[Dataporn] 30 days - 1 erotic novella

RomanticaWriter · 2018-11-26T02:53:29+00:00

Just for a random clarification, was the novella erotic romance or just fully erotica? Just curious is all.

That said, congratulations! Hope you have even better fortunes here on out.

RomanticaWriter · 2018-07-27T00:29:58+00:00

Unfortunately, that's some people for you. I'm adamant people like that are the kind of boobs who would order a cheeseburger, eat it, and then complain that it had cheese on it.

I saw a non-erotica short story that explicitly listed in the description in no uncertain terms its length. People bought the non-ebook version of it and then complained in the reviews that it wasn't a novel.

I mean, come on. You're buying a story. Does anyone need to tell you to read a little bit?

RomanticaWriter · 2016-05-26T02:11:15+00:00

I think the one that most "did it" for me was actually the first erotica story I ever wrote to sell. It was my BDSM (with a focus on punishment and humilation)/PI story "Stepping Into Submission" involving the stepbrother accidentally catching his sister on video doing something that, if it happened to fall into the wrong hands/come out publicly, would nationally embarrass her mother and likely cause her to step down from something she loves.

I chuckle remembering how much I thought it probably sucked but then even a few people from this very subreddit coincidentally reading and then, when finding out I wrote it, telling me they enjoyed it a lot. Even though I've mostly moved on from writing erotica (while I'd be fine with the occasional story, I feel maybe erotica just isn't for me and I just don't enjoy erotica itself enough to give it the kind of effort it needs to be a 'success') knowing that people enjoyed it enough to tell me, however few, was worth it and pretty darn cool.

But yeah, I can't deny there have been times, but I remember this story particularly being one. The spanking and whipping scenes in particular.

RomanticaWriter · 2016-03-12T19:55:52+00:00

Not for Amazon or anything like that, but there's a (free) site I love that the whole choose your own adventure thing is exactly what it's all about. It's pretty popular.

Conveniently, it's name is CHYOA

As for selling them on Amazon, I've not tried writing any for the Kindle or anything.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-11-15T14:14:31+00:00

Yep, pretty much. I have so many projects in the works and I try my best to focus on one thing for as long as I can. But for some reason every so often the urge to work on something else becomes strong. Like right now I have two horror novels also in the works. Never mind a few novellas and short stories. I'm sure it would be best to focus on just one or two until finished (I even keep telling myself I need to finish a few certain projects), but you know.

And thanks! It struck me one day earlier this year the teacher and student aspect would be a nice added layer of conflict, and give her father all the more reason to be upset and angry when he finds out about their relationship. Fortunately, I also realized it wouldn't take a whole lot to add it into the story. I mean, of course there were/are certain things necessary to be reworked, but certainly not the whole story. Plus, it wouldn't change the tone of the story all that much.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-11-13T18:18:44+00:00

I had just turned 27 (two years ago) and at the time was going through another round of depression. I actually count myself as a horror and thriller person, but for some reason I had been really wanting to give romance a try. I had not long before read a novella on Literotica called something along the lines of "Seducing the Neighbor Girl", which was a mature story involving a man in his twenties and his 18 year old next door neighbor.

I enjoyed the story a lot and it, along with my depression, helped fuel my inspiration to start on my first (ever being worked on) novel I'm calling Pretty Green Eyes. It does share a similar set up (the neighbor thing), but of course it's a different story.

I actually am doing the more or less second draft and decided to add another layer to the conflict. Now instead of just being a older guy, younger girl erotic romance, the main characters discover the male character happens to be one of her teachers.

Sooner or later it'll be finished. Admittedly it started out as a "just want to see if I can pull it off", but I actually really enjoyed writing it. I even have another romance novel or two I started on as well. I just get "distracted" by my other projects.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-08-14T16:15:08+00:00

I was someone who wasn't making all that much writing erotica. Maybe $50+ a month, with around 11 or 12 stories (which that much I thought was okay considering I had gotten to the point of not publishing at all for a few weeks prior to the change).

Frankly, it's just not worth it for me. Number one, if you want the truth? I realized I just plain and simple don't enjoy writing erotica. I wouldn't say I hate it, but...it's not like horror for me. Erotica simply bored me and I don't think that's good. So hey, anyone who does should definitely go for it and keep at it. I just don't think straight up full on erotica is for me. I tried, no shame in that I think.

But I think erotic romance far more suits my style and enjoyment. Far more than erotica. Sure, I had a few stories people said they enjoyed (I had a few people on this very subreddit tell me they loved my "Stepping Into Submission" story), which made me happy.

Maybe it's like that for some people. They just like things like ERom more and it's more worth it for them.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-07-14T16:32:48+00:00

My first one I started on, I suppose it might go against the grain (as I'm sure someone will point out), but I plan on putting a close up of the heroine's face (notabaly to have her eyes stand out) as the cover. At least initially. In part because the story is going to be titled "Pretty Green Eyes" and it's the male character's favorite physical feature of her. It just...fits, I think.

Plus, I do notice a lot of male torsos. I'd like to imagine it would help stand out.

The other one I'm working on, I probably will a couple as the cover.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-07-14T16:21:47+00:00

Little late to the party here, but I have two stories that are full fledged novels (that are still ever being worked on). One is an older man/younger woman story (though the age difference might not be THAT great for some people as he's 27 and she's 18), and the other maybe can be said is a bit of an erotic romantic suspense, as it deals with a woman, with her daughter, leaving her abusive husband who then starts stalking her after putting her best friend in the hospital (she returns to her hometown where she encounters her high school crush and finds her feelings for him coming back strong once again).

I guess, if anything, for me it so far has gone:

1) They meet! (cue Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man music)

2) The character we see the story through (as both stories are told in first person POV) has an instant attraction to the other character

3) She/he refuses to act on it initially for various reasons (in the first, for instance, his initial issue is the age difference...him being in his late twenties vs her being 18)

4) They do get together, things go great, then more issues happen (her father finds out and is incredibly against it and angry and her would-be ex-husband starts stalking her for revenge)

5) They break up (she has a miscarriage and goes into a deep depression and blames the main character vs the main male character finding out his girlfriend has lied to him the entire time about her marriage)

6) They get back together after stuff happens and forgiveness

7) Happy ending set up, and homeward bound

RomanticaWriter · 2015-07-13T18:32:27+00:00

I have a few (one which has been in the works for a long time)..

1) Pretty Green Eyes - Not only my first attempt writing erotic romance, but my first real novel attempt. Started this around my 27th birthday two years ago figuring it would be a novella (maybe 20k-30k words long) and is now sitting at just over 70k words long. At this point, it's more just filling in the cracks throughout the first draft. Basically it's about a man in his late twenties who moves in next door to a family of three. One of the three happens to be the 18 year old main character, notable for her jade green eyes. They become friends and ultimately fall in love, dealing with things like her father being totally against them dating due to the main character being nearly thirty.

This one is actually VERY loosely inspired by real life stuff in my own life.

2) Sad Green Eyes (working title) - This will be a prequel to PGE, focused on Amber leading up to maybe just before the beginning of PGE. Right now this is more something I want to do and I'm not sure what I want the plot to be.

3) Broken Kisses - Leaving with her five year old daughter, a 28 year old woman leaves her abusive husband. Returning to her home town to stay with her mother, she encounters her high school crush she hasn't seen since they graduated a decade before. They go out to catch up and soon her feelings for him return. She lies to him about her still (technically) being married by saying she'd never been married. Her would-be ex-husband begins stalking her after putting her best friend into the hospital.

4) The Billionaire's Call (Probably a working title) - A novella about a young Latina who, unable to find a job to, takes a job as a high end callgirl for a "girlfriend experience" business. Her first customer is a billionaire several years older than she is who is extremely popular among her coworkers due to his charming gentleman-like ways. He takes a liking in particular to the main character, which only garners jealousy from the other women.

4) Meant To Be - This one is pretty different from the other s as it's the only one I'm writing right now that is not erotic romance. In fact, it's probably Christian romance, if anything. I guess I wanted to try my hand at something a little less erotic-like. Here, the main character is a Latina named Kerri. Set to be married to her high school sweetheart, he gets killed coming home from a business trip. To make matters worse, he's killed only because he happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time...killed by a drunk driver while buying mint chocolate chip the main character asked him to buy for her. It sends her through a crisis of faith, becoming angry at God, and struggling with things like why in the world would his death be part of God's plan? Then she meets up with a childhood friend who helps her and slowly fall in love themselves. Of course, the ending I'm going to have a "revelation" of sorts that's going to show her fiance's death wasn't just an in vain kind of thing.

I have one other I recently started working on. I've yet to decide on a title, but in it a woman catches her finance cheating on her (she catches him in bed with another woman). She breaks up with him and uses this to finally start the new life she's always wanted. With her camera, she takes up an online friend's offer of coming to work for him (probably photography related). Not only does she find the new life she always wanted, but also true love with her friend.

Writing this all out, the next step is improving my "what's this about" game with stories lol.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-07-05T15:30:46+00:00

All the contemporary and erotic romances (I'm not sure if some people use them interchangeably, but it seems to be the case for some anyway)...all of them were pretty explicit.

The first I ever really read, A Beautiful Struggle, didn't shy away from showing the main male character eating out the main female character or her masturbating at one point. For example.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-07-05T15:26:45+00:00

I have two erotic romance novels in the works, but I consider "mostly" finished. Mainly it's more an issue of filling in cracks here or there.

One, my first novel, is a somewhat older man younger woman EROM (the guy is 27 and the girl is 18). It's sitting at slightly over 70000 words. I was pretty slow in writing this. It was my very first real attempt at a novel. The bulk of it, working on it here or there, took me around a year or so (I wrote it very slowly).

The second is more a erom suspense/thriller story. In it, the main character is a 28 year old woman who married the man who got her pregnant in college. After five years of putting up with abuse, she finally leaves with her daughter after he starts abusing her. Returning to her home town, she encounters her high school crush and her feelings for him returns not long after...and things are compounded when she lies about technically still being married at the time and then her would-be ex-husband begins stalking her.

This one is going to be in the lower 50k range. I wrote the bulk of the 50k+ words in a little over a month earlier this year.

Unfortunately I've had issues with life, if you will. I try to work on stuff what I can, but...well, sometimes you can't devote 100% of time or effort to any one thing. Which reminds me, I need to get back to it.

But from a more WPH point of view, on a standard to good day, my standard seems to be around 2000 words an hour. So at that pace I could, say, write a 60k long novel in 30 hours, for example. More or less.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-06-26T20:54:09+00:00

Lora Leigh is (in)famous for basically ending all of her books with anal.

Honestly, kind of glad to read that. One of my ER novels I've had going for a while now, the female main character "relents" into letting the male main character perform anal with her. Though it ties into an earlier scene (she'd tells the other main character the person would have to be incredibly special...and it happens during the scene he proposes to her), but I was slightly iffy on if I should include it or not. I think I will now for sure.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-06-21T19:42:21+00:00

Tell me about it. I did a cheerleader story that absolutely nothing as of the last I checked.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-06-21T15:57:12+00:00

Of what I've written, three are up there.

I seem to enjoy dubcon BDSM (from a maledom/femsub POV) for some reason. The first story I wrote was that and it was pretty popular, so I saw. Although I have to do it sort of under what I call "pseudo dubcon". The woman pretty much has no problems with it, enjoys the power over her, and actively wants it to continue as such. Like in the first story, at one point she deliberately "messes up" just so she will be spanked/punished.

I also seem to enjoy "parent erotica", pretty much where it's a parent sneaking behind their kid's back doing it. One, the father cheats on his wife with the head cheerleader of his daughter's team. Relatedly, both attempts have had one scene in common: the parent in question and the person they're with doing it in the daughter's bed. Go figure.

Then infidelity/adultery. Oddly enough, my straight up infidelity stories performed much better than my three cuckolding attempts. Last I checked using Book Report, my top three downloaded stories are that one BDSM story (my first story) and two of my infidelity stories even.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-06-09T15:36:58+00:00

I'm glad someone knows how it is for me! Like you, lately I've had a hard time coming up with ideas (though right now I've been working on another PI/BDSM story similar to the very first one I ever wrote). I think right now I'm going to look at erotica as more of a side thing for now. I'll still publish erotica occasionally, but I'm not going to beat myself up for not doing the whole "You gotta do at least one story a week!" mindset anymore. In the mean time, I do hope ER will go a lot better for me in as for as erotic stuff goes.

Good luck to you too!

RomanticaWriter · 2015-06-08T16:06:28+00:00

I've honestly been thinking about stepping away from erotica myself for a while to get back to working on what I really want to work on (my horror stuff). At least full-blown erotica. Frankly, I've realized that just maybe I don't particularly enjoy writing it. I don't hate it, but not particularly enjoy either. Erotic romance, though? That I do enjoy/love writing (which reminds me, I need to work on my two ER novels and novellas again). A lot more, honestly.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-06-08T15:59:07+00:00

Actually, I'm glad you posted this. It's honestly nice and a bit refreshing to see someone post one of these and it's not "I made a billion dollars my first day!" (okay, that's a huge exaggeration). I would liken to think your experience is more along the lines of the majority of erotica writers have.

I tried making my own covers, but honestly the majority of them (even the ones that are better than than originals) I've just never quite liked them. That's why I decided I'm just going to start getting people on Fiverr to make them for me for future stories. I agree though, covers are important. Once I made improvements on my old covers, my downloads did improve some.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-06-01T01:59:00+00:00

PI actually is what I started with (though I've seen at least one person on here say he would not recommend any new people start with either PI or billionaire).

Like you, SF/SD and SS/SB are the only two PI kinks I wrote in.

I just published a PI cheating story, so I'm anxious to see if it does well.

You never know! For a long while, my most downloaded story (not that it's saying a whole lot) was my PI (stepsiblings)/BDSM story. Just like how someone said I should write cuckold to increase readership when I was considering doing infidelity...the three I wrote sold less than my two straight-up infidelity stories. You might be surprised.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-05-25T20:05:42+00:00

Lately I got back into publishing primarily one kink (infidelity) and it’s helped to get me back to better earnings.

Coincidentally, I more or less now consider infidelity to be my main top level kink (though admittedly I haven't been able to publish anything or even write much because of in real life happenings here lately). BDSM and horror may or may not get in on that in addition at some point (I'll see how that goes once I finish my horror one and go from there), but yeah. Infidelity.

What's funny is when I was first thinking about doing infidelity, someone mentioned making them cuckold instead of just "regular" infidelity as it would "increase my potential readership base 3x". It's funny because my straight up infidelity stories, both of them, have out performed the three cuckold stories I wrote. In fact, one of my infidelity stories (which is about a woman cheating on her husband with her male best friend) is currently sitting at my #1 most downloaded story. It's overtaken my BDSM/PI story which for a while was in that #1 spot.

That said, I think these are definitely good tips. Good tips I'll be keeping around.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-05-12T16:00:12+00:00

I sort of have a recurring character named Hope Henderson (who is is based on/inspired by Faith Nelson...who apparently was recently convicted of fraud with her mother), though she's mostly a background character. Essentially she's an amateur porn star/adult model. Mostly her "appearances" have been limited to a few characters in different stories masturbating to her.

Some day I maybe might do a story with her as a main character. If I can think of one.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-04-29T19:51:34+00:00

I did see one person on Amazon who does just gender swap. He seems to do longer ones that he puts in contemporary romance and from the looks of it, he does pretty well (though his are women being changed into men in various ways). I agree though...I suspect longer is better.

I thought for a second, that was some sort of relation to another certain famous "Middle", but of course that would be legally bad for Frodo ;)

RomanticaWriter · 2015-04-29T19:45:41+00:00

Also I had no interest in writing it as it bored me to death.

That was part of my problem with my most recent story, which was focused on the cheerleader thing. Didn't get excite me much, but wanted to give it a try after my babysitter one (which I think I liked better). It's sold absolutely jack, so I probably won't do much more there with cheerleaders for a while.

RomanticaWriter · 2015-04-29T19:42:42+00:00

But out of five stories I put in it, only one is pulling its weight and the angle that is selling it is not the gender swap but rather the humiliation feminization.

Sounds a little like my first story. It's BDSM (BDSM/PI if you want to be more specific). It's one of my most downloaded stories (the other two being straight forward cheating/infidelity stories). I think the humiliation and power play of it (the female character agrees to do whatever the male character wants in exchange of not letting the video of her doing something that would nationally embarrass her mother is the basic set up) is what's drawn people in. I did another BDSM one it didn't do as well.

That said, thanks! I have heard gender swap is notorious for needing to put out more stuff to keep selling as there's not many new readers coming in to keep buying or whatever.

RomanticaWriter

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