How to write Erotica

Tuesday is my favourite day of the week because it’s Writing Group. We do it workshop style and take turns leading it and without it my week would be a hollow shell.

This week was my turn and I have some experience writing erotica (not always in parody) and I’ve noticed that some others in the group shy away from a love scene where it’s called for so I offered to lubricate their entry into writing about sex.

Here’s what we did.

1. I took 5 lines from John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” ad everyone had to write a description as if they were in that scene covering all five senses and what they were thinking/feeling. I put each line on a coloured strip to help evoke mood.

a night in the forest (dark green)

a mountain in springtime (yellow)

a storm in the desert (orange/red)

a walk in the rain (light blue)

a sleepy blue ocean (dark blue)

This was to get them in the flow of writing from all the senses as this is what a good love scene needs to do if its aim is to be erotic.

2. We read through a selection of passages from published authors and discussed style and our reactions. I chose DH LAwrence (Lady Chatterley’s Lover), Anne Rice (The Beauty Trilogy), James Joyce (Ulysses), E L James (Fifty Shades of Grey) and Anais Nin (The Delta of Venus). I’d like to have had something from American Psycho and a soft Mills & Boon/Harlequin to have two from the extreme ends of the scale but couldn’t find any excerpts online. I left the author’s names off to see if people could make a guess.

3. Then the following as a handout, my own ideas, but also based on things I’d read online while researching.

Sex tips for writers

Sex or love scenes in narratives are supposed to be one of the most difficult things to write and to write well. Plenty of successful writers get nominated for the literary Bad Sex Award inc.  Paul Theroux, Stephen King, Nick Cave, JK Rowling. It’s not just difficult because of shyness on the part of the writer but also because you’re trying to describe something that is more than the sum of its parts. But not putting a love scene in or “closing the bedroom door” can make the reader feel cheated. First be honest with yourself about whether the story needs it and then…

1. Decide what’s comfortable (language and “acts”) for you to read and write about but also what suits the characters you’re writing.
2. Build up to it. If the scene is supposed to be romantic or erotic or awkward or violent, do the scene setting and foreshadowing so the reader is in the right mood. Seduce them into it. You may then be able to “tell” less of the scene and not need to be especially graphic.
3. Use all the senses, thoughts and feelings of the characters so the reader connects with them.
4. Be sparing with “Fifty Shades phrases”: gasp, murmur, inner anything, raised eyebrows, biting lips, women’s orgasms that happen at the moment of entry.
5. Give some thought to terminology. Overly medical words and euphemisms don’t work well. A lot of sentences you can rephrase so you don’t have to keep saying “cock” etc. e.g. she touched him…we get it! Keep the language true to the tone and setting of the story.
6. Remember it’s not YOU, it’s the characters. Unless you’re EL bloody James telling the world you’re writing out your fantasies and forever grossing most of us out, sex is the same as everything else you write about – from your imagination and everyone who reads it knows that.
7. Make it realistic not necessarily real. Every single movement doesn’t need to be there on paper. But don’t suddenly have the right hand doing x when a moment ago it was handcuffed etc. Keep track of clothing too.
8. Outside of (and arguably even within) full erotica, a sex scene should drive the plot or character development forward and not just be there for the sake of it.

4. Finally, bearing in mind the tips and the writing from all senses they had to write a sex scene either with characters they had written before or just a description of a personal experience. The idea was that no-one would have to read aloud so as not to inhibit but quite a few volunteered and then as the leader for the night I had to. Something I was totally unprepared for as I’d written up a non-fictional encounter.

And no I’m not posting that part!

 

PS A distilled version of this was published in Issue 58 of Mslexia, the first and possibly last time I’ll ever be published in a literary magazine.