A Treatise on Writing Porn
I: Porn versus Erotica
I have actually seen this argument break out in a lot of the weirdest places, and over some of the strangest grounds ever. Most people want to ascribe the tag of "erotica" to whatever it is they enjoy experiencing, some want to limit it to things that are written (as opposed to pictures or videos), others want to control it as whether or not it's art. To make this point perfectly clear: I write pornography. I do not write erotica. What is my distinction? Erotica is art that induces feelings of sexual arousal. Pornography is anything else that induces arousal. The issue then rests on "what is art?"
Art, to my manner of thinking, is the use of some means of communication to express more than the literal meaning of the communication, normally with an eye towards describing the human condition. When I write a story, I have no message. I am trying to get my readers hot and bothered, plain and simple. Now, I take a very artistic approach, and try to convey my ideas with as much skill and beauty as possible, but at the end of the day, all I care about is whether or not the reader has one hand or two below the table.
But, at the end of the day, there is only one true rule about writing: Write what you enjoy! If you don't enjoy what you are writing, it's going to be really tough to convince someone else to enjoy it.
II: Consistency
The single most important thing to any work of pornographic prose is the story. It can cover any ground, involve any people, and have them do any thing. But some stories bomb while others sizzle. Why? The first part has to do with internal logic. I have read perfectly arousing stories that have people unhinging their jaws to deep-stomach a dick that bumps into its owner's chin. This scene is obviously (I hope)
unrealistic, but it worked. Why? Because the story stuck to its own, goofy, delirious internal logic, and didn't back off of it.
My stories generally occur in the real world, on Planet Earth. I have not, and probably will not, write a story that occurs in space. So I have to deal with things like gravity, air, water, and other facts of Life on Earth. What this means is that Amazonian woman who was crushing beer cans in her bare hands can't be tossed around like a toy by the circus midget she had some weird fetish for. Now, you are probably
rolling your eyes and asking, "Why does this matter?" After all, as long as everyone gets their rocks off, who cares? Well, the reader does, just not consciously. Read this scene:
Monica pulled Bill's tie, dragging his face up against hers and the two kissed. Bill pushed her coat off her shoulders, and she crossed her arms behind her back suggestively. Bill sank downward, his tongue licking her breasts, suckling her nipples. Monica moaned and wrapped her legs around him. He stood up, hands squeezing her shoudlers as his hips rammed against hers, slamming his cock inside her.
what's wrong here? Firstly, these two never took their clothes off! Quite clearly, Bill was wearing some sort of suit, as was Monica. Now, one can argue that in paragraphs preceding this excerpt this could have been explained away with Bill wearing only a tie and Monica, only a coat, but that still makes the point. The clothes have to go sometime, and they need to be accounted for. Now, most readers, who are hopefully masturbating in some fashion at this point, aren't likely to be
specifically criticizing this point. However, somewhere in the back of their minds, the story is not adding up. The image is incomplete and the sense of immersion is being broken. This type of thing is part of the difference between a "hot" and "okay" story.
Look, if your hero is wearing shoes, he needs to take them off at some point. Even if it is just one throwaway sentence to the effect of "he stripped down to his bare ass," it needs to be there to keep the reader "sucked in," to the story, so to speak. Now, I prefer to expand on this and make it an integral part of the events, either as something erotic in its own right, or as a tense interlude, but HOW you do it is up to you. What's important is THAT you do it.
The other part of internal logic is the characters. The characters need to be real people. They can certainly act in unrealistic ways (how many black girls who like renaissance festivals really fuck random white jerkoffs who grope them right out of the fun house?) but they, too, have to be consistent. A shy, inexperienced girl being seduced for the first time is unlikely to scream rich obsenities while riding her first lover and whipping him with a cat o' nine tails. And, if she is the
shouting type, the vocabulary is likely to limited. Again, it is something that won't necessarily get specific criticism from the reader, but will puncture their sense of immersion, and take the edge off your stories.
This is where dialogue becomes such a challenge. It is depressingly easy to completely let the air of out of a good story by having an otherwise-realistic person start screaming like a porn star. I personally keep dialogue to a minimum, ESPECIALLY when it is during the sex, because it is so hard to have peope talk about what happens and not seem ridiculous. To a writer, I strongly advise them to carefully consider their dialogue.
Now, all this said, this not a ban on anything outlandish. If you want to write about two lesbians going at it in Central Park on the Fourth of July for everyone to see, go for it. But, you do need to acknowledge the fact that it is outrageous. If people read what's going on thinking "man, they would SO get arrested," they are NOT thinking "Ho-ly SHIT this is hot!" So have a few onlookers shouting at them, or busybodies immobilized by shock. Account for reality, don't just submit to it.
After all, if reality truly rules everything, then there wouldn't be so many stories to write, would there?
III: The Setup
The plot of your basic porn story is three parts: the setup, the action, and the ending. The setup can be any length, as long as it is interesting for its length. The setup should never be one word longer than necessary, but it shouldn't be shorter than appropriate either. One of my favorite stories, "A Girl Named Charlie" by Day Dreamer has an eleven paragraph setup, which is huge. Of course, he follows it with forty paragraphs of action, so the payoff is pretty good! Of course, this
story actually highlights a more sophicated structure, that I will cover later. Returning to the point of the Setup, we need to accomplish a brief set of goals:
-Introduce all the players
-Describe the primary chracteristics of the players
-Move them into the location of the action
-Set them on the road to Fucksville
There is no rule on how long it has to be in order to convey the message. Obviously, the eleven paragraphs of "A Girl Name Charlie" are on the long side, but they also do a tremendous job of creating sexual tension in the reader, because they acquaint us very thoroughly with the characters and the way in which we get to the scene of the crime. But just because a setup is longer, that does not automatically make it better. If you find yourself wanting to skip over parts of the setup as you
read it, then it needs to be shorter. It's that simple. If you can't hold your own interest, you shouldn't expect to hold anyone else's!
IV: The Action
Okay, now let's talk about the good stuff. Obviously, if we went Victorian and reduced it to, "She woke up the next morning, aglow with love," there wouldn't much point to this, would there? But, there is certainly room to screw up on the other extreme, too. It would be very easy to reduce a woman undressing to "She exposed her tits." But that sentence isn't very interesting, is it? How did she do it? Did she unbutton her shirt, pull it off, unzip her dress, what? Was she wearing a bra,
and what did it look like? What did her breasts look like? I've seen a lot of tits in my day, and there is a ton of possibilities here. At the same time, we don't need microscopic detail, or medical dictionary.
This gets to the biggest observation about my writing: I don't use slang for body parts. It has nothing to do with being inhibited or anything like that. I have no compunction about saying, or writing any words, and I don't think there is anything wrong with talking about cocks and pussies. EXCEPT in the context above. To me, simply saying what it is cuts off a rich opportunity to be much more descriptive. And a description feeds so much more into the imagination of a reader than a simple
word. Not only does it more precisely convey what you are envisioning, it helps to make the experience of reading more exotic, by taking to the reader to a place they wouldn't have just imagined on their own.
All that said, my same principles of realism above apply to this, as well. People's arms and legs have to go SOMEWHERE. The bonus is that, a lot of the time, describe the contortions that people go through to get their bodies together adds to the hotness of the story. If someone is coping with a weirdly painful position because what they are having is SO GOOD, that only adds to the reader's impression of "Wow, this must be HOT." Of course, if you are tilting more into fantasy, you have more leeway. But you need to be consistent.
My own style, a lot of times, edges right onto gritty realism, where I like to include a lot of the less-than-ideal aspects. Guys will cum too quickly, girls might need more attention after intercourse to get off, and so forth. This is absolutely NOT necessary. I just happen to like it in my stories. The point of the principles of realism is immersion, not journalism. You are not a newspaper reporter trying to cobble together a balanced, unbiased review of the events! You are trying to make
it seem as hot as possible. The point is not to get SO outrageous (at least, without acknowledging the fact) that readers start backing out on you.
V: Structure
How does the story happen? I, personally, write a lot of boy(s)-meet(s)-girl(s), boy(s)-like(s)-girl(s), boy(s)-spontaneously fuck(s)-girl(s)-who-fuck(s)-him/them-back, principles part ways or imply more action, stories. In "A Girl Name Charlie," boy meets girl, boy takes girl to movie, gets to third base, takes her home, next date eats her out and gets blown, takes her home, next date gets to home base, and checks the back door. Obviously, it's a long, long story, but the slower, richer
advance works really well, especially since it is written about teenagers in the forties, where even going all the way after three dates is being unspeakably easy. The point is that there is a progression. If the two characters already know each other, or already lovers, then that progression can be very short. Or, it can take place after an event where things get carried too far. But there needs to be SOME sort of arc to really give the events some weight. A simple vignette, a fuck out of
context, can certainly be done, and it can even be done well, but a story that provides enough information to give a little bit of color to the story ,and provide some meaning to the events, can add a lot of punch to what you write. It doesn't have to be much, but that little bit of color as to WHY these two people are fucking is the spice that makes the pie.
VI: Conclusions
I have tried to explain WHY I do what I do, and HOW I do it. And sure, I titled the article about doing things my way, but the ultimate point to all of this is make written porn better. It's not to produce an army of Mini-Me's out on the net who are exactly duplicating my work, although I don't think that would be a backwards step by any means. What I want the reader to get out of this is how to chase down the little details that keep taking the edge off of what should be a very good story, written in their own voice. Nothing is worse that a person writing out of their own skin, trying to sound like someone their not. It doesn't work in the bars, and it doesn't work in stories. So go out, be you, and have some fun. If all goes well, a lot of other people will get to have fun, too.