Writing Erotica

Writing To Prove Something

Before I said goodbye to work last year, I made a solemn vow to one of my friends that I would be spending my days writing erotica. To date, I have been happy to keep my promise.

I write a fiction blog for Wordpress, The Spiral Room. The main strip is Den & Lauren, a tale of hypnosis and hedonism, pleasure, entrancement, and seduction.

There are other stories which have appeared - The Chaotician (a story about a chaos magic practitioner), Taken Under (weird Sixties espionage, rife with druggings, brainwashing, and gas sedation), and The Chronicles of Shirae (a sea-based fantasy set in an analogue of the Mediterranean, featuring a mostly-barefoot, shaven-headed, non-binary Master of the Sorcerous Arts and the community of people who travel with them across the galaxy).

But Den & Lauren is the main strip in my blog, just as Judge Dredd is the main strip of the weekly sf comic anthology 2000 AD. Only, Den & Lauren typically has far less clothing on display.

Erotic Themes In My Writing

The themes I aim for in my more erotic stories in The Spiral Room focus on a handful of common themes.

Seduction

Somebody is gently introduced into a world of hedonistic pleasures which is exactly what they need from the start of the story.

Temptation

The protagonist is offered something which, to them, is forbidden. Of course, this would not be erotica if they turned that offer down, but it’s the buildup of sexual tension, up to the point where they succumb to the temptation, which is hottest in stories like these. As one of my Tempters once put it, “The fall is a bit of a let down. Once they let go, it’s just paperwork. But that one little moment where they are poised on the edge, ready to succumb … it’s the best feeling in the world, stronger than mortal fear.”

Transgression

Some of the things I write feature protagonists, or often the people they are turning, doing things they didn’t otherwise fancy doing. One of my typical fantasies involves someone turned, for instance through hypnosis, or occasionally gas or scopolamine, casually accepting a cigarette and declaring “No, thanks - I don’t smoke” even as she takes a drag.

In this kind of fantasy, the subject’s behaviour is modified on an unconscious level by modifications to their values, their beliefs, and even the feelings associated with behaving in a manner deemed aberrant to their baseline behaviour. Such transgressive changes are made to the subject in a trance, reinforced with post-hypnotic triggers.

It’s the post-hypnotic triggers that light the blue touch paper.

Incapacitation

This is what really turns the readers on most of all - the act where somebody applies something to incapacitate the protagonist or subject.

These are by no means limited to:-

• Drugs, usually supplied in a spiked drink;

• Gas, streamed into a room through a vent;

• Spirals, pretty gif patterns sent through emails;

• Trancing, application of hypnotic trance through some form of induction.

There are also spells and supernatural powers, but these tend to be restricted to fantasy settings, although The Chaotician is very much a modern setting.

Novel

I’ve even begun writing an erotic novel, with the aim of getting it published as a book. I would aim to write the story as an ongoing series, featuring the same setting (landmarks, customs, etc.) if not the same protagonists.

I began writing it before I lost my job, and put my mind into writing it more fully once I was footloose and fancy free, as it were.

Meaning

There is a purpose behind writing erotica. Having seen the atrocious Fifty Shades series, with its rapey gaslighting protagonist Christian, I’ve wanted for years to write erotica to knock the socks off that series - erotica where the consent is laid out right at the start.

Erotica where the protagonists are faced with choices. Erotica where there is a story, and consequence, and cost, and people are happy to pay that price and plough into unabashed copulation, because the whispers in the bedroom are communication, and the murmured words spoken in the public spaces are promises, not threats.

Erotica where you, the reader, come away from the book knowing what all of that unleashed passion was about. Knowing that it gave you something of what you want.