I’ll bet some of what you wrote is archived at http:// neatopotato. net/xnovel/ [NSFW], a collection of various “…adult novels from defunct publishers such as Greenleaf Classics, Liverpool Library, Beeline Novels and Heatherpool Press.” A huge percentage of the stuff on there is awful, but some is readable, and I’m sure some small portion is actually good. I haven’t located it yet, but I’ll keep looking. Sturgeon’s Law applies - in spades.
I have to say that I like to keep my literature and my fiction separate (both in movies and in books). So I’d rather two-dimensional characters but steaming hot explicit descriptions of what’s going on than a Great Work Of Literature which happens to have unvarnished depicitions of sex in it.
Using colourful euphemisms and flowery language does bother me, although I’ve always figured it was so Women Of A Certain Age could read erotic stories and not feel bad for reading “porn”.
There is a happy middle ground. My favorite writers of erotic stories on the net, on sites like storiesonline, manage to have characters every bit as compelling as most mainstream fiction as well as hot sex. I only know them from their handles, but consider some of them among my favorite writers:
Friar Dave and Al Steiner are the two writers I re-read most frequently. Frank Downey and Nick Scipio are close behind. If Vulgar Argot were as active as he had been, he’d rank much higher. Sadly, he has a huge pile of incomplete series, and starting to read one will prove frustrating. 1999 was a banner year for net erotica with great stories by Michael K. Smith, the TV show parodies of Shelby Bush, the humor of M1ke Hunt and especially stories by Dirty Dawg. His story Celeste manages to be erotic and tragic in equal measure. Looking at this list, I realize that I have no female writers, but that is mostly due to few of them writing the longer stories I prefer - but I’ll read anything that rache and Deirdre created.
A penis is a penis. Calling it a “throbbing pylon” doesn’t help anybody.
Thanks for the recommendations! I shall keep an eye out for them and see if they are indeed the happy middle ground that I’m seeking…
It would make a pretty cool Progressive band name though. 
All of the above, but mostly my own imagination. There is very little that I can write about based upon my own experience since I write male/male erotica and I’m not male. I’ve written a few male/female pieces before in the past and they were pretty awful. I find it easier to write about things I’ve never experienced than trying to write about things I have experienced. I research the hell out of my writing to make sure its all accurate and, even though I publish under a female name, some of my readers are convinced that I am a guy. I also have guys fact-check my works before I post it.
I try to write in the voice of my characters, so if I am writing a prim intellectual, there will be ‘penis’ and such. A teenager will use the word ‘cock’. I hate all the overly flowery language that a lot of female writers seem so fond of. It pulls me out of the mood myself. I also like my porn to be realistic and gritty. I hate it when it’s all perfect and magical. I love my characters flawed and I loved it when the sex is flawed as well (but in hot ways if that makes any sense).
I also always write plots, even if it is just a small one. My longest stories are over 70k and have plots so dramatic, I’ve had several people tell me that they don’t like sex, but loved the story because the plot was so well developed. To me, that’s the second greatest compliment an erotica writer can receive. The first being, your story was so hot, I normally hate sex scenes, but I found myself incredibly turned on by it.
I wanted to learn how to write and I knew writing erotica would get more readers than writing general fiction. I always struggled to write before and it was a subject I knew I needed to improve on vastly.
I live off the feedback. Not only have I become a much, much better writer in general, but I’m also finding that I love posting stories and getting reactions out of people. Whenever someone tells me that they cry at one of my stories, I’m delighted. Even more so when they tell me that they’ve picked up a classical work of fiction they’ve never otherwise read based on the fact that it was mentioned in my work.
I’ve also found that I love writing. I’m thinking about possibly doing it as a career.
As most male/male romances are written by women for women, most of my favourite romance authors are female. This is not to say that I haven’t read a few good works by males, but most of the fiction written by males that I’ve read hasn’t been to my tastes.
I know of this phenomena, but I’ve never understood it. I’ve not tried my hand at writing erotica yet, but I can’t imagine writing anything other than the type of sex with which I am familiar - heterosexual, from a male perspective. I could reasonably describe most of the action of two women making love, but I couldn’t imagine that I could really get inside the mind of a woman’s emotional life and sexual desires.
That’s something I was wondering about too. Especially because I can’t even begin to imagine what a lesbian/bisexual woman actually thinks or feels about the activity they’re engaged in. I mean, as a male who likes seeing all-female porn I know what looks hot, but that’s completely different to trying to imagine what the participants in a fictional lesbian sex scenario are feeling as they are engaged in said activities.
I’m curious about those of you who get paid for the writing. How are you publishing? Is it online or in print? Are your contracted to write or do you write on spec? Do you self publish? Do you run your own small business or is there a collective of some sort that handles the leg work?
I publish with epublishers, though I don’t write erotica. I write erotic romance, which still has very explicit sex scenes, but also the romantic element. The market for that is huge right now, and what began as a very small niche in the publishing world has become a very large part of the overall market. Though there are plenty of publishers that are interested in well-written erotica without the romantic element, and I occasionally sell to them as well.
It’s no different from writing any type of fiction. You wouldn’t expect male authors of commercial/mainstream fiction to only write about males, would you? Hell, you wouldn’t expect white middle-class males to only write about white middle-class males. Likewise, African-American women aren’t limited to writing only AA women, and working class people aren’t limited to only the working class. If people only wrote about what they had immediate, first-hand knowledge of, fantasy and science-fiction wouldn’t even exist as genres. Likewise, romance would be extremely limited.
A good writer can bring a character to life and make them real, regardless of how far removed they might be from that character in their personal life. I might not be a man, but I’ve lived with one for ten years, I’m surrounded by them, I’m exposed to their thoughts, likes, desires, fears, and dreams through daily conversation/interaction and popular culture. And if you’re capable of making a character 3-dimensional and believable, then you’re capable of realistically writing that character whether said character is fucking his boyfriend or shopping for his dinner.
Generally I would, actually- at least as the main characters. In my reading experience it’s generally fairly obvious if the author is trying to write about something outside their knowledge or experience*. That doesn’t mean there can’t be well-rounded, 3D supporting characters outside the author’s background/experience of course, but as a general rule, Rule 1 of writing is “Write What You Know”.
So I, as a university educated white male, would not try and write a novel in which the main character was an impoverished black woman living in a South African slum, because I have absolutely no knowledge or experience of that sort of thing and it would be blatantly obvious I had no idea what I was talking about in the story.
*Sci-Fi/Fantasy being an obvious exception to this, of course
“Write what you know” isn’t really a great rule of writing. I certainly would never tell anybody they should limit themselves to that. How boring literature and movies and music would become! I doubt Quentin Tarentino knows what it’s like to be a bride on a mission of revenge, or a guy who got shot in a gut, or a black woman whose down on her luck. I’m glad he didn’t try to limit himself or I wouldn’t be able to enjoy three of my favorite movies. I’m dead certain that Johnny Cash has no experience with shooting a man just to watch him die or being sentenced to Folsom Prison for the rest of his life, but the song he wrote about that experience really makes you believe he’s speaking with authority.
I’m not saying that everybody should write about experiences or people that are utterly foreign to them. I am saying that good writers are not limited to writing about their own experiences, and they shouldn’t be. “Write what you know” is a great rule to help kids in Creative Writing 101, but it’s hardly the first rule of writing, and it’s certainly not something that should limit a writer. The only thing that really limits what an author can do is imagination and skill.
The thing with The Bride is that she’s deliberately 2D. You could have had The Groom as the main character and still gotten pretty much the same film (minus the “Looking for her stolen daughter” sub-plot, and even that could have been worked in somehow).
That’s not to say good imagination can’t overcome some of these limitations, but generally stories work best when authors are working from what they know or have extensively researched.
Then I suppose it’s fortunate that I have extensive research in what sex is like with men.
I really find it odd that people can’t step outside of their own lives and minds enough to write from a POV of a different sort of person. I don’t write books about lesbians, but that’s not because I don’t understand what women experience during sex. It’s because I’m not particularly interested in lesbians. Likewise, I don’t write about gay men because I know what it’s like to be a man, but because I’m interested in men and want to spend more time thinking about them.
In the erotic romance genre, paranormal and urban fantasy is extremely possible. I don’t write books about werewolves because I have no interest in such a beast. They’re boring to me, quite frankly, as movie monsters and as lovers. But I’ve written several books about vampires and demons. And even though I don’t know what it’s like to crave blood, my characters sure do, and it’s my job to convey that physical, emotional, and mental response.
It’s not that they can’t do it, it’s that it wouldn’t likely be as convincing.
For example, if you were to write a story in which the main character was an Australian male stockman, it’s not going to be as convincing as a story about an Australian male stockman written by an Australian male with some knowledge of farming on remote stations. That’s not to say it would be a bad story (far from it, I suspect!) it’s just going to be different and possibly not as realistic.
Generally things I’ve thought up or various fantasies I have.
I prefer an unvarnished realism. I try to keep things down to earth rather than fantastical, if that makes sense.
I had a very difficult time finding stories that appealed to my interests. If I did find one that started out promising, the author usually did something near the end that took be out of the story and got me rolling my eyes at best. So I decided to write what I wanted to read and while I am by no means an “author” I do enjoy jotting something down when the mood strikes.
Both. I write for myself and if someone else likes it, even better. I also really enjoy the hatemail I get from my stories by the ever present ‘Anonymous’. I try to let readers know what type of stories I write so they can be skipped. Those that still read it then get so angry the have to write incoherent hate mail makes me smile a little. After all, if I was boring them then they wouldn’t write and I’d be doing something wrong.
Depends on the type of story and the mood I’m in at the time.