Tips for Creating Stories Women Appreciate

[Kelliezgirl]

I just want to say that it's really really nice to be in a thread where women (& some guys too!) are communicating about writing erotica. I'm the only one in my circle of friends who writes smut & it's great there's a little community of us online! I appreciate the comments from some of the guys - although some of the vocal male comment makers (not specifically restricted to this thread) seem to be primarily focused on the 'erotic' (leaning heavily to Pornhub-style) rather than 'erotic literature'. No shade. No kink-shaming. But I'm fully appreciating some of the incredible writers on this site (glad I wandered in). This seems like a nice gang.

One of the challenges is how we define erotic vs. erotic literature.
One woman's art is another woman's porn.
There is an element of Justice Stewart's "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it" aphorism.

 

[Lovealippy]

For me, it's all about the writing - the more detail and description, the better. Personal prefetences are for contemporary settings and realism, ie things that are relateable.

 

[Britva415]

Are they described like the male characters

I've definitely seen women with 12" dicks around here.

 

[redgarters]

To elaborate on what I like, intelligent women who have bonds with other characters. Or smart women who have difficulty forming bonds with other characters. Please give us a journey of discovery. There can be a conniving bitch as the antagonist or a disgusting man who stands in her way. It needn't be a love story. We can have sex for the sake of sex, but still feel it emotionally. We don't care about penis size, breast size, or a perfect body (at least I don't). We care about the struggles, the heartache, the victory or defeat. We want women we can relate to who are strong in spirit and sometimes physically strong.

Pass a bowling ball through your penis and tell me how tough you are. If you can't do that, you have no idea how tough a woman is!!!

Putting soap box back in closet.

I struggled with this when I started writing LS - how do I, as a male, write believable and engaging female characters, and from a female POV? It's very hard. I feel I still have a lot to learn to do it properly.

What I generally find is what @MillieDynamite points out very well and what @Omenainen 's Pink Orchid challenge is all about: Give your female characters agency. Create them as fleshed out, mulitdimensional, real characters and not single dimensional sex bots. Make them breakable, fragile, strong, emotional, logical or smart, - and sometimes all of those at once. Because that's how people are.

People often like to read stories and characters they can connect with in some way. To build that connection the characters need to feel things and express those feelings in ways that we the readers can relate to in some way.
Very generalized, I agree with many here who have said that women readers are probably more likely to look for those connections in the stories than men (I'm probably an outlier in that sense, I may even skip over the sex bits if the romance of the story has me hooked).

So I guess my two bits is, that if you want to attract female readers, make your characters someone who people can connect with. Writers here often focus on the How and What and When and Where. But when it comes to the connection, the Why is Queen.

 

[AG31]

This has been an interesting thread. It raises the question in my mind as to whether women want to read about women or about men. I feel as if it is the former. For me it is the latter.

 

[8letters]

I'd like to toss some statistics into the discussion. For 34 weeks, I gathered the comments on stories after 28 days. When I did, I got the identifier for the commenter. When people create their Literotica accounts, they can specify their gender. The percentage of meaningful responses has declined significantly over the years, making this data shaky. But it's the best that we have.

F and M means Female and Male. ? means not given and O means Other. The first four percentages are the percentage of all comments by a Literotica user. The last columns are the percentages when I just look at Female and Male commenters.

Thoughts:
* Lesbian Sex by far has the highest percentage of female commenters
* Loving Wives has the lowest percentage of female commenters
* Novels and Novellas has to me a surprisingly high percentage of female commenters
* T&C unsurprisingly has the highest percentage of Other commenters
* Romance, to my surprise, is very middle-of-the-road for percentage of female commenters
* Gay Male has the second highest percentage of male commenters
* I/T is not far behind Gay Male for the third highest percentage of male commenters. That agrees with my impression is that the vast majority of commenters on my stories are male

 

[NotWise]

I've always suspected that users who don't specify a gender are more often female than male. Men, after all, give women reasons to be guarded about their gender. If so, then the large percentage of commenters who didn't specify a gender means that the values in the two right columns may not be meaningful.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

This has been an interesting thread. It raises the question in my mind as to whether women want to read about women or about men. I feel as if it is the former. For me it is the latter.

Men like to read about women. Women like to read about both.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

There is a biological aspect to what turns us all on.

I watched some nature doc years ago. It showed the culture of chimpanzees. The female sat there as all the males circled around. I couldn't help but think that the expression on her face said, "come on guys, impress me." Maybe I'm wrong there but whatever. Anyways, a male approached and gave her fruit. Then he started grooming her. Then she said, "okay," and they went off and did it.

So what happened here? The female is thinking, I'm going to have babies and my babies need to be fed, so the dude that sires them has to be able to hunt/gather and have skills. This dude showed skills and diligence and so she said yes. It's a practical thing. How does that translate into our modern society? Well we don't hunt or gather much but we do work and earn money. Therefore, a man with means (money) provides providence and that makes him attractive. Now personally, I'm so terminally arty that I don't care about money (that's my problem, not judging anyone), but I totally understand women who are attracted to that and why.

Also, we all know about mountain sheep butting heads to see who is the strongest. The females sit back and watch the show and the winners of the head butting get laid. These females are thinking, I'm going to have babies and my babies need to be strong to survive the hard conditions up here, so the dude who sires them needs to have strong genes. So in our modern society, if a guy looks buff, women tend to be turned on.

Lions, males with pretty manes get laid. I suppose that a good mane shows good health, strong constitution (good genes). So in modern society, when a woman sees a pretty guy, she's turned on.

If a guy is popular, he could have social influence. That could help the family, so that could be attractive.

If a guy is clever/smart/creative/ingenious, that can help the family/community, so that can be attractive.

If a guy has skills, medical/mechanical/carpentry/cooking, that can definitely help the family, so that can be attractive.

If a guy is confident/decisive/assertive and is a leader, that can help the family/community, so that can be attractive.

If a guy is brave ... pretty obvious.

The list goes on.

Of course, every woman has different turn-ons, but they all stem from some biological factor. My point is that if a woman is going to jump some random guy's bones (or even just lay down for him), he has to give her a reason. The vast majority of stories on lit don't do that and so female readers are taken out of the moment when they read them. It's not an engaging experience at all.

 

[ShinyCrazyDi]

Wow that's a lot of work, I REALLY appreciate your hard work compiling the data. Fascinating stuff.

Would like to also float the idea that as gender is both complicated, blurry & self-selected, some men may deliberately pretend to be women on sites like this, giving them a way to explore certain kinks. & vice versa.

I'm still getting used to the different criteria used for each category (if anyone has a link or some input into how to check I'm selecting the right category for each story I publish, I'd be super grateful) but some interpretations of the data could be made using a hefty splash of assumption & guess-work. 'Loving Wives' (from what I've read so far, again, new here) seems to cater heavily to a male fantasy that leans on the 'Madonna/Whore' archetype. We get so much of that in mainstream media already, & discourse, that it feels a bit condescending when viewed through our experiences as a woman/NB etc.

As for the 'biological' aspect of human sexuality (sorry, word-vomit coming). Again, it relies heavily on assumption/internal bias as to how you interpret the ideas, how you link it to our close genetic relatives (apes like chimps, bonobos etc - let alone linking it to Lions - you may as well make assumptions that human beings are attracted for the same reasons as giraffes or kangaroos) but personally, I remain unconvinced by the biology/evolution argument.

Human beings are far more complex social creatures than other animals, & even within the animal kingdom you'll find outliers. In the context of our societies (remember, so MANY 'desirable' gender-traits are different depending on which community you belong to) there's just so much more to it. Much of the 'evolutionary' theories on human behaviour is still being wildly debated - especially as many of the assumptions are being challenged by each day's new discoveries (remains of ancestors that were assumed to be male by their original discoverers have been found to be female, there's evidence that a lot of the ancient cave art & even the Palaeolithic 'Venus' is now being interpreted by archaeologists not as the 'obvious man-made fertility idol' but perhaps as a woman-carved 'self-portrait').

Biologically, every discovery about our genes, the interplay of physicality & mental development etc, only seems to raise new questions. & the system of viewing human sexuality, which has for centuries been solely via a male-bias (women weren't even allowed into most universities until VERY recently in our history) is being challenged by the emergence of new technologies, & new viewpoints exploring the subject. I'd be very wary of putting too much stock into the 'biology/evolution' theory that human sexuality can be condensed so simplistically.

A man 'has to give a woman a reason to make her want to jump his bones' is 100% correct - but the reasons are unlimited & I'd be careful in your writing not to put too much emphasis on 'biological need'. It can read a bit outdated.

 

[ShinyCrazyDi]

I've also been thinking about the whole 'interracial' category lately. Something about it sticks in my craw. It seems especially racist, unintentionally reflecting outdated fears & prejudices about BIPOC. Black men are coming for your white women! Black women are sexually aggressive! Asian women are submissive - like geisha! Etc. As if there's something inherently 'kinky' about having a partner with a different skin tone, or features, or from a different social or ethnic community. It's weird.

BUT I guess, it might be used as a label to help BIPOC readers locate stories from a POC perspective? Is that how some people use it? Anyway. It's just been on my mind as I familiarize myself with this site & its quirks.

 

[Omenainen]

I'm still getting used to the different criteria used for each category (if anyone has a link or some input into how to check I'm selecting the right category for each story I publish, I'd be super grateful)

Love Your Readers: Categories by Tx Tall Tales

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I've also been thinking about the whole 'interracial' category lately. Something about it sticks in my craw. It seems especially racist, unintentionally reflecting outdated fears & prejudices about BIPOC. Black men are coming for your white women! Black women are sexually aggressive! Asian women are submissive - like geisha! Etc. As if there's something inherently 'kinky' about having a partner with a different skin tone, or features, or from a different social or ethnic community. It's weird.

BUT I guess, it might be used as a label to help BIPOC readers locate stories from a POC perspective? Is that how some people use it? Anyway. It's just been on my mind as I familiarize myself with this site & its quirks.

I wouldn't draw conclusions on racial links by what goes on in that category. Just because it's overrun by BBC and BNWO stuff doesn't mean that someone can be turned on by an ethnicity that they find exotic. Being attracted to someone's skin color is no different than being attracted to someone's eye color or hair color.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Human beings are far more complex social creatures than other animals

Certainly humans have social aspects that complicate things. I did not say that our attractions are wholly defined by biology, just that they are rooted there.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I've also been thinking about the whole 'interracial' category lately. Something about it sticks in my craw. It seems especially racist, unintentionally reflecting outdated fears & prejudices about BIPOC. Black men are coming for your white women! Black women are sexually aggressive! Asian women are submissive - like geisha! Etc. As if there's something inherently 'kinky' about having a partner with a different skin tone, or features, or from a different social or ethnic community. It's weird.

BUT I guess, it might be used as a label to help BIPOC readers locate stories from a POC perspective? Is that how some people use it?

Maybe a few? But mostly that first thing.

 

[ShinyCrazyDi]

Love Your Readers: Categories by Tx Tall Tales

You absolute LEGEND - thank you so much

 

[ShinyCrazyDi]

No shade but you could make the same statement about sea-sponges. Or dust mites. In the fact that to keep a species going it's statistically more likely if many of the individuals reproduce, that's a given. But there's no scientific consensus that 'biology is the root of human sexual attraction' unless you reduce it spectacularly to the fact that all living things on Earth came from a single-celled organism. But even regardless of the iffy 'scientific' premise, writing about human attraction using assumptions about biology/evolution would be (not impossible) but difficult to make erotic. I think I'd imagine it being narrated by David Attenborough.

"The sea sponge considers its choice between mates, on the one hand, the sponge before it looks especially 'spongy' & may result in excellent spongy offspring. On the other hand, it could simply produce more sponge by growing it from itself, asexually. It was sexually attracted to both itself & the other sponge. What was the sponge to do? Was there a way to have a threesome? With itself & other sponge? Sponge felt wet with seawater & desire, based on its biological urge to create more sponge. Oh no! A hungry looking turtle! Sponge would have to make a choice quickly, lest it be eaten before reproducing!" I jest, I jest.

On the second point where you say 'attraction to skin tone is the same as eye colour' I've heard that from people, but honestly, it only works if reduced to terms on a page, examined in a theoretical vacuum, without the historical, social & systemic context that exists in the real world. No value judgement, but if you know someone who's only attracted to (for example) Asian women, it may be healthy for that person to unpack the reasons for that. Just for their own edification & personal development. Not to say that fetishisation can't be wielded to write some wonderfully creative erotica by the right writer. I think most things go on this site.

 

[Elypep1980]

Personal preferences:

Slow burn and build up
Not too long but not to short
Avoid lots of profanity and words like cunt
The tease is half the fun
Stories aren’t porn sites and nothing usually happens like a movie were a door is left wide open etc or someone is accidentally naked…
That’s just me though

 

[AG31]

There is a biological aspect to what turns us all on.

I agreed with your list of things that might influence a woman to feel sexual attraction, but we shouldn't forget the even more basic biology. What attracts most women to men instead of women? It's founded in the need to continue our species. Even before such things as you list are observed, women are attracted to some subset of more pronounced forhead, more body hair, deeper voice, more pronounced muscles, greater height, facial hair, etc.

I think it's possible to write erotica that attracts women (well, me) by focussing mostly on this primitive layer of attraction.

 

[MadeleineSinha]

Even if you were to succeed, it might not get you any more or better feedback on Lit from women. There is just such an overwhelming unbalance of visitors and readers toward the male side of the scale.

Worth noting that from the few interactions I've had with posters via PM who claim to be women a significant percentage clearly aren't, many seem as if they've never even spoken to a real woman IRL.

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

Worth noting that from the few interactions I've had with posters via PM who claim to be women a significant percentage clearly aren't, many seem as if they've never even spoken to a real woman IRL.

Lol, for a long time on Lit I was in the opposite category. I used to go under a male-sounding username because I was wary of exposing myself as a woman here on Lit.

 

[NotWise]

Maybe I don't need to make this point, but if you're going to write a story that's interesting to women, then you have to stop talking about it and start writing.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

No shade but you could make the same statement about sea-sponges. Or dust mites. In the fact that to keep a species going it's statistically more likely if many of the individuals reproduce, that's a given. But there's no scientific consensus that 'biology is the root of human sexual attraction' unless you reduce it spectacularly to the fact that all living things on Earth came from a single-celled organism. But even regardless of the iffy 'scientific' premise, writing about human attraction using assumptions about biology/evolution would be (not impossible) but difficult to make erotic. I think I'd imagine it being narrated by David Attenborough.

"The sea sponge considers its choice between mates, on the one hand, the sponge before it looks especially 'spongy' & may result in excellent spongy offspring. On the other hand, it could simply produce more sponge by growing it from itself, asexually. It was sexually attracted to both itself & the other sponge. What was the sponge to do? Was there a way to have a threesome? With itself & other sponge? Sponge felt wet with seawater & desire, based on its biological urge to create more sponge. Oh no! A hungry looking turtle! Sponge would have to make a choice quickly, lest it be eaten before reproducing!" I jest, I jest.

There's a fair few Lit stories I've read where I've felt they'd be distinctly improved if they were adapted into a script and read by David Attenborough.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

There's a fair few Lit stories I've read where I've felt they'd be distinctly improved if they were adapted into a script and read by David Attenborough.

The Frat Boys circle, looking for a lone female to become separated from her herd...

 

[Bramblethorn]

There's a fair few Lit stories I've read where I've felt they'd be distinctly improved if they were adapted into a script and read by David Attenborough.

Aaand now I'm going to hear that voice every time I read a story here, aren't I.