One of the points of realism I try to include in my erotica is in the dialogue. Sure, classic erotica might use certain words or phrases, but these days the consumers of erotica are more discerning. They don’t want someone to randomly say “ooh, spank me harder, baby!”
Dirty talk just looks weird on the page sometimes, and it can get repetitive. Plus, while it can be realistic, it doesn’t always look or read realistically.
If you look at a recent evening in my life that contained spanking and sex, you’ll find that, while there was some dirty talk, it wasn’t the entire focus of the thing. During the spanking, for example, she never said “harder” or “more”; when Partner 1 makes encouraging noises, they’re generally nonverbal. Those are hard to write, and every reaction being “mmm” or “umm” or “emm” will get repetitive after a while. I might sometimes write the onomatopoeia of a moan, but I’m more likely to describe it rather than make it dialogue.
Also during the spanking, we took a few breaks to discuss personal things that I won’t share here. At one point, she said “I’m out of my headspace now”, which isn’t generally something people say in spanking erotica. Erotica readers are reading for things to be realistic but with the sharp edges sanded off (although that’s not always how I write), and they don’t want a scene to be interrupted by anything. Not a pet, not a kid, not a stray thought, not a worry; none of that stuff. In real life, though, spankings often are broken up with realistic discussions, at least in the beginning. Once the spanking really gets down to business, it’s mostly “mmm” and me saying things like “someone’s getting pretty warm back here” or “where do you think you’re going?” (That’s a fun one when they try to squirm away, especially when coupled with grabbing them by the hip hard enough to hurt a little — always with consent, mind you.)
After the spanking, though, once we got to the sex part of the night, I can’t really see myself writing — at least, not often — some of the things I said. “How did I end up with such a good girl?” I asked her while she was on her knees in front of me. “Do you like how hard I am for you?” Both phrases that work for our relationship, but feel hackneyed when I see them on the page. Or, if not hackneyed, then at the very least tawdry, and I for one am not into tawdry erotica.
Then, while I was fucking her, I was asking her if she was going to come on my cock, and telling her I could feel it, and how good of a girl she was for doing it. Again, things that work great in person, but in erotica they don’t come across as well on the page. Trust me; I’ve tried to write stories with this kind of dialogue, and it never seems to work. Oh, there are times when I have one character or another — usually the one receiving penetration — ask for more, or harder. But I don’t overuse it, and if I were to go back and look at the last ten times I had sex with Partner 1, I would see a pattern of the same types of things I said, because they work for us and our relationship and dynamic. Readers of erotica — even when the relationships are long-established and comfortable — don’t want to read the same sex scenes over and over again, even if, in real life, you have extremely fulfilling sex that tends to follow one or two general patterns of activity.
Plus, it would get boring for me to write the same sex (or spanking) over and over. It’s why I had so much trouble with Holiday Heat the longer it went on — I felt like I’d exhausted all of the possible permutations and combinations of spanking and sex that interested me (and I generally don’t write about things I’m not interested in), and I felt like I was starting to repeat myself. I mean, I wasn’t — every story in those anthologies is different — but that’s how it felt to me.
Dirty talk is great. Dirty talk in erotica isn’t always great. And “ooh, spank me harder, baby!” will probably never appear in anything I write.
Except for this blog post.
