How To: Get Started Writing

Introduction:

I've gotten a lot of questions over the past year or so from people who tell me they want to get started writing, but they aren't quite sure where to start. And I think that's awesome! Fiction writing is a really fantastic art to get into, whether you want to do it as a hobby or professionally. But yes, it can also be--in my opinion--one of the steepest learning curves at the start.

This short(ish) guide is my attempt to consolidate my advice for brand new writers.

If you're new to my writing, or just wondering who the hell I am to tell you how to write: aside from this account here on Literotica, where I post fetish erotica stories on a weekly basis, I've also published a number of novels (primarily M/M romance) under another pen name, and I have a day job in nonfiction/technical writing for the financial industry. I've been writing in general for decades, and writing professionally for over 5 years.

But none of that makes me the Czar of Writing, and I'm not here to tell you how to write. This is just my advice, and it's based on my own experience. If anything here sounds wrong to you, or makes writing sound like a pain in the ass... then just toss that part of my advice out. Really! There is no one 'right' way to write, and that's not what I'm trying to teach here.

Now, before we launch into it, I am going to cover a quick checklist of what you need before you start writing:

1. A story idea.

2. A writing medium.

That's it. You do not need a degree in writing, you do not need to have taken a course on grammar, you do not need a 32-bullet-point outline.

We'll talk more about picking and developing story ideas further in, so don't worry if you don't have one yet; but I'm going to guess that if you're interested in writing, you probably have at least one idea kicking around in your head that you want to get on the page.

The writing medium can be anything you have to hand: the word processor on your computer; an app on your tablet or phone; a pen and a $5 notebook from the grocery store. Literally anything, as long as it lets you put word on the page.

Some writers don't write their first draft at all, but rather speak it into a voice recorder or a dictation program--that's an option, too, if you have those.

There are a lot of fancy specialized programs you can buy for writing, but you really do not need one. And it can be a poor investment in the beginning; many of these programs are specialized for particular writing workflows, and if you don't know what your workflow is yet, how will you know which one will work for you?

Personally, I am very attached to Scrivener these days... but I wrote my first full-length novel in Notepad (the basic Windows word processor).

I will, however, caution you about any option where you are typing into a browser or webpage.

I know it's very tempting to write directly into the text field of whatever site you plan to post to. I have definitely done it myself when I was younger! And... I lost a lot of those stories. Some of them right away, to technical glitches that forced a page refresh or caused a save/post error; others, I lost years later, when server issues on the site led to lost data, and I had no local back-up of the stories. So I can't stop you from doing it, and I definitely understand why you may want to (especially if you're writing erotica on a shared computer), but I hope you'll look at alternatives.

And when it comes to cloud-based word processors, like Google Docs, you should be aware that these services are not as private as many people would like to believe. Many of these services retain the right to train AI models on your files, and also are obligated to review files that trip certain flags to be sure they don't contain abusive materials, which means a real stranger might be reading your file--and might decide it needs to be removed from the cloud.

Also, if you use the service for anything else, like work or school, there's a real risk of someone accidentally seeing something you didn't want them to--either because of user error or because of file permission glitches. So my overall recommendation is that, if you're writing digitally, you try to find an option that will be saving locally, to your own computer.

Okay. So you have something to write with, and maybe you have a few story ideas to choose from. What next?

1. To write, you need to start writing.

Writing fiction is a skill that is primarily developed by practicing it. Ultimately, you just have to get in there.

I hear you saying, "It's not that easy"--and you're right! I agree, it's not easy. I'm asking you to do something you don't know how to do yet, to dive in without guidance. That's a method of learning that we use a lot as children, but mostly leave behind as we reach adulthood, and it can be hard to return to it.

It requires a certain measure of courage. That's actually a good thing, because writing well also requires its own courage: the more you practice at acting courageously, the greater capacity you will develop for growth as a writer.

Don't worry, I'm going to offer some more advice here beyond just "start writing". But my goal here is to always guide you towards the point where you decide to start putting words on the page; if you get a third of the way through reading my advice and say to yourself, "Enough of this, I'm going to go start a story write now", then I am happy with that outcome.

The number one thing you need to get into writing is a drive to write. Which brings me to our next point...

2. The best story to write is one that excites you.

This is a good rule in general, but it's especially true when you're first starting out.

Because you will be learning as you go, your earliest stories may be some of the most challenging for you, in terms of process. Why make it even harder by taking on a project that bores you? The momentum of working on a story that you love, that really jazzes you up--or one that just feels nice, a world you want to spend a lot of time with, a character that you enjoy thinking about--will help push you through the learning curve.

But not all excitement is created equal!

There are many good reasons to be excited to write a story. I would also argue that there are a few bad reasons. Beware of the following motives:

A) Writing a story in a genre or subgenre that you don't personally enjoy, just to prove to fans of that genre why it's silly or wrong or unrealistic. (Ex. "Erotica focused on incest is so gross... I know, I'll write an erotica story about the real consequences of incest!")

REASON: Do you really want to write a whole story just to pick a fight about something you don't enjoy? When you could be celebrating something that brings you joy instead? Fiction is a powerful communication tool, but you're not going to convince people to stop liking something, especially if you don't see why they like it in the first place.

B) Writing a story that you think other people will really like. (Ex. "Well... my friends are really enthusiastic about the idea of a kinky romance with a dominant woman, so if I write that, at least I know they'll like it?")

REASON: You are the one who is going to be putting your time and work into this story. That means that the story, first and foremost, has to be for you. As you get more experienced and writing becomes easier, you may get a sense of when you're ready to write stories that are more "for" other people, but I strongly recommend against falling into that trap as a new writer.

C) Writing a story because you think it will impress people. (Ex. "This twist is brilliant... everyone will see how clever I am!")

REASON: Everyone won't. And I'm not saying that because I think you're not clever, or because I think you're not a good writer. I'm saying this because there is no such thing as a universally loved story. (We'll talk about this more in another section.) If this is your goal, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.

So if you have a few ideas in hand, and you're feeling out which one to start with: look for the one that most excites you, that makes you feel willing to sit down and spend some serious time and effort on it, because you like it that much.

But there's another factor to consider, too:

3. The next best story to write is one that's familiar to you.

Do you know how this story goes?

I don't mean, "Do you have it all plotted out?"--I actually don't recommend any formal plotting or outlining for your first story (this is another thing we'll get into more in another section).

What I mean is this: are you familiar with this type of story?

It will always be easier to write in genres and formats that you feel familiar with.

If you read a lot of thrillers, you will have more of an idea of what should happen in a good thriller. If you read short stories, you'll develop a natural feel for how a short story should progress.

There's a reason I put this after the excitement factor, though. It can be difficult--arguably impossible--to get genuinely excited about a story idea that you just aren't into. But it's totally possible to familiarize yourself with a genre or a writing style; all you have to do is read more of it.

If you have a really fun idea for a romance, you can go out right now and start looking for romances that you'd be interested in reading. If you want to try your hand at writing novel-length fiction, you can pick up some novels. You don't even have to spend money on it--there's libraries, and there are eBooks in the public domain.

It does take a time investment, though! So if you're just intending to write as a hobby, or you're just starting out, you may find it easiest to stick to genres and styles that you're most interested in--the kinds of stories that you naturally spend your time seeking out, that you already feel familiar with.

Conversely, as a professional author, reading in my genre is part of my job. I make time for it; not just reading stories that look interesting to me, but reading stories that I know my readers enjoy, and stories in adjacent genres that don't interest me as much but that I know influence my genre.

A few years back, I decided to write a mystery novel for the first time. Mysteries have a very structured history and lineage, and although I was familiar with some very early mysteries (especially the original Sherlock Holmes canon) and was a huge fan of modern mystery media like Knives Out, I realized I was entirely unfamiliar with a lot of genre-defining classics.

So I devoted several months to making myself familiar. I read Agatha Christie; I read some pre-genre mysteries, like Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue; I watched a bunch of mystery TV series that I hadn't previously seen, like Columbo and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries. I read an analysis of the evolution of the genre by author Paul Tomlinson.

I just provide this as an example, because a lot of the time, when talking about professional writing, people will say "Read in your genre" but will not outline what that really looks like. This is what it looks like: making time, making a plan, and reading with a purpose. This is also, in my opinion, a good way to test my interest in a genre--because if I had come out of this hating mysteries, it would have been a really bad idea for me to write some.

(I actually turned myself and my sister into mystery fans, and we watch a lot of mystery series together now. I really recommend Poker Face with Natasha Lyonne, by the way. Season 2 is supposed to be coming in a few months...)

If this sounds like too much effort to you, then don't do it. But if the idea you want to write is in a genre you're interested in, and it's been a while since you engaged with that genre--maybe now is the time to get back into it! See what's out there! Pick up a book, find a show on your favorite streaming service.

Okay, so let's say you have a story that you're excited about and that you feel pretty familiar with. How do you know when you're actually ready to write it?

4. You probably won't ever feel ready, so just start writing.

You may have heard more experienced writers say a story "isn't ready yet". Or maybe you're thinking you need to make an outline first. As you get more experienced in writing, it's likely that you will develop a sense of when an idea is "ready", or you might find yourself gravitating towards the outline process.

But if you've never written a story before, you don't know how to write a story.

This means you don't know how to outline a story, either--and you don't know how to tell if an idea is ready to become a story, because you don't know what's required. Both of these skills require you knowing how to construct a story.

(It is possible that you have constructed a story before. Maybe you've run a tabletop RPG campaign, or you've roleplayed online, or you've made up a story to tell your kids at bedtime. Some of these skills will translate, but the structure of a story can differ significantly based on the form.)

The basic truth is that your story idea probably is not "ready" yet, not in the way that a more experienced writer would need before they begin to write. But you're not going to get it there without learning how to write a story first.

Most beginner writers will find that their first story idea evolves significantly in the process of writing. The longer your story is--short story vs. novella vs. novel--the more you can probably expect the story to change in the process of writing.

Now, the idea that you shouldn't be outlining may come as a surprise, because there are a lot of writing guides out there that will make it sound as if you absolutely must learn to outline before you start writing. So I'm going to go into a quick aside here to justify myself.

There are some less honest reasons for the ubiquity of outlines in writing advice (which I won't get into here but boil down to "outline templates are really easy to make"), but many writers, especially novelists, do vigorously recommend outlining to new writers with the best and most honest of intentions.

Here's how that happens:

A writer is struggling along, wading through the beginning stages of learning to write fiction. Their first novel takes so long and feels so difficult--they have no idea what they're doing! They don't know what comes next! They may need to stop and start over several times, or cut large parts of what they've written, which is not wasted time and effort but sure does feel like it.

Their second and third books go a bit easier, but are still a struggle. They're still learning a lot!

And then, all of a sudden--often around the fourth or fifth book--something clicks.

One of the outline templates they've seen a million times before suddenly makes sense, or maybe they come up with their own outline that works so much better than any of the ones they've tried. And it's so much easier. They're cruising right through this book. They're not getting stuck, they don't need to cut hours or days of work from their draft.

So they rush off to tell everyone about this brilliant outline technique that makes writing so much easier!

But is that what really happened? Was it the outlining process that suddenly made book four so easy and painless?

Well, the outline definitely helped. It's a tool! It's there to help. Not all authors use outlines, but those that do definitely benefit from them.

But... what else changed? How about the fact that they had three books under their belt already?

There's a huge difference in experience between someone who has never written a story before, and someone who has written and finished three stories. (This is true with stories of any length, although the difference may be more pronounced with novel-length stories.) But this experience can feel invisible, even to the writer themselves; it's very easy to attribute success to external or at least more visible factors, like a new outlining method or a new approach to editing.

So I'm not saying outlines are useless. Personally, I am not an outliner, but I know many writers who are. But they all developed their outlining process after they learned how to write a story, by writing a story. There may be someone out there who had success in outlining their first story before they started to write it--but I've never met them, and I've known a lot of beginning writers who spun their wheels a long time trying to make a working outline before they gave themselves permission to start writing.

Asking someone who has never written a story before to create an outline, is like asking someone who has never built a shelf before to write instructions on building a shelf. They might get something on paper, but to what end?

Regarding how to actually get through the process of writing that first story, I leave that largely up to you. I've already mentioned that you can expect it to be challenging. You should be having fun, too! I'm just not highlighting where the fun is, because that's going to be very individual to you--different people get something different out of writing, and following your own sense for what's fun about writing will help you guide yourself towards what kind of stories you want to write and what kind of writer you want to become.

I do typically suggest that, for a person's very first story, they try starting at the beginning and writing straight through to the end. I've known a lot of writers (including myself) who had success with this at the beginning, even if we later evolve into different writing patterns or strategies. I think this is easier to start with for many people because this is how we're used to understanding a story--when we read a book or watch a movie, we're typically starting at the beginning and ending at the end.

But that's not universally true. There are people who write their first story piecemeal, or who write the ending first and then go back to write the rest. (Some people read that way, too.) Again, follow your instincts on what feels right. Whatever allows you to get words on the page, to start writing and to keep writing until you have an entire story.

Okay. But what do you do once you have a story on the page? There's a next step to this writing thing, right?

5. Editing is a good idea, but it isn't always 100% necessary.

Yes, if your goal is to write professionally--you will need to, at some point, get comfortable with editing your work. Even if you plan to employ an editor, you don't want to be sending your naked rough draft through that process.

But if you're just starting to write, and you find that you really can't bear to go back and read your own work to edit it... your time might be better spent not doing that.

I said before that there's a big difference in experience between someone who has written zero stories and someone who has written three stories. When you first start writing, you are taking massive strides each time you successfully finish a story; it may not be immediately obvious to you, but it is absolutely true.

So it's very, very common for a new writer to finish their first story and have an aversion to going back over it.

They've learned so much as a writer over the course of finishing the story that it's too obvious to them what they should do differently next time. And, as well, there can be a shock to the system at having exposed one's vulnerabilities by attempting to write fiction in the first place. The challenges of editing, at this stage, can feel like a very high cost for potentially low return.

And that's absolutely fine. If you don't feel ready to edit a story, you don't have to.

You can just move on to writing the next story.

It's up to you what you want to do with a finished, unedited piece. You can just stash it away for your own records if you like--and it's very possible that with some time and distance, you might find yourself more capable of going back and editing it.

There's also no shame at all in sharing an unedited story online, if you feel comfortable doing so. I guarantee you that there are plenty of stories here on Literotica that went through no or minimal self-editing, many of which are greatly enjoyed by readers.

(I will note that Literotica, unlike many free online archives, does employ a certain level of quality control when approving stories. If you're worried your story really won't pass the quality control, or the idea just makes you nervous, there are also other free online archives that you can look into for unedited work.)

While we're talking about editing, I'll just briefly note some best practices and also some alternative approaches to self-editing.

First of all, it's usually a good idea to let some time sit between finishing a first draft and editing it. The longer a piece is, the longer you'll likely want to let it sit. Personally, I wait maybe 12-24 hours before editing the kind of short stories I post here on Literotica--and I usually schedule at least two weeks' break before editing a novel. Taking space away from the story allows most people to edit more effectively.

There are some people who prefer to edit as they go, meaning they start each writing session by going back and editing the writing they did yesterday. This breaks the story out naturally into chunks with space between editing and writing.

Myself, I am also a big fan of rewriting. When I take a longer story, especially a novel, from the rough draft stage to the second draft, I almost always choose to rewrite rather than edit. This means that I have the original story in one window, and write the new draft into another, as a fresh document; rewriting helps me feel more free to make big changes to story and scene structure if I think it's necessary.

But maybe you're wondering, what are you actually supposed to be changing during the editing process?

6. Self-editing is about making the story sound better to your own ears.

Note that, again, I'm just talking about self-editing here. If you're bringing someone else into the process, like a freelance editor or a beta reader, that's a bit different, and we'll talk about that a little bit in another section.

When you are editing your own work, your only goal should be to make the story sound better to you.

There's a lot of really broad-reaching editing advice floating around out there. Stuff like, "You should cut the word-count by 10% during editing", or "Remove every adverb you see". A lot of this advice started as a well-intentioned attempt by a writer to share rules that they find always improve their work in the editing process.

But what works for them is not necessarily applicable to your work, your process, or your goals.

For example, the common advice that you should cut a story by 10% assumes that you tend to write long in your first draft. You might not. Personally, I write short when I'm drafting fiction; I usually assume that a rewrite cycle will add 20% to my draft, and an edit pass will add 10%.

Maybe you also write short. Or maybe you write really long, and you'll find yourself cutting more than 10%. Maybe you'll end up writing exactly as many words as your story needs.

Regardless, until you know that about yourself--and, in many cases, even once you do--it probably won't help you to go in thinking, "I need to cut a certain number of words from this draft". Cutting or adding words should be a natural part of the number one goal of the self-editing process, i. e. to make the story sound better.

As for cutting adverbs, or any other part of speech, that will all dial down to the difference between your natural "rough draft" writing versus how you actually want your story to sound. Most writers have one or two things that they are always looking for in a self-edit--a way that they naturally form thoughts on a first pass that sounds clunky or repetitive when read back, or a place where they tend to over- or under-describe, add too many unnecessary words that soften the meaning of a sentence, etc.

(If you're wondering, for me, it's usually repetitive sentence structure.)

These are things you'll learn about yourself as you, again, gain more experience with writing and also with editing, and get a better idea of how you want your stories to sound and how to objectively read back your own writing. Generic editing advice from a list on Facebook is not going to replace that experience.

At this point we've covered the basics of the writing process, from getting the story on the page to editing (or not editing) the final product. That's the essence of what I wanted to cover with this guide, but there are a few more tips that I think belong here.

From here forward, we'll be covering things that you might want to think about going forward, either while looking back on your first story or working on subsequent stories.

7. Not everyone is going to like your story.

I told you this one was coming back! Yes, it gets its own section. I think this is really important to understand.

Again, I'm not saying this because you're a new writer or because I assume that you're bad at it. This is simply a fact: there is no story in the world that has a 100% approval rating from readers.

No matter how good your story is, it is never going to be loved by every person who picks it up.

I don't say this so much to prepare you for negative comments--although those will happen; my short recommendation there, if you're struggling with your emotional response, is to go look up some negative reviews of one of your favorite books, or maybe some positive reviews of a book you really hate. There are all kinds of stories and all kinds of readers out there, and negative comments do not mean that you're a bad writer, or that the commenter intended to hurt you.

But I'm not really concerned with how you deal with negative comments; that's your business.

My real point is that you should never write from a position of trying to please everyone.

If you post the first part of a multi-part story, and one of the first comments is "I sure hope this character doesn't quit her job"--don't immediately run off to re-write part two to change the scene where the character quits her job!

If you're working on a new story idea that starts with a character's dog dying, and one of your friends says, "I hate stories where the author has to kill a dog"--don't scrap your story idea!

It's okay if these people don't like your story. They don't have to. There are many stories out there for them to read--and I promise that there are other readers out there who will like the story that you want to write.

If you make it your goal to please everyone with your writing, you really box yourself into an impossible corner.

Personally, when I write, I only worry about my ideal reader, and I find this concept to be really helpful. Of course, there are marketing-based ways to use that term--What do readers who love this subgenre expect? What kind of protagonist performs well with working women ages 30-45?--but that's not really what I'm talking about.

My ideal reader is someone who is looking for a story exactly like mine. A hypothetical person who, if they picked up my story off the pile of stories out there for them to read, would be like "Yes! Finally! This is just the kind of story I wanted to read today". That's my ideal reader.

If my ideal reader is someone who's charmed by a sweet romantic scene between two lovers... I don't need to add kink just to spice it up for other readers who might be bored.

Conversely, if my ideal reader is someone who enjoys a saucy little BDSM in the context of a loving relationship... I don't need to dial it back for more vanilla readers!

If my ideal reader is someone who finds non-consensual sex scenes in fiction exciting... I don't need to include a revenge scene for readers who want retribution for the villain.

Conversely, if my ideal reader is someone who likes to see comeuppance for poor behavior at the end... I don't need to cut that part out just to appease readers who might find it trite or preachy!

Basically, I write with the assumption that if I am writing a good story, there is almost certainly someone out there who will enjoy it. So far, in my career, I have found that to hold true. Other writers find a different approach; I know some very successful writers who can't stand to think about a reader at all, but instead have to think about it in terms of what serves the story. Personally, I think these are different ways of approaching the same concept--but you should reach for whatever feels right for you, whatever inspires you to write, whatever doesn't leave you frozen with worry that someone out there might read your story and not enjoy it.

I also find the ideal reader model helpful later, when I'm deciding how and where to post a story. What tags might my ideal reader be searching for? What site might they be browsing on? What description would tell my ideal reader that this story is for them? It simplifies a lot of the "administrative" tasks involved in posting a story for me, as well as providing guidance for more involved marketing, like creating covers and writing product descriptions for my novels.

And now we come to the final point, which is...

8. There are other ways to improve your writing besides just writing.

Yeah, I know. After all this time I spent harping at you to just write!

I wasn't lying before. When it comes to fiction writing, the number one thing you have to do really is just to write. But there are some other things you can do along the way--especially after you start writing--that can help you develop various skills involved.

I've already talked about reading within your genre. That really is important, so I'm going to bring it up again here. It's especially helpful if you start consuming media critically--I mean really analyzing the story. Not necessarily in the way you might do in a literary class, but more as a reader and a writer: What worked for you about the story? Why? What didn't you like? Why not? Where was the point where you stopped enjoying it, or the point where you were really on board and most excited?

I am not saying you should necessarily share these analyses anywhere--I will leave that up to your own best judgement. This exercise is primarily for you.

The more you practice articulating exactly what you do and don't enjoy about stories that are similar to yours, the easier you should find it, over time, to understand what excites you about what you're writing. This will help you immensely with generating ideas, as well as with overcoming those "I just don't know what should happen next" blocks.

The next step with critical analysis is to take a story you didn't like and ask yourself, "What would I have done differently?" What direction would the story need to have gone in to have brought you in? Where did you feel like the story disappointed on the premise that drew you to it in the first place?

People often ask me how I'm able to come up with so many story ideas, and I attribute a lot of it to this exercise. I read a lot in my genre, and I make an effort to consume critically a lot; as soon as I stop enjoying a story, I flip into analysis mode--and if I really enjoy something, I'll go back and read or watch it more than once so that I can analyze it.

Knowing what I like and what excites me in a story--and, conversely, what disappoints me or turns me off--makes it that much easier for me to take the kernel of an idea, that little "What if...", and turn it into a fully fleshed story.

The next thing that can help you improve your writing is feedback: getting other peoples' opinion on your work.

Not all feedback is created equal! We just talked about how your story is never going to please everyone. This means that if you treat every opinion that people have about your writing with equal weight, you are going to end up very confused. It's common to even get contradicting feedback on the same story--one character thinks a character is too cold to be relatable, another thinks the character wasn't cold enough. One reader finds a twist too predictable, another felt like the ending came out of nowhere.

So how do you decide who to listen to?

Well, if you're actively soliciting feedback, I recommend knowing ahead of time exactly what you're looking for.

This requires some awareness of your own writing--which means you might not necessarily be ready to go out looking for feedback on your first story or two, and that's fine! Some people might tell you that you should always be looking for criticism, but there are other ways to improve. We just discussed quite a few of them. (The number one way, of course, is to write another story.) If you don't feel ready to make good use of feedback or constructive criticism yet, there's no need to go seeking it out.

Once you are ready to seek it out, you'll probably make the most use of it if you can identify what specific thing (or multiple things) you want other people's perspective on.

Are you worried that readers are struggling to connect with your characters? Worried that your prose is too confusing, or not impactful enough? Want to know if there are any glaring grammatical errors that are distracting readers?

These are all very different things to focus on, and if you're actively soliciting feedback, it can help to tell people up front what kind of problem(s) you're trying to identify. When someone provides you in-depth feedback, that's time and effort on their part, and the more they know what you're looking for, the more effort they'll be able to focus where you need it.

You'll also want to consider the source. If someone starts out by telling you that they don't usually read your kind of story and don't really enjoy the content... they just might not be the best person to provide feedback on your story. Even if they have a lot of knowledge about writing in general, it's easy to give very off-base feedback if they're trying to comment on a genre or topic that they just don't enjoy reading.

As far as where to go to feedback, in my opinion, there are two ideal options.

The first is a writer's group. Hypothetically, a perfect writer's group would be one where you know and respect the other participants; they all write well, and they are interested in and familiar with the genre(s) you write in. They respect and enjoy your writing and give you positive as well as constructive feedback. This kind of group is also a great place to bounce ideas off people, and to discuss and analyze media together.

I'm very lucky to belong to a group like this, which happens to be run by my best friend and which has been hugely beneficial for me. But I know it's not as easy as saying "Just go and find a great writing group"--I wasn't always in one, and I know they don't grow on trees!

But you also won't find a great writing group without joining writing groups. So I do recommend that you try. If there's a group, either online or in person, that looks like it could be a fit, give it a solid try--even if you're nervous about sharing your writing, even if you're not sure if you fit in at first.

Conversely, if you've given it a good shot and you have strong reason to think this writing group is not working for you, don't feel bad about cutting them loose and going on to try another one.

Another great place to get feedback is your readers.

Not just any readers. Not anyone who happens to run across a forum feedback discussion, or who rolls up to your comment section. But your readers: the readers who come to your stories looking for what you like to write.

Personally, my favorite critical comments are the ones from readers I recognize, or who are obviously familiar with my work. I know this is a reader who sees the inherent appeal of what I'm writing, and that means that they're an expert. They may or may not be well-versed in the particulars of story structure or spelling or grammar, but they're definitely an expert on what my readers think, because they're one of my readers and they're telling me what they think! That's extremely valuable feedback.

One of the other great things about your readers is that they're usually on your side. Assuming that they're enjoying your stories, they'll likely be excited to see you write more and to improve over time, to write longer and more complex stories, to write with greater confidence. If you directly ask for feedback--just with a little blurb at the end of a story, for example--you may be surprised by how willing they are to offer it, and how insightful their feedback is likely to be.

A third way to improve your writing is by doing research.

This can include the kind of spot research that might come up on a story-to-story basis--facts that are necessary to your story if you're setting it in the real world, or a world that looks like the real world. It can also include a kind of ongoing holistic research: satiating your curiosity about the world will ultimately deepen your understanding and make it easier to build worlds and people in your stories that "feel" real to readers.

I'm going to assume that you know how to find answers to questions like "Which theaters are considered part of Broadway" and "What are some common names used in Ancient Rome". I'm also going to assume that you have some fundamental curiosity about the world and that you invest some of your time and energy into learning about other people, cultures, organisms, etc. So I'm not going to go into these in detail.

I really just want to cover a very erotica-specific tip here, which is this: watching pornography does not count as research.

I am not anti-porn. I'm not telling you to stop watching porn. (Trust me, I watch plenty of it.)

But when it comes to researching specific sex positions and sex acts, or understanding how people actually act or react or feel during sex, visual pornography is not going to get you very far.

Even independent actors who produce their own videos are performing for the camera. At the very least, they are not positioning themselves naturally: they need to choose positions with the camera in mind. There are plenty of sex positions that you will not see in porn for this reason--because the position hides "the action" from the camera.

You won't learn about internal reactions by watching porn. You can't read the actors' minds, and they won't be reciting everything they're feeling as they experience it; their outward reactions are typically tailored towards what makes them feel sexy, or what they know their viewers want to hear and see.

There is likely preparation that happened off-screen, and aftercare that happens after the camera turns off.

Pornography only ever captures a specific sub-section of sexuality, for a specific purpose. You're not meant to be getting the whole picture from it, so don't assume that you are.

Erotica isn't meant to depict the whole picture, either! If you read my stories, you're probably well aware that my depictions of sexuality and sex are not typically comprehensive and often are, in some way or another, unrealistic. (Need I mention the many stories where I have women wearing chastity belts basically indefinitely?)

But there are many parts of sexuality which are available to written depiction which are not available to visual pornography. If your research is just watching pornography, you are closing yourself off to a broad spectrum of ways to write about a particular act, position, sensation.

The more you understand the full spectrum of sexual experience in reality, the more options you will give yourself for writing about it in a way that is fun for yourself and for your readers, and a way that feels authentic to the characters and to the story.

I am not necessarily recommending that you do practical research... although I will tell you, some authors do. I know some erotica and romance authors who do, indeed, research sex acts in part by doing them themselves in real life first. And if you do want to do that, that's great, but you shouldn't start there--especially if it's an act you're unfamiliar with.

Step number one is to look up practical advice from people who have actually done what you're writing about.

There are plenty of forums where people exchange frank advice about sex. Reddit is one of my favorite places to look, but it's not the only option. You want to look for people discussing how they, in real life, safely prepare for and participate in the sex act you are writing about. You can usually find people who will talk about how it feels when they're doing it right, and maybe how it might feel if you're doing it wrong.

If possible, you want to read perspectives from a few different people--because the same stimulation or act can sometimes feel different to different people, or they might enjoy it for different reasons. They might have different emotional responses, as well.

The goal is to have a more comprehensive understanding and to open up your options. It's about not boxing yourself into one particular idea of how a scene needs to go, based on the limitations imposed on another medium. It's about being able to weave a hot scene more naturally into your story, in a way that suits your character's motivations and insecurities and needs.

And--in case you need me to say this--if there's something specific to visual porn that you think is really hot and want to intentionally replicate in your stories, that's awesome. Go for it. It's your story. Again, this is about options.

The last thing I'll touch on is the general category of shit you need to pay for. This encompasses everything from books on writing and online courses to attending writing summits or taking a writing class at a university.

Here's what I want to say about it: you do not need any of these things to learn how to write. In fact, if you are a new writer, I do not recommend that you spend any money, especially on more expensive educational tools like classes or professional coaching.

There's two reasons for this. First of all, most of these tools are really meant for writers with at least some experience under their belt. If you do choose to pay for a course or attend a summit, you'll be able to make a lot more use of them once you reach that stage where you've completed several stories and are starting to get an idea of your writing style and goals.

"But wait," you might be saying, "I just saw this course that says it's specifically for beginner writers, and that it'll help me write my first novel in three weeks or less! Isn't that for me?"

Well, that brings me to my second point: a lot of them are bullshit.

Newbie writers have been targeted by scammers, con artists, and swindlers of all kinds for decades, and the internet has just proliferated the bullshit. There are a lot of people out there who have never written a story in their lives, but are happy to charge you $500 for a one-hour video where they regurgitate whatever writing tips they found on Google and an outlining template they threw together in Canva.

There are also a lot of really great resources out there. Fantastic books, invaluable courses, summits where you can network with people who will help you learn. But you have to hunt through the sea of bullshit to find it, because it's faster and easier to make bullshit than it is to make an actual useful piece of content created with thought and care, so the bullshit artists are just making it a lot faster.

Once you have some writing experience, you are going to have a much easier time telling the bullshit from the genuine.

If you do feel like you're at a stage where you want to start investing some money into improving your writing, here are my personal rules before I spend money on a course or a book: (1) I want to know exactly what I'm hoping to learn, and (2) I want to know exactly why I think this person is the one to teach me about that. This typically guides me towards only making purchases that will actually benefit me, and only purchasing from people whose credentials I've vetted in some way, ideally by reading their fiction work for myself.

But again, I want to emphasize that it's absolutely not necessary to spend any money at all on learning to write. This is, by necessity, a mostly self-taught skill, and there are a lot of excellent writers out there who have never spent a cent on a class or a how-to-write book.

Conclusion:

As I've said before, I'll be very happy if you walk away from this guide ready to start putting words on the page. But, if not, I hope that you at least feel like you got one or two useful pieces of information, or an alternative perspective.

And if you don't really plan to write anything at all and were just reading for fun, I hope you at least enjoyed it. (God, I hope you didn't read this whole thing just having a bad time the whole way through. You could have bailed a lot earlier.)

I am pretty notorious for not replying to many comments on Literotica, due to the lack of threading in the comment section; but I will make an effort to reply to any questions asked here, if you have any follow-up questions about writing that you think I might be able to answer.

You can also reach me privately via the Literotica Feedback form--make sure to include an email address so that I can reply, and keep in mind that it can take several hours to get through the system and land in my email inbox. I am always happy to talk about writing. (I will not, however, read your story and provide feedback on it. Sorry. I only do that for people in my writing group.)

Get out there and write!