I write fiction. I write erotica. I write erotic fiction. Now locked in that particular genre for the past five years, that’s all that I write.

So, being that this is a how to story, specifically how do you write an erotic story, shall we begin? Honestly, I don’t have a clue how to write an erotic story, I just do without thinking about it. I guess, after having written so many erotic stories, without even thinking about what I’m doing and how I’m writing them, the stories just come naturally to me. Yet, even though I have no idea what I’m doing, I’m one of the few writers on this site who routinely writes in 30 of the 35 Literotica categories.

I write: Anal, BDSM, Celebrities, Erotic Couplings, Erotic Horror, Exhibitionism & Voyeurism, Fetish, First Time, Gay Male, Group Sex, How To, Humor & Satire, Incest/Taboo, Interracial Love, Lesbian Sex, Letters & Transcripts, Loving Wives, Mature, Mind Control, Non-Erotic, NonConsent/Reluctance, NonHuman, Novels and Novellas, Reviews and Essays, Romantic, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Toys & Masturbation, Transsexuals & CrossDressers stories, non-erotic poetry, and erotic poetry. Having never had anal sex, having never been tied and blindfolded, having never met a celebrity, or had sex with anyone not of my race, I don’t have to be a cross dresser or addicted to toys and masturbation to experience any of that to research and feel enough of it to write a compelling story. A bit prolific, an understatement, I’ve written stories on Literotica since 2007, I have written stories and poems under the names of AndTheEnd, BostonFictionWriter, CarBuffStuff, PositiveThinker, SuperHeroRalph, SusanJillParker, and WmForrester.

Actually, my apologies, I’m sorry but I can’t tell you how to write an erotic story. I can only tell you how I write an erotic story. Are you ready? Come closer to the screen so that not everyone can see. Let’s begin.

It’s simple. Just before I go to bed, just before I put my head on my pillow, and just before I close my eyes, I think of a story that I want to write. While I’m sleeping my brain percolates my idea and writes the story for me. Seriously. This sleeping writing technique seldom fails.

As soon as I awaken, I’m a writing savant. I’m typing as fast as I can to write the story before I forget it. Sadly, I’ve forgotten more stories than I’ve written and I’ve written more than 1,000 stories, more than 100 poems, and more than 7 million words that have amassed more than 150 million hits on Literotica alone. I recently deleted 250 stories from my BostonFictionWriter name to rewrite and re-edit them as e-Books. A slow process but once I have a whole library of e-Books to generate income, I hope my patience and hard work will pay me dividends, that is, so long as I can trust a publish to give me an accurate accounting of royalties, sometimes harder to do than to write the story.

My writing sleeping, writing technique of allowing my brain to percolate my story as I sleep works for me and may or may not work for you. I’ve honed my skill of telling my brain what I want by even having it awaken me at a certain time and it does, right to the minute. Weird. It makes me wonder what else my brain can do while sleeping if I put my mind to it. I’ve tried telling it to give me the lottery number but that hasn’t work yet.

By allowing my brain to think of a mainstream fictional story or an erotic fictional story before retiring by just thinking of a character, an image, or a category, gives me a story to write the next morning. Never having to stare at a blank page while wondering what to write, I don’t write anything other than fiction. Writing non-fiction to me is like French kissing my brother.

“Eww.”

Yet, if I wrote an incestuous, erotic story about French kissing my brother then, no doubt, after kissing him, I’d be on my knees sucking his cock too. Again, I don’t have to French kiss and/or blow my brother to write a realistic brother and sister incestuous story. Now the aforementioned is as incestuous as it is pornographic writing, that is, until I develop my brother’s character by the use of dialogue, description, and imagery and write the rest of the story with a bit of tension. Yet, not only am I digressing but also I’m jumping ahead.

How to write erotica is the same as me telling you or, more aptly, showing you how to write, which is preposterous as no one can tell or show you how to write. If you know how to write, you can write erotica or anything else for that matter. Whatever you write, the secret behind good writing is practice. Just write, write, and write is all that you need to do to hone your writing skills. It helps if you read too while you’re writing.

As it is with most writers, my best writing is inspired writing. Inspired writing? What’s inspired writing? When I first started writing, as does everyone, I stared at a blank page while wondering, ‘What should I write? What should I write?’ I don’t stare at blank pages anymore. I just write.

How did I reach that place where I don’t stare at a blank page while wondering what to write? I only write when I feel that I want to write and I never sit down to write unless I’m inspired. It could be an image, a thought, or a word that inspires me. It could be something I saw on the news or when I was out for a walk. Anything that I see, hear, feel, smell, and/or touch can give me the inspiration that I need to write a story.

When I first started writing my window of inspiration was only open for five minutes. Trust me, you’ll know when your writing is inspired. As if you’re possessed, the words flow. Instead of having to think about what words to write, you’re writing whole sentences and entire paragraphs as if someone else is depressing the keys. I wrote my first story in that way. I knew the beginning, the middle, and the end, even the title of the manuscript and the titles of the chapters too. Sixty thousand words later, I wrote the story as fast as I could type it. It’s weird when that happens.

Even though it was inspired writing, because my window of inspiration was only open a few minutes a day back then, it took me six months to write my first manuscript and a year to edit the thing. I’m no grammarian. I hate editing and I respect those who can edit. I’m not an editor. I’m a creative writer. Yet, everything that I write, I read over dozens of times before reading it out loud twice, not an easy feat to do when some of my stories are 30,000 words and that doesn’t even include the 60,000 word novels, and 120,000 word chapter stories.

Yet, the more that I write, and I written a lot over the years since I’ve been seriously writing, the longer my window of inspiration remained open. Now my window of inspiration routinely stays open for hours at a time, five to six hours seems to be my maximum to write anywhere from one thousand to twelve thousand words every day. Only when tired, ill, and/or distracted by thinking of something else will my window remain closed. It’s the rare day that I don’t feel like writing. Rain or shine from 5am until noon, I’m writing whether on a computer or by hand. If I’m not writing a story, I’m thinking about a story.

You can pay tens of thousands of dollars to attend college classes majoring in English with minors in English Literature and/or Creative Writing while listening to a professor pontificate and taking endless, useless notes that you’ll never read again, once the final exam is over, as I did. Or you can just read, as I did too, before committing yourself more to writing by going to school and earning your bachelor’s degree in English with Literature and Creative Writing minors, as I did too. For those who want to teach someone how to write, you can earn your MFA, Master’s of Fine Arts degree.

Only, for those looking for a shortcut to become a writer without paying your dues by reading, writing, going to college and spending your life practicing writing by writing, sorry, but there are no shortcuts to learning how to write. Unless you’re self-taught, wicked smart, wicked perceptive, and/or gifted, you can’t see and wouldn’t recognize what the writer does while writing his or her story. Once you learn the process of writing, there are no secret formulas, writing is just disciplined, dedicated, and hard work. What I like about writing is creating and developing stories. Writing whatever I want whenever I want to write it, it’s just me, my story, and my characters.

If you’re serious about writing, you should start by reading a good writer, my advice to you is to read the classics. That’s always a good place to start. Begin by reading Shakespeare, Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Twain, Dickens, Hawthorne, Emerson, Cervantes, Austen, Melville, Tolstoy, James, Shelley, Wilde, Dumas, Woolf, Joyce, Homer, Bronte, Salinger, Wharton, and Morrison, the list of classics are endless and is a good place to begin before even tackling the endless list of current writers. What the writers do with words and sentence structure is as exciting as it is seamlessly magical. Just feeling their book in your hand before even opening it to read it is powerful.

The best thing that I ever did was to earn my bachelor’s in English. Why? Having to read two to five books a day to maintain my course load, reading so many varied authors made me aware of not what I’ve learned but how much I didn’t know. With every one book that I read, there were thousands more to read. As if a disease, I couldn’t wait to finish one to start another. Truly, after reading so very many of the classics with more unread than read, it’s no longer a mystery to me why so many writers are depressed, alcohol and drug dependent, and/or kill themselves, especially back then before television and the Internet. So very many stories, too many stories, are as dark as the doom that the writers must have felt during those modern times were filled with illness, depression, isolation, and desperate desolation.

It’s funny how we all think that modern times are the times that we are living now when they’re not. We only have to look back to the prior centuries to know that we’re the same fools that our ancestors were in believing that they were living in modern times. I suspect that modern times haven’t happened yet and won’t happen until humans have evolved much more than they have now. Now, with still so much crime, illiteracy, greed, and hunger, not much better than our cave dwelling ancestors, we’re all still barbarians under the surface.

Honestly and seriously, I’m sorry to write this but… No one can teach you how to write. Either you have it in you to want to write or you don’t. Those of you who are real writers with some level of home schooling, talent, and/or college credits know what I mean. Yeah, sure, a teacher can teach you all the rules of grammar, a literature professor can broaden your horizons by giving you a list of which classics in literature to read, and/or a creative writing professor can teach you the basics of good creative writing. After leading you, they can’t force you to write. They can’t sit beside you while you’re alone in a room writing, creating, developing, reading, rewriting, and editing. All of that is up to you.

Writing is a never ending process. Writing is discipline. Writing is loneliness. Most times exciting, writing can be boring, and/or stressful. Writers are cursed because writing is something that we must do. Writing is our passion and our cross to bear while seeking the write word, simile, metaphor, or imagery.

Always so critical of storylines and characters, even when not writing, we’re continually creating stories in our over active minds. When we watch a movie, not only do we already know the ending but also we have a better ending in mind. Like anything else, no one can make you write just as no one can teach you how to write. Either you have that driven spirit to write or you don’t. For those of you who are serious about writing, not only do I suggest you read everything you can but also take as many creative writing courses and creative writing workshops as you can. Moreover, take a few courses in screenwriting, not so much to become a screenwriter, but to see what a writer does when writing a novel when compared to what a director does when making a movie.

If you’re looking for secrets on how to write erotica, there are no secrets. Secrets? Back up. Seriously, there are no secrets to writing erotica or to writing any story. Like everything else, writing takes practice. The more that you write the better writer you’ll be. I figure in 40 years, so long as I continue to write, when I’m 80-years-old and in a nursing home peeing and shitting myself or an insane asylum ranting and raving, I’ll be a wicked good writer by then.

Everything you do, no matter what you do, is because you want to do it. Everything you do, no matter what you do, is hard and not easy. If something is easy to do than it’s not worth doing it. You’d be bored instead of challenged. If writing was easy instead of being so very painfully hard, when done writing your creative masterpiece, you’d never receive that self-satisfaction that you’ve accomplished something really important in your life.

Do you want to be a better writer whether writing non-fiction, fiction, erotica, or porn, my advice to you is to just write? It doesn’t matter what you write. Write what you know, write what you want, and write what you feel. Also stretch yourself by writing in different viewpoints, perspectives, voices, and in a diverse number of categories. You won’t know what you enjoy writing until you’re writing it. Much like living, writing is a lifelong apprenticeship and the longer and more you work at it, the better writer you’ll be. Just as there are no tricks, gimmicks, or shortcuts to writing a good story, there are no tricks, gimmicks, and shortcuts to becoming a better writer.

Admittedly, there are those writers who are gifted and born to write. I’m not one of them. I’m just a hack. Working hard to perfect my craft, my passion and discipline to write is bigger than my talent. Yet, not ready to give it up, I love writing stories, even if they don’t sell and even if they’re not read. They are still my stories that I wrote, created, and developed. Being that I can only write what I know, unless I stretch myself and force myself to do a bit of research, they are my characters who needed to be released from my head and they are all part of me.

My philosophy that no one can teach you how to write erotica or any other type of story is true with most things in life. For you to do them, you must have that driven desire to do whatever it is you want to accomplish. Much like driving a car, once you learn the basics and the rules and laws of the road, you’re free to drive. If you’re licensed to drive and know how to drive, you can drive any car, no matter if it’s a Ford Focus or a Chevrolet Corvette. If you can write a story, you don’t need me to tell you how to write erotica. Nonetheless, just for the fun and sexual excitement of it, let’s persevere down the sexy road of writing erotica.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending upon what the readers prefer reading, this site is filled with writers and readers who mistake pornography for erotica. Trust me, they’re not nearly the same. To me, pornography is much like eating plain toast without butter and jam, boring. This site is filled with stories of undeveloped characters and talking heads having sex with one another from the beginning of the story until the end of the story without even so much as the writer naming and/or describing the characters. How boring is that when the reader can’t imagine what the characters look like in the story they’ve invested their time to read. How unfair is that when the writer didn’t take the time to show, not tell, his readers what his characters look like?

For me, a story that doesn’t have developed characters is not a fun and/or an exciting story to read. When all the characters are one dimensional and are as flat as this page, the reader will never connect with the story. If a writer can’t take the time to develop characters, no one will care about the characters and/or the story. If there’s one secret to good writing, develop your characters. Once fully developed and once living and breathing, your characters will grab the keyboard from your hands and tell their own damn story, which is the reason why I’m able to write in so very many categories without having to experience so many sexual things. The only time that writing what you don’t know is transcendent and dependent upon something else is when the writer develops characters enough to allow them to tell their own story and from their own experiences.

While we’re on the subject of characters and characterization, what do your characters look like? Do you know? Of course you know what your characters look like otherwise you wouldn’t be writing and/or reading about them. Then, why aren’t you showing the rest of us what your characters look like? How dare you cheat we readers out of the biggest piece of your story and out of the most important part of your story? You, the writer, owe the reader, for investing their time to read your story, to develop your characters. It’s your responsibility as the writer of the story to show the reader what your characters not only look like but also act like through their actions and who they are through their dialogue. Even though writing pornography may be, writing erotica is not just about writing the sex scenes.

Surely, you’ve read about thousands of characters. Surely, you know what characters look like, don’t you? If you don’t, you ought to know what they look like. Before you were the writer, you were the reader after all, if anyone should know what characters look like you should know what characters look like. Right? Characters are different for every story you say? Perhaps, not really, but okay, I’ll take that as a plausible answer.

First of all, if you don’t know what your own characters of a story look like then you haven’t developed your characters. If you, the writer, can’t see your own characters, then there’s no connection between the writer and the reader and the reader won’t read your story. Tell me. Whether you’re a writer or a reader, what do your characters look like? C’mon. I want to know. You’ve already hinted at a character description by naming your story the Life of Emma or Jesse Gets a Job. What do Emma and/or Jesse look like and, as important, why do they do the things that they do? Being that they’re based upon a human, perhaps they do something totally out of character.

Do you have a favorite description of characters because even if you say that you don’t, I dare write that you do. I know that I do. My favorite characters somehow always tend to look much like me, tall, blonde, busty, and with blue eyes. As a writer, I can only write what I know and all that I need to do is to look at myself in the mirror to see a character that I’d like to write about and most times that’s me. Yet, not all my characters look like me. I’m free to imagine any and all kinds of characters. Yet, I’m cheating the reader by keeping all of that character information to myself by not developing my characters fully so that the reader can see and feel what I see and feel when they read about my characters in the story that I wrote.

Looks are arbitrary anyway. Being that I’m an American living in America, I think I’m good looking and there are as many who would agree as there are as many who would disagree. Yet, when we travel the world, because I don’t look like the woman of their land, whether they are Asian, African, or Arabian, I may be deemed unattractive, totally disgusting, even.

By the writer allowing the reader to see and feel our characters is the reason why we need the writer to lead us to where we, the reader, need to go to understand the story through character development. Without using a heavy hand and weighing down the story with lecturing narrative and writer intrusion, instead with just a gentle nudge, a good writer can put us in that special place of suspended disbelief to actually believe that the fictional characters we are reading about are actually living, breathing, and real. How cool is that? For just the price of a book, the magical entertainment of suspended disbelief is wicked cool to me.

Truly, the characters that you read about are more your characters than they are the writers’ characters. For sure, the characters that you read about in my story are not the characters that I created but are ones that you morphed in your mind to fit the people that you’ve met in your life. Even if I described every detail of my character, which no good writer ever would do because that would be boring, you’d have a different perception of my character than I do. Based on your life’s experiences, you’d have your own perceptions. You’d take my characters and add your own physical descriptions and traits by comparing them to people you’ve met in your life and people that you know, like, love, and hate. In that regard, essentially, my characters are more your characters than they are mine.

Yet, when a writer doesn’t take the time to develop characters well enough to make the reader see and feel them, the reader will never bond with them or with the story. In essence, having invested so much of your precious time to read a story, you’ll feel frustrated. You’ll feel cheated. Yet, before you rashly and too harshly judge the amateur and professional writers who write for Literotica, keep in mind that we writers write for free. We writers write for your entertainment and for your emotional, physical, and sexual satisfaction and personal gratification.

We writers need your votes, your comments, and your feedback for us to write a better story. Think of voting for the story that you read as applause. Surely, if you attended a live performance you wouldn’t insult the performers by not applauding them. So why is it that so many readers, 99.95% of them, sadly and frustratingly, a real statistical number, don’t vote? Moreover, 99.995% of readers don’t make a comment. Based solely on my numbers posted to my stories and what other writers have complained about too, one reader out of every thousand readers who opens my stories actually votes and one reader out of every ten thousand readers who opens my stories leaves a comment.

The small amount of voting and reader interaction with writers is as shocking as it is disappointing. We writers aren’t machines pumping our stories. We’re human. We’re readers too, just like you.

Now, of course, I have no way of knowing how many readers who open my stories even read my stories, yet that’s neither here or there. The lack of voting support and comment feedback are still dismally and disturbingly low, especially after we writers go through the hard work to write the best story that we can write for you for free. We writers write here for free and because we are writers driven to write and must write, the very least that you, the reader, can do is to applaud us by giving us your vote, your feedback, and/or your constructive criticism. Please, I ask you to do that for us.

If the writer is a decent enough writer they’ll use imagery, as well as description, to show their characters. It’s not enough that a writer writes that she’s blonde, blue-eyed, and busty and it’s unforgivable for a writer to dump everything to know about the character in one sentence or even in one paragraph. It’s always better to weave the character’s descriptions and personality traits throughout the story so that the reader is mindfully reminded of what the character not only looks like but acts like too.

Moreover, we want to know more about the antagonist and protagonist than just their physical appearance. What kind of person is she? Is she a bitch or a virgin? Does she cheat on her taxes? Does she kick her dog? Does she even have a dog? What kind of dog does she own? Or maybe she prefers cats? What kind of car does she drive? Does she drive fast or slow? Or maybe she’s not a woman but a man, a bald man, a fat man, a gay man, a macho man, a sports man, a man with a beard, mustache, tattoo, or scar.

Much like this story, How to Write an Erotic Story, this site is filled with stories of narrative with little or no dialogue to break up the endless black words that fill the page and to give the readers a chance to catch their breaths and rest their eyes. This site is filled with stories of faceless, nameless people fucking and sucking. Sex, sex, and sex, instead of writing a real story with developed characters, it’s as if the writer is stiff arming the reader by distancing the reader while distracting the reader with just sex and more sex. Writing just about sex doesn’t constitute a story.

While keeping all of the character development and imagery in his or her head, it’s as if the writer is writing the story that he or she’d like to read to masturbate to while reading their own story. They write stories that are truncated and missing important pieces of information for the rest of us to understand, feel, and even follow the progression of their story. They write stories that remain more in their mind than what they’ve written on their computer. A story written in that way will never be remembered if even read. A story like that is just pure pornography and not erotica.

Now there’s nothing wrong with writing pornography. Pornography serves a need, so long as it doesn’t involve minors and unnecessary violence. Most stories written on the site are more pornographic than they are erotic. Most readers who come to the site prefer reading pornography than they do erotica. If pornography is what you want to write and if that’s what your readers want to read, good for you. You’re writing to your audience. Yet, don’t bash me and my stories because I don’t write pornographic stories. I write erotic stories. Unfortunately most writers and readers mistake porn for erotica. Vastly different, it’s not nearly the same.

Think of pornography as a stripped Honda Civic, a car to get you from here to there, just as a pornographic story will get you from horny to aroused to cumming in a tissue. Good luck with that. Now that you porn readers are already done masturbating, it’s time for the rest of us erotic readers to read some erotica. Just wondering. For those of you even knowing what a Honda Civic is, did you see the car in your mind’s eye? You did? Really? You saw the car? What color was it? What year was it? Was it a four door Civic or the more sporty two door?

Now think of erotica as a brand new, custom made Bentley Continental GT with shiny, chrome wheels and a two tone, true blue over steel blue, metallic painted and hand rubbed exterior. Imagine sitting on a red leather, hand stitched, tufted interior with supportive seats that can be reflected in the high polished, burled walnut of the dashboard. The headliner along with the carpet is real wool and everything you touch is handmade and perfectly fitted with the weighty heaviness of precious metals. Do you feel the softness of the red leather? Can you smell it? Can you smell the wood and see the mirror finish of burled walnut of the dashboard?

If only by the name, the description, and the imagery that I painted of the car, you know that the car is expensive. If you know the car enough to envision the sleekness of its lines, you know that it’s fast and powerful just as you know the man that’s driving the car is rich and powerful too. Only forget about him. This isn’t his story. This is your story. Imagine yourself behind the wheel of this unbelievable car. If only your father could see you now.

Unlike the plain Jane Honda Civic, with 567 horsepower and 575 pound feet of torque, I bet you can’t wait to drive it. I bet you can’t wait to take it out for a spin to see how fast it is on the straightaway and how it handles in the curves. They claim that this two and a half ton, all wheel drive, behemoth can go from zero to sixty in only 4.3 seconds. Just walking up to it, you couldn’t help but notice the huge red calipers of the brakes. I bet you can’t wait to drive it through your old neighborhood to show all of your envious, old friends. Wait, I’m not done yet.

Now that you can see the car, let’s go all the way. Picture a beautiful, blonde woman with mesmerizing blue eyes half your age sitting beside you in your blue, Bentley Continental GT as you motor down the highway. Rid of your ex-wife, no longer having to work for a living, life doesn’t get any better than his. If you were alone, you’d appreciate driving this car more but the scintillatingly stunning woman sitting beside you is distracting you from enjoying the Bentley. Only someone so beautiful and so shapely could steal the shine of the spotlight from such a fine automobile.

She’s wearing a low cut, powder blue blouse that not only compliments the exterior of the color of the car but also lends contrast to the red leather seats by not overwhelming her. Her sheer, silk blouse is more unbuttoned than it is buttoned. Is she wearing a bra? Judging by her nipples making their impression in the silk material known, she isn’t wearing a bra.

Wow, how could a woman with breasts that large get away with not wearing a bra without sagging. If she leaned a little more, you may even be able to see her areola or perhaps her nipple. Gees, where in the Hell did you find her? Scratching your head, between the car and the woman stealing your mind, unable to clearly think, you wonder if she came with the car.

Her short, dark blue skirt that’s climbed nearly up to her crotch makes you wonder if she’s wearing panties. Extrapolating from that thought, you wonder if she’s shaved, bushy, or trimmed. You wonder if this car will impress her enough for you to get lucky with her tonight. Maybe she’s not like that. Maybe she’s a good girl. Maybe she’s a virgin. You look over at her. Nah, she’s not any virgin that you ever saw.

Where are you going? You don’t care. It’s enough that you’re driving a Bentley with a beautiful blonde sitting beside you. Wait, what is she doing? What the Hell? Are you kidding me? No way!

You watch her unbutton the rest of her blouse and flay it open all the way to reveal the most beautiful natural D cup breasts you’ve ever seen. Wow! Only, she’s not showing you her breasts, she’s flashing her breasts to the truckers on the highway.

“Fuck me!”

As if this car doesn’t attract enough attention, she will. How could she do that? How dare she do that? It’s then and only then that you realize that this woman needs an accessory to go with her big tits. You reach in the glove box and hand her the blue box from Tiffany.

“Wear this while flashing Veronica. I don’t want you to catch cold,” he said to her.

“A diamond necklace! Thank you Daddy,” she said leaning to you to give you a kiss while fondling your growing erection through your pants.

Gees, so busy enjoying that car and admiring her, you somehow forgot that she was your daughter that you’ve been having incestuous sex with for the past month.

Now if porn is what you want to write and all that you want to write, then you don’t need me to tell you how to write an erotic story because erotica is not for you. You’d never consider driving the fancy Bentley over the basic Honda or maybe you would. Yet, after all and nonetheless, this site is Literotica and not Literpornica and it’s funny how erotica is always mistaken for pornography. Yet, let me tell you this, if you continue to write pornography, you’ll never get the busty, beautiful blonde sitting next to you in a Bentley. With most women preferring erotica to pornography, you’ll always be driving a Honda Civic alone with your bad self.

So, what’s erotica? Erotica is from the Greek word Eros. Eros, think of Cupid, is the Greek God of love and not the Greek God of pornography. Erotica could be works of art in literature, photography, film, sculpture, and painting that contain thought provoking, sensually stimulating and sexually arousing descriptions. Ah, there’s the key. Erotica contains thought provoking, sensually stimulating, and sexually arousing descriptions and imagery. That sounds like porn to me. Doesn’t it to you? So what’s the difference?

Well, there are a few things that are conspicuously missing from pornography, back story, plot or storyline, character development, description, imagery, and tension. Where pornography concentrates on sex, erotica fills in the blanks with back story, plot, character development, description, imagery, and tension. I repeated the ingredients of an erotic story versus a pornographic story twice because they are important and the major differences between the two stories. Erotica combines the human anatomy with the sexuality and sensuality of art. Erotica is more cerebral, where pornography is more physical. Where erotica is more showing, pornography is more telling.

Showing and telling? What’s that? No matter if a writer writes erotica, pornography, mainstream fiction, or even non-fiction, the writer who shows the reader what he or she means by the use of description, imagery, and dialogue will write a much better story than a writer who merely tells the story by lecturing to the reader with endless narrative. Showing the reader uses writing techniques that connects the reader with the story so that the reader can fill in whatever he or she needs to imagine what he or she needs to read a better story and/or to actually see what it is that the writer is writing. Much like reading a history, geography or an accounting book, when a writer merely tells a story instead of showing a story, then the reader is just able to skim the story without connecting with the story, without connecting with the characters, without feeling anything, and while remembering very little.

If you’re favorite movie is a porn movie, then chances are you won’t enjoy reading erotica. For sure, in reading erotica, there’s never enough sexual action for the reader who prefers pornography. So, what’s the difference between porn and erotica? Porn is visually and mostly geared towards men. Its sole purpose is to physically arouse and stimulate the male species and the testosterone filled reader, while he masturbates to the story. Pure and simple, with nothing else to the story’s benefit and to link the story to reality, the sole purpose of the story is to arouse men to masturbate. To me and for me, and most women and many men would agree, porn is good but erotica is so much better. Geared more toward women, erotica can be more satisfying for men too, that is, if men will take the time to allow an erotic story to unwind long enough to evoke the images needed to sexually excite them. Erotica is the slow burn of a couple’s orgasm and not the rushed, slam bam sex of self-masturbation.

Whereas porn is a man cumming in a tissue, erotica is a woman being seduced long before having an orgasm in bed by the hand, the mouth, and/or the cock of her partner. Erotica gets you in the mood, not so much for the pleasure of your hand but more for the joint pleasure of you with your sexual partner. Erotica allows you to consider all the possibilities while porn, once you’ve sexually satisfied yourself, makes you wonder why you even started reading the story in the first place. Whereas porn appeals more to men, erotica appeals more to women and is often written by and for women, even though there are plenty of male erotic writers and readers.

Whereas pornography is more unrealistic and not deserving the name of erotica, pornography can never go where erotica goes in the psyche. Pornography is a horny teenager cumming in the bathroom or his bedroom. Erotica is Don Juan giving a woman what she needs, a cougar or an older man seducing a much younger man or woman, or a romantic story filled with sexual suggestion, innuendoes, and imagery. Instead of merely describing the scene of incestuous sex between a mother and her son, erotica explains why a mother has given herself to her son. Even though both may be fiction or not or some mixture of fiction and non-fiction, erotica is more believable, revealing, and exciting. Erotica is real life. Erotica is more arousing and satisfying than pornography. Erotica is the appetizer, the soup, the salad, and the full meal and not just the dessert.

Don’t believe me? Except for the guy in the back of the room drooling while masturbating, as I’m writing this story, how many pornographic stories can you remember? The same goes for pornographic movies. They are all forgettable. Why is that? Because typically pornography doesn’t have a storyline and developed characters. Generally, there aren’t any well crafted lines of dialogue to evoke a quote or a memory. Conversely when a reader reads an erotic story, chances are that he or she will not only favor the author by adding him or her to his favorite author list but also will favor the story too.

Just because a writer takes the time to show a real story, to develop characters, to insert dialogue, tension, and imagery in his or her story doesn’t mean that the sex is less exciting than the sex found in a pornographic story. Chances are, because of the time that the writer takes to show the reader the story, the erotic story is much more enjoyably satisfying than a pornographic story. Because of the character development and scene development, along with the tension of wants, needs, and desires of the characters portrayed in erotica, erotica shows a more complete story than a pornographic story does. No one remembers a pornography story, they more remember pornography stars and the sexy sex scenes.

If you read a non-erotic novel about a couple in love, because of the omission of the sex scenes, that story fails to show you the whole story. Unless the story shows of one small snippet in their long life, typically, a story such as that is not believable. Whereas, if you read a pornographic story about a man and a woman, a story that’s loaded with sex from the beginning to the end, that only tells you the sexual side of the story, that’s not believable either. Now, if you read an erotic novel of a man and a woman, one that shows you instead of telling you the whole story of their relationship, sexual and otherwise, that story is more completely satisfying. Erotica stimulates the mind and the imagination with arousing emotions, as much as, if not more than the body. Now that’s how I write an erotic story.

THE END