How did you learn to write erotica?

[Boota]

Hey Tex! I still find my way back every so often. Good to see you and so many of the old familiar names still around.

 

[Stockholmblondie]

Agreed

I also read stories here, and am very impressed by many of the writers. I do have a few stories myself in my head, but am no good at putting it down on paper, maybe I just need more practice. But thanks to all the skilled writers on here

 

[Djmac1031]

To quote Indiana Jones: "I don't know, I'm making this up as I go."

 

[PeytonMirabelle]

To quote Indiana Jones: "I don't know, I'm making this up as I go."

Yeah, this. I'm not sure I did learn and often feel like I've been faking it the whole time ... which I guess is an oddly-appropos feeling on a sex site in the first place.

 

[jehoram]

To quote Indiana Jones: "I don't know, I'm making this up as I go."

Pretty much like the way all of us learned about sex, at least back in the day before we had hard-core porn on tap on our computers.

 

[SimonDoom]

I also recommend taking the time to read some of the very helpful "How To" articles at this Site. Here's a link to the all-time How-To Toplist:

https://www.literotica.com/top/How-To-8

I especially recommend reading a few how-to articles on

Categories, and how to select them

Basics of English grammar

Basics of an erotic story

Dialogue -- this is a big stumbling block for many writers who lack experience writing fiction. Getting a handle on dialogue isn't that difficult and can make the story much better.

 

[MeredithEighty8]

Don't know if it was a matter of learning, trial/error, or just practice. Didn't even know I could "write" erotica until I discover Literotica. I read a story one day and thought, "hell, I can write a better story than that." Several years later, I'm still writing and hopefully, my writing is still improving.

 

[Chaste_Down]

I love the some of the stories on Literotica. Some of the authors on here are really amazing with their writing style. I have always been envious of that ability. I've been thinking about writing my own story (involving my wife with other men) but I dont know where to start. I have a general plot but dont know how to work in the detail and dialogue that I think makes a great story. I would love any help or guidance from any of you skilled writers out there.

It seems to me that there's learning to write.

And then there's learning to write erotica.

It's fairly clear early on that you need to be able to write, period, in order to write erotica. Descriptions of the sex act/s will only take you a short way in terms of capturing a reader. If they're not on their first story or two then they're going to be discerning enough to want some build up, and you need good writing to do that convincingly.

Once you've learned to write, then you can set about learning to engage with the particular tastes of the niche you're aiming at. And that's so much easier if they're your own tastes too

 

[Wildfly11]

Agreed

I also read stories here, and am very impressed by many of the writers. I do have a few stories myself in my head, but am no good at putting it down on paper, maybe I just need more practice. But thanks to all the skilled writers on here

Give it a try. I found writing stories based on my own experiences and adding creative elements a very erotic experience. I have written several and although I have never posted them the experience was an intellectual turn on.

 

[Stockholmblondie]

Thank you honey, always nice with feedback. creative minds usually work

 

[tenyari]

Isn't anyone going to warn this guy about LW?!?

I read through the replies here and mostly found myself nodding in response. However, before I go into my own background as a writer I feel the need to shout out a warning: If you post your story in the "Loving Wives" category (which is where it sounds like it belongs), you can expect some really negative feedback. I'd suggest you do a search of this forum to get some examples, and you can also explore the comments in the LW category to get a better idea of why I feel the need to warn you before you post anything there.

I could actually see myself being a part of that negative feedback if I were to read a story in the 'loving wife' category before reading the author complaints here.

'loving wife' - so... a story about a loving, committed, monogamous romantic relationship. Except it's actually for the exact opposite kind of story? Seems like the entire conflict could be solved by changing the category name to 'cuckolding', and then creating a new category called 'loving wife' which actually is that (or the opposite - making a cuckold category and insisting cuckold stories go there). Giving a category a name that seems to be in jest, some private joke about what it's really about - results in massive confusion.


On the topic:

We've all been telling stories since we were children. When you describe how awesome it was to play with something, or how it wasn't your fault that chocolate got smeared all over your face, and so on. Now you just need to write them down instead of say them. As for the erotica - if you've ever had either a romantic or sexual thought in your life; you've written erotica. Now you just need to record it.

The more recording of it you do, the better it gets. It helps a lot to learn grammar, spelling, and so on. That makes it much easier for your reader to understand your intent and to stay 'in the story' as they read. Furthermore, doing a lot of reading will help you learn what style of story composition appeals to you, and you start by mimicking that style to tell your own fantasies.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

I love the some of the stories on Literotica. Some of the authors on here are really amazing with their writing style. I have always been envious of that ability. I've been thinking about writing my own story (involving my wife with other men) but I dont know where to start. I have a general plot but dont know how to work in the detail and dialogue that I think makes a great story. I would love any help or guidance from any of you skilled writers out there.

1). Set the scene and the characters. There are very few stories I read that are one or two lit pages long as most don’t float my boat. Character and plot always tend to lead to great stories. Your wife and other men story for me would start with the two of you going out, her telling you her fantasy, the two of you going home and talking it over whilst having frantic sex, then making it a reality and how that would unfold.

Or, it could be that you’ve talked about it and you’re curious is she doing that already and you suspect something else is going on and follow her on her normal day of going to the gym with one of her girlfriends, and they both get taken in the changing rooms.

There’s a thousand ways to spin it, but it spins better with establishing character.

Hope this helps.

 

[LdyHoneybee]

I cannot answer that either because I don’t know how.

 

[LdyHoneybee]

Back in the 1990s I attended two consecutive creative writing courses. Most of those attending needed instruction on how to write anything, even a letter. I had to demonstrate the use of a word processor since many hadn't even used a typewriter.

But the first course was a disaster. The tutor started off by asking how many of us had had anything published. Two had written letters to the local newspapers. I had written several dozen. But when she asked me, the last, I admitted that I had written and had published several textbooks, many articles for technical magazines and academic studies. What I wanted was 'creative' writing which I hadn't done. The tutor was embarrassed. She had a 'commended' in a local writing competition. That was her total published work.

She kept saying 'Unless [Og] knows better..."

I didn't really get any advice on creative writing but I found the exercises for the 'creative' part very easy. I could tell a story verbally and writing one down was just a question of time.

But she recommended the local writing competition and most of us managed an entry. Our tutor entered too.

I came second for fiction and third for poetry. No one else on the course, including the tutor, was even mentioned. After that I had to leave the course because the tutor said there was nothing she could teach me.

It wasn't true. I joined the following year's 'advanced' course with a different tutor and learned a lot about points of view, plotting, etc. The new tutor understood that I had been writing factual stuff and wanted tuition on writing fiction and telling stories which is a different skill.

When i was in school i hoped to major in creative writing because it would have allowed me the time to finish things rather than having to fit them in around “my studies.” But i could not get anyone of the faculty to work with me on the kind of writing I wanted to do as the department had a bias for “ American Southern women” (Flannery O’Connor and so on). I gave one of the profs a short bit of fanfic I had written and an episode of an historical novel to illustrate characterization and description and style, and his single comment was “derivative.” It was, but I knew that already.

 

[RetroFan]

One thing I learned after I commenced writing Erotic Fiction is that I seem to do better at writing more serious and sad stories than funny erotic stories, which I mainly write.

I'm not sure why that is, I remember being so nervous when posting my first more dramatic story 'April Leads Julie Astray' about two girls in the early 1960s who had difficult childhood experiences thinking readers would hate it, but they loved it. Since then my stories with more serious themes, like a cyclone destroying the Australian city of Darwin at Christmas in 1974 (a real event), a man who longs to ask out the divorcee next door but is held back by the tragic loss of his childhood sweetheart/fiancee 16 years earlier, a romance between a young Vietnam veteran and his female friend with Cystic Fibrosis that starts on Moon Landing Day in 1969 and my April Fools' Day story 'The Lost Hours with Annabelle' which has a sad ending have all done well on the site.

 

[EarlyMorningLight]

I was working towards being a writer long before I started writing erotica specifically, although a lot of the writers who influenced me early on had significant sexual content in their work. I was lucky. From a reasonably young age, my reading material wasn’t monitored, and I was reading adult fiction (as in fiction written for adults) from the time I was a preteen. I guess my parents figured that reading books with naughty words was still about the least amount of trouble I could be getting into.

So aside from reading and learning how to write more generally, I’d say that the biggest thing that shaped me was personal experience. Sex and relationships, of course, and getting into kink pretty much straight away from my late teens, but also spending a lot of time in sex-focused chatrooms, and learning how to cyber and do phone sex. It taught me that words alone can be incredibly powerful. It also taught me a lot about the response-reward feedback cycle in my brain when people got off on my words. It’s not just a huge part of who I am as a writer, but as a person.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Still figuring that out.

Never did any courses on writing fiction. Just decided to put something together that read ok. It seems to work for me.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I started writing erotica when I was in a long-distance relationship and would have a couple hours to kill on a bumpy coach (long-distance bus). Too early for a laptop let alone a phone, hard to read especially as it was often dark and those little lights useless. But I could write in notebooks, and filled up a few with all sorts of writing.

One is basically a write-up of much of the sex I had as a student, or wanted to have. Given lack of available porn to read, I'd re-read thrm. Over time I tweaked words, crossed out sentences, added new bits with an asterisk.

But that was aimed solely at me as an audience. Creating characters started about ten years ago when I tried some fanfic. Still working on that and making a story. Describing sex is the easy bit.