Creating Unique Titillation

by Sally J. Walker

The conscientious romance writer is perpetually looking for words, sentences, and scenes that depict the pull-push emotional state of the male and the female in the story. The essential questions are two: What words will titillate the reader? AND How can these characters realistically yet uniquely demonstrate their emotional state?

Using titillate's meaning of "to excite agreeably", the romance writer must carefully assess words that convey the five sensations. Don't all writers have to do this to relate credible illusion to the reader? Certainly, but the romance writer must go one step further and create images with double entendre of blatant, obvious denotation AND sexually suggestive connotation. The denoted image, facial expression, body language of one character must create a sexual pull-push connotation in the second character. In turn, the surprised romance reader is titillated and intrigued by the story . . . and the storyteller. Universal is made unique.

The array of titillating words and images is amazing because of individual uniqueness. Each writer comes to a story from unique life experience AND each character in the story is responding from a unique history, even if it has been created by the writer. How does a writer describe universal sensations or situations in a way that is "new and fresh?" How can a romance writer avoid the perennial "literary" accusations of cliched, over-written purple prose?

Examine your life history AND the history of your characters for those unique moments that titillated in the past. Example: A teenager watched her father lick melting ice cream from her mother's arm, his tongue moving from elbow to wrist. For a long moment, her parents stared hotly into one another's eyes and the child flushed with her first awareness of sexual attraction. As an adult, here she sits staring at the smear of hot fudge on her date's full lips. Her feminine core contracts. She blinks at the knowing smile transforming those lips. MAKE THE SENSATIONS RELATIVE to that character, that situation and it becomes unique!

Content refers to the exact meaning of words and context refers to the relative state of their use. As writers we have to stretch ourselves to twist and surprise our readers so content becomes a surprising metaphor in context. That's how you escape cliche and create "new and fresh" references for the reader.

Here's some suggestions for UNIVERSAL CONTENT, UNIQUE CONTEXT

1. Challenge yourself and your characters with memories that stimulate sensuality and sexuality in startling ways.

2. Create unexpected tension and withhold relief and satisfaction until both characters and readers are ready to explode.

3. Naive words or actions in one character are constantly interpreted as double entendre by the other character.

4. Make two lists: Words YOU perceive as sexually suggestive and inane words whose CONTEXT could make sexually suggestive.

The true challenge comes when you confront predictability, turn one emotional response into another, and reveal a depth of character or relationship the reader had not expected. Of course, you must do this carefully and logically to avoid melodrama, but what a "literary" achievement when you pull it off! The winner is the titillated reader and, of course,the writer now in demand!

Sally J. Walker is a member of the RWA Cameo Chapter in Omaha, Nebraska. She recently sold her hardback literary novel, Letting Go of Sacred Things. Sally is also working on a number of other projects which include a screenplay, poetry and a Christian western romance. This article first appeared in November 1996 in the Cameo Newsletter. We thank the RWA Cameo Chapter for allowing us to reprint it.

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