Porn Writing Sucks
Not mine!
Judge not, lest ye be judged. Wise words from a nice Jewish boy spilling the tea to his followers before spilling his blood for all mankind. Or so the story goes.
When it comes to sampling a selection of literotica.com’s 1.5 million pornographic stories, it’s best to add David Bowie’s sage advice to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: if you don’t understand it, it’s not for you.
Me, I’m an understanding guy. While I draw the line at erotica involving non-reproductive elimination, my sexual tastes are small-c catholic.
My beef with literotica has nothing to do with the content per se. It’s the quality of the writing.
Portmanteau That!
Many if not most literotica writers focus their efforts on the first half of the site’s name rather than the latter. Scene setting, character development and expository dialogue. Literary shit.
Boring? Even if you start a story with your dick in your hand. But don’t take my word for it...
“This is a rather lengthy piece and takes a fair amount of time to get into,” ProperlyTwisted warns, hoping his 627 followers will make it through Teacher’s Pet, his six-page voyeurism story.
Not to put too fine a point on it (so to speak), ninety-percent of the literotica stories I’ve perused in the name of market research are to literature what Mountain Dew is to Moet. Less likely to give me a hard-on than actuarial tables. And I don’t do math.
YES!
Back in the day, paperback smut consumers would page ahead to “the naughty bits.” I’m sure that literotica readers use their free hand for scrolling to the same onanistic end. Often is the same end.
When literotica’s writers finally get down to it, even the best fall prey to CLEF (Caps Lock Exclamation Fever).
Here’s a sample from page two of Burntredstone’s 29-page Erotic Couplings’ epic To Walk a Mile.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAIIIEEEEEEE!" Victoria screamed and clung to Ed to keep him from moving. It was too much! She was in heaven!…
"MMMMMmmmfffff!" she moaned into his mouth as her pleasure spiked.
Yes, people make noises and shout dirty words when they suck, fuck, get whipped, etc. But relying on onomatopoeia and simplistic slut talk for a story’s literal/literary climax is lazy, predictable and, well, stupid.
Same goes for the writers’ tendency to throw spears (a.k.a., exclamation marks) with gay abandon.
Yes, there’s something wrong with that. Exclamation marks are like Seeking Arrangement: a tempting tool that’s useful when you need it, but the less you use it the better.
Erotica 2.0?
As I embarked on my porn writing career, I’ve turned my back on literotica’s house style.
I adhere to the “iceberg theory” ascribed to my original literary inspiration, Ernest Hemingway. Keep surface details to a minimum. Let the deeper meanings and emotions lie beneath.
Deeper meanings in porn? Aren’t emotions the entire point of erotica?
Sure, but… I’m both an ambitiously pretentious writer and a die-hard-with-a-vengeance sapiosexual.
I’m repelled by the Oxford comma and passages that make crossing the Atlantic in a row-boat look like high-speed travel. I’m turned-on by the psychology of human sexuality.
My jam: writing clever, concise material that makes readers putty in my proverbial hands. Discerning and let’s-face-it exploiting prospective partners’ psycho-sexual motivations. Fucking with their heads, if you will.
Ella Unbound
I brought this mindset to my first pornographic post, wherein Jake navigates the moral maze surrounding his desire to bump uglies with his step-daughter Ella.
To avoid boring the shit out of readers (see: defecation aversion above), I edited the fuck out of Ella Unbound. Not literally, obviously.
I cut the copy to the bone by constantly reminding myself to keep it simple. Using the Hemingway-evoking words I shouted in the middle of the interminable Titanic. Iceberg! Iceberg! Iceberg!
A Twist in the Tale
Yeah I’m a trouble maker. So it comes as no surprise – at least to me – that I attempted to challenge readers’ expectations.
For example, in Part Three of the five-part series Ella Unbound, Jake gets a blowjob from one of Ella’s college classmates. A young man who proves instrumental in Jake’s final conquest.
Judging from that chapter’s lack of saves and follows – compared to the 25k+ views and 36 saves garnered by the purely heterosexual Parts One and Two – the “twist” was neither anticipated nor appreciated.
Kinda like life itself. And?
Who cares if I eschewed literotica’s standard template? At this point in my life, commercial considerations take a backseat to art. In other words, fuck it. I’m not being paid for this work. That said…
Therapy: A Catholic Girl Gone Bad
As insurance salesman turned mucho macho airport gift shop novelist Tom Clancy opined, unlike reality, fiction has to make sense.
I reckon that’s especially true for pornography. The more believable the lust-driven plot, the greater the audience’s jollies (as the Brits are wont to say).
My second submission put that aspiration to the test. In Therapy: A Catholic Girl Gone Bad, a slut, sorry, sex addict, gets fucked by her sadistic psychiatrist.
Not your everyday therapy session. And I know precious little about bondage or whipping other than Devo’s hit song. But the story’s success depends on making the unreal real.
You be the judge. Preferably in private.
Fun!
The most important aspect of this endeavor: it takes me out of my comfort zone. Stretches me as a writer who spent several decades writing quasi-journalistic editorials like, uh, this one.
It’s not easy. The fact that I’m writing this instead of cranking-out the next porno post is a pretty good indication that a part of my mind is shying away from a difficult task.
Oh well. Just as a smooth sea never made a skillful mariner, writing more of the same shit, even if it pays cash money, does nothing to make me a better writer
Bottom line: pornography is making me a better writer. Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.
NOTE: All my post are also online as self-narrated audio recordings.