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PORN WRITING ADVICE CONTINUED
Trying to be a good homie and make it easier for people to find my thoughts on writing craft so it's not just floating around in twitter replies. I'm expanding on my thoughts from the previous post I made about how to write good sex scenes which I recommend reading first if you haven't already.
from twitter: "something I often see people complain about in porn is a lack of interesting or sexy words to apply to body parts, but really, the words that make you cringe are typically just words you associate with un-sexy things. like your parents, or angry gamer bros. CONTEXT IS KING.
you can come up with an infinite number of ways to describe genitals if you really get into a character's headspace and their knowledge base. the words shouldn't come from YOU. they should come from your character. it helps pave the way both to believable dialogue and horniness
I genuinely think every fiction writer who wants to write good dialogue should study acting even for a brief time. writing and acting go hand in hand, especially if you want to convince people they're not just reading YOUR thoughts, but the thoughts of a lil freak you made up"
Re: what words sound like they're from bad porn?
from twitter: "honestly this is subjective because something that feels like it was taken straight from bad porn will be able to go off flawlessly in another piece! the idea is not to sanction off certain words as bad or overused, but to never take the easy, generic route—BUT there are questions you can keep in your brain like "what is the porn in THIS world like? what embarrasses these characters? what does this character fantasize about?" every single story is its own monster so it's best to take them one at a time and not fall on b&w rules."
The idea isn't to go out of your way to NEVER use "porn sounding" language, it's to make sure that the words you're choosing make sense in the mouths of the characters speaking them, or in that particular narrative prose perspective you chose. Sometimes characters call each other baby and it makes perfect sense to me, and other times characters call each other baby and I stop because it sounds like the AUTHOR is inserting themselves into the character just for the chance to call a character "baby".
Sometimes language dissonance is fun, but that's something that works best when you've previously established narrative in-world expectations, not just your authorial reaction to IRL fiction trends. I know a lot of people have fun doing reversals on typical porn dynamics, but your pieces still need to be able to stand on their own legs, not just in the grand scheme of the pornographic literary canon. Think about who's going to get to read your piece in 5 years, who has no fucking clue what you, the author, were reacting to when you wrote it.
I think a lot of porn jumpscares (i.e. language that pops up and kills your boner) happens when the piece isn't already saturated in the horny lexicon of the world. This just goes back to world building. There are certain words that hit so much better and hotter when you've seen them BEFORE the sex scene, so you understand the piece's relationship to these concepts. Find ways to bring up how characters talk about genitals before their whipping their dicks out so I know what's expected of the WORLD, and it'll read less like a porn mad-libs.
I'm preserving these two posts from twitter because it's relevant. What I desire most in porn is to see the characters becoming horny about something IN REAL TIME, not just an expectation of "well you like feet, so here's some fucking feet." Respect the kink! Respect me! Get indulgent. Unwrap it like a present. Don't take shortcuts just because you're relying on a shared language between perverts.
I try to write every piece as if I'm trying to convince every reader to understand what my character is about to cum to. I never want to rely on shorthand, because the fun of writing is getting to live in those little carnal details that can pass you by if you're NOT horny for it. I'm here to put a microscope on this bonerade so that even people who hate feet will see why my character is jerking off to it in the heat of the moment. Maybe I can't convince YOU to jerk off to feet, but maybe you'll get a little hard reading about this guy about to cream his pants because HE'S so lost in the arches.
(text from the image of my tweets reads: "a good writer can give me a kink i didn't know i had because i will be able to see it through the eyes of the character who has that kink. porn is usually centered on, and catered to, a specific kink. porn still functions without stellar writing craft because it relies on you already being horny for something in the concept. i'm a lot more forgiving seeking out horny porn. but good writing penetrates every scene.")
Feel free to ask questions on substar if you want to! I'm not the end all be all, but I like to do my best to help people when they're hitting road blocks!
from twitter: "something I often see people complain about in porn is a lack of interesting or sexy words to apply to body parts, but really, the words that make you cringe are typically just words you associate with un-sexy things. like your parents, or angry gamer bros. CONTEXT IS KING.
you can come up with an infinite number of ways to describe genitals if you really get into a character's headspace and their knowledge base. the words shouldn't come from YOU. they should come from your character. it helps pave the way both to believable dialogue and horniness
I genuinely think every fiction writer who wants to write good dialogue should study acting even for a brief time. writing and acting go hand in hand, especially if you want to convince people they're not just reading YOUR thoughts, but the thoughts of a lil freak you made up"
Re: what words sound like they're from bad porn?
from twitter: "honestly this is subjective because something that feels like it was taken straight from bad porn will be able to go off flawlessly in another piece! the idea is not to sanction off certain words as bad or overused, but to never take the easy, generic route—BUT there are questions you can keep in your brain like "what is the porn in THIS world like? what embarrasses these characters? what does this character fantasize about?" every single story is its own monster so it's best to take them one at a time and not fall on b&w rules."
The idea isn't to go out of your way to NEVER use "porn sounding" language, it's to make sure that the words you're choosing make sense in the mouths of the characters speaking them, or in that particular narrative prose perspective you chose. Sometimes characters call each other baby and it makes perfect sense to me, and other times characters call each other baby and I stop because it sounds like the AUTHOR is inserting themselves into the character just for the chance to call a character "baby".
Sometimes language dissonance is fun, but that's something that works best when you've previously established narrative in-world expectations, not just your authorial reaction to IRL fiction trends. I know a lot of people have fun doing reversals on typical porn dynamics, but your pieces still need to be able to stand on their own legs, not just in the grand scheme of the pornographic literary canon. Think about who's going to get to read your piece in 5 years, who has no fucking clue what you, the author, were reacting to when you wrote it.
I think a lot of porn jumpscares (i.e. language that pops up and kills your boner) happens when the piece isn't already saturated in the horny lexicon of the world. This just goes back to world building. There are certain words that hit so much better and hotter when you've seen them BEFORE the sex scene, so you understand the piece's relationship to these concepts. Find ways to bring up how characters talk about genitals before their whipping their dicks out so I know what's expected of the WORLD, and it'll read less like a porn mad-libs.
I'm preserving these two posts from twitter because it's relevant. What I desire most in porn is to see the characters becoming horny about something IN REAL TIME, not just an expectation of "well you like feet, so here's some fucking feet." Respect the kink! Respect me! Get indulgent. Unwrap it like a present. Don't take shortcuts just because you're relying on a shared language between perverts.
I try to write every piece as if I'm trying to convince every reader to understand what my character is about to cum to. I never want to rely on shorthand, because the fun of writing is getting to live in those little carnal details that can pass you by if you're NOT horny for it. I'm here to put a microscope on this bonerade so that even people who hate feet will see why my character is jerking off to it in the heat of the moment. Maybe I can't convince YOU to jerk off to feet, but maybe you'll get a little hard reading about this guy about to cream his pants because HE'S so lost in the arches.
(text from the image of my tweets reads: "a good writer can give me a kink i didn't know i had because i will be able to see it through the eyes of the character who has that kink. porn is usually centered on, and catered to, a specific kink. porn still functions without stellar writing craft because it relies on you already being horny for something in the concept. i'm a lot more forgiving seeking out horny porn. but good writing penetrates every scene.")
Feel free to ask questions on substar if you want to! I'm not the end all be all, but I like to do my best to help people when they're hitting road blocks!
Thanks for sharing
thanks for reading!