On Longing

So how long should it take for the hero and heroine to get it on? Once upon a time, the buildup to the big event took most of the book, but lately the trend seems to be to shorten that period by quite a bit so we get to the good parts early on. I’ve even come across the occasional book where H/H do the nasty within the first chapter.

I’m not a fan of this development myself. It’s not that I’m particularly demanding about people getting to know each other well before having sex (although that would be my preference). It’s just that I’m a fan of longing.

You know what I mean by longing, right? Hero and heroine see each other, are attracted, wonder what it would be like to be together. All of this takes several chapters while readers share in the growing magnetism. Sometimes one or both characters have other attachments (usually to unlikeable characters) that have to be dealt with before the two can get together. Sometimes there are outside forces like jobs or serial killers keeping them apart. But the longing and the related tension build slowly over the number of chapters it takes to get the H/H into a position where they can actually go to bed.

This may be one of the reasons I like regencies—many of them emphasize longing more than fulfillment. After all, the H/H in a regency not only have to get to know each other, they have to want each other so badly that they’re willing (and able) to overcome society’s strictures against any kind of physical contact, and that necessarily takes time.

It’s all a formula, of course, but formulas are the backbone of pop fiction. And this particular formula has maintained its popularity because it works. It is, in a sense, the formula of daydreams. Seeing someone in a movie or TV show or  even on the bus who looks really cool, and fantasizing about what it would be like to be with someone like that. But it also plays into a sort of universal human need to connect, to have a relationship that grows and changes and finally gets somewhere.

So here’s to longing. In my own books, I’ll probably go on doing the slow build-up. Maybe I’m old fashioned (probably I am), but I still enjoy delayed gratification more than the instant kind. After all, doesn’t dessert taste that much sweeter when you have to eat your broccoli first?