Besides its general comedic brilliance, the recent ‘EuphOff’ meme showed very clearly that in erotica – as in life generally – words matter.
‘Cock’ is sexy. ‘Throbbing manhood’ is not.
‘Cunt’? Hell yeah! ‘Orchid of love’? Well…no.
So when the adorable Jade A. Waters let slip the other night that she has an actual list of favourite words, I was immediately intrigued. That list – cultivated over the best part of 20 years – has evidently stood Jade in good stead, because she’s a beautiful writer, equally (and devastatingly) capable of tugging your heartstrings and just plain turning you on.
With Jade’s kind permission, I’ve decided to use her list of favourite words as the prompt for a mini fiction contest.
The brief is pretty simple: pick one word from the list below, and write a piece of erotic fiction with that title. Your story should be no more than 1500 words, and you can be as creative as you like with how you approach it. I’ve already got my word of choice lined up, and will be posting my entry at some point next week.
I’m probably not going to award a prize for this one, so there’s no deadline per se, but if I get enough submissions by Easter Monday, I might randomly send chocolate to the ones I really like. Emphasis on ‘might’ (words matter, after all…).
Whether it’s parabola, pretension, or profusion; fastidious, flamboyant, or forbidden; just choose the word that stands out to you, and email, tweet, link or DM me with your story.
And even if you don’t fancy taking part, definitely do go check out Jade’s site, for more evidence of her linguistic talents!
10 replies on “Words: A Writing Challenge”
What a lovely, lovely bunch of things to say, and how honored I am that you’ve used my word list as the basis for a writing challenge! Thank you so much for that—this thing has been running for so long, and living on a wall in every house I’ve dwelled in since 15…so I’m tickled it’s gotten some love from someone other than me! 🙂 Of course now that everyone can see it, I’ve spotted a particular word on there twice (I’ll never tell!)—but as a friend pointed out, “perfectionist” isn’t, so I’ll just leave it be. 😉 Looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with! XX-Jade
Oooooo! There are so many great words on there. There are two that grab me. Hmmm… this is one of those frustrating moments where I back myself into a corner.
Which two?? Have you picked one yet?
The two that stuck in my mind most when I scanned the list were ‘savage’ and ‘clandestine’.
Excited to see what happens with those! 🙂
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