Learn to write erotica – centaur sex anyone?
A workshop hosted by a Mills & Boon editor aims to help people write better sex scenes, writes Emine Saner
This erotic writing workshop, held by Anna Boatman, an editor at Mills & Boon, is sold out. Blame the success of Fifty Shades of Grey, obviously. There are millions of people – women, mostly – who want to read erotic fiction, and apparently many who want to write it. Ash Lodhi, a 20-year-old student, writes bizarro fiction (weird stories, basically), and, she says: "I put a lot of sex scenes in my sci-fi so I thought I would come here to brush up." What does she find hard about writing sex scenes? "Making it sound realistic and not being repetitive, because I tend to use the same one – apart from positions changing." We laugh awkwardly. She also writes erotic fan fiction, she says, often based on House, the American medical TV drama. "It's Hugh Laurie! You can't not write a sex scene about Hugh Laurie." She flips back to the inside cover of her notebook, where she has glued a picture of the actor looking stubbly and handsome-ish, like a regional TV newsreader on his day off. "Look at that."
"There has never been a better time to think about erotica," says Boatman, sitting in front of us, citing the genre's mainstream success in the last year, before running through a brief history of Mills & Boon erotica, for people who thought the company published only swoony romances. She points to the cover of Antigua Kiss, a book from 1982: "This had our first cunnilingus scene. It went down very well." I stifle a giggle.
