Broken Spines #12: How to write a 🫦Spicy Book 🌶️

Hello everyone. How are you all doing?

Today I am coming to you with a very interesting topic and that is, how should one write a sexy book with lots of sexy scenes. I was a little nervous posting this blog because this is such a taboo topic and not a lot of people talk about this. But then I thought, you know what, I’m going to do it. This is important, yes, erotica is an important genre and I’m going to tell you why in a minute but first I wanna mention why I was hesitating in the first place.

Women are not encouraged to enjoy sex or even talk about sex…In fact, we can’t even think about sex because for a lot of people, women are supposed to be these examples of purity and sensibility and innocent, oblivious and inexperienced maidens. Now, of course, sex in general is a taboo topic that even men are not encouraged to talk openly about it but in comparison to men, women are just assumed and also raised in a way as if they don’t have desires and if they do, they are shallow and deserve to be slut shamed.

Let me give you a personal example. I was around thirteen years old or so, and I was reading this book by Chetan Bhagat called Five Point Someone and there was this very brief bedroom scene and I was called “shameless” by a boy in my class for bringing the book and reading it in school.

I was like, dude, this book isn’t even about all that.

But reading one chapter about a bedroom scene was enough for that person to call me shameless.

Another day in school when I was reading a different book and I don’t even remember what book that was, a guy friend of mine told me that I shouldn’t be reading this book because I’m a girl and in this book the girl gets pregnant. When I asked him, “So?”, he looked at me like I had grown two heads.

Like, all I’m doing is reading the book, bro. Chill.

It’s funny because later that day, the guy friend asked to borrow that book from me. Apparently, it’s okay for guys to read that stuff. Boys will be boys but girls must behave and stay oblivious.

As you can see, I was getting shamed just for reading brief bedroom chapters. Chapters!!! Not even heavy smutty, erotic book as a whole, and it’s not just guys but girls too shame other girls when they mention anything related to sex, which is honestly so sad.

Thankfully, for me, even at that young age, I was mature enough to understand the concept of sex education, consent and that reading this stuff is okay, so these things didn’t really bother me. But the shaming kind of got stuck in my mind. So, eventually, as I grew up I started judging and shaming myself for reading books that contain even one or two steamy scenes.

Then when I was of age, that was when I discovered Wattpad because I was so obsessed with One Direction fanfictions on there, and I encountered my first ever smut filled erotica. That’s when the cognitive dissonance began. Because although I still liked reading steamy scenes and the way they were written in so carefully and so descriptively, I also started judging myself for liking those scenes.

BECAUSE OMG, I’M A GIRL. I CAN’T READ THAT. WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY. I’M SUCH A DISGUSTING, SHAMELESS GIRL!!!!!

I still liked smut though because it was realistic. So, I even included two brief erotic bedroom scenes in my first ever book which was a Liam Payne fanfiction on Wattpad and I made sure that the whole thing was consensual, between two adults and something that wasn’t just about physical intimacy but also had love and romance and an actual story that brings the two characters together. Even the books I read till then weren’t dark or anything, fortunately and maybe that’s why I liked reading smut that was written like that. The books always had a story besides the sexy stuff and there was always consent included.

But like I said, there was a dissonance going inside my head. One part of me was like, Oh, I’m a feminist. I love being empowered and independent, and then another part of me was like, feminist, who? You like romantic eroticas where girls submissively give in to men’s pleasure and desires.

And then finally one day when I bought and read the Fifty Shades trilogy, I was done. I finally gave up on steamy scenes because I didn’t resonate with the BDSM scenes and the dark romance. I thought this whole smut thing was a wrong idea and that I had gone bad, so I even stopped reading and writing stuff that included steamy scenes. I even started advocating for romantic stories that had no physical intimacy. I started saying, “love isn’t all about sex. You can love someone without being physically intimate with them,” and “oh, eroticas have no plot. Books with smut are inherently bad and toxic!”

Although even now I still would most definitely advocate for books that have no steamy scenes and just warm, fluffy romance because that’s cute, and love most definitely doesn’t just have to be about sex and there is nothing wrong with that. The difference is that earlier I was doing all of this to separate myself from a lover of erotic books and totally focusing on being the “good girl who reads good books”. But now I’ve realized that reading or writing smut and erotic stuff doesn’t make me or the plot bad.

I’ve realized that the erotic genre and the smut is in fact very important. Here’s why.

EROTICA BOOKS ARE IMPORTANT BECAUSE

1. SEX EDUCATION

Maybe you had parents that gave you sex education and maybe you went to schools where they gave you enough information to answer all of your questions about sex but for the majority of us, especially girls, we weren’t given this information. In fact, for some of us, the whole chapter on reproduction was skipped. Forget about sex education and general awareness around sex and precautions.

I would never have known about sex, female and male body and what organ does what if it wasn’t for these smut scenes and erotic books. I never would have known about how reproduction really works. I never would have known about consent and what it really means. I never would have known that consent is not just limited to accepting no as an answer but that consent is also SAYING NO AT ANY GIVEN POINT DURING THE TIME WHEN SOMEONE IS GETTING PHYSICAL. I never would have known about safe words. I would not have known that it’s okay to say no if you are in a relationship or when you really love someone but you are just not comfortable with them touching you right at this moment.

If anything, smut and erotica has saved me and so many other people and has taught us some really important lessons!

I don’t even have to worry about someone walking in on me while I’m reading smut. It’s not like I’m watching something adult and they will see it. I don’t have to suffer watching anything disgusting or disturbingly graphic that I don’t feel comfortable with, I can just skim that part if I want to. I also don’t get any internet virus that people usually get from watching adult stuff online, and I’m also getting free sex education. It’s a win-win, in my opinion.

2. NORMALIZES SEXUAL DESIRES IN WOMEN

Women are also humans and like men, or anyone else, we also have sexual desires and urges. It’s not something to make fun of or something to be ashamed of. Sex is one of the most natural ways of connecting with your body, the nature and the divine, in my opinion. It is sacred if anything but the society has made it so that we are shamed for even thinking or mentioning it in daily life.

Erotica novels have taught me that it is okay to accept your sexual desires and that women’s sexual urges are just as normal as men’s sexual urges. Many of these books have also normalized honoring self pleasure practices which I think is so empowering for women and I highly encourage it!

3. FOCUSES ON WOMEN’S PLEASURE

If you notice carefully, erotica books are mostly written by women and I find that so empowering because women present women’s point of view. Usually if you look at adult videos or films or even songs, men’s pleasure is given more importance and focus because these sexual contents are made in a way that mostly focuses on male audiences and their needs. Women’s pleasure and their desires are not focused. Because it’s assumed that women don’t have any.

For example, if you watch even music videos of songs or listen to the lyrics, the main focus is on objectifying women and sexualising intimacy in the favour of men’s desires. These are written from male’s point of view for male audiences. But then there is a song by Shawn Mendes which goes like, “Teach me how to love you” and that song in my opinion is so fabulous and sexy at the same time! It does not sexualise women and is also focusing on what women like, instead of men’s pleasure.

It’s the same thing with erotica books written by women and written in women’s point of view, these introduces women to the idea of women owning up to their pleasure and their desires. It normalises the act of opening up to sexual experiences and desires, and since these are written from women’s perspective, there is no chance of women getting objectified or sexualised. In fact, on the contrary, it’s very empowering!

Writing erotic stories from the perspective of women is all about the desires, the sexual experiences and how that makes them feel. It’s all about women and their pleasure, and that is something that I feel we need more in writing smut and erotic stories.

When I was researching for this blog, I found this article that stated the same thing that I am trying to prove here- According to Indian journalist and author Sreemoyee Piu Kundu, feminist erotica is “about strong women having dialogues with themselves, discovering who they truly are.” “Feminist erotica allows women to reclaim their space, make their characters considerably more interesting and ready to engage in sensual acts on their own terms, rather than being passive recipients of pleasure, obeying a man’s commands.” You can read more here.

MISREPRESENTATIONS OF SEX IN EROTICAS

Although now some of us know that eroticas aren’t bad but sex scenes in books has gotten a lot of bad reputation overtime and the reasons don’t necessarily narrow down to readers not preferring erotica as a genre. In fact, there are many misrepresentations of intimacy in books and media, in general. Let’s see what these misrepresentations look like-

1. Unrealistic sex scenes

In eroticas and books with smut scenes, in general, the scenes, the know-how, the descriptions and majority of the things are not based on reality. For instance, you may come across certain body shape or type repeated in these books that you would not see in reality because obviously we all are built different. But some of these books really focus on a certain ideal representation that sexualises both, men and women and also makes it an unrealistic standard that one must meet in reality.

Unrealistic sex scenes doesn’t just limit to body images but also the way it is conducted in books is pretty unrealistic. While I was researching for this post, I also came across this very interesting post that talked about Fifty Shades of Grey in specific and said, “People think that Fifty Shades of Grey is real. That’s the problem with it. They think that this is how it actually works.” You should definitely give it a read here.

2. Romanticising abuse as BDSM and the dark romances

“This is just a dark romance. It’s not meant to be cute.”

Yes, but it isn’t meant to be abusive and violent either.

It’s horrifying how so many people, women majorly, end up in abusive sexual relationships just because they confuse it with BDSM and dark romance, and because they do not have a clear understanding of consent and sex. Violence is not romantic!

I came across another post about Fifty Shades of Grey that won my heart because I was like, “SO TRUE”. It said, “BDSM is about pleasure from pain. Wanting to hurt a sexual partner just for them to be hurt is not BDSM. It’s simply abuse.

“I think that (Christian and Ana’s relationship) is abuse,” English with ALI Fernanda Costa said. “He can do whatever he wants to do with her. She can’t say anything. She just has to accept things…. I think he takes advantage and takes what he wants. I think he takes care of everything in their relationship and she just submits” You can read the full post over here. I highly recommend it.

So, What is the right way of writing an erotica?

1. UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A SMUT AND AN EROTICA

Smut generally translated is “dirty” and I think it loosely But in the context of books, smut is the written, descriptive scene about intimacy and one that contains a lot of graphic representation of the scene.

Erotica is the story with a lot of smut scenes. Get it?

With many books that I’ve read, one common problem amongst many that I have come across is that people write book length sequence of smut scenes with no story (or a very bad one) and call it an erotica. Now, I love me some steamy romance but all I get is the steam, and that too is short lived because there is no story, no real tension, no stakes. So, sometimes even the steam is not worth the read because of it.

So, please invest in plotting, character creation (and try not to include the bad boy with the childhood trauma, that is so overdone!) and create a story that makes the reader crave for the intimate scenes. Don’t just go killing the vibe starting off with the sexy scenes. Tell the readers why your characters feel attracted to each other, add tension (both, story related and sexual) and then add the smut. Create some mystery and some actual connection between the characters, otherwise only a few scenes of your book will be worth reading, and not the whole book.

2. CONSENT

This is a given but please make sure that the sexual scenes that you are writing are all consensual, and just so you don’t forget or define consent in your own terms, let me tell you what consent really means-

1. If someone says no and the other character pushes them or tries to convince them or keeps asking them for their consent, then that is not consensual. That is an attempt to rape. If both of the people verbally (without any need of convincing) agreed, then that is consent.

2. If a person says yes but halfway in the course of intimacy, they start feeling uncomfortable and say no but the other person pushes them then that is NOT consent. You are allowed to say no at any given point of that thing if you do not feel comfortable.

3. When a person is sleeping or passed out or drunk then their word does not matter. Both of the persons should be in their full consciousness while consenting for anything for that matter, let alone intimacy.

4. If they are wearing certain type of clothing, that shouldn’t lead the other person to assume that they have given their consent or that they are “asking for it”

5. When they talk about intimacy with a minor (or anyone inexperienced), gain their trust and convince them to give their consent, and if they do give their consent, then that is still not consensual. That is called grooming.

6. Declaring “I’m going to kiss you” is not asking “can I kiss you?” Hence, not a consent!

7. If they are in a relationship/married, they are allowed to say no.

8. If they are a sex worker, they are allowed to say no

I think there are more ways to define consent but these are all I can remember right now. If you know more, please comment them down below.

3. WOMEN’S PLEASURE AND WOMEN’S POV

Writing about women’s pleasure from a women’s pov is thankfully not underdone (is that even a word?) in erotica and books in general, which is something I’m really grateful for, and when I say, women’s pleasure, I’m talking about how intimacy and certain sexual experiences makes a woman feel and how they acknowledge that feeling.

Unlike men, who always somehow end up objectifying and sexualizing women in the name of pleasure, women just acknowledge their bodies and how it makes them feel in certain experiences, without having to sexualize anyone. So, can we all learn a lesson here?

When you’re writing erotica or romance in general-

• Stop sexualising people!

• Focus on how that makes your character feel

• Brownie points if you write from a women’s perspective because that will normalise the idea that women too like sex and will hopefully teach the audience to accept their femininity as a whole.

4. Do NOT sexualise races/communities

I had to write about this specifically because I recently read a book about a male character who made it very specific in the entirety of the book that he liked Asian women specifically, and that was so triggering and so disgusting!! So, please, just don’t.

5. YOUR CHARACTER DOES NOT HAVE TO BE BAD OR HAVE CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

Yes, it’s a cliche for a reason because we all like characters with a morally grey personality but it is soooooooo overdone! That’s literally every Wattpad book ever!!! Let’s be a little creative. Besides, you can still end up with a great erotica story with a character with good intentions and a fairly okay childhood.

6. PLEASE ADD A WARNING

Please add a warning disclaimer for people under 18 to understand that this story is not for them (especially if you are writing a book online).

Thank you so much for reading this post. Make sure you hit the subscribe button so you can never miss any updates. I write blogs about writing books because writing is a huge responsibility that you shouldn’t take lightly.