Oh geez, I don't know, I write a bunch of different stuff... It would be a lot easier to show people my fanfic. And the fanfic content is pretty horrifying too, so I don't think I could write anything which would ruin my reputation more.
-shruuuug-? I cna only recommend what i've seen work, it sure would be a lot of work but you could also have the patreon running while you're working on building your portfolio up, giving people early access to chapters maybe?
Checking if Patreon's the right thing... They technically forbid porn, and I write a lot of noncon, which is explicitly forbidden by their TOS. What's the best way to get around that?
If you're truly attached to using patreon instea dof a different monetization model, a good bet might be going for the kind of... mhhh how to say. more emphasis on seriously steamy romance rather than just straight up porn without plot so you have plausible deniability and also the preview/patreon reward early chapters are unlikely to actually include sex acts? That'd rly lock you into writing way longer pieces tho
I don't know what other monetisation options there are. Checked again and it says no content which "glorifies" rape, which my stuff doesn't do, so I could probably get away with it. It still says "no porn", but dozens of porn writers still use it; it says something about artistic merit, so is writing easier to get away with or something?
'artistic merit' is vague as balls but I'd assume that as long as you have some plot going on around the banging and the characters aren't just the equivalent of dolls you're mashing into eachother then you'd probably get away with going 'Uh, actually the sex is just incidental to the artistic and entertaining story of people doing stuff'
Maybe it's not a good idea, then, because I literally cannot write romance that isn't fanfic. I tried to get into it because it's a massive cash cow and an easy start to a writing career, I really really tried, but there's only so much pointlessly nauseating mush between characters I can't possibly care about because they were created solely to make cow eyes at each other that I can take. "[Insert genre here] romance" is worse because I feel teased by the actual plot; I can't care about it if it's just there as background for the aforementioned cow-eye-making, because that's as good as declaring that the plot isn't important. 'Scuse my rant but AAAAAAARGH. Anyway, I can do subtle romantic subplots in genre fiction, but if that was what I could knock out super fast, I would be writing under my own name already.
I.... think you have a fairly reductive opinion of romance writing. Characters are characters, if your characters aren't fun and engaging then the romance won't be either? also there's that time-honored tradition of shoving established characters through a couple AU iterations until they're removed enough from the source material to be basically OCs.
I tried, but I really can't tolerate heavy romance focus. I have never, ever seen it done in a way I find appealing other than as a subplot to something else or as a very short story, and the latter might be doable but length is apparently a major selling point for romance fiction.
If you can manage a plot around whatever sex and fetish scenes you want to write, you should be able to manage it, but you might get people who are put off by these two who keep having unreal amounts of kinky sex without ever exchanging indications that they even like each other. A lot of Patreon's "no porn" rules are an attempt to stall out the efforts of independent porn studios from using them as a means of securing income. We're talking studios that were pulling in something like ten thousand a month for five-minute bits of two video game character bumping uglies. Much like how fanart is easier to argue fair use on, written works are easier to argue 'artistic merit' when it comes to depictions of sexual acts between characters. But you're going to need something other than the bumping uglies. If that's romance, fine. If that's crime serials, sure. Whatever it is, if you get reported for exclusively writing porn, you're going to want something that gives you a way to say 'hey, no, this isn't porn, this is a story that incidentally contains sex scenes'.
The thing is porn without plot is not tolerated on patreon anymore. So if you want to write porn without romance? Maybe you can manage a spy thriller of some kind with completely emotionless sex scenes. Maybe. But written porn majorly majorly depends on the set up and the characters involved and you will have to compete mostly in the softcore/steamy romance novel market. That's what most of the market is. you may be able to wing a single core novel with short stories clustering around it. But most of the porny romance market is dominated by 20-entries-novel-series for a reason. The reason is that is what people want to read. Most folks gravitate to written porn because they like being somewhat invested in the characters.
Not really? There are are a lot of romance short stories people are happy to pay a dollar or two for, and I'm talking 13,000-20,000 words here. If you're looking to get into romance and/or erotica, I'd do some research on what sells well on different models. The kindle erotica market, for example, has a lot of stories with very little romance, but ime, if people are paying for something every month, they like to make connections with characters and stick with them. Edit: I follow someone on tumblr that writes fanfic porn compilations and sells them on gumroad, if you want another avenue with potentially less rules. I have done no research into the thing, I just read a lot of romance.
When I say "short", I mean like fanfic one-shot short, not novella short. More than about a page and I'm going OH MY GOD WHY AREN'T YOU ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING. And if the characters are doing something, I wouldn't be worrying about putting that under a different name. I checked and Gumroad says you can't put porn there, so I'd rather not go there either. Porn and fetish fic are different to me than romance, because I have a weird fascination with other people's fascination. I can understand why the porn is interesting; I really can't understand the appeal of romance novels, even though in real life I'm sex-repulsed but romantic and I feel like it should be the other way round.
I'm... not sure what you're looking for? Have you done research on if what you are picturing yourself writing sells the way you're picturing it? Because I personally can't imagine paying even a single dollar for like five thousand words of people boinking unless I'm already invested in the characters. And if you want to have people invested you'll want to write more than just the boinking. If you want to market on patreon you'll need to find plausible deniability, build a portfolio, and market both your writing and your characters as aggressively and in as many venues as possible. If you want to write just smut and nothing else you'll need to do absurd amounts of research to find a monetization model, find your kink niche and market yourself aggressively until you have a dedicated fanbase that is actually willing to pay, which means writing for free to build up a portfolio for a good long while.
I don't mean I can't invest people in the characters' relationship, I have successfully done that. I just can't write something that focuses on only that relationship all the way through with no action (counting fetish stuff as action because my brain is weird).
You... said earlier you'd rather not do anything that is [genre]-romance either, so I assumed the problem was writing romance at all. Anyways most people will be much more willing to pay money for lengthier pieces, lengthier pieces make it easier to cushion the porny parts in enough plot stuff that you have plausible deniability. If you want to write a kinky space adventure or a kinky detective noir thing, or what have you there's markets for that, definitely! You just need the plot bc most crowdfunding things really really do crack down on pwp stuff. Either way you'll need to invest a lot of time into marketing to reach your audience or you won't make much money. And the easiest way to generate interest is having at least part of your origfic writing on Wattpad or similar.
Sorry for lack of clarity; what I meant was I can do "[insert genre here] with romantic subplot", but not "romance with [insert genre here] window dressing". The latter is when I feel teased by the window-dressing plot, because the romance bit is portrayed as more important than the plot about saving lives or solving crimes or whatever, and I can't care about that part when the writer's just declared it to be less important than whether two people hook up or not. Plenty of Patreon users do put up unabashed smut and some do noncon/dark stuff; standard practice seems to be having an account on an origfic site that allows that and linking to it, while only putting up the okay stuff directly on Patreon. Hm.
I mean ideally the romance-plot and the genre-plot would be pretty equal. At least that'd be ideal for me :P But yeah I assumed as much. The crackdown is however also pretty recent so they may still be in theprocess of weeding things out. Anyway depending on how you end up wanting to approach this in the end one potential way may be writing backstory bits that are relatively short and help flesh out the character as patreon content and then putting the smut the characters star in on the other site?
Maybe, yeah. I Google-searched the site for "kink fiction" and found at least two writers who blatantly break the guidelines with more extreme stuff than I plan to ever do...
