Who Are The Top Authors Writing 'Porn Stories'?

There are some really good authors writing within the bounds of what is considered erotic fiction these days and writing really well literarily. The 'Sleeping Beauty' trilogy written by Anne Rice under the pseudonym A.N. Roquelaure is really good and very explicit but written in such beautiful language that it reads like a dark fairy tale. The 'Original Sinners' series by Tiffany Reisz is a great example of someone blending really good BDSM content with deep characterization and complex theology. And then there's 'Fear of Flying' by Erica Jong which is really the first feminist erotic literature. For people looking for contemporary work in erotic literature, the best place to look would be on websites like Literotica. Authors such as Alessia Hazard and Selena Kitt are two of the most popular and psychologically complex writers currently producing stories for the site and consistently reaching the top of the site's charts for their work.

There are many people writing some of the absolute best erotic fiction out there right now and they largely go unrecognized. First off, there’s Chuck Tingle, author of Master Tingle and Taken by the T-Rex (among many, many others). Don’t let the make believe situations in his work fool you, he is doing some really sharp satirical writing on issues of queer identity and issues of consent.

And then there’s fanfiction, much of it written for sites like Archive of Our Own by authors such as Astolat and rageprufrock. While I may not always agree with the pairing choices made by these authors of erotic fiction, the quality of their erotic scenes is far better than most published novels, with more tension and a greater payoff. The character-driven nature of their smut reveals that an understanding of psychology is what really gets people off, far more than descriptions of physical acts.

Finally, one cannot fail to mention the long tradition of French writers merging philosophy and transgressive sex, most famously Georges Bataille in his daring Story of the Eye, a work still capable of shocking decades after its initial publication. This tradition continues in fine form with contemporary authors such as Catherine Millet, whose memoirs like The Sexual Life of Catherine M. blur the line between non-fiction and erotic fiction and offer a brutally honest account of her life.

Erotic writing can be very diverse indeed. On the one hand there are classic works of literary pornography like Anaïs Nin’s Delta of Venus, exceptional erotic poetry of profound sexual insight. And on the other hand there are hundreds of modern indie authors writing erotic novels and posting them on platforms like Amazon Kindle Unlimited where readers can sample them for free, and many of them are extremely successful – Maya Banks and Sylvia Day are two of the top romance writers currently posting novels in serial form.

Contributors in the Japanese light novel scene include Yukio Mishima, who wrote erotic elements into many of his works of philosophical fiction, including Confessions of a Mask. Today Shungiku Nakamura writes pornographic novels of considerable depth, featuring recurring characters in works such as Junjo Romantica.

If you’re looking at how to write great sex scenes, look to the examples of how authors such as Anne Calhoun use them to reveal character in her novels, and see how they serve to enhance the rest of the story rather than becoming ends in themselves.