[QUOTE=dr_mabeuse]I'd respectfully disagree with Gary. I never outline my stories. Often I don't even know what's going to happen when I start to write. I'll just have a scene or an image in mind that I want to describe, and things will go from there.

My advice to you would be to read your ass off. And don't just read erotica and porn; in fact, avoid it. Get some books of good short stories and read them and study them. Find out how authors do things: how they write dialogue, how they describe characters, set scenes, establish moods. It's best to learn from the masters, and the truth is, there aren't very many masters in porn. It's best to go elsewhere for your lessons.

My other advice is that writing is only 30% writing. The rest is revising and rewriting and proofreading. No one gets the story right the first time. You've got to write hot, while the inspiration is on you, then set it aside and let it cool off for a couple of days and then go back to it and revise and correct it. You have a duty to your readers to make it as perfect as you possibly can.

---dr.M.[/QUOTE

I'm not sure that I've ever read a fairly length message here with which I am more in agreement (except that I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't read much erotica).

I do have the guilty feeling that one should outline stories, that one should know exactly where one's going before one starts, that one should have a written master plan in mind and at hand.

But I am constitutionally incapable of thinking that way and sticking to it. I have a general idea of what's going to happen, and an idea of most of the key characters and their relationships. But for me half the fun of writing is the 'what if' feeling one gets in Chapter 11, when one gets an inspiration and asks one's self, "Hey, what if this were to happen?"

Read. One can be an avid reader without ever acquiring a desire to write. But one can never be a good writer without having acquired a taste for reading. A lot of the common faults that plague 'we happy few, we band of brothers (and sisters)" -- spelling errors, grammatical errors, problems with sentence and paragraph construction -- will be drastically curtailed if one has read widely and thoughtfully.

Proofread. And proofread. And proofread. Think of your writing as you would a visit to your home by royalty, because you only get one chance to make a first impression. One sees so many stories here that are rushed to 'print' in (apparently) the heat of the moment, but which could have been so much better. Look at your writing from every possible angle -- Is the dialogue sharp? Are the characters (and dialogue) distinctive and yet consistent? Have you fully captured the sensory goings-on in the encounter(s) you're describing --the sights, sounds, tastes etc, the characters would have experienced? Is there a nice balance between short sentences and long ones, between short words and long ones? Re-read your longer sentences as if you were reading them out loud, to see if they flow properly.

Boccaccio