My Year of Synonyms for 'Thrust' and Relaxation

Listen, writing romance novels is way harder than it looks.

Hey Everyone!

This month, for the RoZone, I thought we’d take a cue from Valentine’s Day and dig into the modern-day pastel commodification of horniness: romance novels.

With the rise of booktok and Bookstagram, contemporary romance as a genre has transformed into a multi-billion dollar industry. Gone are the days when a romance novel meant a cheesy cover with a partially dressed Fabio guarding purse-sized pockets of flowery prose. Today’s romance novels feature whimsical pastel-illustrated covers that hide surprising amounts of smut, and they’re getting people to pick up a book for fun, sometimes for the first time! 

When I worked as a bookseller, I spent endless afternoons trying to convince well-meaning parents and grandparents that graphic novels/books based on movies/ etc “still count as reading.” Now, online, I see echoes of that same conversation as the public contemplates if literature with a licentious flair … still counts as literature.

Here’s my hot take: It does. Peddling smut still requires an entire team of editors, writers, and cover designers! Sure, describing a natural human body part as a “member” might not be groundbreaking literature, but people can read it for fun. Not everything you read has to expand your mind and force you to contemplate your space in this increasingly dysfunctional and dystopian world. Now, more than ever, we deserve intellectual spaces that promote relaxation, and if that relaxation happens to include page-long descriptions of washboard abs, that’s cool, too.

I’ll admit I was suspicious of the literary legitimacy of romance novels until I had to write one. Longtime RoZone readers will know this already, but I ghostwrite romance sometimes for freelance gigs. When I first started, I foolishly thought, “How hard can it be?” and then laughed at my own joke.

Writing romance is a balancing act; not only do you have to manage the plot and characters, but you also have to make them fall in love in a way that reads as believable! (If someone falls too quickly, it could come across as “instalove,” a trope that divides readers to this day.) Plus, just like in an actual relationship, you have to work hard to ensure that intimate scenes aren’t repetitive, which requires a lot of planning. Seriously, how many synonyms for thrust can you come up with?

Also, since people always ask:

The most awkward part of writing a sex scene is choreographing it. You can write an entire scene, pat yourself on the back, and then realize that it’s anatomically impossible for anyone to bend that way. It takes forever to re-write, and then you get to stare at the wall in your office and wonder if “plunge” is too visceral of a synonym.

However much work you think it takes to write a romance novel, multiply that by five and then fill your inbox with pictures of photoshopped torsos. I have so much respect for editors and writers who work in romance. (Even that person who wrote that novel about banging a door).

Yes, that’s a real book. The creativity of the romance genre confounds me. Throughout the past year, I have learned more than I would ever care to about the lives of DILFs, werewolves, hot football players, hot hockey players, hot mobsters, and hot mobsters who shapeshift into werewolves. 

There are a lot of romance novels that showcase obsessive relationship patterns and less-than-stellar understandings of consent (coughCOLLEENHOOVERcough), but romance novels can also be a really powerful tool for demonstrating how consent and checking in with your partner are sexy. Romance novels can provide not only a sense of escapism from this capitalist hellscape in which we live, but model healthy relationships as well.

At the end of the day, I think it’s gorgeous that our most base slutty human desires are now being heralded as “literature.” Who are you when you’re alone in your room, and no one is watching; what if you treated that person like a work of art?