So You Want To Write Fetish Erotica, Part 1: The Senses
A NOTE TO BEGINNERS
This guide is written for those with at least a passing familiarity in kink and a basic grasp of fiction writing, but all are welcome to read along and learn. That means I won’t be defining more common terminology, like bottoms or tops, bears, butch, etc. If something is more obscure or specific, I’ll make mention of it and define it.
That said, I won’t be going too deep. This guide isn’t for one specific kink or fetish. It’s intended as a framework to write the act itself, and I’ve tried to make sure what’s here is as broadly applicable to that as possible.
So: curiosity might have brought you here. Maybe you’re wanting to dip your toes in. Maybe you’re a bit anxious about getting it right. That means you’re asking the right questions. I’m happy you’re reading.
BEFORE WE BEGIN: A NOTE ON RESEARCH
Short answer: yes. Do it. Do it in whatever way is safe, comfortable, and within your means.
What does this entail? The process can feel a bit scary and overwhelming, but kink first and foremost is an exploration of different ways to feel good. For good and mindful kinksters, comfort and safety are of paramount importance.
The SFW way: Look up articles, interviews, how-to’s. Get a sense of the community, any slang terms, how the power dynamic is expressed. Nice and simple. Get a feel for the lifestyle, maybe get a beta reader who knows. You’ll be able to write effectively, and seem like someone who’s taking it seriously.
Below that would probably be indulgence from a distance. This is the next best thing, honestly. Look up some less mediated interviews, podcasts, personal writings. Get a feel for intra-community chatter, how it’s expressed to those already in the know. If you’re adventurous and/or willing to drop cash, find some videos! The internet is full of high-quality adult fetish videos, a vast majority of them performer made and produced. Seeing gives you a much better idea about the visual mechanics of scenes, pacing, and structure.
And, if you’re brave enough, and have partners who you trust, we arrive at the endpoint: personal participation! I enthusiastically recommend this as a form of research with strong caveats: play with partners you trust, have a safe word, and communicate. Never be afraid to stop a scene. Take aftercare seriously. Pleasure and enjoyment are what matter. I cannot reiterate how necessary it is to be safe, sober, aware, and firm in your boundaries. But if you muster up the courage and follow through, mindful immersion is the best tool to understand a kink as an experience with its own rhythms and narrative conventions. And, most of all, you have first-hand experience with an interior emotional world filtered through kink. That’s incredibly valuable.
So get out there! Have a little safe and sane fun with some perverts you trust! Or just admire from afar, taking in the vibe. Or just read about it, and let your imagination fill in the gaps.
Kink is a world where shame doesn’t enter into the equation (and if it does, it’s in a very specific way, and it’s part of the scene). Dive in as deep as you want, and enjoy it.
Chances are, you know someone with a fetish, or a fixation, or some kind of paraphilic attachment. Could be a coworker, could be a friend, could be a partner, could be you!
Somebody gets off on women wearing yellow kitchen gloves (common to the point of cliche, but classics are classic for a reason). Or they like well-manicured feet. Stockings. Watches. Women stomping around the mud while wearing only waders (yes, I’ve seen it).
To the outsider, it can understandably feel impenetrable.
A fetish isn’t an esoteric thing. It’s not, by and large, something to be ashamed of or hidden from partners. It’s part of sex, part of who we are, and how we engage with intimacy. It is more necessary for some, and others, less. They can involve outside objects (or participants, though rare), or just the body, in a specific state, or just a part of it. The fetish or kink could even be about how sex itself is conducted. And all of it is beautiful and normal, a part of how we experience the beauty of physical connection.
So, what is a writer to do if they have absolutely no idea where to start with a particular kink or fetish? Simple. Start with what every single other piece of writing advice has always led with.
Your five senses. Mixed with character. Add in some kind of piece of clothing or an accessory: socks, stockings, gloves, boots—hell, it could be an apron. We experience heightened sensory sensitivity and awareness during arousal—our brains flood with hormones and other chemicals to trigger several biological processes at once, most notably blood flowing between our legs to get those primary sex organs perked up and ready (ooooh, his description is so visceral and vivid, so sexy, not clinical at all).
We begin to register and feel more, so why shouldn’t our writing? Prose styling demands some kind of change when desire begins to take hold—it doesn’t have to be much, but it should convey that the mood has shifted, and that bodies are about to engage one another in ways we find pleasurable.
To whit: a simple method to illustrate (show, not tell—telling is for dirty talk) a change is adding some additional immersive detail.
For this exercise: Pick one. Doesn’t matter which for storytelling purposes, but it will definitely affect the more mechanical questions of how immersion is conveyed.
For our purposes, let’s focus on the person actually doing the thing: wearing stockings, shaving their armpits, slathering the peanut butter on themselves, etc.
Show me. Paint a picture, fill it with detail. Express character through the illustration of emotion, not simply the declaration of it.
A pair of latex gloves, for example. Maybe one partner, Adam, is really into wearing them, and the other, Betty, while neutral, gets a kick out of how she is looked at when wearing them.
Take your time. Pick a character, and filter the senses through their perspective. What do they like? Dislike? Hate? What gets them hot? Are they indulging a partner or themselves while a neutral partner watches?
Betty held the box of medical gloves, the sterile tang of the latex wafting gently into her nose. “You’re into this?”
Adam nodded, bit his lip. “Yeah,” he said, blushing. He was squirming in his seat. “I just wanted to share them with you. If you don’t wanna try, that’s cool, we can just skip it.” He sounded a bit sad, but not ashamed. “Your comfort is more important.”
Betty looked down at the box, then back up at Adam. “Ok, alright. Just this once, and just for you.” She gingerly pulled two of the milky yellow-white gloves from the box, and set the box on the nightstand.
The smell was the same, but holding them in her hand, looking at how brilliant they were in the dark, the cuff long—“twelve inches,” he’d said, “never shorter—they don’t look as good.”—and the cool smoothness of the rubber, something was different.
Meeting Adam’s gaze, Betty gave him a devilish smile. “Shall I?” She asked, bunching her fingers together, pulling one glove over her left hand, into the wrist, letting her hand spread as it slipped up her arm, filling the fingers and thumb. The glove made little squeaks and pops with every little micro movement, ending in a gorgeous creaking when she clenched her fist. Then she released the cuff once it was on as far as it could go, and it snapped against her forearm, the jolt of pain waking her up in ways didn’t quite understand. Yet.
Adam was breathing fast, smiling, sitting still like a good boy. She stepped towards him, taking the other glove and running across her hand, and again, listening to him whine—he wanted to tell her, but he wouldn’t. This was about HER comfort, and Betty was plenty comfortable taking her time.
Still, she wanted him to go wild, so it went on without ceremony, but with the same clench and snap. The latex, so tight against her skin, melded to her touch—but it also created a barrier, separation from her own form. Running a hand down her neck, the cool material warming, that minuscule wall transforming her touch, made her skin tingle, her heart beat faster. Betty could feel a slight flush in her chest.
“So what do YOU feel with these on?” Betty asked, letting a hand fall down the front of her shirt, to rest at the waistband of her pants, her fingers dancing lightly over the fabric.
Even in the dark, she could see him blush. “They…they make me feel a bit less…masculine, I’d say. More submissive.”
She hooked a thumb in the band, pulled it down, gave him a peek of the hair between her legs. “Hmm…Me? I’d say the opposite.” She brought a hand to her mouth, smelled them again. Now they smelled divine. That sharp, acrid rubber was mixed with her perfume, and her deodorant, and her mounting arousal. Adam could smell it, too—his underwear looked close to ripping apart. “What do you think?”
He tried to speak, but she rested a finger on his lips. “That’s all I need.” Betty smiled at his squirming.
Betty sucked on her middle finger as she sat on his lap, wincing a touch at the sour taste of the glove, but soon rolling her eyes at the little noises it made sliding across her tongue and her teeth.
What would this taste like when she…the thought stopped. This was HIS thing, not HERS. She suspected, however, admitting how much fun she was having wouldn’t be a defeat.
Pulling out with a pop, she whispered, “I think I get it.”
See? So this has elements of everything, but I wanted sensory elements to be most forward.
Every part of the sensory experience builds on the last. We see how Betty goes from neutral apprehension to something more enthusiastic by the end. And we do that by using her sensory journey as the spine of the passage. The deeper in she goes, the more fully she experiences the gloves. The more we feel her reaction, the more intense the change becomes.
Note the pacing. This will become a bit more apparent later on, but part of kink is the preparation, the way things shift when the scene begins. Betty lingers that first time, as does the reader. It’s a new experience, so we want to write something that savors it before moving on. Try to make the first time the fetish or kink appears in full a “slow pan”—that is, a move across elements, describing every relevant piece sensory information, and relating it back to character.
Above all, note that Betty’s getting into it. In erotica, readers expect a certain level of “buy-in” from the characters. Reluctance or even outright refusal is okay, but it needs to be addressed adequately in the narrative, and either used as a catalyst for a breakthrough or an expression of vulnerability that needs care and attention. Erotica and romance are entwined, thematically and in content—while we want to honor emotional complexity, we also want our HEA.
Every bit of the glove is tied back to Betty, her reaction, her experience. It is not just “Betty put on the glove,” because while that might work in genres where a tight, declarative sentence would be needed, it doesn’t pass muster here. Our goal is to illustrate to the reader that something profoundly sexy is happening, and it’s just left of center to throw them off. And it advances the story, through her perspective, and how that is changing internally and externally.
Stories are about characters, how the world affects them, and how they affect the world around them. And that means everything: Betty’s partner, with his embarrassment, offering an out, and respecting her boundaries; the gloves themselves creating an entire sensory experience for both partners, her gradual warming up to the gloves themselves—this is revealing character and character change in a few words.
Also: notice we’re building heat before anything explicitly sexual happens! That’s another part of kink and fetish work, especially those based on clothing, that gets a bit overlooked: a decidedly non-sexual experience (donning gloves, pulling on stockings, clicking a watch band into place) can take on entirely new meanings when seen as a fetish-centered sensory experience. Entire scenes can shift from totally innocent to foreplay if viewed correctly.
And what if someone charges a completely innocent activity with that kind of energy? Adam and Betty can once again enlighten us:
Adam sat on the couch, idly tapping buttons on his Steam Deck—he wasn’t playing anything, just scrolling through the store, like he did, for some reason.
“Hey, babe, I’m gonna go wash the dishes. Are there any gloves?” Betty asked. “You cooked, so…”
He smiled. “Aww, thanks, babe. Are you sure?” She nodded. “They’re under the sink.” He paused. “New pair, your size.”
She bit her lip, rolled her eyes. “You’re the pervert, not me.”
“Oh really? Prove it.”
Betty puffed out her chest. “Alright, I will. I’ll be normal as possible.” And she got up and went to the kitchen.
Scrounging under the sink, she retrieved the pack of gloves, ripped open the package. A pair of brilliant yellow, almost-elbow length cleaning gloves, with a little bit of texture on the palm and fingers. She looked his way, and he gulped.
Pulling them on quick, with knowing casual disregard for his feelings, she winked at him. “I get the other ones, but you’re into these?” Betty asked, waving her fingers, little squeaking noises issuing from her hands. “Do you jerk off to those ASMR videos on YouTube?”
“No!” Adam cried, very quickly, blushing. “Not currently.”
“Well.” She said nothing else, just leaned over the sink, turned the water on, and rested her hands on the edge of the sink, looking down at the water. Then, she moved, rested her head in her left hand, using her right finger to swirl the water as it filled up.
Her hair was pulled back, a couple of stands hanging lazily around her ear. “Is it a mom thing?” She asked. “I mean, if a hot woman was mean to baby Betty wearing these, I might develop a complex, too.”
So casually and cutely rude.
Good god. She looked his way and smiled, so warm. She blew him a kiss.
That made his heart skip.
We’re all building something, putting elements together, letting them spark their own associations. We let subtext carry the weight—how Adam’s eyes linger, what he notices, what details stand out, how he feels. It’s a decidedly non-sexual thing, but the object of fixation fills the scene with energy. Betty’s participation, her playful tease, they reveal a bit about her.
At the most basic level, that’s what your kink and fetish writing should do: load the scenes with energy. Give the reader something to experience, from start to finish. The fixations don’t need to be explicitly involved the entire time, but they do need to be living at the edges of the narrative, shaping and informing the characters’ lives. A fetish is something conscious made from the latent, a confluence of memory and desire that we can’t quite explain. They are part of the character, so in certain situations, they might affect how they live in the world. That can cause problems, without even characters noticing.
Adam might see things a bit…differently out in the world.
"Sir?" The girl behind the counter asked. "Are you looking for something specific?"
Adam shook his head. "Sorry, I got distracted. Let me get the crushed cookies." He’d had it locked down for a bit, but Betty’s extended weekend tease had made him hyper-aware of how much PPE was around, and how sexy it was on some people.
Her hands were delicate, the material thin and tight over her hands. He thought about asking for another sweet to mix in his ice cream, just to watch her work a bit more.
He felt a nudge in his ribs. "Ice cream? In February?" Betty asked. "This is where you wanted to meet?" She snaked her hand down to his, gave it a squeeze, letting him feel the soft, supple leather.
He could feel his cheeks flush.
Just a few things can give you the mood, show you what’s happening in Adam’s head. He was alright before, but obviously, Betty’s got him off balance.
Sensation is important, but it’s not the only thing. However, we’ll dive into those new topics in later chapters.
Still, sensation is a foundational element in good sex writing—it can illuminate character, setting. It can convey the richness of kink, without telling us anything that might be in the character’s head.
This essay is specifically focused on accessory kinks with a definitive sensory element (gloves, stockings, shoes, armpits, etc.), but other kinks, particularly those geared towards bondage or more abstract power exchanges, do have their own little worlds to explore.
The feel of something as it restrains, a piece of clothing that signals a scene, the specific scent that might tell someone to prepare for indulgence—it’s all in service of creating a world for the reader. Keep these things in mind as you write and research.
Senses are foundational. They provide us with a wealth of information that we can use to convey character, theme, setting, internal thought. But what about beyond the strict information being absorbed. What is the before, the inside, the unspoken assumptions or fears? Why this? Why now? Why this person? We know that Adam loves gloves, and Betty, while neutral, might be coming around—but where did those feelings come from? Why exactly IS Adam such a fool for a tight fit? Could there be something in Betty’s past, or a secret that she hasn’t shared (or, more juicy, a latent attraction that needed time to manifest?)?
That, my friends, is our next topic of discussion: context! The backstory to the back shot, as it were. What is happening around them, internally and externally, and what drove them to be in that room, with that box, with Betty slipping into a role that she initially resisted, but now feels comfortable inhabiting?
WRITING EXERCISE: take something you enjoy conventionally. Describe it in a way that could inspire arousal. Be bold in your descriptions, don’t be afraid to get purple—the point is to find the immersion, that complete sensory experience that would make someone demand a pause to “relieve” themselves.