9 comments/ 16677 views/ 1 favorites How I Could Enjoy Literotica By: diggypop Ever since I discovered the Internet, and specifically Wikipedia, I've been unable to restrain my compulsion to seek out large amounts of useless information on whatever subject happens to catch my fancy at any given moment. One of the many, many topics I have an odd curiosity about is porn versions of so-called 'straight' entertainment. I had already been privy to the fact that a porn actress going by the name Krysti Myst had done an entire series of films in which she went by the name, 'Buffy' and the thought suddenly popped into my head, "I bet Wikipedia will know if one of those films is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer parody!" Well, it turned out they had an entire page devoted to erotic versions of Buffy (a page which no longer exists, by the way), and one of them, improbably enough, was a story on Literotica entitled, "Buffy the She-Male Vampire Slayer." How could I resist? Of course, any time information like that gets posted on Wikipedia, it will almost certainly be tagged for failure to meet notability criteria, which is a shame, because the mere existence of a story with such a title I found damn entertaining, and therefore notable. I should add that I have always enjoyed written erotica as soon as I was aware of it. For a bookworm like me, it was almost inevitable that my first exposure to explicit sexual material would be in the form of the written word. After all, even Playboy was behind the counter and strictly for adults, and my parent's taste in magazines leaned towards Reader's Digest and Christianity Today (although they've loosened up a lot, to be fair). So I go to the site, and I read the story. And it is erotic, and I do enjoy it...at first. But it goes on for a while, and it starts to dawn on me that it really doesn't feel like I'm in the universe of Buffy taken a sexual twist. It feels like I'm reading a long, drawn-out series of sexual episodes (some degrading) that uses the names of characters from one of my favorite TV shows to tell a rather bizarre narrative that has neither the humor nor the layers of metaphor I look for from Buffy. To be fair, I really had no expectations whatsoever until Buffy, newly granted male genitalia (she also keeps her female parts) thanks to her encounter with a demon, thinks to herself, "Now's the time for me to take advantage of Willow's long-term crush on me!" and then goes in search of her friend. Part of me really wanted to see (or read) that happen. But it was pretty obvious, given the number of chapters in the story, that if that occurred, it would be a long, convoluted journey. I had never really been a peruser of fan fiction, although I was aware of its existence, and I was struck by the disclaimer in the 'Celebrities' section that the stories in said section constituted parodies of the copyrighted works and thus were not copyright violations. An evil idea began to dawn on me... My first attempt at submission of material to this site was basically unsuccessful. One of the many twisted erotic fantasies I have formulated and indulged in (mentally, I mean) over the years is one based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. For some reason, the idea of turning a girl into a blueberry has an extreme erotic charge to it. The turning blue, the swelling, the squeezing her out -- I have always wished someone would recreate this scene and sexualize it, with an adult actress of course. With this in mind, I proceeded to write a version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in which each of the naughty children is ensnared, not in a series of traps, but in a series of sexual initiations. Of course, since this site has a strict policy about no one under 18 being involved in sexual situations (except when the editors aren't paying attention, of course) a magic spell to raise them to the proper age was necessary. Usually, when inspiration hits me, it's more a downpour than a trickle. So at the same time, another idea hit. Use the same premise as my Wonka idea, but set it in Narnia. I had just read a number of scathing criticisms of the Narnia series, and the idea of sending them to a realm where they are confronted by truly grown up things like drugs and sex seemed a lot more moral than drafting them to fight a war, the avoidance of which is after all what had drawn the Pevensie children to that blasted house in the countryside in the first place. While I planned the Wonka parody as a completed story, it seemed best to write the Narnia series in short chapters, as it was a longer and more involved storyline. Which is how, only three quarters of the way through writing "Charlie and the Other Factory" I submitted the first of my Narnia chapters. Well, it got rejected, and although the wording of the response was a bit muddled, it seemed clear that magic spells may be all right for plunging children into scenes of bloody combat, but it simply wasn't enough of a smokescreen for Literotica to allow me to initiate Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter into the ways of sex. Even though there are erotic versions of The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter, and Alice in Wonderland that have somehow made their way on the site, it seemed churlish to argue. Fast forward several months, and my girlfriend noticed that I never seemed to write any more. Now, I have two novels that I've started and need to finish, but I really felt I needed a fresh start at writing. If nothing else, this site has an utter lack of pretension, and I decided to give another shot to an idea I had back when my dreams of writing scandalous versions of beloved childhood tales had been shattered. Or, to put it better, set on the back burner. In my heart of hearts, I know if I wanted to set up my very own site with my very own dirty scribblings, I could. I would also be completely on my own in terms of generating an audience. And I would have to take ownership in a way a site like this one allows me to avoid. Just like plenty of writers in the sixties and seventies wrote stories for pornographic publications that they didn't include on their resumes when submitting stories to the New Yorker, or even Playboy, I can write a story for this site and dismiss it as a harmless piece of fluff that has no real bearing on anything more ambitious I might do. So I came up with the idea for an erotic version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is derivative enough of the original that I wouldn't want to chance attempting serious publication for money, which is usually when the lawyers show up. But it is still enough of its own work to provide me a great deal of enjoyment in writing it, and I hope others equal enjoyment in reading it. I tried specifically to match much of the tone of the original, while also creating new characters and trying for a more thorough portrayal of the inner life of each character as appropriate. Unfortunately, there's not much I can do about Ford; he's a pretty shallow character regardless. And then, out of the blue, another idea occurred to me. It came to me from a variety of places, some crazier than others. One of my regrets is that the religion I was raised in was a very conservative, fundamentalist form of Christianity, and it took me quite a while to get over the idea that sex before marriage is a moral breach comparable with lying or stealing or even striking someone in anger. It has influenced me throughout much of my life, so why not a story? I also have read interesting speculations about colonies such as Jonestown in Guyana, everything from "It was a CIA plot" to "It was a Vatican plot" (Yes, I know; that one's completely nuts) and find the subject fascinating. The initial ideas I had months ago of "Let's find ways to initiate all these innocents into sex" suddenly had an acceptable (by Literotica's standards) setting. A young man thinks he is going to a Bible summer camp to learn how to be a better Christian. But the people running the camp have a darker agenda. And so the Not Bible Camp series has been born. It's definitely a slow burner: The main character is deliberately being manipulated to feel higher and higher degrees of sexual arousal and frustration and only his relative naivete and his own immersion in a belief system that specifically retards his sexual development make this manipulation possible. It definitely isn't an excuse to write a bunch of graphic sex scenes, unlike The Erotic Hitchhiker. And so I am currently writing two stories on this site, one as light and fluffy as I can make it, the other I can even conceive of reworking and publishing for real, without a hint of embarrassment. And that leads me to a potentially thorny topic: the state of writing on this site, and what I think would improve it. ***** I have seen more than one story on this site start with the disclaimer that the author wrote it for the sheer pleasure of it, and that therefore they wanted no comments on such things as spelling and grammar errors. Certainly I can't fault anyone who simply writes for the sheer pleasure of it, and to be fair, I can usually tell within a paragraph or two if the writing is to my taste or will simply irritate me. Generally when that disclaimer is in place, I seldom bother. Let me reiterate that it doesn't irritate me that someone would write heedless of care or skill, or that they would choose to do so in such a public format. After all, this site isn't run blindly. If the admins of this site do or don't see fit to publish any story, it doesn't harm me, as long as I get relative clarity regarding what I submit (i.e. will they or won't they publish it, and why). And I get why someone would choose to do that. Obviously they get pleasure from writing, however hastily, and they like other people telling them THEY got pleasure. They are still risking negative feedback, but the disclaimer makes it relatively unlikely, unless someone particularly cranky and/or offended comes along, and those comments are always discounted. But occasionally someone will say they do appreciate constructive criticism, and occasionally I will even give what I feel is exactly that. I only do that if I really think the writer in question has the capacity to improve. If I haven't been able to last through two paragraphs, not only is it unfair to criticize, it seems futile. And my unwillingness to read a given story usually isn't simply due to mistakes. They can be like grains of sand, irritating but usually not derailing the impact of the story. No, for me, what truly sinks most stories on this site are a lack of focus and a lack of conviction. Again, for many on this site, the attention to detail that I value in writing is anathema to the ends they seek from this type of writing. And that's OK. I'm not trying to stop anyone from writing whatever they damn please; like I said, I can generally detect if something isn't to my taste within a couple of paragraphs. And if I lose interest halfway in? Well the story must have had something worthwhile to keep me going that far, so no hard feelings. (Well, that's another reason to stop reading...) I'm writing to those people that draw me in so far but no farther. Who surprise me with concise detailed descriptions, and yet still leave me bogged down in the forest of their words. Who seem to think a paragraph summing up the protagonist's past is an acceptable substitute for portraying their subject's inner life. And lastly, anyone who has heard but doesn't quite grasp the significance of "Show, don't tell." ***** So here are my handy-dandy tips on How to write better for Literotica or anyone else. My advice is to take any one of these tips and play with it. Don't think of them as rules: it's not that kind of game. Imagine if you were a magician and someone said, "If you cross your eyes when you cast the teleportation spell, you can get there an hour before you left;" wouldn't you at least try it out? Then, if you decide you don't want to jump back in time, you don't have to. But isn't it nice to know you can? Step 1. Know what you're writing This isn't the same as writing what you know. Although this is WAY too simplistic, there are basically two types of stories I see on Literotica. Or rather, there are two types of stories I'm addressing in this essay. The first type is essentially erotic fantasy. This genre has gotten little respect over the years, partly because of where the majority of it has been presented: in the pages of pornographic magazines. The classic erotic fantasy is written in the form of a letter. If the phrase "I never thought I'd be one of the people who write in to your magazine," sounds familiar, then you are familiar with the form. The primary function of this type of writing is to present a sexual scenario, similar to the scenes that appear in serial pornographic films, such as the Barely Legal series. Occasionally someone will attempt a longer form, similar to 'classic' films like Deep Throat or Behind the Green Door, which attempt to string several scenes together in the form of a story, no matter how disjointed. The point of these pieces is to present sexual episodes, not to introduce us to complex characters or convey a message. It's fine to include humor, incidental details, evocative descriptions and sharp dialogue to these stories as long as you remember the cardinal rule: if it isn't contributing to the final, climactic scene, which should always be sexual and should always be the most explicit, steamy firecracker of a scene in the entire story, than it doesn't belong. A general rule is that historical detail, biographical detail, etc should be as brief as possible. If you can fit it all in the opening paragraph, so much the better. This goes for any detail that isn't specifically heightening the erotic appeal of the story. For example, three paragraphs about how one's ex-wife took the kids in the divorce and the heartbreak that resulted in doesn't really belong in this kind of story. An eighteen year old girl talking about how she used to practice kissing on her pillow and how she looked at her dad's Playboy to see if her breasts were big enough, now you're talking. Please note, just because I'm using examples that appeal more to heterosexual males, don't think they can't apply to less mainstream erotica. Your own gut is the best guide. If a page-long description of how your character cried themself to sleep every night for a month heightens the arousal factor of the story for you, then go for it. But a lot of the time, details like this appear because people want to pretend they're writing another kind of story. The other kind of story is, in essence, all the other stories that exist. It's the stories that appear in Analog and Asimov's, Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock's, Twilight Zone, Playboy, New Yorker and Harpers'. It's a story, with the only difference being that it's just a little more explicit sexually than you might find in those magazines, or even a lot more. (About the only magazine I'm familiar with that regularly published sexually explicit stories that was neither an erotic nor a pornographic magazine was National Lampoon, and, unsurprisingly, the majority of those were humor stories, which, again, is a mainstream genre.) My point is, in sex fantasies, the point of the story is to lead up to a climactic sex scene, sometimes with almost no preamble, and kick it up to eleven, hopefully with the result that the reader has a release of his or her own. The point of a story is, quite frankly, dependent on each story, but everything in it still needs to contribute to its intended effect, whether surprise, an emotional epiphany, a laugh, or a resolution of a moral dilemma. In so many of the stories I've seen on this site, a perfectly good sexual fantasy is ruined by someone who's convinced that if they just put in a bunch of stuff about the character's past and how lonely they've been and how they haven't been able to trust anybody and then present the sex scene as their resolution of all these problems, they've got a real story on their hands. And sometimes what might be a real story if there was a careful, focused attempt to include exactly what was needed and no more, becomes derailed by pornographic detail that only serves to accentuate how little effort was taken to get the actual story down properly. So once again, I reiterate: know what you want to write, and write that. If you've managed to successfully write a hot, dripping fantasy that turns you and everyone who reads it on, you have nothing to be ashamed of, unless it's really DIRTY. Then you should probably be a little ashamed. Note: If you ARE going to write a sexual fantasy, you could do worse than looking at the classic examples. Hustler still publishes "Hot Letters" as part of the magazine, but the ones from the 1990s to earlier exhibit a wider range and better sense of humor. Penthouse Forum is of course legendary, but they often have a self-consciously 'respectable' veneer which I personally think gets in the way of the arousal factor. Pretty much any magazine that billed itself as 'porn' in the 70s and 80s will have lots of this stuff just because they couldn't show penetration, so they made up for it with dirty stories. Step 2 Show, don't tell. This is one of those cliches that has a lot of truth to it, although it's almost as important to know when to disregard it. So, to put it more directly, if it's important, make it concrete; if it's trivia, abstract it or leave it out all together. Obviously some elements of your story need to be rendered in more detail than others. A car ride in which your mother tells you you're adopted should get a few details to bring it to life. A cab ride that's changing the scene of your bachelor party from an apartment to a strip club, not so much. As a writer, you are God. That can be a pretty heady thrill. But we westerners have gotten a little too used to the idea that God is automatically good, rather than just powerful. The, "It's true because I said so" attitude can lead to a lot of lazy writing. Anybody can write, "Jim woke up that morning depressed." There is an attitude behind sentences like that one, one that's often unintentional. It says, "I don't really give a shit what it means to be depressed. If you want to know the meaning, look it up in the dictionary. I've already spent all the time I want to on how it feels to be my character." Contrast that with, "Jim's eyes came open, slowly and reluctantly. He had never been so uncertain that he even wanted to get out of bed as he was that morning. He attempted to psych himself up by thinking of all the tasks he needed to perform, everything from brushing teeth to eating breakfast, but the sheer number of steps involved in getting ready for a day he didn't especially welcome made him more tired than ever." Remember that your job is not just to create the world of your story, but to guide your readers around in it. Have empathy for both your audience and your characters. Note: This rule has a particular application for the sex fantasy. Any time you want your readers to see a little movie in their head, you MUST provide them with detail. Paint a picture, and don't wait until the clothes are off to do it. Unless you start with them naked, in which case the reader better be able to see everything in that bedroom, or wherever else the action happens. 3. Every so often, ask: Who sees & who says? There are a gazillion different perspectives one can write from. As authoritative as the omniscient third person is, it can rob your narrative of focus if you aren't careful. One peculiarity of this universe is that for something to count as an observable fact, it must be observed. Now, there are a lot of things we count as facts that haven't been directly observed, but are merely extrapolated from things that have been. A needle jiggles and we say we've detected an electric charge. Another one jiggles and we say, "Ah, a seismic wave!" A tree that falls unseen may very well exist, but events in stories have to be observed by someone. How I Could Enjoy Literotica Now an invisible observer who sees everything is a useful tool in the writer's arsenal. You don't even have to credit him as a character. But if you're trying to get people to identify with your characters, you don't want your readers knowing too much more than them. It distances the characters, and can confer upon the reader the equivalent of an unfair advantage. There's a reason readers can only guess the outcome of a mystery until the end. So every event you describe needs to be from a particular perspective. Sometimes the third-person omniscient is the best choice, but it should be a choice, not a default you aren't even conscious of. The same rule goes for narration. Again, the third person has serious advantages. It sounds authoritative, it allows for presenting a scene from multiple perspectives without losing narrative flow, and it allows the writer to forge their own narrative voice rather than be limited to any given character's. But if you're trying to get your audience to identify with one character in particular, letting that character's voice be the narrative one can immerse the reader thoroughly, almost frighteningly, in someone else's head. If you want to reduce the distance even further, stream of consciousness is often devastatingly effective, but it can also be exhausting for the reader. Just remember, nobody knows everything. So if you write as one of your characters, don't just write what you know. Write only what they know. Raymond Chandler wouldn't even let his character Philip Marlowe say he was sad or happy. His pulse would race, he'd get a burning at the pit of his stomach, or his eyes would tear up. The reader then had to take it from there. Note: With a sex fantasy, it's almost gospel that you write it from the first person perspective. This partly stems from its traditional form as a letter, often to a pornographic magazine. All I can suggest is that even if you feel like using a third-person observer, try writing it from a first-person perspective. It's also a fun exercise to write something you wrote in first-person in the third person. Remember, play doesn't have to mean putting no effort into polishing your writing. Learn to love the act of writing, and not just the outcome, and both will inevitably improve. 4. Every paragraph has at least one job. Every sentence has at least two. Robert Anton Wilson used to say that every sentence should carry something of the tone of the entire work, and something to make it interesting. He wasn't unnecessarily strict about it; it was always more a goal than a strict criterion. But every paragraph that goes by without even one sentence that rewards the reader for paying attention is like a sign saying, "Just skim me; I'm not that interesting." The paragraph's job is convey something that the work as a whole needs. Sometimes it's pure description; sometimes it's an action that's performed; sometimes it's what a character says or thinks. Now, because of Literotica's rules about paragraphs, you may find yourself having to split one up to make sure you aren't overwhelming your reader with text. It's OK. As long as you keep the second part of this suggestion in mind. Give each sentence at least two jobs. Ideally, you could make every sentence a piece of polished literary silver. But that's not necessary. The two jobs your sentences must carry out are: convey SOME information to the reader that builds up the paragraph as a whole; and provide a bridge from the sentence before it to the sentence after it. Obviously this is amended for sentences that begin or end chapters, or sit next to one of those breaks we signify with little stars. (Not to mention single sentence paragraphs. Either it should be a long sentence, or you should be trying for serious emphasis.) But it never hurts to pay attention to what comes before or follows regardless. Remember, if you come across a sentence or a paragraph that doesn't seem to serve any purpose, it's almost always better to eliminate it and sew up the cracks around it as best you can. But you're going to find exceptions. Once again, this is about making choices, not being perfect. Note: This is mainly true if you're writing a 'real' story. A sex fantasy is best when the prose doesn't overpower the sexual description. The last thing you want is for your reader to say to themselves, "Ah, yes, I'm reading a story." Whereas that's fine with almost any other kind of story. Just remember when the sex or the violence happens, you want the reader to focus on the action. 5. You don't have to draw the universe if you draw the reader in. Middle-Earth, Shannarah, Belgariad-land, these are all places where magic works and the landscape differs from our own. Both sci-fi and fantasy authors often take a certain pride in coming up with a wealth of detail for their made-up worlds, much of which won't ever be used in a story, just for the pure pleasure of creation. But I don't need to know, for instance, the name of the 20th king of Narnia to be transported there. All I need to do is read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and follow Lucy, Edmund, and the rest along as they explore it. And the secret to creating such experiences is this. No one notices every detail of every single experience they've had. They notice just enough for their brain to organize the data into a larger picture, and then, if their nervous system gets really excited, they get flooded with an overwhelming amount of detail. But our brains don't like to stay excited for too long, so eventually they adjust. And that's generally all you need to draw someone into a written narrative. While you should avoid the abstract (go for "elegant cheekbones and full lips" over "a really pretty face") remember that your details are best when they support the story, not bog it down. So let your character notice a line of ants crawling on the sidewalk. Don't feel you need to mention every crack in the sidewalk, unless there's some reason a character would notice it, or someone trips on it, or it needs to be repaired. This is a good reason to follow one character's perspective for a while. It gives you the balance between noticing too much or noticing nothing at all. If every detail builds up the world someone inhabits by fitting in their subjective experience, then empathy towards your character can be a remarkably apt guide for what to include, and what not to bother with. Note: Sex fantasies are, by their nature, more insular than regular stories. You want to create in the reader the sympathetic sense of arousal, not create a world so vivid he regrets not having time to smell the roses. It has been noted, however, that women are far more likely to respond to environmental cues when it comes to being aroused. I have heard the claim that Dangerous Liaisons, or A Room with a View is far more arousing to many women than a story about cunnilingus would be. So if the center of arousal in your fantasy is a woman, what might be going overboard on the details from a male perspective may be just what is needed to bring her to a soul-shattering climax. Again, you have to know what you're writing. Are you writing a sex fantasy from the perspective of a believable woman, or the kind of woman you want to believe exists? Either one is fine, but don't kid yourself. P.S. 99% of sex fantasies published in porn magazines feature the latter. 6. Don't be afraid to learn from what others have done. Good writers borrow; great writers steal. If you want to write a romance, read romantic fiction. How does the writer create the effect that makes you enjoy it? The same goes for mysteries, sci-fi/fantasy, cold war thrillers, and coming-of-age stories. Part of writing is taking the pleasure that others have given you over the years and appropriating it for yourself. One advantage to a site like this, of course, is that because sex writing carries some of the same stigma as porn (even though the best practitioners are every bit as serious about their work as any other writer), it feels like there's less pressure. Free means there are no immediate mercenary motives, and certainly nobody is submitting stories here thinking they'll get a Pulitzer, so even if someone subjects your story to a hurtful, vitriolic attack, well, how important can their opinion be? Thus one has the freedom to write any kind of story one likes, and the adding of one or several explicit sex scenes can feel like a buffer. It especially can encourage one to adopt a lighter, tongue-in-cheek style; it reinforces the MST3K mantra, "It's just a show; so just relax." And the last thing I want to do is inhibit anyone's sense of fun. So my advice is, take as much as you can from whatever genre you're doing a sexy version of. Learn to be a gifted mimic. This is especially true of the kinds of stories you see in the Celebrities and (to a lesser extent) in the Humor and Satire section. If you want to do your own episode of Sabrina, or Buffy, or CSI Miami, then try to bring those shows to life. Incorporate their humor, the tics of their characters, even the plots, or your own versions of same. There's a distinct structure to the large majority of plots in either written or broadcast fiction, and there are reasons behind that structure. Maybe nobody will be hiring you to write the next episode of House, but that doesn't mean your version of it can't incorporate everything you love about it, and sexy scenes besides. You learned to talk by imitating those around you. It's also a pretty good way to learn how to write. Your own voice will develop naturally, in time. Note: And this especially goes for the erotic stories you find in old issues of Hustler, Penthouse, and even their lamer cousins like High Society or Genesis. Yes I mentioned this before. Yes, it's worth reiterating. If you were ever a teenager, and someone slipped you a copy of a 'skin rag,' and it felt like a whole world opened up, these were a crucial part of that feeling. It's part of our cultural heritage. 7. Chapters are your friends. Use them. Of all authors, I was a little surprised to read that Terry Pratchett, one of the most superb authors of satirical fantasy around, is disdainful of chapter divisions. I could see his point, which is that they break up the action artificially, telling the reader "This is significant. These words in this particular sentence, they are all the more significant because the page ends here, even though there's lots of blank space left." (I'm paraphrasing wildly.) But even though he has a point (after all one can't dictate the response of one's readers, and attempting to do so often results in a rather didactic feel), there are moments when it's a far from unwelcome gesture for the author to say, "At this point, maybe we can take a little break." Such famously difficult authors as Faulkner and Joyce still found it appropriate to use chapters, or at least sectioned their longer works in rather a formal fashion, and it hardly makes them less readable. (But they still are tough going for lots of readers. I find them worthwhile, but unless the reader is prepared to put forth a great deal of effort, they may not be rewarding.) Even if the characters or situations in a given Literotica story are interesting enough to pull me into chapter after chapter, that doesn't mean I want to spend an hour at a time reading one. Any activity is better when you allow yourself a break, and sexy stories are no exception. Want a rule of thumb? OK. Consider about once every chapter putting in one strongly detailed, explicit sex scene. That means if you're writing about a long weekend, maybe that scorching 69 scene deserves its own chapter, and maybe that scene with the anal sex in the hot tub is worthy of its own chapter, etc. If something other than the sex is driving the story, than this still is about the right ratio. As your intrepid archeologists jet-set around the globe searching for the Holy Grail, it makes more sense to have one sex scene in Paris, and one in Morocco, than to have one in the hotel room, and one in the lobby, and one in the ride to the dig site, and one at the dig site, and one in the library, and then three more in the hotel room... However, if there are multiple characters in your story, there will still be times when multiple sex scenes make the most narrative sense, and breaking them up into formal chapters will seem like an artificial division. That's OK. But it's all the more imperative in such a situation that you've created, lively, interesting characters so that readers actually want to see them shagging their brains out. Remember, sex should enhance your readers' interest in the characters, not be a substitute for believable, fleshed-out personalities. Note: I have observed that it is quite common for sex fantasies to present one sex scene after another, and while this also runs the risk of exhausting the reader, I can understand the impetus. Sex fantasies and porn movies are often very similar, with the exception that a far greater number of written fantasies (the professionally written kind, at any rate) are, if fluff, at least polished fluff. Even porn films with budgets tend to put all the money into set design, or costume. With the exception of some of Will Ryder's efforts (Specifically Not the Bradys) there is virtually no effort put into script or believable performances. Which does not hamper in any way their audience appeal, apparently. However, this creates an expectation that an erotic movie is one with a plot of varying complexity, lots of hammy performances, and a string of sex scenes, usually at rigidly timed intervals. This also goes for the soft-core variety, ubiquitous on pay-cable channels. And it works fine, given the basic assumption: No one is expected to watch one of these movies all the way through. You see the sex scene, it turns you on, or doesn't, and if it turns you on enough, you masturbate and call it a night. If it's a cable soft-core, well, maybe you'll check it out again, perhaps On Demand, to see how the silly plot turned out. If it's real porn, you stop it and come back to it. This is especially suited for DVDs, which let you go directly to any scene your sick little heart desires. The written version, however, if it's doing its job, is almost certain to sap the reader's vitality before he or she comes to the end, provided it has five or more sex scenes, or even one that takes up a whole page. Is there a solution? I myself have written at least one such story (the aforementioned Wonka), so I know it's possible to sustain a narrative through multiple sex scenes, particularly if one is doing a parody or pastiche. Of course, the reader can always copy and paste, perusing it at their leisure later, but that gets unwieldy after a couple of pages. Once again, there's no shame in using chapters to break up the monotony. If you're worried about sustaining the pace, relax. Variation in pacing is, in 99% of all cases, more effective than simply putting the pedal to the floor and never stopping. 8. Try writing your first draft. And by writing I actually mean putting a pen to a piece of notebook paper and physically writing it out. Now, after trying this once, you may decide it feels silly and unnatural and you never want to do it again. And that's fine. If you are a trained typist, regular writing may even seem painfully slow. But there are some advantages to it that can't be beat, even if you have a laptop. There is almost nowhere you can't go with a notebook, nowhere you can't pull it out and start writing, and when you have thirty minutes with nothing to do, like waiting for a bus or for business to pick up at the bar or club you got there way too early for, well now you have something. And what you write on paper is so obviously yours. Sure, you may have the worst handwriting in the world, but the only person who needs to be able to read it is you. And notebook pages fill up so quickly, especially if you're on a roll. Suddenly you're incredibly prolific, and instead of forcing yourself to finish a page, you've written five and you aren't sure you CAN stop. But the main advantage, I've discovered, is that now you have to transcribe all that onto your computer, and all of a sudden, you'll discover you've cut the number of typos, shifting tenses and unintentional sentence fragments down dramatically. Making corrections just seems less onerous when you have to rewrite anyway. 9. Don't let your tenses slip. Shift them consciously, or keep them rigidly. It's hard sometimes to stick to one tense. After all, so much of the storytelling we grew up reading is in the past tense, it just seems natural to write that way. But then, as the story or scene plays itself out in your head, you can get caught up in the immediacy of it and start writing in the present tense. And it can be jarring to the reader. And it seems sloppy. Here's the deal. Because our minds formulate reality out of our past experience, it IS natural to write narrative in the past tense. It makes it feel more solid and settled. This happened; you can't unhappen it. The present tense, however, feels almost detached to some people. Things that happen in the present aren't fixed; they're still in flux. If we see something surprising, it often takes a couple of seconds to be sure we weren't just seeing things. Ever had a friend that half the time would take back what he said with a "Just kidding?" What a dick, huh? Forcing the reader to think in the present tense can feel like that sometimes. But it has an immediacy to it that can't be denied. And if you're trying to arouse in the reader a similar experience to what the character is feeling, it can be a very powerful tool. Just always remember to pick up your tools when you're done with them. Note: As the first-person is to the sex fantasy, so the past tense. If you do choose to experiment with present tense in this genre, be prepared for a more arch, formal tone than you'd normally expect with this genre. 10. Poetry is about struggling for the right words. Prose is about choices. There are so many elements of our lives that can't be summed up in words. Sex is one of the biggies. Feelings and emotions are more basic than language ever could be. And yet we can never know if another's feelings matches our own. Words can't solve that dilemma. And yet a clinical, sexually explicit description of sex will never capture the way it feels any better than emotionally charged words like 'love,' 'desire,' 'lust' or 'vulnerability.' All words can do in the service of story, really, is draw us into a state where we try to feel an imaginary person's reality for a while. We may, along the way, explore any number of facets of humanity, but ultimately we never get completely out of our own heads. With that said, what our prose needs is not certainty, but confidence. We can never know fully what effect our writing will have on the other side of the screen. But we can make decisions, and we can be conscious of our reasons for making them, and that, at least, can carry through our work. So be of good cheer! You will be misunderstood, accused of espousing ideas you never heard of, and people will laugh at the serious parts and not get the funny ones. But you were there when inspiration hit. You were there when you wrote your fifth draft. You were there when you put the finishing touches on it and said, "I'm ready for this to be read." And I'll be keeping my eye out for you.