Watch your language!
Steampunk pirate porn is going well.
I've never tried to write anything quite like this. My main character is Valor, a Victorian schoolboy, a gorgeous genius, but also a complete naïf who knows next to nothing about sex. He's been well-educated in a school largely free from religious prudery and has absorbed only a minimal amount of the freaky sexual baggage from his era, but that is still a lot of freaky baggage. He has never seen or touched a real naked woman in his life.
It's third-person subjective, meaning I'm having to adhere, for now, to his vocabulary for sex. This is a young man who (through no fault of his own) isn't even really aware that women can have orgasms, and thus even the idea that some women might enjoy sex in the same way that men do is so foreign to him it would seem weird if you suggested it. I am assuming that by his age, he'll have experience with male equipment simply because he's an owner, but I am not even sure he knows that pussy is wet.
It is so incredibly hard to try to think like someone that clueless. Thank god he's inquisitive and being held captive by a pervert, who will shortly remedy his lack of knowledge so thoroughly that his offspring, who will be born with handprints on their asses, will shortly after sexual maturity develop an uncanny, almost instinctive ability to give fantastic head.
All of this will make for wonderful comedy, but it's a pain in the ass when you can't have your character thinking in the kind of frankly sexual language that porn really relies on. What words do you use?
Because we're already sitting here talking about porn, let's look at just a few of our options. I'm leaving out many words, both useful and comical, but I think I hit most of the highlights.
Though it can be done really well, I generally dislike overly euphemistic descriptions: manhood, womanhood, member, passage. Many of them are all right, I suppose, but if you're going that route, please use "cock" or "pussy" just once, so I know one or both of the following things:
1) You don't think I'm a delicate flower who is interested in reading about sex but can't handle blue language.
or
2) You aren't striving for that fake elevated tone so common in porn/erotica. The one that most people try to accomplish by simply avoiding profanity instead of actually writing well.
And we mustn't forget "dick!" It's an old word and has an impressive pedigree and can be used to good effect, even if I usually eschew it in favor of "cock."
The strictly anatomical is a dreadful thing to inflict on a reader. "Penis" is a word one's earnestly square mother-in-law would use. "Testicles" is marginally better; I use it as a swear word sometimes, but it's not what you'd call sexy.
Don't get me started on "vagina." Especially as it is commonly used wrong. Hint: you can't really see the vagina from the outside without some spelunking and maybe a penlight. The external female anatomy is the vulva. That word is even worse still, as it not only sounds like a kind of car, but like a doddering old person's car with one turn signal perpetually blinking. Next time you read the word "vulva," you will picture an old man in a hat. See if I'm wrong.
The clitoris desperately needs a new name, or at least a couple more good, stable synonyms. You can only say "clit" so many times before you begin using cute words like pearl, button, and so forth, just to keep yourself sane, and that can easily shade into the purple.
I like "pussy." "Cunt" is really dirty, it's a big gun, it has impact, but if you pull it out at the wrong time, you will lose people. No "twat" in porn, please, it doesn't sound dirty; it's too funny. "Coochie" and "hoo-ha" and other assorted cutesy words . . . god no. "Cunny" is a nice older word that has been largely lost to us. "Snatch" sounds nasty, but can be useful precisely because of that, in the right context. Again, used wrong, it's horrible.
At least "breasts" is fine, and "tits." "Boobs" is too fourth-grade. "Bosoms" is so laden with melodrama that unless you are writing a romance novel from 1975 you should probably avoid it. I am not even going to touch "ta-tas," "mams," or "melons," and you should know better, too.
Then there's the thudding and semi-comical "buttocks." Ass, behind, backside, bottom . . . those are okay. "Arse," yes, great, use it if you like it. Just be aware that almost every American-English speaker reading your stuff will be so busy wondering whether or not you pronounce that "r" that they will skim over at least two sentences without remembering a damn thing you say. I realize that's a really USA-centric thing to say, but it's true. If that doesn't bother you, carry on. "Bum" is a fun word, but it's so cute and so colloquial and so inoffensive that using it in porn counts as a lapse in diction.
Then, we are inevitably forced to confront the anus. Used right, "anus" is unappealingly anatomical but isn't too jarring. Used wrong, it is screamingly funny. Despite the fact that everyone has one, it's very hard to use "anus" in writing or conversation without bringing the whole thing to a screeching halt.
"Asshole" or just "ass" is fine, but you should never use "butthole" in a sentence that is meant to be sexy. Anyone who writes it "butt hole" or "butt-hole" in something meant to inspire frantic onanism might need help from a really sadistic proofreader. If this applies to you, I mean no offense, but you know where else you see that? Porn website copy ("Paige loves getting rammed in her butt hole!") and semi-literate porn magazine letters ("I was so surprised when Lola-Janine said she wanted me to do her in the butt-hole that I darn near dropped my bottle of Jack!"). I should know, I dealt with that crap for several years. Best not to use it. It can make you look like a butthole.
Digression: Sargon saw it in a porn magazine letter once as "butt-hole," written just like that, with quotes around it. "I slid my greasy love torpedo into her 'butt-hole.'" No. Just . . . no. If you come across that one in the wild even once you will immediately understand what I mean when I say that some people should not be allowed near the English language without a sniper on the next roof over in case things go horribly, horribly wrong.
And, perhaps the most raging debate of them all. Did you come? I'm going to cum. She swallowed his come. I've never seen so much cum. He whimpers when he's coming. I could feel her cumming. Pre-come tastes the same as pre-cum. These words! They mean the same thing! They are spelled differently! And they possibly have different subtleties of connotation!
People have their preferences on this one and they will defend their position almost to the point of knife-fighting. There are genuinely compelling arguments for both cases, which I would not have admitted ten years ago, but I've softened in my old age. It doesn't kick me out of a piece like it used to.
I'm of the "I'm not going to let you come" school of thought myself. "Cum" often seems juvenile and tawdry. And yet, I have seen it used in really first-rate work and it didn't bother me.
I have actually seen the phrase "having a cum." That one had my brain on a dial tone for a minute. It's not horrible, but boy, did it look weird. Maybe it's a dialectical thing, the way some people say "watching a porno" instead of "watching porn" or "watching a porn movie."
There's a thin line between keeping something fresh and doing something silly, and a fine line between writing frankly and using a frank style to try to disguise a tin ear for language.
So, as you can see, pornographic language is a complicated! Important! Issue! And I bring it up solely so that next time you are reading porn - mine or anyone else's - you will stop for a moment and appreciate the fact that the writer at some point consciously balanced what words their point of view character would use with words that will not interrupt the torrent of filth so irrevocably that you stop wanking.
Thank you and goodnight.
I've never tried to write anything quite like this. My main character is Valor, a Victorian schoolboy, a gorgeous genius, but also a complete naïf who knows next to nothing about sex. He's been well-educated in a school largely free from religious prudery and has absorbed only a minimal amount of the freaky sexual baggage from his era, but that is still a lot of freaky baggage. He has never seen or touched a real naked woman in his life.
It's third-person subjective, meaning I'm having to adhere, for now, to his vocabulary for sex. This is a young man who (through no fault of his own) isn't even really aware that women can have orgasms, and thus even the idea that some women might enjoy sex in the same way that men do is so foreign to him it would seem weird if you suggested it. I am assuming that by his age, he'll have experience with male equipment simply because he's an owner, but I am not even sure he knows that pussy is wet.
It is so incredibly hard to try to think like someone that clueless. Thank god he's inquisitive and being held captive by a pervert, who will shortly remedy his lack of knowledge so thoroughly that his offspring, who will be born with handprints on their asses, will shortly after sexual maturity develop an uncanny, almost instinctive ability to give fantastic head.
All of this will make for wonderful comedy, but it's a pain in the ass when you can't have your character thinking in the kind of frankly sexual language that porn really relies on. What words do you use?
Because we're already sitting here talking about porn, let's look at just a few of our options. I'm leaving out many words, both useful and comical, but I think I hit most of the highlights.
Though it can be done really well, I generally dislike overly euphemistic descriptions: manhood, womanhood, member, passage. Many of them are all right, I suppose, but if you're going that route, please use "cock" or "pussy" just once, so I know one or both of the following things:
1) You don't think I'm a delicate flower who is interested in reading about sex but can't handle blue language.
or
2) You aren't striving for that fake elevated tone so common in porn/erotica. The one that most people try to accomplish by simply avoiding profanity instead of actually writing well.
And we mustn't forget "dick!" It's an old word and has an impressive pedigree and can be used to good effect, even if I usually eschew it in favor of "cock."
The strictly anatomical is a dreadful thing to inflict on a reader. "Penis" is a word one's earnestly square mother-in-law would use. "Testicles" is marginally better; I use it as a swear word sometimes, but it's not what you'd call sexy.
Don't get me started on "vagina." Especially as it is commonly used wrong. Hint: you can't really see the vagina from the outside without some spelunking and maybe a penlight. The external female anatomy is the vulva. That word is even worse still, as it not only sounds like a kind of car, but like a doddering old person's car with one turn signal perpetually blinking. Next time you read the word "vulva," you will picture an old man in a hat. See if I'm wrong.
The clitoris desperately needs a new name, or at least a couple more good, stable synonyms. You can only say "clit" so many times before you begin using cute words like pearl, button, and so forth, just to keep yourself sane, and that can easily shade into the purple.
I like "pussy." "Cunt" is really dirty, it's a big gun, it has impact, but if you pull it out at the wrong time, you will lose people. No "twat" in porn, please, it doesn't sound dirty; it's too funny. "Coochie" and "hoo-ha" and other assorted cutesy words . . . god no. "Cunny" is a nice older word that has been largely lost to us. "Snatch" sounds nasty, but can be useful precisely because of that, in the right context. Again, used wrong, it's horrible.
At least "breasts" is fine, and "tits." "Boobs" is too fourth-grade. "Bosoms" is so laden with melodrama that unless you are writing a romance novel from 1975 you should probably avoid it. I am not even going to touch "ta-tas," "mams," or "melons," and you should know better, too.
Then there's the thudding and semi-comical "buttocks." Ass, behind, backside, bottom . . . those are okay. "Arse," yes, great, use it if you like it. Just be aware that almost every American-English speaker reading your stuff will be so busy wondering whether or not you pronounce that "r" that they will skim over at least two sentences without remembering a damn thing you say. I realize that's a really USA-centric thing to say, but it's true. If that doesn't bother you, carry on. "Bum" is a fun word, but it's so cute and so colloquial and so inoffensive that using it in porn counts as a lapse in diction.
Then, we are inevitably forced to confront the anus. Used right, "anus" is unappealingly anatomical but isn't too jarring. Used wrong, it is screamingly funny. Despite the fact that everyone has one, it's very hard to use "anus" in writing or conversation without bringing the whole thing to a screeching halt.
"Asshole" or just "ass" is fine, but you should never use "butthole" in a sentence that is meant to be sexy. Anyone who writes it "butt hole" or "butt-hole" in something meant to inspire frantic onanism might need help from a really sadistic proofreader. If this applies to you, I mean no offense, but you know where else you see that? Porn website copy ("Paige loves getting rammed in her butt hole!") and semi-literate porn magazine letters ("I was so surprised when Lola-Janine said she wanted me to do her in the butt-hole that I darn near dropped my bottle of Jack!"). I should know, I dealt with that crap for several years. Best not to use it. It can make you look like a butthole.
Digression: Sargon saw it in a porn magazine letter once as "butt-hole," written just like that, with quotes around it. "I slid my greasy love torpedo into her 'butt-hole.'" No. Just . . . no. If you come across that one in the wild even once you will immediately understand what I mean when I say that some people should not be allowed near the English language without a sniper on the next roof over in case things go horribly, horribly wrong.
And, perhaps the most raging debate of them all. Did you come? I'm going to cum. She swallowed his come. I've never seen so much cum. He whimpers when he's coming. I could feel her cumming. Pre-come tastes the same as pre-cum. These words! They mean the same thing! They are spelled differently! And they possibly have different subtleties of connotation!
People have their preferences on this one and they will defend their position almost to the point of knife-fighting. There are genuinely compelling arguments for both cases, which I would not have admitted ten years ago, but I've softened in my old age. It doesn't kick me out of a piece like it used to.
I'm of the "I'm not going to let you come" school of thought myself. "Cum" often seems juvenile and tawdry. And yet, I have seen it used in really first-rate work and it didn't bother me.
I have actually seen the phrase "having a cum." That one had my brain on a dial tone for a minute. It's not horrible, but boy, did it look weird. Maybe it's a dialectical thing, the way some people say "watching a porno" instead of "watching porn" or "watching a porn movie."
There's a thin line between keeping something fresh and doing something silly, and a fine line between writing frankly and using a frank style to try to disguise a tin ear for language.
So, as you can see, pornographic language is a complicated! Important! Issue! And I bring it up solely so that next time you are reading porn - mine or anyone else's - you will stop for a moment and appreciate the fact that the writer at some point consciously balanced what words their point of view character would use with words that will not interrupt the torrent of filth so irrevocably that you stop wanking.
Thank you and goodnight.