How To Write Erotica: A Mills and Boon Guide. Mills & Boon

of another who is mildly astonished to be actually getting off on this sort of rough treatment. The important point here is plot development. The story should not merely consist of a repetitive series of dressing-up days, like an adult version of play school.

      Vanilla—A slightly derogatory term for the kind of sex that many readers feel most comfortable with between the pages of an adult novel, but still with a strong erotic charge. Vanilla sex is straightforward and unkinky, a pure demonstration of mutual passion and attraction that is fully satisfying for the individuals involved. It tends to be soft core and prefers to describe the sex act in non-specific terms: in vanilla a man has a ‘maleness’ not an ‘erection’; women have ‘buds’ in place of ‘nipples’; and no one actually ‘comes’, though they might ‘experience an overwhelming crescendo of joy that sends them crashing like a wave on to a cosmic rock of euphoria’, or any combination of similar words in a slightly different order. In terms of tone, good vanilla sex is often the hardest to get right.

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      There are any number of ways in which you can turn your reader on, and it’s a safe bet that whatever you’re into is going to appeal to a surprisingly large demographic. But in order to create the kind of all-round experience any discerning reader is entitled to enjoy, you need to make sure your book is as well written as possible, and not just a string of sexual encounters held together by the flimsiest of connections. In short you need three things: characters, plot and technique.