How to Write About Sex

I’M ALEXANDER CHEVES. MY NICKNAME IS BEASTLY. I WRITE ABOUT SEX.

HAVE A QUESTION? EMAIL ASKBEASTLY@GMAIL.COM OR CLICK HERE.

LOVE, BEASTLY IS 100% SUPPORTED BY READERS. GO TO MY PATREON TO SUPPORT MY WORK AND GET XXXTRA SPECIAL PERKS, OR LEAVE ME A TIP HERE.

I recently have been toying with the idea of starting my own fetish sex-positive blog, yet I’m unsure how personal I want to go into my kinky lifestyle. I have read a handful of your articles and must say great job! Your blog is simply amazing.

I am still relatively new to the kink scene and was hoping to make my blog about finally entering into a community of queer kinky men and women that I actually identify with as well as educating others on products and topics relating to fetish and kink. I don’t want my blog to be a complete recount of my sex life, but yet want to use my sex life as examples to discuss topics like “finding a daddy/sir” “entering headspace” or “bore of vanilla sex”

All I was wondering is, besides your blog, what other references or tips would you give a new fetish blogger wishing to document his own experience and have it framed in a way that readers would find interesting. 

Hey aspiring sex writer,

My first and most useful piece of advice: read sex writing. I collect vintage gay porn magazines like Honcho, Drummer, Manhunt, Straight to Hell, and more. They are the hottest things I own. Vintage gay smut is hard to find — you have to befriend older gay men who will pass down their collections to you — but it’s filled with rule-breaking, small-circulation publications that feature the hottest (and often very poetic and beautiful) gay sex writing you will ever read.

My second piece of advice: I would advise against focusing on educational kink content, since a) you’re a beginner and b) that content is widely available everywhere. The most valuable content you have is your own personal experience, and that is what people are interested in. They don’t want generic how-to articles. They want you. People connect to people.

This is why I nearly always answer questions with a personal story from my life. I’m not just answering questions — I’m telling stories, sharing my thoughts and views, and building a character. The character happens to be me — the real me, actually, though this is certainly not the case for all writers.

But that doesn’t matter, because writing anything is filtering the “truth” — whatever that is — through your own subjective lens. You are essentially fictionalizing yourself. Fiction and non-fiction are arbitrary, meaningless terms. A great way to understand character building, even if the character is a real person (you), is to read great fiction. Lolita by Nabokov is a masterclass on how to create a complete, complex character with voice alone. Read La Nausée by Sartre, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.

Again, steer away from teaching readers about kink, since, by your own admission, you know little about it. Instead, share your experience of kink. Personalize the kink. That’s an interesting blog!

When you get more practice, you’ll learn the artistry of disclosure and withholding. Readers don’t want to know every detail. Classic “new writer” syndrome is an attempt to show everything — to describe every moment, every step, afraid that if they don’t, readers will lose their place in the narrative. They won’t. You have to trust the reader. They can fill in the gaps. In fact, you never really need to describe any physical details in your writing unless they are relevant, necessary details. (In other words, if it really matters that someone in the story was wearing a red hoodie or white shoes, keep those details in — otherwise they are extraneous details that clutter the prose.)

And remember: writing is re-writing. I re-write my best posts here dozens of times. You don’t want to know how many times they get rewritten. It’s embarrassing. And since I always write about personal stuff — typically in a rush of passion — I’ve learned to let new posts sit and breathe for as long as I can before publishing them. Every time I publish something the day I write it, the post later looks horrible and I end up editing it a few weeks later anyway.

If you fear the idea of personal details of your sex life winding up in front of your mother, do something else. Sex blogging is a forfeiture of privacy. Even if you use a fake name, people will find out who you are. Sex writing is not as life-altering as porn, but writing about your sex life is still risky to your family and loved ones. If you write about a boyfriend or partner without consulting them first, you will get dumped, as you should. I recommend keeping all current relationships off the blog. I’ve not followed this rule perfectly and have reaped the repercussions of not doing so.

A professor once said you can give someone the tools of language and get paragraphs, but you can’t teach voice. This is true. If you have the voice, you have it. If you don’t, consider agriculture or tech, or go into a useful trade like repairing air-conditioning units or practicing law.

Good luck.

Love, Beastly