Ideas - just one good one will do - are what you need before you can plot your novel.

Erotica, as much if not more than any other genre, offers vicarious thrills. It gives us licence to explore a hedonistic wonderland where the usual social conventions do not apply. In these books, the fabulous flesh of fantasy men and women is displayed solely for our carnal appreciation

An erotic novel or short story is one designed specifically to inspire the reader’s sexual imagination. If it fails in that primary purpose, no matter how successful it may be in other areas, then it fails completely. A good erotic tale should arouse you like a lover - or at least like an efficient striptease artist. If the juice does not flow, you do not pass Go.

Don’t kid yourself that readers dwell on the scene-setting or the evocation of a sunset before the protagonists retire for the night. It used to be that people read novels looking for ‘the dirty bits’ and skipping pages until they got to them. That was before explicit erotica was on open sale. In erotic fiction there should be no need to skip, as the dirty bits are guaranteed to arrive before the reader has to go in search of them.

Respect the reader.

As an erotic writer, you are at an advantage over authors whose work requires in-depth knowledge of Sanskrit, keyhole surgery or what Henry VIII ate for breakfast. Unless you have been very unfortunate in life to date, you will have experienced erotic pleasures firsthand and forged sexual relationships - whether short or long-term doesn’t matter.

Readers of erotic novels, however, want more than mere exposure to sexual activity. They want to be led into a fictional world in which people interact carnally within a dramatic framework. In other words, they want the kind of experience they get from a good read in other categories of fiction - and they want a vicarious sex thrill too.

One of the challenges in writing an erotic novel is to avoid boring the reader. Beware of repetition. If the first half-a-dozen sex scenes in your book are of the same lovers in the same bed having missionary-position sex then your reader will feel cheated - and you'll be yawning your head off.

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