How To Pull Up Your Story Score

For the beginning, don't be afraid to start what you would might is halfway through the story and then later go back and fill in the particulars. The important thing with erotica is not to ramble on for too long about trivial matters. Detailing a character's past, for example, may be useful to show how lucky or unlucky they've been in love up to this point, but it can slow down the reader and prove to be boring. The trick with a character's past is to hint at it every now and then throughout the story. Readers are looking for interesting, detailed characters, but they aren't looking to read biographies here.

So relax, set the scene, introduce the characters, perhaps offer subtle promises for what is to come. Get the reader on your side.

The middle: a lot of writers see this as the slack part of the story, where they can afford to just go with the flow and not worry about keeping things tight. But the middle has got to be strong if you want your readers to bother to continue on to that explosive ending you've got planned.

The thing with the middle is to remember your events. In your story, you should always be building up to an event, then exploring that event, then letting things fall a little quieter before building up to the next event. If there is too much happening all the time, the reader can get quite tired of the bombardment of action – give them a break every now and then. But if there are long periods without anything significant happening, readers will switch off and go looking for someone else's story.

Of course where erotica is concerned, the event is usually some kind of sexual confrontation – though it doesn't always have to be. Where the readers are looking for something to turn them on, you cannot afford a long period of time without reference to anything sexual.

Don't assume you need a lot of events in one story, though. A lot of very successful stories on Literotica are one-event tales, where the writer introduces characters, slowly builds up to the event, and goes out with a bang. The mistake with a one-event story is to have the event too early on and then trail off afterwards. If you have an event very early on and then nothing after that, the reader will be deeply disappointed, and may think that they have wasted their time reading on after the event. Disappointment needs to be avoided to push up that score, which is where endings come into play.

Endings need to provide satisfaction to the reader, they are the reward for the reader's effort in sticking with your whole story, so the ending needs to be good. It's ultimately up to you if the ending is happy or not, but a happy ending will do better in erotica since it's all about creating a fantasy and promoting enjoyment for the reader.

The thing to avoid is a finale that is in any way menial. If you've just finished a powerful love scene, don't spend the next 300 words describing how the characters picked up their weary bodies, went to the bathroom, cleaned their teeth and then went back to bed and fell fast asleep on their goose-feather pillows. We're not interested. That's the kind of thing that we assume might happen afterwards, so you don't need to state it.

It's far better, then, just to kill the story at a high point, perhaps even at the moment of orgasm. You may want to hint at what kind of future your characters will enjoy after that powerful love scene – but never, ever end on a downer. Don't have them yelling like a pair of angry walruses as they come together and then spend the last paragraph telling us that although it was great, the relationship just didn't work out and the two characters went back to a fairly mediocre, mundane existence. Even if you're recounting a real-life story: try not to kill the mood at the end. Better to leave out the future if it is a tepid one.

If your reader feels happy at the end, your score will improve, simple as that.

6. A couple of points before you graduate

Avoid writing in the 2nd person if you can: you usually alienate an entire gender – there's nothing quite as off putting as being told that your throbbing cock is pulsating with desire if you don't actually have a cock, or that your pussy is like a lawn sprinkler in the middle of a hot summer's day if you've been banned from operating a sprinkler because of the local drought restrictions.

On another note, a pet hate of mine: the word 'blonde' or 'blond' is almost unique in the English language because, like French, it has to agree with the gender to which it is being attributed. So if you're describing a stunning golden-haired girl, it's 'blonde' with an 'e' on the end, and if you're talking about a ravishing yellow-haired garage mechanic, it's 'blond' without an 'e'. It can be especially confusing if you ever use the word 'blonde' or 'blond' to stand for the actual character – for example, the blonde went shopping and bought three identical socks – sometimes if you use the wrong version of blond, the reader will start off imagining a blonde girl and then realise that the blond is, in fact, male. A Literotica Editor will probably pick up on points like this, but we want to make it as easy for an Editor as possible, don't we?

Which reminds me, make sure that you always use an editor before you submit a story. There's nothing so tragic as a good story littered with obvious spelling errors or typos that an Editor would have picked up on in the blink of an itchy eye. The Literotica Volunteer Editors facility is an incredibly good service. Without even paying anybody, you can get someone to look over your story to provide comments and point out mistakes. Don't be arrogant and feel you don't need an editor: even Hemingway had a sub-editor correcting his copy before it went to print. Sometimes you don't spot a typing error in your writing because your eyes are used to the material, and you see what you want to see rather than what you've written. Another person can pick up those errors quickly and easily, and your story will be much better before you post it. But do remember to contact the editor and ask them if they are available before you send them any material. There's nothing so rude as to send a story without even a greeting note to break the ice.

One advantage of going through an editor is the chance that all your apostrophes will be in the right places. Some readers will automatically go for that '1' button at the end of your story if you don't use apostrophes with care. In England recently, a retired journalist was so annoyed by the errors involving apostrophes that he took a pot of paint and went around correcting signs throughout the county.

7. Congratulations: here's your diploma. No, don't snatch, it's not polite

It was a long trek, I'm sure you'll agree, but I do hope it's been worthwhile for you. It may seem like a complicated business writing creatively, but the truth is that anyone can do it. You just need a little resolve and a smidgeon of courage, and you'll be a star.

Literotica is a wonderful exercise in cultural democracy, providing a voice for anyone and everyone to reveal their creative sexual desires and promote the use of that greatest of things, imagination. But to get the best out of the experience of writing for Literotica, you should always aim to progress. Through a little effort, you can get steadily better and better, and as you do so, you'll build up a legion of admirers. So let's make the most of these exquisite brains of ours, and hopefully both of us will one day end up at the top of the score charts.

Any questions? E-mail me or any of the Literotica Volunteer Editors and you're sure to find a straightforward answer that will help to unlock the genius that we all know lies in that mysterious mind of yours.

Okay, class dismissed. Oh, and you at the back, stay behind after school, please. I need to talk to you about something...uh...in private...