Converting an Erotic story to non-erotic

[dirk2024]

Hi all,

Has anyone ever converted one of their stories from Erotic to non-erotic?

I ask because I recently told a co-worker that I had taken up writing as a hobby. (I haven't even told my wife yet) Now the coworker wants to read my work. I don't think an incest laden, threesome is something I want to share around the water cooler ya know?

I don't necessarily want to hide what I'm doing, but I don't want family and friends to know about it. Also, I don't want to invest a lot of time in it, so I thought, 'Hey...what if I remove the incest, the third person and the sex and simply turn it into a love story'?

 

[TheRedLantern]

Found the use case for AI writing

 

[ElectricBlue]

I don't necessarily want to hide what I'm doing, but I don't want family and friends to know about it. Also, I don't want to invest a lot of time in it, so I thought, 'Hey...what if I remove the incest, the third person and the sex and simply turn it into a love story'?

What would be the point? What are you going to do with such a story?

You want to write erotica, but you don't want those who know you to know. That's fine. I suspect most writers here haven't told their partners or friends.

You wanted to write erotica, so write it, don't agonize over it.

 

[AlinaX]

Rewrite it as spies swapping secrets...

 

[dirk2024]

Rewrite it as spies swapping secrets...

I immediately thought of that old TV show Get Smart.

Yes...I'm that old.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Rather than rewriting an existing story, especially with so many elements that you apparently would need to take out, why don't you write a new one? A simple romance where the sex is implied might even be an interesting exercise I suppose.

But then I can't imagine not having my SO very much in the know about my works. Heck even my youngest sibling is aware that I write stories that I do not want to share with him. Although my older brother isn't, but that's cause he doesn't know what a boundary is and would try and insist on reading them. I dun wanna share my smut with my brother. So you could simply tell your work friend that they aren't work appropriate stories I suppose and see if they'll let it go at that.

 

[dirk2024]

What would be the point? What are you going to do with such a story?

Share it with family and friends who ask when I tell them of my new hobby.

Maybe give Stephen King a run for his money!

 

[Rustyoznail]

I looked at desexing a story so I could enter it into a traditional literary competition. It's hard, and probably easier to write something new without the hard core sex.

 

[dirk2024]

I looked at desexing a story so I could enter it into a traditional literary competition. It's hard, and probably easier to write something new without the hard core sex.

thank you.

 

[Areala-chan]

You can perform a DIY castration on your own work, but you're going to spend just as much time sewing it back up again.

Best to just write it fresh with the goal in mind to make it a straightforward story minus the erotic element, in my opinion.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I've got one Romance here which could have a couple paragraphs diluted into being appropriate for any audience.

I did de-sex one story for a beta reader who didn't want to read detailed gay sex. The story actually held together quite well as a travelogue, though did have a section going roughly: "You want a nightclub with friendly young men, yes? I know a place." [Narrative requirements mean the young men prove very friendly for about 3000 words] The next morning...

I actually tried de-queering a whole series, where the main character will get to shag his female friend if he gives up smoking; she finds a guy to help distract him from cravings in the meantime. So there's a whole storyline of heterosexual sex, which could be a story in itself without the other relationship being the majority plotline. It worked well for 2/3 of the story but then missed a driver for the protagonist's actions, so was a bit of a mess, tbh. Still, not too bad for a couple hours eliminating 80k words! If you can't experiment on Lit, where can you, &c...

 

[iwatchus]

As @Kumquatqueen points out, it depends on the story. I have a romance it could be done to trivially. But take the sex out of a typical stroker and you are left with Once upon a time, the end.

 

[NotWise]

I desexed a story to give to my son-in-law, but the story was essentially non-erotic to start with.

One question you need to answer is, if you take the sex out, then how much is left?

 

[KittyOfSteele]

I'm working on the opposite: converting the last non-erotic piece I did into an erotica, which is far easier than turning an erotica into non-erotic.

If you're serious about it, search for the least erotic story in your repertoire, and get started to censor and expunge things, but I'd take @NotWise 's question once I'm done with it.

If you want the easy path, just write something new. If you can't seem to write anything else than erotica, well... there was this post from puppygirllaika on Tumblr that has some interesting advice on writing sex, food, and violence, which almost sounds like a Sin City anthology.

 

[TiberiusPrime]

Hi all,

Has anyone ever converted one of their stories from Erotic to non-erotic?

I ask because I recently told a co-worker that I had taken up writing as a hobby. (I haven't even told my wife yet) Now the coworker wants to read my work. I don't think an incest laden, threesome is something I want to share around the water cooler ya know?

I don't necessarily want to hide what I'm doing, but I don't want family and friends to know about it. Also, I don't want to invest a lot of time in it, so I thought, 'Hey...what if I remove the incest, the third person and the sex and simply turn it into a love story'?

So you'd have a 750 word story?

I will say that my wife does know what I write and have written. Unfortunately, she has dementia and doesn't remember. Regardless, despite the subject matters, she fully endorsed what I wrote, even if it wasn't something she'd normally be interested in reading. She'd often ask me how I came up with my stories. I'd cheekily say, "Based on real life of course!" She'd roll her eyes. I miss that.

 

[dirk2024]

I desexed a story to give to my son-in-law, but the story was essentially non-erotic to start with.

One question you need to answer is, if you take the sex out, then how much is left?

A Pulitizer Prize Winner!

 

[alohadave]

Now the coworker wants to read my work.

Tell them no. You aren't obligated to share your work with them.

 

[filthytrancendence]

there was this post from puppygirllaika on Tumblr that has some interesting advice on writing sex, food, and violence

That's pretty funny. I've never really written much gore, but far and away the best sex scene I've ever written comes after like 3000 words of foreplay which occurs while the couple is sharing a private gourmet meal. My original inspiration was just to draw on my own experiences with the sensuality of really excellent food, but it became obvious in the writing of it how well the two dovetail in written description.

It's still my highest rated story, which is a little funny, I think. I'd probably be tempted to think story ratings aren't a very objective value judgement if it weren't for the fact I agree with them on that one.

Edit: lol, I just opened it for funsies and realized that I forgot that section starts with a chapter called "The Epicenter of the Violence" in which I have the characters pontificate about the violence in Pulp Fiction. So I did kinda hit all 3 there.

 

[THBGato]

I ask because I recently told a co-worker that I had taken up writing as a hobby. (I haven't even told my wife yet) Now the coworker wants to read my work.

This is one of the reasons why I've started putting my stories on W*ttp*ad - it's just more socially acceptable (I think) than this site. It doesn't have the adds for camgirls, for a start.

(I'd asked one of my colleagues to check my Irish in one of my non-erotic stories. She loved the story and started telling people about my writing and they started asking where they could read it. So similar issue to you.)

My stories tend to be light on sex anyway and what sex there is generally has a role to play in plot/character development. But there are a couple I'm not going to put up there because there's (in my opinion) too much sex for that platform.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I created a low-sex version of my first story here, because I was putting it up on Smashwords and I thought it might be worth having a version for people who wanted the romance without the explicit sex.

The lesson I learned from this is that there are very few people in this category.

 

[YDB95]

What would be the point? What are you going to do with such a story?

Present it to my writers' group. I've done it several times.

 

[iwatchus]

I ask because I recently told a co-worker that I had taken up writing as a hobby. (I haven't even told my wife yet) Now the coworker wants to read my work. I don't think an incest laden, threesome is something I want to share around the water cooler ya know?

I told my (30 yr old) son what I write. Now he has no desire to ever read it.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I don't write a lot of erotic content, but I'm not ashamed of what I do write. It is fiction after all.

Judging from my own stories, I would have to echo what many others have suggested, which is to write new. You can write the same story without the sex, but I think that it would be more efficient to do so from scratch. I can't imagine the editing it would take to remove the build up, the sex, and any related dialogue from a story that I had already written. It just seems easier IMO to write it again from the beginning.

Anyway, that is the approach that I would take.

 

[iwatchus]

It frustrates me that we are ashamed of what we write. This is not accusatory, I am with everyone else. There are exactly four people who know my identity and what I write. I have mostly told people I am writing Romance and Sci Fi, which is mostly true.

Sexuality is such a deep and fundamental part of who we are. I don't know how literature is supposed to consider the human experience if one of the most important aspects is ignored. Not that I think any of us are close to being literary greats, but the world is a worse place because we do not allow their talents to explore the full human experience, for fear of the shame it would bring. Not everything is about sex, but sex is a part of so much of what we do, who we are, that it is a travesty that it is left out.

And it is not just literature that has been harmed. I would have loved to have seen what Hitchcock would have made without the Hayes code, or the puritanical nonsense behind it. Yes, there is porn, but there is such a gulf between the move "Rebecca" and "My step brother saw me in the shower and I let him fuck me in the ass" on Pornhub. In literature, we at least have Henry Miller and Anais Nin (for starters). The universe of explicit great film is distressingly small.

 

[Bazzle]

Hi all,

Has anyone ever converted one of their stories from Erotic to non-erotic?

I ask because I recently told a co-worker that I had taken up writing as a hobby. (I haven't even told my wife yet) Now the coworker wants to read my work. I don't think an incest laden, threesome is something I want to share around the water cooler ya know?

I don't necessarily want to hide what I'm doing, but I don't want family and friends to know about it. Also, I don't want to invest a lot of time in it, so I thought, 'Hey...what if I remove the incest, the third person and the sex and simply turn it into a love story'?

fade to black at every opportunity