Perverts 'R' Us
What Is Erotica? And How Do I Do It?
By Danyealle
Common errors most authors make and how to avoid them
The most basic of all definitions is that it is words and sentences that are put together to stimulate the reader sexually. But for those that write and read it they know there is more to it than that! Much more! There is good erotica and bad erotica. There are straight stroke stories and those with a plot that is both sexual and stimulating in other ways. The variations of erotica are as diverse as the authors. It can contain normal every day characters to those you see on TV to science fiction to robots to fantasy creatures that never existed, all depending on who the author is. Each story is as believable as the author makes it. Some can make you believe robots can exist as sexual beings and others couldn't convince you that a middle age woman has sex.
The first step with any story, be it erotica or a straight story, is a basic premise and a plot line. Yes, even a stroke story has a premise and plot, stroke story it's self is a plot. The ideas come in various ways from various sources depending on the author. Some are simple that will only take a few pages to complete others are complex and end up as a novel length. Each author has their own style they write in and it usually evolves as they go on and become more proficient at what they do.
Some of the other basic elements are grammar and spelling. Even for the most mundane of stroke stories, spelling and grammar is essential. Nothing will turn a reader off a story, no matter how good the premise or plot, like a lot of misspellings or very bad grammar. Very bad grammar and misspellings are usually easily corrected; most word processing programs come with spell check. Just run that and it SHOULD catch most of the most glaring ones. Then close it and put it aside for a couple hours then come back and read through it again, you should pick up a few more. But by far the best thing to do is send it to someone else and let them look through it. They will find a lot of things that you miss; it is very hard to correct your own stuff because the hobgoblin of most authors is that you know what it is SUPPOSED to say, not what it actually SAYS. Not only do they check errors, most can tell you where something doesn't sound right or you made a mistake, stuff that is easily fixed. Most big story sites on the web offer volunteer editors free of charge. Take advantage of this! Not only does it give your work the polish it may need, but they can sometimes offer suggestions you didn't think of to make what you write sound as professional as what is published in book form!
The next logical step is the form, how you write what you write. In this area a MUST is DESCRIPTION, DESCRIPTION, DESCRIPTION! Let's look at a couple sentences for example…
OK, which would you rather read? The first one, while descriptive, is a lot more boring than the second one even though they say the same thing! A little time and effort is all it takes to be descriptive! It is quite easy to do. If you come up with a loss for words a thesaurus is most helpful, there are even online version of them that are free to use. A little more description can make your story much more enjoyable and more exciting to read. But don't go overboard with it, too many descriptive sentences can make it just as bad. With time and work you will find the happy medium and know how far to go.
There is also another goblin that lurks here and there with authors, sentences that always start with the same thing! Think about it, how many stories have you read that most sentences start with 'the', 'he', 'she', 'they' and 'and'? Quickly they become annoying and hard to read. All it takes is a little thought to fix this. Do it the way you see it the first time, then go back to it and read through it and correct it that way. There are many creative ways to do this. Commas are free to use and work great with this! Combining sentences works well too! All it takes is a bit of time and creativity!
Pronouns are the next thing to consider. By far a story becomes a lot more bulky and unwieldy if you continually use the full names rather than shorten it and use the basic pronouns. This seems to have been a problem with most of us, myself included, when we start out writing. For some reason our brains seem to lock on the names and we use them each and every time rather than using pronouns, it's a common newbie author mistake! Yes, those names are needed from time to time to remind the reader of who is talking and such but throughout a story; no it isn't and just makes it harder to read. By all means, the first writing, do it your normal way but when you go back through it and keep a look out for the areas that you see can do without the proper names and change them! Soon, as you develop as a writer, this will become second nature to you and much easier to do.
This is a problem that is almost wholly in the erotic genre; words and phrases that while very erotically descriptive are so stupid all it will produce is a laugh from the readers, not sexual stimulation. His 'love muscle', 'love gun', 'rod of steel'… At one time, years ago, perhaps they were erotic, now all they do is produce laughs. There are tons of them out there, and you know what they are when you see them. Stay away from them, banish them with holy water, perform an exorcism, do what you have to do, but don't use them! Unless you are going for a piece in historic perspective where certain phrases were used at the time, all it will do is make the reader shake their head and close it without finishing. Another thing in this area is inaccurate or unbelievable descriptions. If you truly don't know what female genitals looks like, go to a site and find a picture (educational sites have great pictures of anatomy with everything labeled) then go from there! Putting in a normal human male character with a 20-inch cock is not believable to anyone. Stay away from such things if you are just doing a normal story. In sci-fi, fantasy, or stuff like that, it is fine.
Another hobgoblin is perspective. Every author that I have ever known has at one time or another had a problem with staying in the perspective they started out in (IE 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person). Sometimes as we get going well in the middle, unbeknownst to us, we slide into a different perspective as the story goes along. All it takes is a quick read through and you've caught it. That is why you ALWAYS go through and check it afterwards, or have someone do it for you.
Along with this is something in the family tree with perspective, that being accents and dialects. If you start out with someone who has a strong southern accent or something like that, don't kill the accent in the middle. You have to stay with it or it loses the impact you wanted it to have in the first place. As authors, we ALL have problems with stuff like that, we tend to slip into what is our accent or dialect, because it is what we are familiar with. But if you are doing a story with a character that is very old-worldly, with very formal dialect, and then suddenly you switch to the modern slang-based dialect you normally speak with, you are going to lose the impact you were going for. If it is something that is so uncomfortable and unfamiliar to you that you are having problems with it, don't use it and do something else. No one is going to know later what you intended to do, just how it came out.
Research is another thing that is often overlooked when writing erotica. Most people think, "well I know how to suck and fuck, so what else do I need?" Again, that is what separates the ordinary from the attention-grabbing stories. I'm not saying spend a year researching something and knowing every detail about it. What I am saying is to take a couple hours and look a few things up on the web. It isn't hard to do and when you do that it gives the characters and stories much more life and believability than if you just made things up as you go along. Not only that, but sometimes you find out some things that you didn't know and will give added enrichment to what you are writing. If you don't like doing that yourself, draft a friend of yours to do it. Most are more than willing, and like to surf the web and learn new things. Research and reading expands your horizons exponentially and will give your writing more depth. Hell, you might find a new genre of story-telling that you never knew existed and find out you are pretty damn good at it!
By far the worst hobgoblin in erotica is inconsistency. Too many of us get stuck in a rut of writing the same thing over and over, just changing names, the way people look and their ages. Sometimes when you look on a site in your favorite section, you go through story after story and find they are basically the same thing over and over with just different names and places. This is where the one thing ALL authors have comes into play, IMAGINATION! If you think it up, you can do it! Sometimes it's just a bit harder to do.
I myself have found that I have written the same premise over and over again without realizing it. That is when you have to take a step back, take stock and think of how you can do it a different way. Your writing is limited by only your imagination, nothing more. Know what? No matter how far-fetched the plot line might be and how strange it sounds, someone out there is going to like it. It is the differences that make writing erotica so much fun and rewarding; only your imagination limits you. Want to do bestiality in space? Go for it! You might just have to come up with a longer explanation as to why they are there is all. Sometimes isn't the journey as much fun as getting there? Do you want to try a different topic that you usually do? Go for it, the worst that is going to happen is you aren't going to like it. But how will you know you aren't any good at it unless you try? Remember, the first sentence is always the hardest of any story.
Despite what some critics might say, erotica is just as much an art form as any other genre of writing. Who says these stories can't be engrossing and as engaging as straight fiction? If it is what you do why not try to do it the best you can rather than just sitting down and keying in something for the sake of doing it. All it takes is a little time and some imagination and who knows what you and your computer might produce? You never know who might be reading that story you think is just a piece of stroke fluff.
Danyealle - 11/20/05