Five Tips from Tilly Hunter

A big thank you to Ashley for inviting me over here today. There are plenty of invaluable writing tips on the site already as well as a fair bit of advice on approaching editors or publishers, so I’ve tried to look at things from a slightly different angle with my five tips...

1. Turn off your inner censor...

You can’t write about sex with a projection of your mother, father, gran, uncle, priest or teacher sitting on your shoulder expressing shock or moral outrage at every sentence. If you have young children or a sensitive job, you’ll probably need to pick yourself a pseudonym and guard it closely. Then you can give yourself permission to write freely, unrestrainedly, uninhibitedly. Without anyone whispering to you that it’s not art, that it’s cheap and smutty, that it’s wrong or filthy.

2. ...then write dirty

I mean really dirty. Think of a sexual act that you, personally, find shocking, or weird, or distasteful, or even disgusting. Then write a short scene incorporating that act. And not in a shocking, weird, distasteful or disgusting way. In a way that is hot and positive and leaves you with that tight little feeling in your throat. Even if you never show this to another soul, I think it’s useful to get the worst you can think of out of your system rather than tiptoeing towards more and more risqué things and also to learn how to make anything sexy, even if it’s totally beyond your own experience or fantasies. Another useful exercise is to make something really mundane sound hot. Something like knitting, say...

3. Copy

I’m joking. You shouldn’t copy other authors. But you should read as a writer, working out what it is about other authors that you like and how you can take elements of that and make them your own. I love the deep point of view and breathless stream of consciousness of Charlotte Stein, the literate quality and filthy daring of Janine Ashbless, the realistic and authoritative descriptions of BDSM in Fulani, the playful humour of Justine Elyot. Whatever strengths your favourite authors have, take those as your standard and aim to write that well.

4. Don’t sell out

Related to the last point is to always produce work you can be proud of. I know it’s not the done thing, especially for us Brits, to admit that we actually think we’re any good, but for me it’s really important to feel a personal sense of pride in what I write. This means not churning something out and thinking ‘it’ll do’. Not writing to ape the bestsellers. Not avoiding moral issues (and not the ones your gran, priest, teacher etc would be on about). The moral issues I’m thinking of are the safety of casual BDSM encounters, how easy it is to unwittingly slip into scenes of dubious consent, gender stereotypes, presenting straight sex as normative...

5. Don’t let it get personal

There are, of course, erotic memoirs or diaries out there – Diary of a Submissive and No Ordinary Love Story by Sophie Morgan spring to mind and both are great reads written by someone who has been very brave to bare her personal story. But they’re different from writing erotic fiction. You can’t base an entire writing career on your own exploits, however varied and exciting. And, for me, I start to get uneasy when real life creeps in a little too much, however much my imagination embellishes it. I can’t reveal which stories that’s happened in, although I can tell you it’s not the m/m ones... I use all manner of observations and snippets of conversation and things I’ve read as inspiration and to add unusual little details to my stories, but for the big picture it’s all my imagination. And yes, that can be a dark and strange place.

***

Tilly Hunter is a British erotica writer and editor with short stories out or in the pipeline from Xcite Books, House of Erotica, MLR Press, Cleis Press, Storm Moon Press, Coming Together and Ryan Field Press. Her trio of BDSM short stories, Miranda’s Tempest, gives a kinky twist to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Grimms’ Hansel and Gretel and Homer’s The Odyssey and is available at most online retailers or at Amazon or Amazon UK. Her editing and proofreading site is at www.tillyhunter.co.uk and she blogs at tillyhuntererotica.blogspot.co.uk.