But despite its reputation and the many moral quandaries that come from it, porn in the literary sense offers a lot more benefit than just benjamins.
First is the obvious: Harlequin-style romantic novels fly off the shelves the way candy leaves a "take one" basket on Halloween. It doesn't even have to be good; if it's on the right shelf, it will get bought, and your work will get out there (if only under your clever pseudonym, "Q. Allister Rybart, III").
Outside the immediate monetary gain, it gives you the confirmation that you've passed the bare-minimum standard of printable fiction. It also lets you experiment with worlds and characters that might never get bought in conventional markets. There is no out-of-bounds in the game of trashy novels. You can't embarrass yourself.
...Okay, maybe that's taking it a bit far. Some people can burn water, after all.
But beyond making a bit of spare change while you test the easiest waters on the planet, there are rewards to writing the basest form of entertainment short of fanfiction. There are elements intrinsic to literary erotica that don't exist at the same depth and breadth anywhere else. Yet at once, many of the lessons learned from shaping volumes of smut are readily applicable to perfectly clean writing.
Let's start at the beginning.
In any genre, the best way to get noticed is to be different. In porn, that means having a plot.
...I mean a real plot.
Characters with personality, witty dialog (or at least more than a montage of filthy-minded puns), and a setup that makes sense (honestly, how hard is it to get two people to have sex?), and you're already heads and tails above the lion's share of the field.
Of course, if it were that simple, everyone would do it. If you're fumbling for inspiration, don't get frustrated (yuck yuck). You don't need a ten-page backstory for "I'm here to deliver your sausage pizza" guy, just give him an actual personality. A quirk, maybe two.
Go to a club for an hour and watch how people behave. Sit in a coffee shop somewhere and listen to the dialogues around you. I guarantee you'll have plenty of a readily-identifiable human being (or at least enough of one to pass in porn). It's a good lesson in learning how to pick up on people's quirks without having to rely on who or what they are to make them three-dimensional.
That said, do NOT use people you know. Even ex's.
...Especially ex's.
Putting people you know into romantic fiction always ends poorly. Unless all you want to think about is "Amber gasped at the sight of his trembling" whatever each time you see your best friend walk by, stick with strangers. It's safer that way.
Learning the twin lessons of how to pick out a persona from a stranger sipping a mocha and why putting your friends into fiction is unwise is no doubt a benefit, but neither of these cannot be garnered from perfectly reasonable genres that don't involve awkward collisions and oddly-soundproof walls.
One of the challenges you're unlikely to run across in any other genre is just how far you can stretch a thesaurus over a relatively small subset of the language.
Quick, think of every word you know for penis.
Seriously, go on. I'll wait.
Got a list? Now chop off the ones you wouldn't feel right putting into fiction (even bad fiction) because of how they sound. That includes every euphemism and two-word phrase that sounds like it was thought up by a trio of frat boys in the midst of a serious bender.
Look at what's left, and remove anything that looks like it belongs in a biology textbook. Finally, remove the word "member."
That is your arsenal.
Now imagine stretching it across at least three scenes, one of which should be (appropriately) climactic. That is the challenge before you: make a scene work with only a handful of words to choose from. You'll have to work descriptions into winding suggestive mazes of thought that are intricate enough to avoid directly naming the thing you're indicating without losing the reader in the process.
Now do it two more times.
There are few better ways to learn the power (and difficulty) of subtlety in description than by avoiding using just another noun for the same object. When you have to talk around your subject and can't afford to be too flowery, your only avenue is the linguistic sweet-spot between too much and too little.
That is where you should be writing all the time.
And to think, all this while you'll be pandering to the most forgiving, most lucrative fanbase for amateur writers known to man.
So shelve your objections, pick a nickname that sounds like a cross between a Hollywood baby and a Tolkein extra and get to writing. It isn't hard to stand out in the world of "romantic" fiction, and the journey through the mire and muck will leave you with plenty of wisdom for the cleaned-up road ahead.
Remember: just because it's trashy doesn't mean it has to be rubbish.
First is the obvious: Harlequin-style romantic novels fly off the shelves the way candy leaves a "take one" basket on Halloween. It doesn't even have to be good; if it's on the right shelf, it will get bought, and your work will get out there (if only under your clever pseudonym, "Q. Allister Rybart, III").
Outside the immediate monetary gain, it gives you the confirmation that you've passed the bare-minimum standard of printable fiction. It also lets you experiment with worlds and characters that might never get bought in conventional markets. There is no out-of-bounds in the game of trashy novels. You can't embarrass yourself.
...Okay, maybe that's taking it a bit far. Some people can burn water, after all.
But beyond making a bit of spare change while you test the easiest waters on the planet, there are rewards to writing the basest form of entertainment short of fanfiction. There are elements intrinsic to literary erotica that don't exist at the same depth and breadth anywhere else. Yet at once, many of the lessons learned from shaping volumes of smut are readily applicable to perfectly clean writing.
Let's start at the beginning.
In any genre, the best way to get noticed is to be different. In porn, that means having a plot.
...I mean a real plot.
Characters with personality, witty dialog (or at least more than a montage of filthy-minded puns), and a setup that makes sense (honestly, how hard is it to get two people to have sex?), and you're already heads and tails above the lion's share of the field.
Of course, if it were that simple, everyone would do it. If you're fumbling for inspiration, don't get frustrated (yuck yuck). You don't need a ten-page backstory for "I'm here to deliver your sausage pizza" guy, just give him an actual personality. A quirk, maybe two.
Go to a club for an hour and watch how people behave. Sit in a coffee shop somewhere and listen to the dialogues around you. I guarantee you'll have plenty of a readily-identifiable human being (or at least enough of one to pass in porn). It's a good lesson in learning how to pick up on people's quirks without having to rely on who or what they are to make them three-dimensional.
That said, do NOT use people you know. Even ex's.
...Especially ex's.
Putting people you know into romantic fiction always ends poorly. Unless all you want to think about is "Amber gasped at the sight of his trembling" whatever each time you see your best friend walk by, stick with strangers. It's safer that way.
Learning the twin lessons of how to pick out a persona from a stranger sipping a mocha and why putting your friends into fiction is unwise is no doubt a benefit, but neither of these cannot be garnered from perfectly reasonable genres that don't involve awkward collisions and oddly-soundproof walls.
One of the challenges you're unlikely to run across in any other genre is just how far you can stretch a thesaurus over a relatively small subset of the language.
Quick, think of every word you know for penis.
Seriously, go on. I'll wait.
Got a list? Now chop off the ones you wouldn't feel right putting into fiction (even bad fiction) because of how they sound. That includes every euphemism and two-word phrase that sounds like it was thought up by a trio of frat boys in the midst of a serious bender.
Look at what's left, and remove anything that looks like it belongs in a biology textbook. Finally, remove the word "member."
That is your arsenal.
Now imagine stretching it across at least three scenes, one of which should be (appropriately) climactic. That is the challenge before you: make a scene work with only a handful of words to choose from. You'll have to work descriptions into winding suggestive mazes of thought that are intricate enough to avoid directly naming the thing you're indicating without losing the reader in the process.
Now do it two more times.
There are few better ways to learn the power (and difficulty) of subtlety in description than by avoiding using just another noun for the same object. When you have to talk around your subject and can't afford to be too flowery, your only avenue is the linguistic sweet-spot between too much and too little.
That is where you should be writing all the time.
And to think, all this while you'll be pandering to the most forgiving, most lucrative fanbase for amateur writers known to man.
So shelve your objections, pick a nickname that sounds like a cross between a Hollywood baby and a Tolkein extra and get to writing. It isn't hard to stand out in the world of "romantic" fiction, and the journey through the mire and muck will leave you with plenty of wisdom for the cleaned-up road ahead.
Remember: just because it's trashy doesn't mean it has to be rubbish.
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