A Goodreads user asked Michael Grant:

Any tips on how to do romantic scenes? I'm very stuck and cringed out.

Michael Grant Well, it depends.

First, if you mean sex scenes, I avoid them because no one writes them well, they always go drifting off into poetic metaphor, which will only make the actual experience seem disappointing by contrast. It's much the same effect pornography has in raising expectations. Real, actual sex, while tons of fun (usually) is not about these huge quasi-religious experiences, nor is it an orgy.

Describing actual sex as it is actually practiced means writing a scene with a lot of fumbling, nervous sweating, anxiety and some pleasure. But if you put it down on paper it ends up looking rather appalling, which is how actual sex between actual humans looks unless you're one of the participants.

In other words, as long as I'm not willing to bullshit people there's no winning on this, certainly not in YA. I have written a handful of YA sex scenes and I always toss them off and basically throw the scenes away because the point, the interesting thing, the thing that is actually huge and poetic and deserving of all your similes,is love not sex. Don't get me wrong: sex is swell. But love is important.

So, if you really want to write a good romantic scene, build to it. If your characters love each other, if we readers know about the love, have seen it grow and believe in it, the scene will write itself. If it's not writing itself because you the writer don't quite believe in it. And if you don't believe in it, guess what, neither will the readers.

Now, if you're just doing a casual make-out scene, that's not hard. Some kissing, some heavy breathing, some hands on the move. Keep it simple, keep it direct, don't turn it into some romantic armageddon.

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