This is a living document meant to catalogue some of the things I try to do in my own script-writing. I'll add things as I think of them later.

Just to give some credentials... I'm a published writer in RL, and I have an advanced theater degree... for whatever that's worth. :)

DOs

DO BREAK ANY AND ALL OF THESE RULES if you feel it is best for the script you are writing.

Art happens when you KNOW the best practices of what has worked before and for others, but then you break them anyway. This is true in EVERY creative endeavor. There are very few hard and fast rules to follow when writing effective, sexy, emotive, and engaging erotic scripts. Don't get trapped into letting anyone tell you how best to write YOUR script.The ideas of "what listeners want" and "the standards of the GWA community" or "this is how you get upvotes" are all largely bullshit. The key is to follow YOUR vision. By all means, KNOW the general guidelines and best practices that can help you enhance your work, but be willing the BREAK those conventions when YOU feel it's necessary. I can't stress this first "DO" enough. Now on to the rest of them.

DO Take your time

Effective scripts are (usually) not written in a few minutes. Though it largely depends on your process, your intent, and your level of writing ability, writing a good script takes time. It takes creating a rough draft, and then refining it. Going through and reworking it and editing it--as many times as necessary. For some scripts this could take only a couple pass-throughs. For others, it might take a month of revisions and careful wording to get just right. The point is, don't be in a rush to get your script out there. Feedback and fills are nice, but you generally only get one shot to release a new script for the first time. That's when the most attention will be on it. If it's refined and polished to the point where you feel like you've created what you MEANT to create, you'll be so much more satisfied with any fills and feedback that come in. If you release it half-cocked, you may not get the audience you're looking for, or performers who are interested enough to do it. That said:

DO Release your Scripts

Ge them out there. Don't dwell on them too long. It's MUCH better to put out 10 scripts at 80% of your ability level than to release ONE script that you've tried to get to 100%. You'll learn MUCH faster and have a lot more fun if you release your scripts even if they aren't perfect, so you can try again next time. Don't be precious with ideas. Ideas are easy, and it's likely they've already been done anyway. It's the EXECUTION of those ideas that counts. Shakespeare didn't have many original ideas. He just executed those ideas better than anyone else.

DO Read Your Own Script Out Loud

Even if you're just sitting at your desk and don't do it for anyone else. Even if it's a script for a woman's voice and you are a man. Even if you're embarrassed to say the things you wrote out loud: PERFORM YOUR OWN SCRIPT before you send it out. There is a magical thing that happens when you actually say the words out loud and perform the dialogue you've written. It helps you hear what is awkward. What doesn't make sense. It helps you hear when you've transitioned too quickly from seduction to blowjob, or orgasm to recovery. It even helps you come up with dialogue to say WHILE sex is happening. In this way you will palpably empathize with a performer who might try to fill your script. The more natural it feels to you when you say it out loud, the more natural it will feel to them when they perform it. DO IT. It makes a huge difference.

DO Empathize with your characters

You may be a man writing for a woman's voice in hopes that someone will fill the script the fulfill a fantasy of yours. You may be a woman writing for a male sub in hopes of having a little whipping boy to play with when someone performs it. This is GREAT! It's the magic of what GWA is all about. BUT, if you don't take the time to empathize with the characters you create in your script, it will seem shallow and hollow when brought into a recorded format. While you are fulfilling a fantasy of your own by writing something you hope someone will fill for you, you are also fulfilling a fantasy of the performer as well! Most performers fill scripts they connect with. They WANT to perform scripts that speak to them. Some performers love acting. Some love creating sex sounds and sound effects. Some LOVE diving into wonderfully drawn characters in ways that they can't indulge in in real life. Don't forget that they are fulfilling their fantasies simply by performing these things. And the more time and effort you put into understanding and expressing your characters within the story and dialogue you create, the more likely performers will connect with them too, and WANT to fill your script.

DO Create context with your sex.

For most people, sex without context is almost as boring as watching paint dry. While simply hearing a sexy voice moan and whisper while its owner touches themselves and orgasms can be hot, we are script writers... We MUST do more than that. Many performers have trouble coming up with their own context. That's why they do script fills! For me, the context is what's sexier than anything else, and to be honest, as a performer, performing the sex itself is the most difficult and exhausting part of doing an audio. If you don't perform yourself, you can't imagine what hard work it is to create good kissing or blowjobs sounds, the toll it takes on you to be out of breath for minutes at a time and perform a sex scene. Or even more challenging, for the more extreme oriented, what it takes to create good deep throat or gagging sounds. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun and critical part of any GWA audio, but the sex itself, once you get there, really only needs to last a few minutes. The rest is the story surrounding the sex. The relationship between the characters--the personalities of the characters. These traits are what ATTRACT us to these characters in the first place. Think about what's attractive to YOU in a man or woman. What personality traits do they have. How doe they talk? How do they think? EVERY aspect of their character should be thought of in terms of, "what is attractive about this person?" That could be extreme dominance or extreme submission. It could be a Big Beautiful Woman or a short mousy, submissive guy. These details matter. And it's these discoveries that will make us cum once the sex starts. The sex itself is only the tip of the iceberg.

DO Think about the verisimilitude of your dialogue.

This is one of the biggest problems that both new and experienced script writers have. The challenge is this: How do you get a clear story across when you're only able to show one half of the dialogue? This is part of the art of this kind of script writing (keep in mind your script DOES NOT have to follow this convention either--but most scripts on GWA do). We as script-writers on GWA have to cheat sometimes. We have to allow the speaker to reveal things in the dialogue that wouldn't usually naturally come up. For example, what a speaker is wearing is not something the speaker would talk about directly unless asked, and even then, the flowery adjectives we add to those descriptions just make it sound even more unrealistic.

"I've got a tight little skirt on and a skimpy, pink little crop top. Do you like it?"

In real life a woman would almost never say that. It's MUCH better to reveal these things in a more natural way--and let the picture of her emerge slowly. Something more like this:

"Do you like my outfit?"

"Yeah, it's kinda short, huh?"

"Oh, thank you! It's a Mickey Mouse charm. I usually don't wear crop tops, so hardly anyone gets to see it!"

"I'm so glad you like it!"

This is MUCH better. I can see what she's wearing without her having to tell me. And more importantly, I don't need to know what color her top is, or how tight her skirt is. I can fill in those details myself. Perhaps most important of all, I get a sense of the interaction between these two people. I get a sense of connection! She's excited that he likes the charm on her navel, and he's confident enough to mention it. There's magic in that interaction, whereas the first example is much more flat and expository without any life at all.

This is only one aspect of making dialogue more believable, but please... take the time and PRACTICE this. It is the most prevalent problem with scripts on GWA, and it makes ALL the difference between an average script, and a GREAT one.

DON'Ts

DON'T Dwell on the size of body parts.

I know... It's porn. I know you have your type that you're attracted to. I get it. But here's the deal with erotic audios. The listener (that includes YOU if you're writing this for someone else to perform for you) will fill in what they want to see in their mind--as long as the script allows them to do it. Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with mentioning the occasional huge cock, big breasts, or tiny penis... etc, especially if those things are important to the unfolding of the story. But if it's not critical to the story you're telling, PLEASE don't dwell on it. The idea is to give the listener JUST ENOUGH of a hint of who this character is and what they look like so they they can fill in the details THEMSELVES, based on what THEY find attractive. As a performer, nothing turns me off of a script faster than a line like this...

"I know my huge, perky tits are practically popping of of my tight little sweater, and my plump ass is driving you crazy, but..."

When I come across a line like that, I can't read any further. You may have the best ideas in the world, but you'll lose me if you ruin my image of the character (not to mention their ability to talk in a somewhat believable way) with a line like that.

DON'T Demand too many sound effects.

This is certainly a rule that's made to be broken, but all I'm saying is this: The more sound effects you demand in the script, the less likely it will get filled. If you want your script to be performed, you'll want to find a way to get your story across with dialogue alone, unless it's ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to have sound effects. First, this promotes good writing practices. If you can get across that you are in a dirty garage filled with busy mechanics while your horny heroine is angling for a gang-bang with dialogue ALONE, you will be way ahead of the game. Any sound effects of pneumatic drills or clanking wrenches will be icing on the cake, but not necessary to the story. If you're adding a whole bunch of sound effects to your script, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

That said, I've created a bunch of audios with unbelievably complex soundscapes and music arrangements, but that's because I'm willing to perform and create them myself. There are always exceptions. An immersive audio with lots of SFX can be transcendent, but just realize you're asking for a lot of a performer who might want to fill it. My suggestion is to make scripts like that the exception rather than the rule.

DON'T Over-direct

This is SUPER subjective. A lot of performers LOVE direction in their scripts, some don't. There is a point at which you can go too crazy with directions. The clear line not to cross, though is when your directions are describing things characters are doing that don't easily translate to a sound the performer can make, or acting inflection they can interpret. For example this is bad:

"Hi! It's great to see you!

[A casual hug]

Oh.. my...

So what's been going on?"

What does a casual hug sound like? What is it that it needs to convey in the story? You'd be surprised how many script writers do things like this. They probably do it because they can't figure out a better way to express what's going on without a visual cue, but that's the problem. This isn't a visual medium. If you need a [casual hug] to happen, you need to find a way to express that within the dialogue, and reproducible sounds that express that dynamic. Writing visual directions or directions that don't give the performer a clear idea of what they need to do to express what you've told them to express is not helpful, and just clutters up an otherwise good script. Learn to think in terms of words and sounds... and how that medium can get across your vision. In some cases, it might mean adding a line or two, or it might mean going all the way to introducing a new character so these ideas can be expressed outside the context of the "primary" relationship. In either case, be careful about over-directing. Scripts are USUALLY meant to be interpreted. That's part of what attracts many performers. Some direction is good--too much can make your script un-relatable.

DON'T Over-sex

Speaking as a performer, doing the actual sex noises is great fun, but it can be exhausting to perform. And at a certain point, too much sex becomes boring and unnecessary. Keep what you need to get the story across and maybe give a climax to the scene. Get rid of the rest. Context is the bedrock on which the sex is based. The underlying attraction is what is most important--the details that make us WANT these characters. The actual act of sex is just the scenery on top of it.

CONCLUSION

As I think of more, I'll add them... but if you can follow some of these guidelines, it will vastly improve your scripts. And once again, once you understand them, don't be afraid to BREAK these rules. There are ALWAYS exceptions, and sometimes those exceptions can be transcendent.

April <3 <3