I’ve started this weekly blog about my life as an erotica author. Why and how did I get started? How is it going? What have I learned? These posts are suitable for general audiences, but probably not of interest to anyone under 50. Feel free to contact me with questions or for information about my 50+ erotica books. For the past twelve years, I have been on an incredible journey and there is much more to that story. I’ll post here each week with another short chapter of my life as an author of erotica. Might even give tips regarding how to get involved. I encourage you to join my Patreon community.
4/23/23
Writing Old Men’s Erotica
I SOMETIMES JOKE that I write ‘Old Men’s erotica.’ It is replete with wish-fulfillment. “Oh, if I knew then what I know now!” The phrase has given rise to an entire genre of do-overs in which the hero is magically placed back in his fourteen-year-old body with Wikipedic knowledge of all that has happened in his seventy years of life. He is able to bet on obscure sports events and make a fortune, or co-opt inventions that would make him rich. Most of all, he can use his vast accumulation of knowledge of women to seduce all the fourteen-year-old girls who wouldn’t give him the time of day when he was fourteen, and it’s okay to screw them because his new body is only fourteen and not 70.
I conveniently forget to tell them that if they knew then what they know now, they’d be old men in a teenage body. It isn’t just the physical age that separates old men from young men. It is the entire thought process. It is youth itself.
I recall an episode of Star Trek TNG in which Q gives Picard the opportunity to live his life over to avoid having an artificial heart valve that is cutting his life short. Picard discovers that it was the impetuosity of his youth, causing that injury, that set the stage for his advancement to Starship Captain. Exercising the same wisdom and restraint at a young age which was valued when he was older made him less of a commanding man who never advanced beyond the lowest levels in Starfleet.
But in a way, the difference between ‘old men’s erotica’ and women’s erotica is that women are titillated in their imagination. Old men, I’m sorry to say, tend to lack imagination. Or, perhaps they’ve simply forgotten what ‘it’ was really like. This is illustrated by two things.
I was hyping my books at a music festival when one fellow looked at one and put it down again. “I like erotica,” he said. “But I want it to go all the way. I want to read the description of what it feels like to push his cock into a young woman and how she tastes on his tongue.”
This is not particularly bad advice to anyone writing erotica. Engaging the senses is valuable, but for men, it tends to focus much more on the detailed description of the sex act itself, supported by a compelling story.
The lack of imagination was hammered home to me when a reader of Living Next Door to Heaven sent me a note asking: “Could you please put in the bra and cup sizes of the girls so I can get a better idea of what they look like?”
Really? Do you think I work in a lingerie department fitting bras to young women? Please! I don’t understand the arcane art of fitting a bra and the associated sizes. From what I hear, many if not most women don’t understand it either. No, I will not tell you she was a C-cup, because I don’t know what that actually means. However, I will talk about their firmness, response to my touch, feeling when I pressed her close.
I am always amused when I see the meme about men writing erotica with phrases like “she breasted boobily to the stairs and titted downwards.” But in fact, men—specifically older American men—are obsessed with breasts. And I know for a fact that I have succumbed to the most ghastly male descriptions of women’s most treasured assets.
I’m thinking perhaps, I need to develop a close personal relationship with a lovely pair of firm young breasts in the near future. For research purposes.
But we need a little humor with it as well. My favorite scene was of two young people talking about how they played doctor when they were little and she’d complained that her breasts were swelling. He’d suggested she try icing them.
But physical descriptions aren’t the only things that need to be spelled out. I find that I need to take great care in painting the feelings that are being experienced. I had to develop a vocabulary of emotions that went far beyond ‘happy’ and ‘sad.’ The shock so great that the hero throws up. The joy so intense that he cries. The laughter so hearty that it hurts his chest. The love so intense that he can only hold his lover and rock her in his arms.
I’m an emotional person. I write a great deal of very emotional material. Some of it is sad, some angry, some tender and loving. But I guarantee you that no reader has cried more tears over something I wrote than I wept while writing it.
So, the question facing an eroticist is how to spark that imagination and get the emotional and even physical attention of the reader without succumbing to a lot of, “Oh oh oh, uh uh uh!”
I use a lot of dialog in my stories. Even during sex. Sometimes I have characters telling each other of their erotic fantasies. Sometimes they are discussing mundane things as a way of prolonging their excitement. The conversation is punctuated by movements, touches, kisses. Very seldom do any of my characters rush to a climax.
I have frequently heard from some readers that my story would be better if it had some ‘real sex’ in it. Not only do I not rush to a climax, I don’t rush a teen into bed for the best sex of his life in the first chapter. The teasing is half the fun. The encounter that brings them one step closer, but not all the way. The resistance against nature’s call because of fear, religion, parental lectures, social stigma, or all the above is part of what builds sexual tension. Eventually, the climax is much sweeter.
Next week, I’ll talk about ‘writing what you know.’
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
