Can There Be Too Much Sexual Tension in a "Sweet" Romance?

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Sapphire135

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I have a historical novel in the final edit stage. There is no sex scene, but there is a lot of sexual tension. The hero twice (in his POV scenes) reflects on his state of arousal and, in the one scene where they passionately kiss, he tells the heroine he wants to bed her. It's all done in period language and nothing graphic, however, I worry that a reader would feel this is building up to something more than a passionate kiss and be disappointed when there is no final culmination. I am torn about whether I should leave it as it is or try and make it a bit more G rated.

Any opinions/advice on this dilemma would be much appreciated!
 
Deb Kinnard

Deb Kinnard

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Upfront: I write both sweet and non-sweet; my G rated stuff is with a publisher and my R rated stuff is indie.

Like so many other things, the answer is "it depends." If you're going for sweet/secular, I'd have no problem with him saying he's physically excited and wants to bed her. This is how humans are created, after all.

If, however, your target publishers are inspirational (Christian) houses, you might want to tone it down a hair. In mine, I've used euphemisms such as, "You're a fire in my blood" or things of that nature. Those houses won't take any verbiage that mentions physical arousal (although we all know that has a tendency to happen!) or mentions of sacking in together.

The passionate kiss should be fine in either type of submission, IMO.
 

Sapphire135

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Deb Kinnard said:
Upfront: I write both sweet and non-sweet; my G rated stuff is with a publisher and my R rated stuff is indie.

Like so many other things, the answer is "it depends." If you're going for sweet/secular, I'd have no problem with him saying he's physically excited and wants to bed her. This is how humans are created, after all.

If, however, your target publishers are inspirational (Christian) houses, you might want to tone it down a hair. In mine, I've used euphemisms such as, "You're a fire in my blood" or things of that nature. Those houses won't take any verbiage that mentions physical arousal (although we all know that has a tendency to happen!) or mentions of sacking in together.

The passionate kiss should be fine in either type of submission, IMO.
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Thanks for your response, Deb! It helps a lot.
 
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