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--- Writing Porn For Fun and Profit! --- ========================================= I don't know how it is in your neck of the woods, but winter has finally arrived here in Colorado. After the typical turn of weather on Halloween - how does it always manage to turn nasty literally hours before you head out to trick or treat? - we're now well into snow, cold and ice season. And no, I don't ski, I hate getting cold. Ah, well, on the bright side, winter makes me appreciate spring and summer all the more... In this issue I've got two great markets for you, one paying and one non. LegSex is a high quality market for more experienced writers and HerCurve is an beautifully done lesbian e-zine. Speaking of "leg sex", I define the term a little more in the Questions section. I'm so used to it, I forget that it's a phrase that can bring up some bizarre mental images. Check out Herman Franck's good news in Goings On, as well as Magdalene Meretrix' article on Breaking Into the Erotica Market. I'll tell you a little more about my quest for markets and you can read the last excerpt of The Basic How-To of writing porn. As usual, feel free to email me with any comments or suggestions! Katy
1 - Don't be afraid to write outside your chosen genre. For example, I write erotica, "essayrotica" (a term coined by Hanne Blank to describe Erotic Literary Non-Fiction essays), and non-fiction/how-to on topics of a sexual nature. Writing in each of these genres has boosted my sales in the others. Anything you write will get your name out there. As an aspiring erotica writer, you want name recognition. 2 - Don't be afraid to give your work away. There was a point when I felt bitter about giving so much work away. That was before I realized that most professional erotica writers list the publications where they've been published and, in most cases, half or more of those publications were non-paying. You want to be able to cite a long list of publications and you want your writing to spread far and wide - name recognition gets your foot in the door. Many of the non-paying markets have high-quality editors. I submitted a piece to a non-paying market and was told that I should make drastic changes. I balked, figuring a non-paying market couldn't possibly understand the high-quality I had produced. I took the piece to a well-known, professional, paying market. The first thing the editor told me? To make the exact same changes! 3 - On a related note, if an editor, even an editor of a non-paying publication, asks you to change your work, you should strongly consider changing it. I know, I know: your words are your babies and changing them for an editor feels like you are adulterating your art. But the editor is the door between being non-published and being published. You can't expect to open that door by stubbornly shoving. You have to learn how to turn the doorknob. Learning to listen to and work with editors will only improve your professional image and your chances of getting published. 4 - Find an established writer or editor who is willing to take you under their wing. This doesn't mean that you should harass published writers, but it does mean that you shouldn't be afraid to use their e-mail address if it's listed with their story, column or article. Write some fan mail to let your favorite writers know what you liked about their writing. Feel free to mention your own writing in the mail. Don't sweat composition too much - be natural here - but don't forget that every piece of e-mail you write is a writing sample. I got my regular column as a result of a well-crafted post on a non-writing related e-mail list. An editor saw my post and liked what I had to say. She recruited me, took me under her wing and helped nurture my talent. 5 - Hone your people skills. Try not to piss anyone off unduly because you never know when today's jerk will be tomorrow's anthology editor. Moreover, there are times when you will need to work closely with another writer or an editor on a project. If you are irascible and stubborn, no one will want to work with you. If you are easy to get along with, networking will be a breeze. 6 - Hit the anthology circuit. Find the spots where editors routinely place calls for submissions (The Erotica Reader's Association is a great resource for this) and look at all the calls. Keep a personal list, organized by deadline dates, of all the anthologies you would like to submit to. Anthologies can be a great boon to your burgeoning career - prestige, money and name recognition. Granted, the money is usually not much - the standard is around $50/story - but anthologies are still a great stepping stone to future work. Make sure you keep an index list of just deadline dates and anthology titles so that you can prioritize your work. 7 - Keep a copy of everything you've written, whether it was accepted or rejected. You can often re-sell stories, making money several times off one piece of work. Pay close attention to what rights you are giving away when you sign a contract. Learn the difference between all rights, first American anthology rights, first electronic rights etc. 8 - Record your own stories if you haven't sold the audio book rights to them. With about $1000 worth of equipment (in addition to the computer you already have), you can record your stories, encode them digitally and press your own CDs. Alternatively, consider using mp3.com's adult section. You can upload your stories as mp3 files and the site will produce your albums for you. You can even adjust your settings so that people can only listen to a couple of your tracks for free but have to buy your album to get the whole collection. 9 - Market yourself! Build a web page writing resume. Add the URL to your e-mail .sig file. Don't spam people, of course, but always keep your eye out for ways to let people know about your writing. These are just a few pointers. Of course there is more to learn and know
than could be included in one short article, but I hope this has got you
inspired and ready to jump in. The biggest secrets to becoming a published
and paid writer are, of course, write, write, write and submit, submit,
submit. Without these two crucial steps, you'll never get where you're
going. Magdalene Meretrix has turned a career as a sex worker into a career as a
sex writer. Her work appears in various publications including Scarlet
Letters (http://www.scarletletters.com) where she writes a quarterly
column, "Sexwork/Sexplay," that explores various aspects of sexwork. Her
first book, "Turning Pro: A Guide to Sexwork for the Ambitious and the
Intrigued," will be released in Spring, 2001 by Greenery Press. Check out
her website at http://www.magdalenemeretrix.com The following review of Herman Franck's new book will appear in the March, 2001 issue of Genesis Magazine: The Family Business (Emerson-Adams Press; 368 pp: $26.95) By Herman Franck, Esq. This novel tells the sordid tale of a Tina, a Mafia spy girl who comes to the aid of Tony, the Harvard educated son of a wealthy Don trying to stay legit while his family dabbles in importing Asian hookers, heroin and sweat labor. When Tony starts his new job, he gets caught up in a price fixing ring and then gets into trouble with the corporate big wigs. Tina, the family's sexy, seductive spy comes to Tony's aid with some steamy scenes along the way. The Family Business is well written, captivating and invokes imagery throughout making it play like a movie in your mind. And speaking of which, Mr. Franck has recently completed a screenplay based on the book and is showing it to producers and directors. He wishes to bring together a production team, actors and actresses. Early word had it that porn star Mimi Miyagi was interested in the project. We'll keep you posted and interested parties can contact Mr. Franck via his website, www.kitmedia.net- J.D. Rating: five stars (out of five) --- Check out my column at http://www.AbsoluteWrite.com on - what else?! - writing porn. This week I talk about using your characters to give your stories personality. =========================================== Busy, busy...that sums up my last two weeks. I'm beginning the process of searching for listings, ferreting out as many on-line and print markets as possible (and their addresses, that's sometimes the hardest part!), sending out questionnaires and hoping for responses. Actually it's fascinating work, albeit frustrating when markets I'd love to include don't respond...aarrrggghhhhh. As far as your preferences as to paying vs non-paying markets, you all are pretty much evenly divided on this one, although the consensus leans a little more toward including both in the new book (yes, I'm definitely leaning toward an update-able book). What I think I'll do is feature mainly paying markets but also add ten or so of the higher quality non-paying markets for those of you who are looking to pad your resume. And while there are plenty of markets out there that'll put your work up for free, my goal will be to find the really good ones. I'm also going to try to add one non-paying listing to each newsletter since I've found some great e zines out there. Thanks to those of you who have emailed me with possible markets, please feel free to continue to do so! =========================================== (Check out Parts I and II of this excerpt here - http://www.KatyTerrega.com/backnewsletter.html) Some other details to watch out for: Porn, at least for the markets we’re dealing with, is usually written from the first person. This can take many forms, from a simple stream of thought, as though the author were actually talking to his audience, to a quite stylized first person essay. You, as narrator/participant/storyteller need to draw your audience in and first person catches that immediacy quite well. There are really spectacular third person porn stories out there, or maybe there are some varying-person stories just waiting to be written (maybe I’ll even try one when I’m done writing this book) but for now, especially at the beginning, stick to first person perspective for mainstream porn. Speaking of perspective, is yours staying the same the whole way through? If you started by telling the story as if it were happening right now, have you stuck to that? A lot of beginners tend to switch tenses in the same paragraph. Keep your she was’s and she is’s straight. You can certainly switch between past and present in your story, but make sure that you’ve got obvious breaks between the two or you’ll confuse yourself as well as your audience. Personally, I tend to stay away from dialogue when writing porn. For other venues it works great, adding nuance and detail and vitality to your writing. But in porn so much of it comes out sounding stilted. Your characters, after all, are there for one thing, and it's not talk. Erotica obviously lends itself more readily to dialogue but even then I would be very careful not to overdo it, especially within the sex scenes themselves. I've run across too many stories where the prodigious use of Oh, Baby! and Do it harder! should have been left on the proverbial cutting room floor. There can be, however, some use for dialogue at the beginning and end of your stories. Conversation between two people can often set your scene quite nicely, usually with a minimum of words, and can also add another character for your main character can react to. I also often use dialogue (sparingly) at the end. Sometimes a small joke between characters or a bit of verbal sparring can be just the thing to tie up a story's loose ends. Avoid the overuse of description. Just like in mainstream writing, description is used far too much by novices. While it can be quite tempting to describe porn characters in terms of their physical characteristics, it's best to find other ways to get your story across. For example, I make it a point never to use the age-old 36-24-36 style of describing a woman. Whatever her particular attributes, try to find some other way than straight description to let your reader know. Let your unique choice of words show your audience how beautiful this woman is, don't speak down to them by just listing the details. The Final Draft: So you've looked at and fixed your basic structure, you've organized your paragraphs, you've fine-tuned your sentences plus you've double-checked your tenses and perspectives. Now you need to run through the entire story again, checking the flow. Watch for parts that seem to trip you up, whether it's awkward sentencing or confusing paragraphs. Read it out loud to yourself or to someone else to see how it all fits together. If a sentence or word sounds strange when read out loud, chances are good that it will do the same on the page. I like to go through the story in it's entirety several times. Often the part that's been run through several times (usually the beginning) sounds a lot more polished than the rest. At that point it's simply a matter of working through the not-so-polished parts until they're all just as shiny as the first one. Proof Reading: It's easy to skip this last step. After all, haven't you read through your manuscript about a thousand times already? Don't you know it all by heart? Wouldn't you have already caught a misplaced comma or a misspelled word? Absolutely not! Quite the contrary, looking at the big picture can quite often blind you to the small details. You'll be surprised at how much you've missed. Especially if you've changed a lot of things from your first draft, it's easy to overlook the obvious. While checking through a story of mine in a print magazine I caught a huge mistake that both the editor and I had missed. I'd started out this particular story with one name for my character but somewhere along the line her personality had suggested another so I changed it. Unfortunately neither I nor the editor noticed that at the very end the first name had been left in, leaving the readers wondering, I'm sure, who this brand new character was and where she'd come from. This is where you need to check everything, your spelling, your grammar, your punctuation. Better yet, have another person check it for you. My husband almost always proofreads my finished products before I send them out, he considers it a perk of my profession. And he quite often catches mistakes that I've made in what I consider to be an absolutely finished manuscript. A proofreader is also good for showing you the places where the story doesn't flow. If your proofreader is confused about something, your audience/editor will be, too. My husband often points out places where I need to add another descriptive sentence or haven't fully explained something. By looking at his feedback as a valuable part of the process of writing, I'm able to glean valuable information as to what a reader or an editor will think. If you can, find a person who can help you in this way, someone you trust, someone who is capable of being both kind and objective. --- Order It's A Dirty Job...Writing Porn for Fun and Profit here - http://www.KatyTerrega.com/orderebook.html =========================================== Leg sex - I knew this question would come up! I've gotten used to the phrase, but I remember my first thoughts when I saw it: Sex with...um...legs? How is that possible? Actually, the leg sex genre (which is one of my favorites) encompasses a lot of different ideas. Mostly it's the "worship" of legs and feet and the things surrounding them, like hose and shoes. This worship can be mild, as in adoring, or it can move into extremes, as in the humiliation and domination of said worshipper. I find that the psychological factors are what make the genre fun to write, I love getting into my character's head and experiencing this "fetish" from his or her perspective. As far as the sex itself goes, it includes the licking, sucking, smelling and rubbing of legs/feet/shoes/hose. The soles of the feet are often used to masturbate a man , and the toes can be used for penetrating various and sundry orifices. There's a fair amount of woman on woman in the genre as well. Depending on the level of domination, actual intercourse is often not as important as all the other activities. --- Send me your questions! I'll answer the most common and/or interesting ones here, and if I don't know the answer, I'll do my best to find a pro who does. =========================================== I'm looking for essays/articles that will inspire and/or instruct other porn writers. Success stories, how to break into certain markets, unique views on the genre, etc. Around 800 words is good, although I'm flexible. No, you don't have to be published but it might help. Or, maybe you're published in other genres but not in porn, and maybe you've got something to say about that. Another good angle is familiarity with a specific market. There are so many sub genres of porn and it's hard to know the subtleties of each. If you've got a specialty, from BDSM to Watersports to Leg Sex to Amputeeism, feel free to share your knowledge. I don't really need queries, just send me your finished article/essays and we'll go from there. Right now I'm paying with a copy of the updated It's A Dirty Job...(plus credits) but as SOON as this site is self-supporting I'll be able to offer some cash. =========================================== And you have been, thank you! Please keep on doing so. I will try to get to all e-mails ASAP, and that usually means within twenty four hours. But sometimes - lets see...does Too Loaded With Work To Think Straight count? - it'll take me longer. If you haven't heard from me in two or three days, EMAIL ME AGAIN! I probably screwed up and didn't get/see/notice your question or comment. Tell me what you want this newsletter to be, tell me what info you need to have, tell me what you like or (oh, alright) dislike about what's going on here. ============CLASSIFIEDS==================== ========================================== Writing Porn For Fun and Profit! Katy Terrega |