The more I research microtropes, the more I realize just how specific romance readers are when looking for new reads. I knew this to some extent, being both a romance reader myself who has long loved the specificity of Smart Bitches Trashy Books Book Finder and HABO, and a plot writer who thrives on very specific plot outline requests, but I don't think I really understood how specific readers can get until I started deep-diving into microptropes.

And while I love looking into sub-genre specific microtropes, I'll be honest: my favourite to research are sex and sex-related microtropes. Mostly because there are just so dang many of them, and reading about them reminds me of just how many ways there are to set up and write sex scenes. The four sexy microtropes I'm talking about today barely scratch the surface of the hundreds out there, but they're great ways of setting up sex scenes and showing characters getting aroused by each other.

1. Showing off their arousal

This microtrope describes when a male main character takes his love interest's hand and places it on his erection and says something to the effect of "This is what you do to me/have done to me," or when a female main character takes her love interest's hand and places it up her skirt/down her pants so they can feel her wetness and mutters something to the same effect.

Why is this so hot? Because the main character is showing their lover physical evidence of just how much they want them. This works particularly well for main characters who might not have the gift of the gab, and struggle to explain just how gone they are for their love interest. But what they can't say in words, they can certainly show in other ways.

2. Describing what they want to do behind closed doors

This microtrope falls into the broader "dirty talk" umbrella category, but whereas dirty talk is a general term for talking that happens during or in the prelude to sexy times, this specific microtrope is when the main character tells their love interest/s exactly what they want to do to them.

The microtrope works particularly well when the characters are in public and can't act on any of those things. They just have to listen to increasingly detailed descriptions of the sex they can't have right now, which ratchets up the sexual tension and makes the eventual sex scene, when the characters can finally play out what they've discussed, insanely hot.

3. Teasing with just the tip

A sexy microtrope that works both with penises and strap-ons, this one is great both for public and private scenes. Maybe your MCs are in an opera booth, and one just can't wait until intermission to get her kicks, so she subtly lifts her skirts so her lover can tempt her with a tip, just to tide her over. Or perhaps your MCs are in a taboo relationship, and figure that if it's just the tip, it doesn't count, and they aren't really doing anything wrong, and surely that'll be enough to satiate them (except, as we all know from the bang it out trope, it just makes them hornier).

This microtrope works really well with forbidden situations and relationship—brother's best friend, ex's brother, teacher/student, age gap—and of course, the outcome is always that just the tip isn't enough.

4. Spilling lots of cum

This microtrope got big a few years ago with the rise of monster romances; monster peens are, more than human peens, very good at producing a lot of the white stuff. And while the trope does work in human-human human-non/monster paranormal creature romances, it's harder for human males to produce, so including this in a contemporary or historical may depend on your imagination and whether you want a realistic sex scene, or just want to throw human anatomical realities to the wind.

But what's the draw, you might ask? The reason readers find this microtrope so hot?

One word: uncontrollable. The flood of cum is really a metaphor for the hero's feelings about the heroine, both sexual and romantic. And those feelings cannot be contained by . . . well, anything, which is why the spillage continues onto their lover/s, whatever surface they happened to be using during their lovemaking, and maybe even the carpet.

So there you have it. Four super-sexy microtropes that will heat up any romance novel. Use one, use them all. Have fun. And until the next post, happy reading and writing!