How to Write Pulp Erotica

By: Punchinello

I don't presume to know how to write great fiction, or even how to write great erotica. But pulp I know. Here is my method. I'd be very interested to hear what you think about it and where it could be improved.

Step 1: Get an Idea

Ideas can come from many sources: movies, TV, novels and stories, art and photographs, your own dirty fantasies, or something that happened or almost happened to you. To key to pulp is that the sexual element is intertwined with a non-sexual element like adventure, mystery, danger, or horror. Often, the idea may only be a single image or thought; rarely is it a full-fledged plot sprung to life.

For example, maybe a hot picture of Cameron Diaz in a swimming pool sparks your interest and reminds you of an old pulp novel you saw called Loves of a Girl Wrestler. Suddenly, you think: how about a story about a chick who is into competitive swimming and diving? Swimmers have great bodies, and the world of competitive sports is always full of petty cattiness and casual sex....

Step 2: Write It Down

Don't underestimate the need to write down your ideas. Keep a writer's journal of titles, scenes, bits of dialog, etc. Just the act of writing down everything you can think of about that idea can spark additional ideas.

I keep a Word document with many, many such ideas—some of which have been in there for years, and I just haven't had that spark that would allow me to develop them into plots.

So you make up a working title for the swimming/diving story: "Wet" and write down that "Lynn" loves swimmers. Then the wordplay hits you: she loves swimmers so much that she's always "wet."

Let's say that one of the main things that attracts you to the story is the image of notorious "Lynn" slipping into the men's locker room and going down on hunky "Rogan," the star diver. Since this is more exploitation than adventure, it could use a theme. A moralistic theme is common in exploitation; it justifies the sensationalistic aspects of the story (American publishers used to have to justify smutty books to the government or be charged with transporting obscene material across state lines). The theme for this idea is a common one: Lynn is a bad girl who does nasty things, but what goes around comes around.

Step 3: Develop the Plot

I usually write down ideas and let them stew for a while while I work on other things. Rarely do I try to bring an idea to life immediately after conceiving it. Let it gestate and germinate; come back to it now and then to see if what you've written sparks any new ideas. When you feel that you're ready to tackle it, develop the plot for the story in a loose paragraph. This lays the foundation for the whole story to come later, so you may want to take a couple of swings at it before settling on one storyline.

At this point, I usually transfer the idea to its own document, which will eventually come to be the finished story.

For "Wet," we'll ask ourselves: what does a sports-related story usually have or need? and what are elements common to swimming and diving that make for good stories? Well, there's the competition itself, of course, so there will have to be a big swim meet or diving meet. And we've positioned our main character "Lynn" as a promiscuous little minx who gets what she wants at any cost, so there should be some catty drama and plenty of cheap sex. What else? Homosexuality, sports-related injury, maybe a cheating scandal, maybe drugs.

Okay: Lynn wants pro diver "Rogan" and steps all over her friend "Ronnie" to get at him. When she discovers that Rogan's coach is gay, she tells Rogan in order to endear herself to him, but Rogan overreacts, and he and the coach part ways. Now Rogan is without a coach at a crucial time before a big meet; Lynn's plan has backfired! Now, for added drama, we also want a party where a diver gets drunk and cracks his skull on the bottom of a pool. This will help underscore the idea that there are nasty consequences to being ruthless; so maybe Lynn should be blamed for that too.

Now we have a story; it's not ready to be written yet, tho. We need to develop an outline that makes these elements come together.

We could have gone a completely different route with this, of course. Maybe Lynn's main goal is winning, and she uses sex to get the right coach and to ruin other swimmers. Then, proving that "cheaters never prosper," she loses the big swim meet to the cute virgin.

Step 4: Create the Outline

The outline is a critical stage often overlooked by novice writers. The outline is the backbone of the story. It gives it shape and form; and it gives it a finite beginning, middle, and ending. That's key to your story. You have to know where it is going. You can't let your characters "determine their own destinies." That leads to weak, noncommittal endings that mirror real-life too much. For pulp and exploitation, like any blockbuster Hollywood movie, you want a big finish that leaves the reader wide-eyed and breathless. It needs to build to a climax... just like an orgasm.

To create the outline, I write short, single-thought sentences that name the characters clearly (avoiding pronouns). That way, I can rearrange the sentences at will without keeping two events together that are only partly related or confusing yourself about which character you were talking about for a given scene.

For sex stories, it's important to bring in the action quickly: page two or three. It doesn't have to be a full sex scene, but at least a sexy taste of what's to come (so to speak). Then, depending on the length of the story, you'll want about a page or page and a half of plot between sex scenes; much more than that and you'll lose readers—even in pulp, where the reader expects some gunplay, fights, chases, and what-have-you. However, the conclusion itself shouldn't be more than a page or so away from the last sex scene and could even be a sex scene (the characters declare their love in the midst of danger, etc.).

For "Wet," we'll start with the idea that Lynn and her friend Ronnie are swimmers and teammates who both want Rogan. Lynn is willing to go farther to get him, so she slips into the showers and sucks him off. When Lynn discovers that Rogan's coach is gay, she uses it to get sex from a couple of other guys on the team, Brad and Tony, who are eager to show they're not gay. However, Tony is the boyfriend of Marla, another friend of Lynn, and they break up because of it.

At a party, Ronnie hangs on Rogan's arm, so Lynn screws Brad again to make Rogan jealous. But the party takes a dark turn when the drunken, distraught Tony cracks his skull in the pool. Marla, Brad, and pretty much everyone else, blame Lynn.

Lynn tries to win Rogan by divulging that his coach is gay, but Rogan overreacts, and his coach Pete quits. Ronnie is angry with Lynn for ruining Rogan's relationship with his coach at a crucial time before the big meet, and the two girls get into a poolside catfight. Randy Rogan settles the fight by pinning Ronnie on top of Lynn and fucking her from behind.

Ronnie starts helping Rogan with his diving, and Lynn is left alone. On the day of the big meet, Lynn tries to sabotage Rogan's chances by some nasty method. But Rogan wins anyway, and Lynn is thrown off the swim team and threatened with criminal charges if she makes any more trouble. Lynn's world collapses, and she is defeated and humiliated... for now.

Step 5: Write the Damn Thing

Decide how long each scene should be and separate them with temporary page numbers so you don't go overboard. This will help you be sure that you have the right amount of material (you can even write scenes out of order if you want). I do my writing in MS Word and leave the default margins so that every document has the same setup.

If you're not an experienced writer, look over a novel carefully and note the way that professionals write. Write in the past tense, use standard punctuation, etc. It's especially important to make the dialog read smoothly, so be sure to follow conventions like starting a new paragraph when you have a speaker. Fiction allows for more creative use of sentence structure than formal writing, but don't go overboard or the story itself will suffer and you'll lose readers.

And, for pity's sake, use a spellchecker. Adding a disclaimer that your "speling isnt' verry good" is not going to impress anyone.

Step 6: Write Revise the Damn Thing

Once you written the story, put it away for a few days. When you come back to it, reread the whole story from the point of view of your audience. Did you get to the sex relatively quickly? Are the sex scenes too rushed or too drawn out? Do you have decent plot in between, or is it hack porn?

Some writing guides will tell you that half of writing is rewriting. I'm here to say that that's crap, at least for pulp. If you've planned the story out, outlined it, and written to your outline, you should have a fine story. The revision stage should allow you to clarify certain passages that aren't as clear as you thought and maybe punch up the dialog (and fix hasty grammar mistakes). This isn't a multimillion dollar Hollywood blockbuster, after all; and most of those are rewritten to death by half a dozen writers who end up with a pile of shit at the end anyway.

You'll also want to give it a final title. A good, pulpy title has elements of sin and sadism; adventure and adrenaline; horror, terror, and triumph. Here are a few actual pulp and exploitation titles:

Satan's Sin House, Girls for the Coffin Syndicate, Love Queen of the Pygmies, Valley of the Silent Men, Little Gay Girls, Those Nude Teen Beatnik Joygirls, The Virgin Sex Slaves of Arabia's Whip-Mad Sheik, Confessions of a Psychiatrist, Reform School Girl, Hypno-Sin, The Hell-Plot of the Nazi Nymphos, Murder Me for Nickels, Phantom Fangs, The Fighting Harlots of Cay Chi, The Slithering Shadow, The Black Gargoyle.

Some of these would make fine sex stories and many were (by the standards of the era). The name of the game was "readership." You had to make sure your magazine or novel would stand out on the shelves and scream "Read me!" The same is true in a lot of ways if you're posting to a newsgroup or on the World Wide Web.

For "Wet," we'll keep the working title. It just works so well with the cover art blurb. An old-style pulp adventure would have a more sensationalist title like "Cobra Queen of the Sapphire Pool," (and, if you're lucky, cobras and sapphires in the story somewhere) but "Wet" is a good exploitationist title with a smutty double meaning that won't be lost on anyone.

Step 7: Post it!

Hey, don't forget to post your work on the Web or in a newsgroup. The world forum for English language sex stories is alt.sex.stories.moderated, a true bastion of intellectual freedom. And there are plenty of websites where you can submit your work, including this one. Pulp Erotica is always looking to expand its library and provide readers with the most thrilling erotica possible.

Check out the complete story of "Wet"!

Punch

Editor-in-Chief