Erotica
Erotica by Penelope Friday
Penelope Friday is a fiction writer specialising in erotica, and has had countless steamy short stories published by Xcite books and other publishing houses. In January 2009 she had an historical lesbian novella, Loving My Lady, published. Penelope offers advice on how to write sensuous fiction and avoid purple prose…
As a child, when I said that I wanted to be a writer, I think I can safely acknowledge that erotica wasn’t what I had in mind. I was always writing, but the subjects were a different breed of story (horse stories, school stories, adventure stories - you name it!). Still, the constant writing, imagining and playing with words helped me find new ways of expressing myself - and, of course, I enjoyed doing it.
I came into erotic writing via fanfiction, a genre in which writers take characters invented by other authors and create their own alternative stories. Although it’s a grey area in legal terms, fanfiction writers don’t earn money from their creations, and most writers would acknowledge that fanfiction encourages more readers towards the originals rather than taking readers away.
A large sub-section of fanfiction, however, is explicitly and shamelessly erotic in tone, and it was here that I was led away from my innocence (!) into the world of sex writing. I learned what sort of phrases worked and what didn’t, what situations were unbearably clichéd, and what it was that readers were looking for in erotic fiction - all without having to go through the depressing cycle of having my stories rejected by editors!
And there is one final thing that fanfiction brought me about which I cannot speak highly enough: beta readers. Many fanfiction circles are extremely fussy about the standard of work they accept, and a regular requirement is that you have your work read and checked by another person (a ‘beta’) before submitting it.
I can’t tell you how grateful I am to the poor beta who told me kindly but firmly that “She worshipped at the shrine of his manhood” was not a romantic expression but a painfully embarrassing example of purple prose!
The first stories I sent out to publishers were passed around and beta-ed within an inch of their lives before coming anywhere near an editor’s table, and it worked. My very first original erotic story was accepted; and two years down the line, although I’ve had rejections, I’ve never actually written erotica that has sold to no one.
So, two things to keep very firmly in mind. Firstly, practise may not make perfect, but it certainly helps you improve and find a writing style which works for you. Secondly, if you can possibly find someone (preferably someone who knows something about the genre) who is prepared to look through a story and give you an honest (sometimes ruthless) opinion - do it! Good advice is priceless.
There are, however, plenty of other ways in which you can improve your chances of getting erotica published. Try and avoid purple prose, however tempting it is to get carried away by a flight of fancy. There is no need to have every man in your stories be “tall, dark and handsome;” and seriously, you really don’t need to go into details about the dimensions of his ‘attributes’.
A lot of eroticism is in the brain: you can set the scene so that your readers can imagine themselves in the situation, but there’s no need to give a blow by blow description of how, precisely, tab A was inserted into slot B.
Something which I have learned by practise, and which certainly doesn’t come naturally to me, is the importance of using all the senses when writing erotica. Touch and sight are the two senses to which most people gravitate in their writing; but sound, smell and taste have an important role to play.
If it doesn’t come naturally to you either, it is possible to go back through a story and deliberately add this sort of detail: I once put in a description about the smell of my heroine’s apple conditioner, and more than one person told me that this little, apparently insignificant, point made the story come to life.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t play to your strengths - and an important thing to remember is that there isn’t one right way of writing erotica. Missionary style intercourse is not obligatory but, on the converse, there is no need to write about more and more weird and wonderful sexual practices.
You can write contemporary stories, dive back into history or forward into the realms of science fiction, you can even write about fantasy creatures such as vampires and werewolves. You can write heterosexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual or ménage stories.
You can write fiction that concentrates specifically on a sexual encounter, or in which sex is important alongside the main plot, adding intimacy to the story. Above all else, enjoy writing erotica. Sex writing, like sex itself, should never be a chore.
As far as finding markets is concerned, the Erotic Readers and Writers Association is a very good resource, as is the Erotic Authors Association. It’s possible to get a fairly good list of potential publishers from there; and they are both also useful for finding out about open calls for submissions for anthologies.
Fiction writing, regretfully, is unlikely to provide enough money for a full time job (although I’ve been told that pornography pays better than erotica), but works well as a secondary source of income.
One of the problems is that, unlike with articles, you are usually required to write the story first and find the market second, but another is that there are very few markets which pay more than £50 for a short story. Even novel-length fiction rarely gets an advance of more than a couple of hundred pounds, although there’s always the hope that the royalties will start flooding in.
Of course there are exceptions to the rule, and some people live happily off their earnings from erotica alone. But if you don’t, it’s certainly not a failure. Most of us don’t - which is why you need to love what you write. Who knows, though? The next story could propel you into the top echelons of writing! Or the next, or the next…
Meanwhile, enjoy yourself and enjoy your writing while you’re waiting for fame and fortune to knock on your door. That way, whatever happens - fame, or just a useful secondary income - it’s been worth it.
And never, ever, give up hoping and believing in your talent.
