Everyone Should Write Smut And I'm Not Joking

Writing is a complex, difficult experience of vulnerability, self exploration, and learning a methodology. Engaging with the sexual and the erotic is a way to learn that.

I’ve been writing filthy trash for about twelve years now, and it’s probably the best decision I’ve ever made for myself. As I outlined in my other piece, my games journalism career wasn’t working out, and I threw up some quick smut on deviantart. Come to find out, I was really good at it, and I only got better over time, even as my tastes shifted. I now can approach stories I’m not into, pick them apart, imitate the style, and produce a decent story.

I now turn the camera on you, the viewer, to say — you should do it too. I don’t care what you’re into or why, you should at least try your hand at smut once in your life.

This sounds like some trite ‘work outside of your comfort zone’ platitudes, but it’s more than that. It’s about your development path to unlocking your true identity as a writer. It’s about finding your voice. Ideally, this is what every writer either has done or should do.

And I don’t just mean a fuck scene, or some trashy bodice ripper for your aunt, or whatever you’re assuming — I mean whatever niche, specific gross shit gets your motor going. The point of this exercise is to get to whatever turns you on, and slam on that button with everything in your power

So here’s my sales pitch on why you, the reader, sitting right there with this blog open, should write some gross trashy erotica.

Writing smut teaches you to write for yourself

You’ve surely heard the phrase, “who is this for?” It’s a load bearing component of criticism and absolutely essential for anyone creating or analyzing to start with. If you’re writing fantasy, you are likely aiming it at fantasy enthusiasts. If you’re making dark fantasy, it’s for the goth girlies. If you’re writing Ready Player One, it’s for nobody.

But a lot of writers seem to have taken this angle entirely too far, and now fiction is only about who you’re writing for. The altruistic, noble quest of finding someone out there who needs the story you wrote – and handing it to them on a silver platter. You’re welcome, lonely queer child somewhere, I just saved your life. Turns out creatives are pretty susceptible to this kind of flattery.

Creative power comes from what the person behind the camera or pen wants to see created. You have to think of your audience, yes, but if you’re only thinking about them then it comes off as weirdly fake and stilted. Look at the way the entire world loathes Drake and understand the faustian bargain that is creating solely for approval of others.

At the core of making things is your desire to see something you like. And if you like it, there’s a strong, strong likelihood that there’s other people out there like you. You’re not alone in your kinks, otherwise there wouldn’t be such a thing as BDSM clubs. And if there’s other people out there like you, then you can speak to them with your fiction.

Writing is a vulnerable act, and smut gets you comfortable with the scary act of bearing your incoherent, strange soul

Much like any other performance skill, writing is an art form that is inherently vulnerable. When you put out a piece of fiction — or dance, or sing, or play an instrument, or act, et al — you’re bearing a little piece of yourself for the world to critique and analyze. It’s scary stuff! Writer communities are founded and thrive off of gentle encouragement to keep the spirit alive.

With a lot of fiction, you can find ways around that. You can couch it in Whedon meta-commentary, smirking witticisms, banter, and fourth wall breaks. Letting off the pressure of the focus on yourself is a neat trick that helps you tell the reader, I know, this is stupid, isn’t it?

Making smut is harder. Corny camera winks and goofs works for VHS porno, but for written erotica? When people are undressing and groping and kissing and grinding? If you’re not getting the passion right, you’re not making the reader hot. And if you’re not making the reader hot, the reader checks out.

This is different from romance. Romance can be funny, charming, and light, which is what brought us romantic comedy. A smoldering affair needs to actually have heat behind it. Erotica has to make the reader hot, and sincerity is the only way to get there.

And yes, you have to find it hot, or else you’re not communicating that feeling to the audience. It doesn’t matter what it is, if you like seeing girls pegging men or sexy preists spanking women or I dunno, even the ‘haha what is this’ fetishes like inflation. If that’s what you’re into, that's the feeling you should chase.

“But that doesn’t apply to love, or joy, or other fictional emotions.” Doesn’t it? Conveying sexual thrills to a reader and making them hot and bothered is a visceral feeling. It’s the white hot bullet to the center of the human id. Drawing horny out of your reader is just like any other emotion — sorrow, rage, pain, joy, glee, it’s all part of the writer’s toolkit. If you know how to make them feel horny, then you can make them feel anything.

Learn to find the stuff that you find hot, structure a narrative around it, and try your hand at sincerity. And yes, it’s going to be embarrassing for you. That’s fine. You need to get comfortable with that kind of vulnerability if you want to make it as a writer.

Horny logic is emotional logic, which is what all storytelling is based on — smut helps you learn what matters and what doesn’t

When you really get to the core of writing, emotional truths win out over logical ones. Narrative quirks of writing or logic or worldbuilding fade to the background so long as what ‘feels’ true still lands home.

(RIP to David Lynch, who was superhumanly capable at this exact thing.)

You’re familiar with the obnoxious Cinemasins style critique of stuff like horror movies — why doesn’t anyone call the police? The correct answer, even more so than a line in the script that says the police are busy or out of area or roads are blocked, is simply, “Who fucking cares?” You’re watching a horror movie, you’re not here to see characters thrive and grow, you’re here to see them freaked out and panicking and running away and crying while grabbing a baseball bat they don’t know how to use.

Similarly, whatever trashy bit of smut you’ve got rattling around in your brain obeys that logic too. Why on earth would someone think to drink an experimental potion made to make them beautiful? Wouldn’t that be dangerous and risky and foolish? Much like the horror movie question, the answer is — you’re reading bimbo transformation porn, why are you asking that question? Did you ask why Ariel would sign a contract with a witch to go to the surface too? Did you complain that sacrificing your soul just for a boy is self-destructive? Go the fuck home.

You do have to give the barest amount of sense to why the character would do such a thing, of course. The ‘ugly girl’ would want to drink the bimbo potion, but it's the core of why you're here. And that’s the skill that comes with practice and community that hones your talents.

Horny fiction works like this, where two characters feel a connection and want to smash their parts together and have to grapple with that, and if you’re asking why they want to fuck — well, did you convey the connection? Yes? Then okay, question answered. Ariel wants to go to the surface because she’s a reckless, horny teenager filled with wanderlust and yearning.

And speaking of which…

Humans are horny and it’s essential to their function to know how they pursue intimacy

Humans are not automatons. We’re messy, neurotic, gross animals who like pleasing ourselves in ways that can be self destructive and terrible. You have to be able to understand that logic if you’re going to be a writer, because it’s the cornerstone of good storytelling.

Too much of modern media is sexless, and moral crises keep existing disconnected from emotional ones. Sure, Captain America has to decide which is more important, sticking to his moral code or allowing himself to be told what to do, and it creates interesting friction with Tony, but when did a character in a Marvel movie pursue a sexual interest that got them in hot water?

If you’re not going to engage with lust, not even to make a Romeo and Juliet entertainingly reckless, then what’s the point of writing fiction?

Berserk’s two biggest moments come from consequences of lust and desire. Guts and Casca finally open themselves to vulnerability after so long of being afraid of it, and that vulnerability is punished later when Griffith takes his revenge on them for abandoning him.

Griffith meanwhile finally sleeps with his beloved Charlotte before she’s wed, but the incident is full of messy, complicated emotions. He seems to be doing it to make himself feel better after Guts leaving, but he does love Charlotte too — as much as Griffith can love anything. And his impulsive action damns him and the world for it.

If you’re ignoring the reasons why characters fuck, then you’re missing out a huge chunk of the human condition.

Your sexual id is the best motivator to get something created consistently

This one goes out to my ADHD friends.

Creating takes discipline, and sometimes that discipline is hard to condition into yourself. You have to get through the boring stuff, the tedium, world building, and character establishment. I’m not acting like writing isn’t obnoxious, tedious labor sometimes. It really sucks!

The key getting through all of that is really, really liking your own material. And what’s a better way to like your own material than having to write it so turned on you can barely sit still?

Fiction that touches your pleasure centers is the world’s best motivator to keep writing. It’s a little harder when you’re in a slow burn, and need to set up characters that have normal mundane lives before the friction starts to set in, but when you get in the swing of things, it goes incredibly smoothly.

The thing all creatives tell you is that the most important part is finishing the thing. And if what you’re writing makes you feel sexually charged, then it’s much, much easier to, uh, finish.

Horny readers are loyal readers

When it comes to fetishes, despite popular perceptions, there’s actually very little in terms of ‘escalation.’ There’s the curiosity and novelty stuff, but on the whole, people into stuff just really, really like that stuff and seek it out a lot. People do not actually get into BDSM then slowly go crazy as they demand more intense BDSM until it kills them or something. That’s borderline Reefer Madness puritanical bunk. Furries do not engage with dangerous medical processes to become more furry, they just make fursuits, go to cons, and fuck a lot.

On the writer side — yeah, checks out. When you have a reader who wants to get off to something you made, if they like your style, they will keep coming back because you hit their happy buttons in a way they like. They’ll even stick around amid your other dalliances too.

It’s genuinely hard to actually feel like you’re not a good writer when you have an audience of loyal readers who take your new piece of fiction made to get them off and tell you how much they like it. When that happens, the creative loop is complete — you now are making an audience happy with your art, and they’re making you happy by telling you how much they love it.

And — best of all — they have money. And the only thing better than audience love and praise is someone messaging you privately to say, “Hey, that thing you made was insanely fucking hot. Can I give you $400 to write another one?”

They’re also ravenous readers

What I said above about ‘emotional logic’ coming back for a second here.

If you really, really like incest and read a lot of incest and want to try your hand at it – good news, incest freaks (complimentary) are not exactly shy of the desire to read more incest. And before you say, “Yeah, but there’s tons of incest out there, and theirs is better than mine!” let me remind you:

There’s an impulse for writers to fixate on the insufficient fictional journey they take the reader on, and how the plot is a bit too windy, or maybe the characters aren’t deep, or the arguments aren’t quite where you want them, or the prose is not really landing. Smut is a good way to refocus your attention because if you’re here to give people incest, the core thing that matters is the sense of wrongness, the intensity of the relationship, and the social taboo. All other details are secondary, even moreso than in ‘regular’ fiction.

So long as you can hit the sexually thrilling beats, you did your job. The other stuff can be honed over time.

You have a built in excuse that offloads responsibility for why you came up with it

Coming full circle here, but when I said writing was vulnerable, I wasn’t kidding. It has that same feeling of being naked in front of someone for the first time. The stinging, terrified sensation of watching eyes peer at you exposed, watching every flicker on the face in panic that it might be laughter.

There’s never an easy way to handle that kind of emotion. But there’s ways to soften the blow. And if you write some filth that turns you on, a way to soften the blow is to accept that yeah, I don’t get it either. Whenever some readers see the icky body horror shit I write, I’m sometimes met with rude, hostile people that tell me I’m a sociopath or deeply disturbed. And I tell them all the same thing — “I dunno man, I thought it was hot.”

Horny logic is incoherent, messy, and entirely personal. Doubly so when it comes to niche kinks. And it’s super comfortable to be able to blame a demented id you can’t control for all your weird impulses. I sure didn’t put these kinks in my brain willingly, if you don’t like them, then please complain to the manufacturer.

Don’t get me wrong, tour readers are going to be hard to separate from your critics. But it’s been extremely beneficial to me as a writer to learn to not shy away or hide the parts of my id that cry out for release when I pick up the pen. This kink or scene or type of character is there, they’re in my work a lot, and yeah that’s my style. And if you’re not into it — peace be with you, friend.

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I now send you away with a mission; if you’re a writer and you’ve never written a piece of smut before, do it. Find whatever secret kink you’re curious about, think of a short piece between 2k and 7k words, and do an outline. Make it small scale and focused, maybe a scene or two with some extra setup, and go for it. Don’t think for a second about how other people will view it, or how embarrassing it is, or anything. Write down that weird, gross piece of fiction, then save it and put it away for a month or two without looking at it.

When you’ve gotten some distance from your new piece, go back to it and try to read it like it was created by a stranger. Push aside the shame and embarrassment of knowing you did it, and look at your own fiction. Does it hit your pleasure centers? Is it still ‘hot’ in the right way?

If so, I encourage you to post it online under a pseudonym. You just might have something good on your hands.