The Benefits of Writing Porn

I’m here today to talk about how writing porn (erotica, romance, whatever you call writing that readers derive sexual pleasure from) enhances and improves other writing. It does this in multiple ways, if you have the ovaries or cajones to really go for it. I can hear the Pollyannas clutching their pearls from here, see the shocked, judgmental looks aimed like lasers at me for daring to put romance as a parenthetical of porn (which is where it belongs).

Why do I consider romance a parenthetical of porn? In short, because it is. A cock by any other name is still the same. I actually have less respect for people who diddle themselves to euphemisms than I do for fans of hardcore. But let’s leave the reader perspective out of this. From a writer’s perspective, it’s much easier to employ Victorian euphemisms than it is to avoid being repetitive with vocabulary that’s more base because of the sheer volume of them, so for me, it’s a cop-out out of the gate. And don’t get me started on the hypocrisy of romance novel fans who allege a moral problem with porn. That’s a false argument—the objection is aesthetically, not morally grounded. A pirate sliding his sword into the maiden’s sheath is fucking, no matter how floral the euphemism, so for fans of this nonsense to claim high moral ground is absurd, and I flatly reject it.

Have a reader in mind, and write for that person, whether or not they ever see a single word of it. The more you know about your reader, the better the writing will be.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s take a look at what we expect from literary porn, and first and foremost, sensory description is what we crave. You can’t write good, engaging porn without tons of sensory detail, the more senses engaged the better. You also have to avoid using the same terms or imagery—repetition annoys readers. Writing porn exercises your sensory detail usage while forcing you to find new ways to present the same, or exceedingly similar, tension-building and climax scenes. You can’t take this honed skill straight to your other writing.

Speaking of building tension and creating climax, timing and pacing are extremely important to porn. You can’t rush to the climax, or you’ll find yourself there alone with unsatisfied readers. I tend to build tension to climax at least three times in erotic stories—some readers are slow burners, and reader enjoyment is the point, so porn writing also teaches writers to actively think about the reader—otherwise, it’s just jism on the page, and nobody wants that. Porn writing is the mist straightforward reader-centered writing there is.

There’s one more benefit to writing porn, and that’s liberation. This is an arena that encourages tearing down taboos, delights in it. Give it a try and tear a few down. Have some characters enjoy things thay aren’t supposed to be doing—public sex, inappropriate social dynamics, etc. I have a few ethical standards that I won’t abandon: only adults on my pages, ever, full stop, no exceptions is the first one. The second one is that if aggression is involved, so is explicit consent/desire for the aggression. No rape or pseudorape—that’s violence, not sex. Those are a couple of standards I’ll never abandon, among others.

Write porn. Write it well, break taboos, be true to yourself and work on sensory detail, pacing, and fresh language. Here, more than anywhere else, stereotypes, redundancy, and triteness stand out like. . . well, you know. Just don’t skip the last step of taking the benefits back to your other writing. Free your mind and your pen will follow.