So I'm trying to finish up my glorious foray into erotica after about four years of avoiding it and having difficulty. I'm fixing that now, hopefully, but while writing it I needed a refresher on words to use. Penis, balls, dick, cock, and ass might be quite useful but on occasion I'm sure everyone wants to find something a little more...interesting to say--or at least something different. So I looked through different erotica word lists and decided that this was an important area to address.

(I also have no idea if this is appropriate at all for this forum and if it's not I'll copy/past it into my LJ and link it up here instead.)

There are some words that, if I'm trying to take your pr0n seriously, you should just never use. Now, this is a "mileage may vary" situation, my beliefs are not laws, and I'm very certain some of you could write some pretty damn awesome stuff with some of these words...but below is going to be a dictionary of sorts. Some of the words will be ones that are passable with care--most are ones that make me stare in vague confusion or would be a general back-button pusher for me unless done well. In general when I say I find it odd--I mean it's a word I would often find out of place in the middle of a generic sex scene. Not the beginning--in the middle when they are really getting into things. IE sex is happening in one form or another

Erection: surgation, tentigo, weeping arousal, iron rod, probing brand Size: giant, enormous, massive, mammoth, colossal, immense, gigantic, gargantuan

Glans (top of penis) Dirty: mushroom tip, mushroom head, bonnet

Penis hose, meat, pecker, whanger, wang, dong, dip stick, man meat, schlong, leaky eye, ass finder, lance, stem(I just keep thinking of flowers), mast, love pole, ramrod, dagger, cannon, Aaron's rod, one-eye bandit, third leg, pink Oboe, blue veined Piccolo

Scrotum (skin and muscle containing the testicles) velvet pouch, silken sac (I just have a hard time imagining someone going "He tongued so-and-so's velvet pouch")

Secretion man gravy/sauce, penial seasoning, milk, secretions(somewhat, previsional, I suppose)

Anus (external opening)

balloon knot, brown eye, bung hole, dark-box, fudge forest, exit portal, rosebud, other mouth, rosy ring/hole, mouth, welcome chute

Rectum (internal; after anus) Secret

Areola (colored skin surrounding nipple) pancakes, silver dollars (I just get silver dollar pancakes out of that which might work with a breakfast surprise! peice. Either way: He drew his teeth down my silver dollars, glazing them against my nipples before nuzzling the pancakes... I don't even know.)

Buttocks Ghetto booty, badonkadonk, badonk a donk butt, derriere

Perineum (skin between the genitals and anus)

taint, notcher (am I the only one who never heard of either of those words for teh perineum?)

Anal Butt slam, bend some ham, butt probe(he angled and butt probed me hard!), butt-bang, butt-fuck, kiester stab, Greeking, fudge packing, baloney colonic, sphincter invasion, split some buns, third way

Now, all of this is up to the writer. I can see someone coming and saying "I so~ use butt-bang in my story! It is awesome AND sexy" and that is probably so. My rule of thumb was take five seconds to see if I could make that sexy. It was quick and dirty (har) so I probably missed some. I took a list and simply erased ones that I thought were passable. Some like "secret" I kept in the list simply because without context it would be hard to know what it was referring to. Also, I believe every word could be used believably given the right narrator and use in dialog--This list is simply for trying to write a erotic sex scene excluding dialog.

Rules, however, are always meant to be broken.

What are some of your "oh no" words? What about ones you like using? Any particular reasons?

My rule of thumb is that no word is necessarily off-limits, but I always defer to the character's POV. I have characters who would never say "cock," for example, but then I have some who would sneer at "penis." And I've read plenty of sex scenes where the word choice jars, but I've also read many where they used words I never would and it worked very well. So, actually, I think character POV is important, but consistency of tone needs to be considered as well.

My brain is saying there's more to this, but as I'm up in the middle of the night riding out a chronic pain bout, you may want to take everything I say tonight with a dose of Vicodin. Because I am.

Yay! Rude words first thing in the morning! *is happy*

*is also twelve*

OK, I have a huge problem with people using the word sex to refer to either the male or female genitalia. Can't stand it. But I have more than once seen (published erotica) writers advising people to use it! Noooooo! Do Not Want! For m/m, it's totally unnecessary - it's not like there's a shortage of words to describe the male member, and using sex is just - well, how many guys do you know who'd refer to their penis like that?

(I can sort of understand it for het or femme - as far as I'm concerned, there are no good words for the female genitalia. Cultural conditioning? Probably. But I still don't have to read it.)

Probably the main thing I try to consider when writing is how my characters would talk/think. I like to get deep into my characters' voices - so yeah, I might actually use some of your squick-words, IF the character is the sort who might talk like that. But then, uh, they're not usually the sort who'll actually manage to get any, so it wouldn't be in the middle of a sex scene, just them fantasizing. ;D

And I think any/all of them are acceptable if you're going for laughs.

A few thoughts:

Taint: I actually quite like this one, since I had it explained to me ("tain't balls, and tain't ass") :D Not that I've ever used it, but hey, I might!

Mushroom/mushroom head: anything that makes you think of fungus in connection with the genitals is a Bad Thing.

Silver dollars: Uh? I've never seen any silver ones. Do I need to get out more?

Secret: Oh, god, please tell me no-one actually uses that!

I think my general view is: keep it simple, and keep it real. If your character wouldn't say it, don't have him thinking it. And if he does say/think it, consider what that reveals about him.

While we're on the subject, how does everyone feel about cum/come? Cum/cumming always looks weird to me.

Oh, hi, Heidi!

Yikes. That sounds horrible. At least you've got the good drugs, right? *worries*

No worries. This is chronic, which is to say it is just what my life is now. And it seems to have calmed down with the big blast of drugs and more sleep, so yay. Also, this is what I get for being two days over my date with the gym. (If I lift weights/do cardio regularly, I fare much better, but I was busy on Monday & Tuesday.)

You know, I use "sex" quite frequently, but come to think of it, I tend to use it largely in het. I use it a lot for the female genitalia, because "vagina" is inaccurate, and cunt is too crude for anybody I've written so far. I'm not sure I'll ever use it. But then sometimes it works, if it's not in a love scene/sex scene. I think I've used "sex" when it's just being described, and it becomes a nice way to separate a non-sexual situation from one that is meant to be charged with anticipation for such.

Oh, I thought of what I was going to say: no purple prose, which I'm not sure how far that slang translates, but that's mainstream romance novel slang for "his pulsing rod of passion," etc.

Iowan: I agree, there are just some words that make me go 0_o—particularly the blue veined piccolo. I’m also biased by the fact that I cannot write humor to save my life so my word choices are trying to keep a vaguely serious tone with sex. I don’t think I’ve ever used to word “sex” in sex but I have seen it done with well.

Regardless—I hope you’re feeling better!

@Mina: Taint is a word I had never read/heard during sex that I can recall. I kept it because my response was ? what? I obviously need to read more erotica.

I have seen secret used, though, and generally not well. Silver dollars still make me think of pancakes (now I am hungry).

I, actually, think I waffle on the cum/come issue. I want to say I normally use cum but I think I have used come before. I’d have to check and, well, I’m at work so digging through erotica is not exactly the best idea. (don’t ask me why I’m responding to this topic here and now as is, I can at least feel safe enough getting away with it.

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