I started writing stories more than thirty years ago. My first effort was a Sci-Fi novella. I was in my mid-twenties. It was fun to write. I typed it on an old Royal typewriter. I wish I still had a copy of it. It got lost in one of my many moves.

In 2002 I found Literotica. I was on a trip to Europe and was walking around one night in a town east and just a bit south of Zurich. Klus was a quiet and picturesque town in the Jura mountain range in Solothurn Canton in Switzerland.

I was stunned when I noticed an upscale bordello in town. I walked past it and back again on my way to the hotel. My mind raced with the concept, and on January 27, 2002 I published my first erotica story: A Night in Klus. As stories go it was fun to write. It has been read nearly twenty-one thousand times and as of this writing it is rated 4.31 out of 5 by the thirty-five people that took the time to vote for it.

Under the pen name QuietlyMakingNoise - title to my favorite song of all time - I penned 15 stories. Under the pen name Master_n_Mentor I crafted 9 essays on BDSM. All but one are considered “HOT” by Literotica standards. That means they are rated greater than 4.5 out of 5.

My favorite essay was titled, The Self-Transcended Submissive. It is an essay about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and BDSM. To date, it is my highest rated piece of writing. It has a 4.73 out of 5.

The essay that has the largest number of readers is titled, A Beginner's Guide to Dominating her. It has three-hundred and seventy-two reads. The number of favorites is 511. These two numbers floor me. The rating is 4.57 with 1,000 votes. This essay has 77 comments. Nothing else I’ve ever published has had the legs this essay has. Published in May of 2007, the latest comment was posted in December of 2019.

I started the journey to develop my skill at storytelling. I noticed - as you’d see in Klus - that my characters were one or two-dimensional. I started working on character development. I also noticed that flow was a problem. I worked on developing pacing for the stories. Some do well, some I miss it all together. The point is that I experiment and get feedback.

The dreaded “hook”! To this day, I think it escapes me. I will keep working on it till I get it.

Now is the time to start to seriously think about telling a complete novel-length story. The key question for me is: What should the story tell?

Author’s note:
I’d love to get comments about your journey. How did you become a writer of smut? What were the good things? What were the things you’d like to improve, with the benefit of hindsight?

Leave comments and let’s start the conversation.