I like to write erotic stories for myself. The exercise is sexy but also makes me think different about fantasies I have. I’ve never been much of a writer. But for those of you who are professional writers or do a lot of erotic writing, how do you improve your writing?
For what it’s worth I don’t post the stories anywhere. They’re for me to explore.
Okay. Preface: I’m not a professional writer. I just like doing it in my spare time. I’m okay at best.
First: Read everything. Not just your favorite author or favorite genre, but everything. Especially read things by people that are different from yourself. This helps give you a well of ideas and personalities and perspectives to pull from.
Second: Start your initial writing by just spewing out whatever is in your head. Don’t worry about grammar or anything like that. Just write. You can go back and edit later. Which you should absolutely do, even if you think you got it the first time. When you do go through editing, read it like it was the first time seeing these words. If things seem off, or you notice things like a lot of word repetition in your descriptions. Stop and think about other ways to form the sentence. Maybe pull up a thesaurus for a buffet words to roll around your tongue.
Third: Dialogue can be tricky for some people. I have two suggestions. First, try saying your dialogue out loud. Act it out like you’re the characters. Do both sides and emote like the characters would. See if it feels awkward or stilted. Even if you’re doing erotic writing, saying the words out loud will give you a feel for how it’ll sound when people read it in their head. The second part of this suggestion, is to read scripts. Scripts are almost entirely dialog, and reading them will give you a feel for the back and forth action that makes up a conversation.
Fourth: Unless you’re writing for a group of church ladies that want to read erotic stories while hiding the juicy bits behind innocent words, try to keep the euphemisms for sex things grounded to what actual people would use. If you’re fucking a woman, are you going to ask if you could lick her “flower” or enter “her core” or pleasure her “love button”. And with men, avoid shit like “sex missile” or “sliding in to the hilt” or "member ". Again, think about words real people would use in a real situation. And, hey, if those are things you actually say, then use them and more power to you.
I definitely want to start calling it my “love missile” now.
“Sex missile” is amazing so thank you. Great ideas. I’m going to have to practice some of them including saying the dialog out loud. One thing I already do that’s similar is I read it out loud so I can hear if the language is awkward but I haven’t paid attention to the dialog sounding realistic.