How to Write Smut

From the Vault Dept.: I recently emceed the launch party for my friend and former editor Bob Rosen’s book Beaver Street. It’s a beautifully written account of the sixteen years he spent editing porn magazines. I contributed a variety of pieces to several of his titles for a few years, most notably as advice columnist Dr. Marilyn Vas Deferens in Sex Acts. Here’s an old Metroland how-to piece sharing the insights I gained in those trenches.

                                                                            

I DID IT BECAUSE I thought it was hilarious. The money wasn’t all that great, but at one time I was covering technology, reviewing Web sites, writing short fiction and maintaining an advice column—all for a variety of magazines typically relegated to the far end of the newsstand. Even as Senator Exon was railing against Internet smut in Congress, I was telling readers where to find it.

And it was a challenge. It’s more difficult to write a convincingly erotic story than it is to craft decent mainstream fiction. Forget any notions of morality that might condemn the language and subject matter. When it comes to sex, the written word is affected by the same phenomenon that governs dirty movies: Once the sex starts, story and characterization tend to screech to a halt.

If you want to write smut, you have to read and enjoy smut. During my formative years, Penthouse magazine’s Letters column introduced me to the genre. Here was the playout of fantastic, first-person scenarios in which some average schlub—hey, it could’ve been me!—found an unexpected sexual encounter at a Laundromat/neighbor’s pool/campsite. The numbing sameness of the letters didn’t slacken my enthusiasm, and, like all genre fiction, there are formulas to be followed.

“Stories should contain a huge-breasted female character,” begins an old guideline from Gent magazine. “And this character’s endowments should be described in detail in the course of the story.” Other magazines can get even more particular, specifying how and when sexual encounters should occur. When I churned out fiction for Plump and Pink magazine, for example, I was cautioned not only to describe the females as lavishly overweight, but also to be sure that some of the sex acts—how do I put this delicately?—involved folds of flesh.

Write for Gallery and you’re proscribed from the following: “S/M, pedophilia, male/male sex, bestiality, sex with minors, incest, references to drugs and/or drunkenness, sex for money, and using authority to manipulate a subordinate for sex. Otherwise, you may be as depraved as you’d like. And please keep in mind that stories should get to the sex quickly.” (Actually, there are more restrictions, lactation and golden showers among them, that have to do with Canadian distribution, but that’s a lengthy dissertation all by itself.)

You won’t get rich off this genre, but it’s good for a steady stream of income if you’re quick and imaginative. About the best you can expect from those magazines that pay at all is upwards of 20 cents a word—that’s 400 bucks for a 2,000-word story.

Although you’re creating a fantasy, your story still needs a beginning, middle and end. You have to introduce convincing characters in order to engage the reader’s sympathy. Typical porn stories are told in the first person, so your narrative voice should be amiable and engaging.

During the course of the tale, a problem will be solved. I amuse myself by setting up some problem other than a wish for a sexual encounter that the encounter itself serves to solve, so there’s a bonus fulfillment.

For example: An unhappy male narrator complains that his wife doesn’t find him adventurous enough in bed. She mentions a porn film she likes and he goes off to rent it, but the seductive female video clerk gives him a tumble and teaches him a few tricks (encounter No. 1) that he is able to bring home to his wife (encounter No. 2), who, we learn, set the whole deal up in the first place (surprise payoff). Not great literature, but I can guarantee a more immediate pleasure from the finished product.

If you’re writing for a specific magazine, read the magazine. It’s simple enough to copy the tone of a story without aping the story itself. At the same time, you’ll learn to cringe at the clichés of the genre (rippling abs, perky breasts and on and on).

And be consistent with your terminology. Most submission guidelines specify that you should stick with whatever term you prefer for significant bits of anatomy, with only one or two synonyms per story for variety’s sake. And keep in mind that, in the porn world, the climactic output is always spelled “cum.”

A covers-all-bases guide is Katy Terrega’s book It’s a Dirty Job, which gives the beginning writer a terrific overview of the process of writing in general as well as the particulars of writing smut—and she lists the better markets and contacts. It’s well worth the $10 investment.

With any luck, I’ll be able to read and enjoy your work someday. I have but one request, my porn pet peeve, as it were: Would you please refrain from the repeated-letter style of literary emphasis? “Ohhhhhhh, mmmmyyyyyy ggggggggodddddd . . . ” makes a character sound like an iiiddddddiiiooootttttt.

– Metroland Magazine, May 22, 2003