This week, Fable and the Verbivore jump into Part 2 of our discussion about developing and building physical intimacy between characters. If you haven’t already listened to it, we’d highly recommend checking out Episode 71: Let's talk about writing physical intimacy Part 1.

Warning: We talk openly about building physical intimacy and writing about sexual contact in more detail than in our previous episode. This topic may not be suitable for all audiences.

Last year, we released podcast Episodes 15 and 16 which explored creating chemistry - both romantic and platonic - between fictional characters. We mostly focused on describing attraction beyond the physical by showing intellectual attraction, emotional attraction, and social attraction.

Today, we revisit writing romantic pairings to talk about a physical intimacy framework originally presented by romance author Linda Howard for showing a natural progression to intimate connection between two characters. Inspired by the work of Zoologist Desmond Morris’ on Intimate Behavior. Picking up from where we left off last week, we unpack the remaining 4 stages that help demonstrate the progression of intimate contact and look at how some of the books we enjoy approach handling intimate scenes.

We discuss the choices that writers make in their approach to creating romantic and physically vulnerable scenes. The explicit or implicit language that they decide to use, the point of view involved in the scene, and the closeness to the experience that they decide to take all determine how these scenes read.

Throughout the episode, we consider how the unique needs of the project, reader expectations, and the character’s relationship arc can help determine what type of scenes work best for a given story. But we also are reminded that sometimes as writers we need to try to write something several ways and see what ends up working best.

We hope you enjoy listening this episode! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore