My guide to writing erotica

Edit: more will be added when I have time.

Alright, let me start off by pointing out that I'm no professional writer. Save a few columns, I haven't had anything published worth mentioning. Take all of this with a grain of salt. If someone with more experience, knowledge and/or wisdom wishes to correct me, feel free.

Without any further ado, let's do this.

Why.

First question, when writing anything, you should ask yourself, is why you are writing. If you're writing for yourself to masturbate to, then by all means just ahead and do your thing. Will others be reading it, or are you practising for that occasion? Because then you have some things to consider.

You see, despite its visual delivery, writing is a medium that can tickle all the senses. This is the first mistake I see a lot of people make, and there's a whole tvtropes page on this phenomenon known as "IKEA porn". Many people, especially those who just started off writing, seem to think writing should be a transcript more than anything. We don't want to read that kind of thing! If I wanted to experience "my penis entered a vagina" I would much rather go out and do it than read about it. Similarly, I can imagine that sentence doing very little for your female readers. They don't have a penis and, despite your female readers possibly having an extremely vivid imagination, the word penis and its many synonyms is not going to get the proverbial job done.

What

Before telling you what to do and what not to do, like the meddlesome bastard that I am, there's one more thing you need to consider before you start writing: what it is you will be writing.

Now we're both adults here, so it's clear you're going to be writing porn. Smut. Erotica. And you've (hopefully) given your subject some thought already. But you need to realise how that decision, how your material will affect what you're writing.

Is it fanfiction, where it's important to focus on aspects of the characters that make them who and what they are, and language, behaviours and thoughts are key?

Is it an impossible situation, like fantasy or sci-fi, where you need to really get your setting and atmosphere correct?

Are you trying to get something really kinky on paper, so it's especially important you focus on the sensations, emotionally, physically and mentally, that make your kink so amazing you'll have vanilla people reading it and want to give it a try?

Will it be semi-poetry, and are you ready to look up things like style and rhythm in favour of characters or setting?

Or are you simply writing "flat" porn, no bells or whistles? Because you better get ready to do all of the above. Writing simple porn is the hardest thing to do.

Source: reddit.com/r/Erotica/comments/2axwkb/my_guide_to_writing_erotica

8 comments

  1. I think erotica readers are fine with the words penis and vagina as long as those are not the only words used. It’s best to keep terms simple and dirty. No one wants to wade through prose so purple they have to break out a thesaurus when they’re trying to fap.

  2. Personally, I *prefer* using the correct terminology. I bought a dime store erotica book that repeatedly used the word "cunny" for vagina. Wtf. It’s a vagina. Cunny sounds like a cartoon character. After reading that one I realized how goofy everything can sound. I mean, if you’re not going to use the word, it’s fun to tease around it by using a simile metaphor… Like "he dove his tongue into her inner depths, as if searching for a treasure not yet discovered," or whatever. I don’t know, that was a bad example. That’s only when appropriate, *not* every sentence. The truth is that pussy, cock, cunt and dick don’t exactly fit into the theme of some really well written stories, especially ones about losing "innocence" for the first time. It’s a stark contrast in implied vulgarity, and sticks out like a sore thumb.

  3. You’re both right (though I think treasure and hidden depths may be a bit too overblown a style of prose for my tastes). What I meant is that i have an issue with the typical phrase "my cock felt so good in her." This is not enticing or descriptive. It’s a manual with an opinion. I’ll keep working on this if people care :)

  4. Yeah the treasure thing was def no good, I just couldn’t bring an effective example to mind. My wife showed me a tumblr user named lavendersurrender that writes pretty fantastically, though she mainly writes odd incest fantasy storylines. She’s the best I’ve found so far, and she makes all of those euphemisms seem somehow both passionate and adorable at the same time. Even with her weird choice in plot it’s completely readable. I see erotica as more of an artistic expression of ones sexual desires, and hold it to a bit of a high standard. Personally, I feel like there’s a distinct difference between erotica, and spankread that you find in between centerfold spreads. I’m a snob about it, so I pretty much lurk on this sub. It has some great stuff, though.

  7. It doesn’t as far as I know. Them were the jokes. I wonder how you’d build an erotica story around ol Cunny the Clown.

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