Love at first sight...

Kissing before getting the fellow's name might be a bit too fast. Other than that, it depends on your setting, characters and story. Most people like to observe people they're attracted to a bit, but others leap in feet first.

It really depends on the characters, their personalities and the situation/place they are in their lives. My chars are in love at first sight, and they are both very sexual beings/lack inhibitions...yet they don't kiss for the first time for the first time until almost two months later and it's another month before they wind up in bed together...because of their pasts, and the crazy situation that her life is in. It's just not feasible. Now, if they'd met another time and place they'd probably end up in the sack within a day or two *lol* Because once they're there it's tough to get them out and back into the story...

What it comes down to is knowing your characters and your story...if based on who they are it's believable, then go with it. If even one of them is cautious, give it a little time.

Depends on how deep and long the kiss is. Some folks exchange pecks on the cheek or on the lips at the end of a first date. Also depends on if you're writing a slow-burn romance or something with hot and quick action.

Depends on the setting, characters, etc. One romance novel I quite enjoy, Mimosa Grove, the main characters barely say a word to each other before they are naked and in bed, but its also because they'd been lovers in their dreams for months. Soon as they saw each other in real life, they didn't really need much in the way of introduction

That said, love itself is generally irrelevant on when they first kiss, depending on the characters (again). Particularly these days, it is not that uncommon at all to kiss on a first date, or more. And, of course, there are occasions where a kiss may come before introductions (maybe at a New Years party, they've been eyeing each other all night, and just before midnight managed to get close enough that they do the kiss thing with each other)

It's the 'love at first site' thing that I would find unbelievable. Attraction and lust at first sight, absolutely. But love? Nah, it just doesn't work that way. Unless there's some serious supernatural stuff going on . . .

As for how soon is too soon for the first kiss, that totally depends on the circumstances. I've read lots of books where the characters were strongly attracted and uninhibited, so kissing the first time they met was perfectly believable. They should probably talk for at least a few minutes first, though.

Now, how am I going to get the huge jumping spider off my mouse so I can post this? *pokes spider with pen* Wow, those things can really jump.

I'd have said it's impossible, too. Until I met someone. This was a long time ago...we didn't end up together, but it took us three years to figure out we were a non-starter. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I saw him walking across a parking lot and it was like being hit in the stomach with a cannonball.

We're still friends 30 years later, and despite how truly and deeply I love my husband, something in this earlier guy just reaches in and shakes me up. Not on purpose. I couldn't have resisted it even if I'd known it was coming.

And that's more information than I've ever put out there, except in my fiction...LOL.

It isn't so much about how soon a first kiss is as what will the conflict be if the h/h experience love at first sight and quickly tumble into marriage. A romance about what happens after a hasty marriage would be interesting, but it isn't a common trope these days because it would go one of two ways: a deep, angsty character study or a plot-driven story where it was likely that the h/h would experience Big Misunderstandings and long separations before coming back together. Both aren't impossible, but the romance novel is essentially a novel of courtship--that is, a narrative of two people getting to know one another and falling in lust and love. If the h/h are already in love and happily married near the beginning of the book, it would probably push it out of the genre and into mainstream fiction because the tension imperative to romance is gone.

I would definitely focus on the conflict (external and internal) between the h/h because that is what will make or break your premise.

I think if the attraction is written in a believable way then a kiss at any stage can be believable....although one thing I think is that some readers like the tease - the build up to such things - but I see no reason you can't build it believably in a few pages instead of a hundred.

I also don't think you can force attraction between between charachters - it is something that I feel takes on a life on its on throughout a WIP. I have a MC who is pursued by one man, and no matter how hard I tried to make her attracted to him, it just never happened, but she kissed another fellow on the first night she met him.

I think well written charachters dictate the way.

I have no issues with a kiss early on, as long as you find other ways to build sexual tension.

it's really all about how you write it, and how you write the characters. i believe just about any romantic situation can be made to be believable, as long as you the writer have a firm grasp and understanding of the feeling and emotions of your characters.

think it makes sense for them to kiss early on? then write it. you know your characters better than anyone else, you know their realm of reality.

An early kiss is fine, but as others have said, any and all tension leading up to it (even an interruption that makes them delay the kiss for a paragraph) is tasty IMO

Anything is possible in writing, if the writer makes me believe it's possible.

BUT I tend more toward Chemistry at first sight, because as anyone who ever blew up a high school lab (no? Just me?) knows, chemistry can be volatile and that usually makes the story telling more interesting

annie (who has no issue with whirlwind romances - met hubby Jan 5, married April 28 and only waited that long because friends said I owed my mom a wedding)
http://anniejonesjoywritingthroughlife.blogspot.com/