(The following is an excerpt from my book, "Whip Me, Beat Me, Make Me Write Hot Sex" available in e-book format from Captiva Press, Amazon, B&N, and elsewhere. Copyright 2010 Tymber Dalton, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized Duplication Prohibited)
If I had a dollar for every BDSM story I’ve read where the author committed some sort of sin that pulled me out of the story, I wouldn’t need to be a writer. For example, using handcuffs in suspension. When I read that scene in the book (I won’t name the offender) I literally was pulled out of “readerspace” and it totally ruined the story for me.
If you doubt what I’m saying, spend some time trolling the Amazon.com erotica discussion forums where readers don’t hesitate to state what they hate in a book. No, you can’t please every reader, and what one might hate, another could absolutely adore.
1. Do. Your. Research.
2. NEVER have your hero/heroine drug someone. EVER. That is predatory (I know I mentioned this before) and NOT something that normally happens.
3. Don’t have your characters get drunk/stoned before playing. In real life, most people play sober. In fact, at many play parties and clubs, it’s a rule you have to agree to if you want to play, you must be sober. It’s a safety issue.
4. Do not have your bound character, especially one who is suspended, left alone. (Unless it’s a bad guy doing it.) Also, most people cannot sleep bound all the time. It’s a health and safety issue (deep vein thrombosis is a real concern, as is tissue damage from blocked blood flow).
5. Try to avoid having your BDSM being used as a basis for “bad” things. That’s a stereotype that kinksters are these weird, crazy people who get off on beating each other. Most of them are normal people you might know in real life.
6. Be logical. Don’t have a person just go through a super-heavy, intense scene, and five minutes later they’re heading in to work like nothing’s wrong. Maybe that happens in real life on occasion, but usually a sub who’s just been through a heavy scene doesn’t want to do anything but wind down and chill out.
7. Ditch the stereotypes. Yes, a Male Dom with a female sub is one of the most common configurations out there. But shake it up. What if the Male Dom is actually only 5’ 6” and a geek in real life? What if he embraces his kinkiness and doesn’t care if anyone knows? Play around with the norms and try to come up with something other than a cookie-cutter answer.
8. While in real life yes, there are people who run “training schools” for subs and slaves, for the most part people figure it out as they go, usually through trial and a lot of error. Avoid the old, “Oh, she signed up for slave school,” theme. That one has been done to death and is becoming a cliché. However, many kinky conventions do offer seminars on various lifestyle topics, from bondage to toys and everything in between.
9. Remember your reader. You might be turned on by having a guy (or more than one) ordering you around in the name of “that’s how we do things,” but remember you’ve got a lot of readers out there—your largest commercial fiction demographic is, at this writing, hetero (or het) women—who will toss the book if they read that. You’d better do a lot of backstory and lead-up to that point to explain why the heroine would tolerate that kind of treatment and to make it sexy and not stupid.
10. Having a hero toss the heroine over his lap and spank her is not inherently BDSM. It’s spanking. There are plenty of spankers who consider themselves kinky, but not into BDSM. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but don’t label it a BDSM story if you’re only using spanking as another plot device. If you want to write a BDSM story, you need to get the characters into that dynamic.
11. People in BDSM relationships go through the same trials and tribulations as people in vanilla relationships. Sometimes even more so. There’s not this magical “I command, you obey” dynamic all the time in every relationship. There will be times, even in the most high protocol Master/slave relationship, where things change and arrangements are renegotiated. Never forget: people are not robots. Unless, of course, in your speculative fiction they are robots. Then knock yourself out.
12. Shit happens. (Sometimes literally.) Equipment breaks, people get muscle cramps or faint, power goes out, one or both people might not be in the mood to play because of a bad day, or the kids have a cold and can’t go to Grandma’s for the weekend, or whatever. People are not machines. Perfection doesn’t exist. Don’t be afraid to write a little imperfection into your characters, it humanizes them to your readers. Remember, these are real people juggling real lives, jobs, family, non-kinky social obligations, along with their kink.
13. Being a submissive (or Dominant) is only one aspect of their lives, not the sum of their existence. The kink aspect is just one part of their life even if it’s a large part. Many submissives consider their submission a gift to their Dominant. This isn’t ancient Rome, and anything other than consensual “slavery” is illegal. Being a submissive woman does not lower your I.Q. Being a submissive man does not make you a wimpy wuss. I’ve heard it said that it takes more balls to be a submissive man than it does to be a dominant man, because it takes a much stronger character to not only have that kind of trust in another person to submit to them, but to buck societal norms and not be a dominant man.
14. Anyone who is a serious lifestyle Dominant takes their role to protect those in their care very seriously.
15. Straight guys like anal sex and anal play. No, not all of them, but plenty of them do, and even more of them like it but are afraid to admit it because they think it makes them gay. No, it does not make them gay, it makes them human. Don’t be afraid to have your straight guy secure enough to enjoy taking it up the back door from his gal (via butt plug or strap-on or finger).
16. Which brings me to an extremely important point: anal sex requires lubrication to be enjoyable. The rectum and anus are not self-lubricating. Unless, of course, you’re writing speculative fiction with non-human characters, then knock yourself out and make it so.
17. Please, stop already with the wide-eyed woman gasping, “Oh. My. GOD! Will it fit?” when the hero’s willy flops out of his pants. Yes, it will fit, unless you’ve written speculative fiction and the guy is built like a French baguette. Women give birth to babies. Believe me, the cock had to get in there somehow, and I have yet to hear of a man’s penis that is larger around than the average six-pound baby’s head. This old chestnut has been DONE. TO. DEATH. Stop it. Your readers will appreciate it.
18. Most guys are not hung like horses, and most women can’t climax from one or two pumps inside them. The average male cock is around five to seven inches when erect. Some guys are growers instead of showers. You don’t need to write the guy as a pencil dick, but most readers prefer a little realism they can relate to. The woman who needs a “helping hand” to get off because just riding the pork sword (and if you use that purple phrase in a book I swear to the Goddess I will beat you like a red-headed step-child) doesn’t do it for her. The hero with a slight paunch. The occasional fart during sex. Realism doesn’t have to be nasty morning-after breath, but remember not everyone is perfect. Heroines who have a few more pounds on their frame than an anorexic string bean are very popular. So are heroes with a little realism. They don’t all have to be six-foot-seven Norse gods with abs of titanium. (I like to kill off characters that look like that in my writing…)
19. This is directed at straight male erotica writers: NEVER refer to women’s breasts as anything relating to sports items or produce. No cantaloupes, no softballs, nothing. Another point directed at straight male authors who wish to make it as a commercial erotica writer: your largest commercial target demographic, based on purchasing patterns, is het women. Write for them. Most of you male erotica writers who aren’t gay men writing for gay men (and honestly, a lot of us het women LOVE the gay male erotica writers) totally fuck up the story for us het women. If you want to learn how to write erotica for het women, READ erotica written by het women. We don’t focus much on the woman. We want to BE the woman (or the man, in the case of m/m stories) getting done. We could give a shit in most cases about long drawn-out descriptions of the heroine. We want to BE her. So quit trying to turn us on by writing like a guy, and try writing like a girl (or like a gay guy). We also like reading about what the characters are thinking, not what they’re seeing. And if you can’t write about the hero because it makes you squicky to talk about a guy like that, you really have no business being an erotica writer. There is a reason why the majority of successful erotica writers are either women or gay men. If you want to be one of them, learn how to write like one of them. (Of course, if you’re just writing for your own pleasure, write whatever makes you happy.)
20. Oh, and another stereotype, quit with the heroines with a waist so tiny the hero’s hands can span it. Most of us are a size twelve or more, and we hate the skinny girls. Write for US. Use heroes and heroines older than thirty (or forty, or even fifty) on occasion. We lived our twenties, we want to relate to people.
21. Try writing outside the old clichés. Instead of the wealthy man of industry, make your hero a mechanic or taxi driver or something the average person can relate to. Ditto your heroine, give her an occupation other than writer, newspaper reporter, or kick-ass take no prisoners corporate lawyer. (Yes, I’m guilty of that too.) No, I’m not saying you have to do that all the time, because yes, it is fun to escape into a book where it’s totally not like real life. But it’s nice to pick up a book sometimes where you can relate to the characters.
22. Don’t write your story based on what you read in other stories. There’s a good chance those other authors got at least something wrong, unless you know for certain they’re in the lifestyle or did a lot of research first. Do. Your. Research.
23. SAFE SEX. Condoms. You don’t have to stop the story to have a long, drawn-out discussion about it, but USE THEM. It can be as simple as inserting (ha-ha) a simple, “He sheathed himself in a condom and…” We don’t need to know he went to the store and bought them special, and we don’t need a huge long negotiation scene about them. It’s assumed people involved in kinky sex probably have ready access to condoms. But I’ve heard so many complaints from readers about stories where condoms weren’t used when they should have been, and I’ve heard praise for stories where they were used, that it doesn’t hurt to USE THEM to avoid pissing off your readers. Readers commonly expect condom use in non-monogamous or non-established relationships. (Unless, of course, not using a condom is a plot point meant to lead to a complication like an STD or pregnancy.) There is some flexibility when dealing with paranormal/speculative fiction, or if the couple is monogamous and has been together long enough to preclude their use, but for contemporary stories, at least mention their use.
24. Avoid purple prose. Seriously. The aforementioned “pork sword” is at the top of that list. Avoid swords, sheaths (although using sheath as a verb is usually fine as long as it’s not overused), cream, all those well-abused purple prose words that make editors and readers cringe. Also, avoid being too clinical. “He inserted his penis in her vagina” reads like a rape report, not hot erotic fiction. Also, avoid overuse of “hissed” and other non-standard dialog tags. Said and asked are the two best ones to use, although sparing use of others is all right.
25. And!! Oh!! AVOID EXLAMATION POINTS!!! Exclamation points are used to denote screaming or shock! Overuse makes editors’ eyes twitch! No, seriously!!
(Copyright 2010 Tymber Dalton, All Rights Reserved, Unauthorized Duplication Prohibited)
