I want to make a game for this community, and frankly, at this point, the “game” part of making games is easy for me. I have multiple game jams under my belt (still itching for a top spot in a big one though), and coding, game design, sound and music design, and (non erotic) art are easy for me to do.
But I cannot write to save my life. Especially not erotic stories.
Where do I even start to learn?
A good place to start is to read some other works that you like and see how they do it, be that games on the site or separate erotic works on sites like DeviantArt. Also, at the end of the day, talk is talk, and looking at any form of writing can probably help a bit at getting a good word flow going. This helps because it’s up to you how erotic you want the dialogue to be, especially since this type of content is rarely 100 percent erotic. You can also choose a lot of moments to let the action do the talking, not everything needs to be narrated.
Personally, whenever I’ve needed to write something, I’ve found that writing ANYTHING is good enough. Then I can go back and say, “Eh this feels weird” and tweak it until it flows better.
We make fat fetish games on a forum, don’t be too stressed at writing the perfect sentences to match what you need.
This might not be your fandom, but the writing is top notch! I recommend it at least to get an idea on the intimate ways it plays out:
https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885555
This one might be good for naughtier inspiration:
https://archiveofourown.org/series/2154411
Edit: Actually, I recommend checking out the deviantart of the author of that first one:
https://www.deviantart.com/debuchan
If I have to be honest, I don’t think there are many ways to learn to write besides actually writing.
Practice is the only thing that will really help you. Reading also helps a lot of course, see how the writers of the stories you enjoy do it, you may even look for practical direct advice on how to and the rules of good writing, but there is no substitute for doing.
The 2 main things are good 3 dimensional characters and engaging organic plot, neither is easy to achieve, but you shouldn’t be afraid to fail. Your first stories will most likely suck, it’s part of the process and nobody comes out of the oven already sliced and garnished.
This doesn’t help much does it? Lulz. Sorry but there isn’t much I can think of in terms of general advice. Best of luck
Don’t be afraid to give a try first. We always need to start somewhere and doesn’t matter if the writing sucks, because we can always improve and learn from the experiences. I consider myself really bad at storytelling and writing, but working on a game has helped me to learn how to write a proper story.
Always a good thing is to look for references. If you feel you don’t know how to write, then read and learn from others first, not only erotic-type of stories, but every type of story can help.
Something i got recommend by a friend that writes fanfics is to have an excel-type spreadsheet and while brainstorming, taking notes of ideas, possible characters, etc and writing them on the spreadsheet. Later you can use what you have in your sheet to build your story.
Don’t let anyone tell you writing isn’t hard, but don’t assume it always has to be hard either. I’m an avid reader, and all the way through school and college I was getting top grades in English and Composition classes. Despite that, I’ve never been confident in writing prose, and I hated most of the stories and essays I turned in, even though they were usually very good from a technical standpoint. I like being wordy, adding detail, using turns of phrase and similes and metaphors. That’s great when you need to pad pages or word counts, but it’s much more difficult to do in a manner that flows well and engages the reader over a period of more than three pages, and trimming the fat is something I still struggle with. The best advice I can give is to get into a groove with something you’re enjoying writing, and while polishing it a bit afterwards is fine, eventually you need rip off the band-aid and publish it - either you’ll get feedback from readers on how to improve, or you can take the lack of feedback from readers as a ‘10/10 no notes’ and let it increase your confidence, rather than panicking about whether it was so bad that no one could be bothered to say it to your face - it’s the internet, if there’s actually something to complain about, someone will complain.
This is honestly some of the best advice you can get. If you sit down and try to force yourself to come up with an idea, you’re likely going to look back later and be less than pleased with the results, if you don’t end up frustrated and empty-handed in the first place. Get in the habit of scribbling down ideas whenever you have them - in a spreadsheet, in a text file, on the Notes app in your phone, on the back of a page of junk mail. It doesn’t just give you a repository to look back on later (which is already a big benefit by itself), it helps the ideas burrow in like brainworms. You can let them marinate, make revisions, see where the threads might take themselves, play with different prose or narration styles to make them pop, and in turn come up with more ideas. Even if they don’t turn out to be great or fit the narrative direction you want to go, at least you’ve got something you might be able to use for a future project.
If you’ve got some solid, well-fleshed ideas on what you want to put to paper, and a good technical understanding underpinning your writing, but still struggle with how to put that together into actual prose and dialogue, don’t be afraid to go back and look at authors and works you really enjoy. What is it about their style that activates your neurons? What’s there in the dialogue or descriptions that really makes it tick for you? I’m not saying to copy another author’s style one-to-one, but to find out what it is you enjoy about their style and make it work for you, build on it, tweak it, even subvert it. Finding some joy in what you’re writing is key - if it’s not entertaining to you, why would it be entertaining to your audience?
It’s also the case that many people full of great ideas and solid skills don’t have the time, energy, or confidence to turn that into a fuller work, and in that respect, there’s absolutely zero shame in turning to someone else to help write or even ghostwrite, as long as you’re crediting and compensating them properly. Working with a writing partner is a lot like rubber-duck coding - while you’re describing what you’re trying to get across to the reader, you might find insight into what it is you really want, or a way to zest things up a bit. Even better, assuming you’re working with a human writer, you’ve got someone who can actually respond to those ideas and innovate in kind. While it’s also possible to outsource all of this to AI these days, it’s not really something I’d recommend; the quality of the output varies greatly by the quality of the model and inputs, and while saying “you’re not learning anything” sounds like a schoolteacher cliche, it’s true that you’re not really going to learn anything that you can apply to future projects by just giving a few inputs about the scene or characters and copy/pasting the output, although that sort of slop is apparently popular on the Kindle bookstore these days, sadly.
This is terrible advice, but true. Next time you’re sick - the flu, Covid, whatever - and there’s nowhere to go and no one to see, just buckle down and word vomit into a text document for like twelve hours. Then pass out, and when you wake up, drink a whole pot of coffee or three while editing what you wrote. I wrote Fat Focused that way.
Unstable Frienemies was piece meal, a bit at a time - for that one, I had to work on it regularly and around the same time each day until the process started flowing. It’s kind of like running, if you don’t do it for a while it really really sucks but if you hit it every other day or so it becomes just another thing you can do on demand.
In short, find an altered state, either by being sick or by grinding out pulp until your brain learns ‘this is the time of day that we do the writing thing.’
If you want technical advice on plotting and characters, try reading Goal Motivation and Conflict by Debra Dixon. Motivational advice, Stephen King’s On Writing.