Erotica

I edited erotica at SilkWords—a pick-your-path romance and erotica story site that has since closed—and I’ve edited hot romance for years, long enough that authors stopped being shy about asking whether I edit it too. The answer is yes. Erotica is its own genre with its own craft, and I edit it on those terms.

What is erotica—and how is it different from porn?

Erotica is a story—a plot and a character arc in which the protagonist’s growth is driven, in large part or entirely, by their sexual experiences. Porn is arousal on the page and nothing else. Erotica is a person becoming someone new through what happens in bed (or in the garden shed, the casino restroom, wherever!). Most readers hope for at least an HFN, and your protagonist doesn’t have to find it with another person—or with several. A lead who ends the book alone but knowing at last what she wants has an arc too, and I’ll hold your book to that arc the way I’d hold any novel to its spine.

What do erotica writers most often get wrong?

Writers setting out to write erotica most often end up writing porn instead—not because they aimed low but for one of two reasons: the character arc never got built, or the sex scenes soaked up all the nerves and excitement, and the rest of the book went without. Both are fixable, and both are the kind of thing an editor sees before the author can.

Language is the other stumble. Every erotica author has to find their own level—veer too clinical, and the scene reads like an anatomy lesson; veer too euphemistic, and the reader starts skimming. My working advice is simple: whatever you find hot as a reader, without being so shocking it pulls you out of the story, will probably work for you as a writer. Go back to your favorite books and note the words those authors chose.

How do you build erotic tension across a whole book?

Sexual intensity usually builds steadily across a book, which means your opening sets the ceiling. Start with a scorching scene, and you have nowhere to go. Start with soft-focus lovemaking, and the reader who picked the book up for heat puts it down again fast. When I edit erotica I map that build—where the tension between your characters is rising and where the book is merely adding more acts, wilder settings, or more people. Two women circling each other for twenty chapters can carry more charge than an orgy in a castle—tension lives in what hasn’t happened yet. Escalating the spectacle is not the same as escalating the tension, and readers feel the difference even when they can’t name it.

What kinds of erotica will you edit—and what won’t you?

I’ll edit smutty, kinky, out-there books—straight or queer, vanilla or far from it—provided the sex on the page includes explicit consent and safer-sex practices. That’s a requirement, not a preference. What I won’t edit is material describing acts that are against the law. If you’re not sure where your manuscript falls, drop me a note and ask for my full list of editing limits—asking costs nothing, and you’ll have a plain answer before you send a single page.