by Fiona Jayde I didn't come up with that idea. I just made it sound cute. This particular idea of motivations behind every action can be a vital contributor to "believable realism". Romance, even more so, erotic romance, is a genre based on fantasies. And lets face it -- most of these fantasies would never take place in real life. We aren't talking about improbability of some hunky alien dropping from the sky. The reader allows us that. However, if that same hunky alien dropped into a girls apartment, proclaimed her as mate and told her to bend over, what should a heroine do - without making the reader's eyes roll? (If this was me, I would scream for my phone and run for my display swords. The hunkiness of said alien wouldn't enter my mind until much much later. One of us would get hurt. Since I haven't practiced martial arts in a few years and those damn swords are heavy, it would probably be me.)

Even in sci-fi and fantasy worlds, even in alternate universes, the actions of our characters must have a degree of reality. That reality stems from motivation. There should be a reason they are doing whatever it is they are doing. Alternatively, there should be a reason they are allowing things to happen to them even if these things aren't necessarily "believable".

And here is the secret: we authors can make ANYTHING happen. Literally anything. We can make our heroine welcome the hunky alien with open.. ehem, arms and make it looks perfectly natural if we set up proper motivation for her. This motivation can include dreaming of the hunky alien for years, or perhaps being hypnotized or under his control somehow. Or she is addicted to his pheromones and can't help herself. There needs to be a reason why she doesn't run screaming for the cops or dig out her baseball bat to brain him.

That reason can also be confusion, arousal, curiosity. The reader need to see these feelings, hear them voiced, allowing herself to be dragged from the plane of reality into that of the unreal.

In case of the alien hunk, our heroine knows this shouldn't happen, she knows this isn't right. She just can't help herself, and if the reader sees the questions, hears the doubts, the reader is dragged into the situation right along with the heroine.

As example, lets use DeBriefed, the first installment of the GrimJustin series. The story opens with an interrogation scene. A very sexy interrogation scene. Dinah - the heroine - is told she must give up information and in return she will be pleasured. If she doesn't give up the info, her pleasure will be withheld.

Seriously, yeah right!

But since Dinah thinks that, echoing the reader's own thoughts, it makes thing more believable. The fact that Dinah is drawn into this situation despite herself, calling herself crazy for wanting more, for succumbing to it, makes the reader identify with her and slide inside the story despite the "no way in hell" factor.

As for the hero- who would actually interrogate someone like this? Enter Jack Brenner, with his complicated feelings for our heroine. He was her lover in virtual reality. He owes her his life and he cannot stand to see her hurt. He needs the information she has, and he must obtain it through any means necessary. The sexy interrogation technique seems more apt now.

Jack walks a fine line between alpha and asshole. If the reader didn't see his motivation, Jack would simply be a jerk. His care for Dinah makes him human, his own struggle for control during the steamy interrogation makes him sexy. His unwillingness to hurt her makes him a hero instead of some ass with a domination streak.

To demonstrate this further, lets look into a plot often used in erotic romance - a heroine taken by a deliciously handsome dominant man who uses sex to "subdue" her.

We - of a modern feminist generation -- shake our heads and proudly proclaim we would never allow this to happen. Then some of us secretly drool over our ebooks. The task of the author is to go around this resistance as smoothly as possible, while keeping the hero out of the asshole realm and keeping the heroine from wilting like a used dishrag.

One way to do it is to set up the heroine as secretly craving someone strong enough to take her on. She can be a successful lawyer or a super hero fighter. Or she can just be sick of all her suitors being pansie and she is craving a "real man". But lets note - this is only in the bedroom. Our heroine isn't looking for someone to take care of her, and make her decisions for her. If she becomes a dishrag, our readers will quickly loose interest.

Enter hero. He is strong, he is dominant, he isn't used to some woman commanding him. He would fight a man for dominance, but its silly to fight a woman for it. He subdues her in the only manner he knows how - by showing her how weak he can make her. He isn't dominant for the hell of it - he does it to prove his point.

Based on these motivations we have seeds for plot:
For the life of him, our hero can't understand why his woman lets him play dominant in the bedroom (or the starship gym or against a tree trunk in the jungle) but she refuses to follow his lead anywhere else. The hero realizes he cannot subdue her, and perhaps this is where he grudgingly starts to respect her. Our heroine can realize that through dominance games she can revel in someone else's strength and let go of her own need to control.

While readers are willing to give us lenience in the fantastic - aliens, shape shifters, or vampires, we as author must retain the credibility and the realism behind our characters' actions. Motivation is the powerful key that allows us to do that - if the motivation is real, the rest, no matter how unlikely, can be believable because of it.