Deciding to become an erotic author can be daunting and scary for beginners who hope to venture into the field and identify with other successful erotic authors. The journey could become strenuous, especially if you have no idea where to begin or how to craft your own erotic story in the first place.
Selling sex to ardent readers isn’t hard, the difficult part comes with skillfully writing an enthralling story – no matter how short – that would keep your audience glued to their seats, devouring your story and coming back for more.
As a beginner, this article will help you with 8 simple Erotic Writing Tips to hold onto as you begin your journey and useful resources that can help you gain a better understanding of the erotic craft.
These simple writing tips in this article have everything to do with planning and preparation as a budding erotic author to avoid costly mistakes authors make in the beginning years of their writing journey.
Here are the 8 Simple Writing Tips For Erotic Authors.
Tip #1: Understanding The Diversity of Sexuality.
Sexuality is a very important part of writing erotica and a strong magnet to keep your readers invested in your story and coming back for more. No reader wants to be fed Vanilla erotica all the time without any kink or varying degrees of sexuality to spice up the story.
Example: If you are most comfortable with writing erotica between one man and a woman, you should be ready to switch it up by including BDSM, MILF, HOTWIFING, and COUGERS into the story mix.
There are a lot of sexuality troupes out there in the world, and it comes with their style of writing. This is the part where research plays a major role.
Tip #2: Carry Out Intensive Research on Niche Writing
Picking a niche or sub-niche to write in can be very difficult, especially as a budding author. It is advisable to carry out thorough research on the niche you’d like to write in, familiarize yourself with the contents in those niches and pick what resonates well with you.
Evergreen niches include BDSM, MILF, AGE PLAY, and LESBIAN/ GAY but there are a few more out trending niches and sub-niches out there that are great perfect to write in. Remember, niches trend with time and season, so don’t be too shy about switching up again if need be.
Check Out The Beginners Blueprint For Budding Authors
Tip #3: Read Books In Your Selected Niche
What better way to familiarize yourself with a chosen niche than to read published books in that genre, especially high-ranking ones. It might not cater to your tastes, but it will give you an insight into style, wordplay, kink, language, and many more tips to help you draft your stories.
Also, reading other great published literary works in the niche that catches your eye could be the greatest thing to ever happen to you because it could come packed with ideas that some best-selling books may never have.
Read with your heart in it and vary the length of the books you read. Try a mix of short stories, novellas, and novels. It will help.
Tip #4: Begin Small, Don’t Overwhelm Yourself
This is a top priority and a top writing tip for every budding and aspiring erotic author in the field. Don’t overwhelm yourself or you could burn out faster than you started. Do not compete with already established authors, rather write at your pace, find your flow, build your creative capacity and find your style.
Starting small will help you achieve a lot of the items listed and more as you grow at your pace and keep up with writing and publishing content regularly.
Tip #5: Dedicate Yourself To Writing Your Story
It is easy to say you want to become an erotic author or a contemporary romance author but it is hard to sit down and write your story. If this is what you crave, then dedication to writing is key.
The above-listed top writing tips will be utterly useless with implementation; which means don’t even bother with the four if you aren’t going to write a story.
Draft a solid plan to get you off the ground running, find a writing schedule that fits in with your lifestyle and keep to it. The rest will fall in place as you push on.
Tip #6: Pick An Achievable Word Count
Starting small includes picking an achievable word count. It’s not bad to write a 50k-word novel or a 100k-word erotic novel if you’re an expert in the field; if you aren’t, I suggest you begin with short stories and level up as you gain momentum.
Why? Because it takes a lot to write a lengthy novel and budding authors could easily get frustrated in the process of meeting up with that word count.
Rather, starting from 3000 to 5000 to 8000 words per story would help your smooth transition into lengthier novels. The whole idea behind achievable word count is to publish consistently.
The Beginners Guide Blueprint will show you examples of how to properly break down a word count to craft a meaningful story.
Tip #7: Publish Consistently
The essence of writing is to publish a complete story.
The goal of every reader is to keep getting toe-curling stories from their favorite author and satisfying reads. To meet up with your reader’s demands, writing, and publishing consistently is key.
Simply pick a publishing schedule and stick to it – though hard to keep up with, it is important for the first six months of starting.
This way, readers know when to expect a published story and get on a manhunt for it.
That said, ensure that every piece of the story is not rushed or haphazardly written despite the word count. Your publish schedule could be two stories a week or one book per week depending on your writing schedule and word count.
Tip #8: Write In One Niche At A Time
That said, this is easy to understand.
As a budding author, learn to stick to one niche and build a large catalog of books under it before switching to another.
This is a great way to create dominance in a niche and get your books seen by many when you publish consistently in a niche.
This doesn’t mean the stories have to be written in the same pattern or style. It is great to keep playing around with every possible way to make your stories stand out in the crowd and the best way is to write a series.
You could have 30 books in the ageplay niche divided into 5 books per series. That’s a great way to create dominance.
Endnotes
There are many other top writing tips for erotic authors out there and materials to help you kick start your writing career, but I’d say, don’t dwell too much on reading that you’d do writing your story.
The best way to be better is to practice harder.
Good luck.