Why do you write erotica?

[TryAnything]

I'm curious as to what motivates others to write erotica. I've been a fan of written erotica since 1966, when the book, Valley of the Dolls, came out. My mother found the book in my room and confiscated it. Like many things that she didn't approve of. Little did she/they know that we -- my brother, my sister wasn't in on it -- had discovered my dad's stash of Playboy magazines. He had every issue from #1. We had also discovered their stash of 8mm porn videos. We'd use their projector to watch them, inviting friends over for the event.

But I digress...By the time I had graduated high school, I had discovered paperback erotica in certain...bookshops, we'll call them. I was hooked, virgin though I still was but hated being. When I finally started writing erotica myself, I was ~50, I think. I enjoy the writing, thinking of the stories, but I have to admit that I write to get myself excited more than anything. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

I know that there are writers here on Literotica who take their writing very seriously and I commend and appreciate that. I'm a bit anal about grammar and spelling, but I definitely am NOT a 'writer' by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe a cheap erotic storyteller or something. I'm not delusional about what it is that I write, but then I have an objective...excite myself!

I'm curious to hear about other writers' motivations, inspirations.

To horny stories...

 

[Jada59]

I write it because after reading a book of women's erotica, I was just not impressed. My dad had a huge collection of porn and most of it was good. I wanted to write like that. And so I do!

 

[TryAnything]

I write it because after reading a book of women's erotica, I was just not impressed. My dad had a huge collection of porn and most of it was good. I wanted to write like that. And so I do!

I like that. Incest is a favorite theme of mine, so I like the situation that you describe. Nothing inferred, BTW.

 

[SimonDoom]

This seems to be a popular question lately. Something's making everybody reflective about their kinky writing adventures.

I was a longtime reader of erotica online before I wrote anything. I can't recall ever reading erotica before erotic story sites began popping up on the Internet about 20 years ago, unless you count the salacious part of popular paperback books I read as a kid. But after my introduction to online erotica, I was hooked. Gradually, I got the idea I'd like to write my own stories. I was often just a little disappointed or dissatisfied with how erotica in stories was handled, and I thought I could do it better. So I gave it a try, finally publishing my first story here nearly three years ago.

It was strange but thrilling to write my first explicit sex scene, and stranger and just as thrilling to get back feedback from readers who enjoyed or were aroused by my writing.

I suppose there's a psychological element, as well. I've always been a sexual and kinky person, but I was fairly inhibited when I was young and it's only since I entered middle age that I've really begun to explore this side of myself. You could call me a closet exhibitionist who's coming out of the closet. I see writing erotica as a way to throw off inhibitions and explore boundaries that interest me. Most of my stories revolve around characters who are trying something new or forbidden and testing their own boundaries.

 

[AlinaX]

I think it was reading erotic romances where the hero was godlike and described in detail but the heroine was an amorphous blob that got me actively writing erotica (as opposed to stories with occasional erotic content). That and all the cliched romance tropes and heteronormativity.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I fell in love with erotica in high school. Twilight was everyone’s obsession (I’ve actually never read it), and a comparative blogzine article about it and Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire led me to Rice’s works and her Sleeping Beauty series. I read the Beauty books dozens of times trying to understand their deeper meaning.

I began writing about a year ago, and write because I want to make provocative social commentary and hopefully tell interesting stories with mind-blowing sex while doing so. Fingers crossed. My current project has many moving parts but its thematic question is “When is incest not incest?” and it’s social point is, essentially, that social memory is short and society forgets things, both moral and “immoral”, quickly when they’re given the right spin.

 

[MindsMirror]

We each found erotica in the days of usenet. He was reading The Book (a mind control themed sexploit) and she was reading anything under alt.sex.stories. Years later, we found literotica and were lurkers for many years. Finally, we had to try our hand at a story and created an account.... We never expected to write much...
-MM

 

[HHHawkeye]

I mostly started writing it because I have weird particular kinks that are never going to be realized in a story otherwise.

 

[Blind_Justice]

My reading habits were formed by a mix of pulp stories, '70s sci-fi/fantasy and whatever kinky stuff my dad forgot to hide. When I found pen&paper roleplaying and the accompanying fiction, I was a bit surprised at how tame it was compared to the older stuff I've read before. So I went ahead and eventually mixed the high-fantasy epics of the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books with a big dose of spice. How much the pendulum swings towards smut or storytelling depends on my mood, but I try to keep my works stories first, porn second.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

I write for different reasons. To get it out of my head - sometimes ideas get stuck in there and it can get annoying. Because I've thought, "I could do better." Because I've an idea I think would be neat to read myself, and can't find someone else writing it. Because it sounded like fun. Because it sounded like a challenge.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

There are two reason I do...

1. because I can. While I do write other things, they are posted here, I like the build up to the erotic.

2. the most important reason, I write what I like to read and for a long time now, I have been unable to find much that I like to read. Not a slander against any of the fine writers here. I sure what they write is excellent. I know mine isn't.

 

[jehoram]

I write erotica because I have a dirty, dirty mind, and this is one way to indulge it. I'm going to have these fantasies anyway, so I might as well share them.

I think that my first taste of erotica was through "Penthouse Letters" ... those short stories supposedly submitted by readers. Was there ever an Army barracks in the late twentieth century that didn't have copies of Playboy and Penthouse being passed around? Of course, we were mainly interested in the photographs of astoundingly proportioned women ... and the articles, naturally.

Later on, I discovered Erica Jong, Nancy Friday, and Sheryl (?) Hite. The fact that women had dirty minds, too, was a revelation to me. I never cared much for most of male-written smut, though. I just didn't relate to it. Instead, I populated my imagination with a different sort of people who, regardless of gender, sought relationships that were open and honest and, most of all, fun. They treated each other as equals in their sexual experimentation and usually developed deep bonds as partners.

"What Kilgore Trout's writing shared with pornography was not sex but visions of impossibly hospitable worlds."

That's how Kurt Vonnegut described the prose of one of his most favorite characters, and it's pretty close to how I would describe my own prose. Except that I put in the sex, too.

 

[HeyAll]

First off, I have no backround in writing (creative writing courses, self-writing books, ect...) and before erotica I had no history of writing anything anything beyond school work. Basically my writing consisted of writing a lot of essays for high school.

The first time I read erotica was in high school, from porn in exchange with friends. It was the late 90s then so the majority of porn was still magazines/videos. A friend showed me a book with a cover torn off. When I read it at home, it was incest story and I thought it was super hot. I realized why the cover was torn off, because it was embarrassing to have around.

For reasons I can't remember, I started reading erotica online. I can't remember how I found it, maybe an internet search. It was the early 00's and almost everyone was online at that point.

That's when I really fell in love with erotica; because it can push your buttons in different ways than pics/videos and really delve into different taboos.

Some time later, I discovered Lit and the forum. To see the nude pics in the forum you needed an account, so I made up 'heyall'

Some years later, I decided I wanted to write something because I felt that I had some good ideas. I remember my 'heyall' name and the password still worked. So I submitted there.

Writing my first story was awkward at first, but really fun. It got a lot of reads and comments. So I kept writing and got even more readers. Now I have over 230 stories. A lot of readers too.

It became an instant passion and I work on stories almost every day, in one way or another.

So I guess my motivation to write is for my own enjoyment and for all the readers who read my work. If readers didn't read my work anymore, then I wouldn't bother. I guess that means readers are my main motivation then.

Finding ideas are easy. You just need to think and look around everywhere; news, movies, real life, etc...

 

[HeyAll]

btw, "Service" from TryAnything is one of my favorite stories from when I first started reading Lit.


https://www.literotica.com/s/service

Give it a read!

 

[R. Richard]

Because it sells.

 

[Hypoxia]

I wrote songs, software, poetry, propaganda, tech guides, etc long before any narrative fiction. I write erotica (when the voices in my head demand) because I found compelling stories with lousy orthography on LIT and thought, "I can write better than THAT!" I have written (but may no longer) much incest, as a puzzle to solve: make the taboo violation believable. I try for O.Henry-type twist endings, even in strokers. Words arrive; beware.

 

[Athalia]

I write it because after reading a book of women's erotica, I was just not impressed.

My situation as well. Also, I was just trying to get out of the mind-set that I was raised in, where sex was dirty and good girls didn't do it unless they're married and want to have a kid. Writing erotica was one way to do it.

Also, Jehoram made me do it.

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

I read erotica for a long time before I started writing it. At first it was a short term project to get a story out of my head. Now I enjoy it and alternate between it and my SF. Although i am generating enough ideas i may go the Amazon route for some stories under a different pen name

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm interested in how people interact, and sex is part of that picture. I've read some fascinating stories that played with that, but it's hard to find that kind of thing, so in the end I had to write it myself.

 

[MichaelGH]

You don't usually get to talk about this sort of stuff in real life so this is a great tool to explore your feelings about sex with the additional benefit of seeing how readers respond to your work.

And it's also like a playground where you get to make your own rules. Sex can be a sensitive and oftentimes foreboding topic to approach and so through writing you can explore what you want without any tangible effects on anyone else. There are some extremely out there fetishes here and so it'll take a lot for anyone to judge you (or very little, there are some extremely judgmental commenters too but everyone kind of agrees they're assholes).

Also I haven't run out of ideas yet.

 

[blozo]

Because I can't get it up anymore and it pisses me off.

 

[TryAnything]

I suppose there's a psychological element, as well. I've always been a sexual and kinky person, but I was fairly inhibited when I was young and it's only since I entered middle age that I've really begun to explore this side of myself. You could call me a closet exhibitionist who's coming out of the closet. I see writing erotica as a way to throw off inhibitions and explore boundaries that interest me. Most of my stories revolve around characters who are trying something new or forbidden and testing their own boundaries.

I totally relate to this. I definitely use my writing as a 'safe' way to explore things that I might not necessarily really want to try but am curious about. Not surprisingly, the constant written explorations have led to some real-life situations where boundaries were pushed beyond where they would have gotten if I hadn't done all of the written explorations.

 

[Series 6]

My sex life has never been what I wanted it to be, so I can kind of live vicariously through the stories I write, though I have not written in quite awhile.

I'm taking college classes and I see some inspiration for stories from some of my fellow classmates. Hopefully I start writing again.

 

[seeshelly]

I want to write...

I have not submitted anything to be published on Literotica. My husband wants me to write a sexual autobiography because my feelings about sex turn him on. He knows about my first sex and he knows what I am doing now and he thinks I should share it. But writing a sexual autobiography is different then making up an erotic story. I am not a writer and don't know what I am doing. But when I do try to write down something I drift back into the moment that I am writing about and I end up masturbating. The end result is I don't make much progress in writing.

But I think that anyone that is writing erotic accounts from real life or if it is fiction, the writer is getting sexual stimulation from the act of writing.

I am wondering if others find that writing makes them need to pause and masturbate?

 

[Stillrandy]

I am wondering if others find that writing makes them need to pause and masturbate?

My goodness yes! This means it is taking a very long time for me to get my story written. I have not written in a long time and so I am finding it difficult to get back into the swing of it. I won't be able to publish this in lit because it is out of bounds. I may not publish it anywhere, but do enjoy the writing .