The Basics of Actually Good Erotica

It’s no secret that I think a lot of erotica is crap. The great majority of it is pretty subpar, an example of poor writing that uses the inclusion of sex to excuse it from being good as opposed to enhancing the final product. It’s something that plagues my work from time to time, and I’m sure a few stories on this very site come to your mind when I mention stories that could have existed without having sex in them, that decided to have sex in them just… because.

Part of why I write erotica is to challenge myself in this way. How do I create a story that exists as a story and doesn’t need to exist as a ‘stroke story,’ but also isn’t just a normal story that just has sex inserted into it? I tried to make Being More Social, my biggest piece, the result of this thought, and to my mind, I’ve failed. A few people have, rightfully so, called out the story as being a regular young adult story with sex scenes thrown into it. While there are other schools of thought, this is a very valid criticism. So how should the very best erotic stories go about balancing their sexual content with their ability to be a story?

On a scale of 0 to 100 in writing talent, it takes about a 2 to just write sex. All you need to know about how to write sex is to know the action, then swap synonyms (so like instead of ‘he stuck his penis inside of her,’ create ‘he drilled her with his iron rod.’ Magic.) There’s a great number of stories on here that clearly learned how to write sex scenes by reading other sex stories, then swapped names and maybe if the reader is lucky, changed a few mannerisms of the characters. Worse, they might think that a character is defined by one trait (like ‘bossy,’ ‘childish’ or ‘nympho’), or maybe even just a word they use a lot, like ‘jeepers.’ The better writers make their characters less flat, by maybe daring to have more than one trait to their personality. The best understand how their traits work with or against one another, and how they relate to that person’s sex life. Making your reader hard or wet is the first step. Anyone can write, “and then he thrust hard and came inside of my pussy.” Yawn.
This is one end of the scale: making your story just about the sex. Maybe if you’re really good at writing the sex scenes, you’ll get a lot of viewers that come to your story looking to get off. Then after they’ve finished, they’ll close the tab in shame and get on with their lives. If that’s your end goal, you don’t need my pretentious opinion. You do you, space ranger. I’m sure you’re great at what you do, as long as you’re anything unlike fbailey or blueheatt. But if you want to dare to take your work to the next level and dare to say, “I want to do more than make people climax with my writing,” you need to think deeply about the end of the scale you’re on and how you can approach the middle.

If you’re anything like me, you lean a little too close to the other end of the scale: caring too little about the sex. Maybe you hate sex but still want to use this site as an outlet for your writing, you cheeky devil you. Maybe you started as a sex story but can’t escape the buildup cycle you’ve created. Maybe it started as a sex story but you got so engrossed in your characters that you want to develop them instead of making them fuck. All of those are noble but remember your audience.