The MarriageHeat Writers’ Corner

The MarriageHeat Writers’ Corner

Happy New Year everybody, and welcome to the MarriageHeat Writers’ Corner! The turn of the new year seemed like a perfect time to provide the community with some tips to:

1. Enable MH Readers to more easily become MH Writers,
2. Enable MH Writers to become more effective at communicating their passion, and
3. Enable our small, ragtag band of volunteer editors to edit submitted stories more efficiently.

So we put together some guidance to help achieve those purposes!

MarriageHeat Site Guidelines

First, we’ll start with a reminder about the guidelines. We won’t repeat them all here, but we ask that all commenters and authors read through them. These guidelines are easily accessible from anywhere on the website! You can see them at this link here. Alternatively, click the “Guidelines and FAQ” button in the top bar under the “MarriageHeat” heading on most site pages. Or access it from the hamburger/drop-down menu in the top-right corner on mobile devices.

We will update these guidelines from time to time for clarity, or as new issues and topics arise.

MarriageHeat’s Mission

While we have our differences, we want to ensure the whole community is unified in the main mission of MarriageHeat. We’re not just another erotica or porn site. We are not here to portray sexuality in the multitude of ways mankind has twisted and corrupted it. There are plenty of sites that do that on the internet already—far too many. We aim to be different.

Our mission is to shine a light to the world by promoting sexuality according to God’s design. What is that design? One man, one woman, bound together by sacred marriage covenant, and enjoying their sexuality to the fullest in the safety of that committed relationship.

Community members and frequent visitors will know that the way we promote sexuality is through written erotica—portraying sex in all it’s unfiltered beauty, raw passion and explicit detail.

We believe that sexuality is a severely under-appreciated aspect of God’s creation and his design for human relationship. By portraying the staggering beauty of sexuality, we hope God’s people will more deeply understand his goodness and love toward us. In this regard, we follow the example of the book of Song of Solomon.

This is the mindset and mission we ask all authors to keep as their foundation for stories submitted for publication.

Advice for Authors

Now we have a few practical pieces of advice for authors to consider. We believe these can make their stories more engaging and easier to publish. There are many things we could mention, but we’ll keep it to a few basic things. These are the ones we run into a lot that could make our editing jobs a lot easier!

As we review these tips, we’ll link some of them to examples so that you can see precisely what we mean. The Writers’ Corner will be using today’s story as a reference: Atta Girl – Part 1, written by one of our editors, PatientPassion. A note like [WC Example 1] will appear in both the Writers’ Corner post and the Atta Girl story to link a tip with an example. To find example references more quickly in the story, use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+F or CMD+F and start typing “WC Example” to find the references. 

Plagiarism:

Hopefully it’s obvious, but we’ll say it anyway: please do not plagiarize, ever, for any reason. Don’t copy other writers’ work and submit it to MarriageHeat. We want YOUR stories—your experiences, your fantasies, your passion! We only get that through your original works. Not from pieces copied from other writers, who may not share our mission of promoting hot monogamy. Besides, plagiarism is a form of stealing, which we should all know is bad. Let’s not participate in that!

If there are outside articles or stories you’d like to discuss, you generally may do so on the MH site. But we probably will not publish it on our site if it is work that belongs to someone else.

Tenses:

Mixed verb tenses is one of the most common issues we see, and time-intensive to fix. It’s a problem if part of the story is told in past tense, and another part is told in present tense. Sometimes this makes sense; for example, if the story switches between describing background information and real-time details of an encounter. But most of the time, it’s best to write the whole story in the simple past tense. (Atta Girl is written this way.) If you so desire, you may write in the present tense. But please keep it in one or the other! Switching back and forth makes it flow strangely. See the example below, with verbs emphasized in CAPITALS:

Best (Simple Past Tense):

She LET (past) the nightgown fall from her shoulders, revealing her nude body. Her hands CUPPED (past) her breasts, displaying them for him. He PRESSED (past) his body into hers and KISSED (past) her passionately.

Good (Present Tense):

She LETS (present) the nightgown fall from her shoulders, revealing her nude body. Her hands CUP (present) her breasts, displaying them for him. He PRESSES (present) his body into hers and KISSES (present) her passionately.

Bad (Mixed Tense):

She LET (simple past) the nightgown fall from her shoulders, revealing her nude body. Her hands are cupping (present progressive) her breasts, displaying them for him. He presses (present) his body into hers and kissed (simple past) her passionately.

Can you feel the difference? It may not be a big deal to some. But in our humble opinion, consistent verb tenses make a much more sensible, smoothly-flowing story. You can save us editors a lot of time by keeping your tenses in order. And we appreciate it very much!

Paragraphs:

When writing your stories, try to use relatively short, compact paragraphs. This makes stories much easier to follow and digest. A giant block of text can be intimidating, and easy to get lost in! Aim for roughly 100 words, and no more than 200. No, you don’t need to count every paragraph. This is only a loose guideline. To make this easier, count a few paragraphs to see what 100 or 200 words looks like. Or copy them into a word processing program that can count for you.

Here are some good tips and tricks for knowing where to start new paragraphs:

• Imagine your story as a TV show or movie. When the “scene” changes, start a new paragraph. [WC Example 1] For major scene changes (skipping from one time or location to another), definitely start a new paragraph. You can even use a page break. (Or a line of asterisks, dashes, or other designs if you’re feeling fancy!) [WC Example 2]
• You can make a paragraph out of a single sentence if it’s something you want to draw special attention to! [WC Example 3]
• Start a new paragraph when the focus or topic of description significantly changes. [WC Example 4]
• Start a new paragraph when the speaker changes in dialogue. (Yes, even if that means you have 3, 5 or even more single-line paragraphs in a row!) [WC Example 5]

Dialogue:

Speaking of dialogue, it’s a great device in writing. And it’s often more engaging than a narration of what the dialogue contained. Verbal interaction between lovers is hot, too! Consider this example, and see which one you think is preferable.  

He breathed hard and told her how attractive she was, and she moaned told him how good he felt inside of her.

Versus…

“You are so hot, baby,” he whispered, breathing heavily.

“Mmh, you feel so good inside me,” she moaned back to him.

The first one’s not bad, but doesn’t the dialogue bring the passion to life that much more? [WC Example 6]

Word Count:

Stories tend to be most readable between 500 and 2,000 words. This is not a requirement, just a general guideline. (However, we do require that story submissions be at least 300 words.) If a story is any shorter than the required 300 words or recommended 500 words, it might feel incomplete. It may not give readers a sufficient taste of the beautiful scene you’re trying to portray! Likewise, if a story is longer than 2,000 words, some readers may start to lose focus. Especially since our attention spans have begun growing lamentably short in recent generations!

We also recognize that some stories simply cannot be adequately told in under 2,000 words. That’s fine! We still accept submissions well in excess of 2,000 words. However, if it’s over 3,000, we’ll probably split it into two or more parts, depending on how long it is.

As a personal example from PatientPassion, the Atta Girl series came out to about 8,000 words because of all the juicy details I wanted to include! (Even though it’s a story about only one night and one encounter!) Even after splitting it, Part 1 still came out to around 2,700 words. 

So don’t be afraid to write long stories if you want to! We editors will simply publish them in smaller, readable chunks. Feel free to set your own Part/Chapter breaks as well, and aim for 500-to-2,000-words for each part. 

Basic Grammar and Other Miscellaneous Tips:

There are many small and subtle ways that stories can be made more readable, engaging and entertaining. Unfortunately, the list is way too long to compile here. So let us focus on a few that we think would help the most. (And a few more that just happened to come to mind!)

• Avoid run-on sentences. Some longer sentences are fine, but generally, aim for 25 words or less. Our brains can only hold so much information at one time. If you have two complete thoughts to communicate, they’re often better off separated by a period than a comma.
• Avoid using the same word to start more than three sentences in a row. Mix it up to avoid monotony and make it a more interesting read.
• We don’t see italics used much, but they’re great for two purposes. First, they can emphasize certain words or phrases. [WC Example 7] Second, they can indicate a character’s thoughts without quotation marks, avoiding confusion with spoken words. [WC Example 8]
• Always capitalize the first letter of a sentence, and the personal pronoun “I”. It’s not difficult. Making this simple change can save an editor from making dozens of little changes across the full story.
• When writing dialogue, put punctuation at the end of a quote inside the ending quote mark. “Like this,” not “like this”. [WC Example 9] There are technically some exceptions to this grammatical rule outside of dialogue applications. But they’re niche enough that we’ll let you research those on your own. Or we editors will take care of them.
• It’s better to use actual words instead of symbols. For example, use the word “at” instead of the “@” symbol. And use the word “and” instead of the ampersand character (&).
• It’s good to use descriptive words to give depth and flavor to your writing. But it’s possible to use too many! A character could be described as beautiful, gorgeous, hot, stunning, fit, sexy, wild, wonderful, kind, loving, sexual, and erotic. But you can see how that can get tiring quickly! Try to limit lists of adjectives to 2-3 at a time. Use the others somewhere else!
• Minimize the use of specific measurements when referring to anatomy. If your spouse is “well-endowed,” praise the Lord—but let’s celebrate them subtly. Part of the goal of MH is to be an encouragement to all kinds of couples. One way to do that is to not get overly specific with your descriptions. [WC Example 10] That way you broaden the audience that can identify with your stories and characters. 

Now of course, there are some descriptions that are relevant. It’s inspiring to hear the challenges and successes of couples who deal with real life issues. Height differences, weight issues, or health conditions come to mind. In that case, specifics might be relevant and warranted! But a story loses some charm if we read of some six-foot-six man with a nine-inch member. Or that he’s married to a petit five-foot-one, 100-pound blonde who wears E-cup bras. That tends toward objectifying people, and frankly it just starts to sound more like sensationalized porn than real life. And that’s not what MarriageHeat is about! So keep it classy, folks. Classy and erotic are not mutually exclusive.

Conclusion

For our final piece of advice: relax! We don’t expect you to remember every single one of these tips. And we won’t be upset if you miss implementing a couple of them in your submissions. Just do your best to incorporate as many as possible, and your submissions will be that much better! And less work for the editors means more and better content for the site, and more hot marriage inspiration!

All of you community members—readers, writers, and commenters alike—you make this site what it is. You all contribute to our mission of promoting hot, passionate marriages. Thank you for being a part of our community!

We hope this guidance will help you all become better writers and more appreciative readers! We also hope it translates into better communication of the beauty and pleasure of the gift of sex within marriage. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to share them in the comments.

We pray all of you would have a year full of wonderful sexual enjoyment. More importantly, full of the grace and knowledge of our mighty and loving God.

Happy 2025, happy writing, happy reading, and happy loving!

– The MarriageHeat Team