How Do You Write Clop? · 8:47am Jun 11th, 2015
Hey guys, Pima here. Hope you liked my last fic, even if it was quite different from my usual stuff. I promise I'll get back to more vanilla stuff soon. 
A few weeks ago, I received a PM from a reader asking me a surprising question: how do you write clop? I say surprising as I am most certainly not a good writer, and so I'm not sure why anyone would ever come to me for advice. Nevertheless, I answered him, and I figured that I might as well post my response here. So, without further ado, Pimapifi's Guide to Clop:
So... how to write a clopfic. Let's see if we can break this down a bit, eh? I apologize in advance if any of this advice squicks you out.
1. Clopfics aren't special
There is no exclusive formula that makes a clopfic good. The things that make a clopfic good are the same things that make any story good: believable characters, comfortable pacing, an appropriate tone, proper English (or whatever language you're planning on writing in)... In my experience, clopfics are a bit different from most fics in that people tend to pay less attention to anything that isn't specifically meant to arouse. However, that isn't an excuse to slack off and make a story that is lackluster in any place that isn't clop.
SleeplessBrony, one of the fandom's premiere clop writers, once compared the writing of clop to the writing of an intense swordfight. If you read a story about two nameless blokes just stabbing each other, yeah, it's full of action and everything, but it's boring. I don't care about two nameless peeps stabbing each other. It's the same way in clop. I don't care about two random ponies fucking. I want to know who they are. What are their names? What's their relationship? What are their goals? Why the hell are they having sex?!
In my two horse-fuck fics, I could have very well just opened the fic on Sunset getting rutted by Lonestar... but I didn't. I established why they were together, and why everything that was happening was happening. In Stable Relationship, a lot of the tension in the piece comes from the intricacies of AJ and Sunset's relationship. They're friends, yeah, but they're also both intensely jealous of the relationship the other has with Lonestar. That tension makes the sex all the more engaging.
I've often said that a poorly written crackfic is still a poorly written story. The same is true in clop. A poorly written clopfic is still a poorly written story.2. Write for yourself
In all clop that I write, I try to follow the wise words of the legendary fic writer Kits:Write what makes your penis happy.
Seriously. Write the stuff that turns you on. Don't cater to fetishes or styles that you don't like, or don't find interesting. There's no quicker way to ruin a good clop piece than by the author not having any interest in what they're writing. For some reason, there's this belief that it's weird or wrong to be aroused by your own writing--that couldn't be any further from the truth. If you're writing well, you should find your prose erotic. How is anyone supposed to get off to your clop if you can't?
And, yes, sometimes this might mean writing something that not everyone likes. My last fic, Cheerilee's Fantasy, is watersports, a fetish that creeps a lot of people out. However, it's something that I love, and something that I really wanted to write about, so I did.
This kinda leads me to my next point, which I apologize in advance for the crudeness of...3. Keep yourself horny
Hopefully, the plotline that you're putting down into prose form is one that turns you on. Hopefully--and I apologize if this squicks you out--it's an idea that you could see yourself getting off to. Here's a tip: don't jack off to your own ideas until you're done writing the fic.
One of the quickest ways to lose interest in a topic is by jacking off to it. Keep yourself restrained. Make the idea into a forbidden fruit, something that you can't obtain until you're finished writing about it.
This will also do wonders for keeping you horny! There's no better time to write clop then when your dick is begging for a good jostling, so to speak. Take that mind-rending horniness and put it into your story.4. Avoid needless euphemisms
He slid his throbbing stallionhood into her blossoming flower...
You're writing about two ponies from a TV show for little girls having sex. Don't be afraid to get dirty. Don't afraid to cut right to the chase.
He slid his cock into her dripping pussy.
Seriously. There are few bigger turn-offs than stupid "literary" prose in a clopfic. I want to read about stallions ramming mares right in the cunt, not something out of a Jon Krakauer novel.
5. Be clear about what's going on
This kinda builds back into #1, but it's especially important in clopfics, and it's something that quite a few authors (myself included) struggle with. When describing sex, you need to be super-clear about which pony is doing what to whom, and how they're positioned.
When I first published Riding, do you know how many people thought that Lonestar was fucking Sunset in the ass when really it was all vaginal? Quite a few. And the reason for that was that I was unclear in my descriptions, and I made the audience confused. Be clear.6. Do your research
In the first draft of Riding, I said that Lonestar put his "full length" into Sunset. His full length.
Do you know how long a horse's cock is? About thirty inches. Getting thirty inches of cock stuffed inside you would kill you.
This was a case of me not doing my research. I had no idea how long a horsecock was before I wrote the story, and so I assumed that a normal human being could just take it. Hell, I still don't quite understand how the medial ring works, and someone just commented on Stable Relationship that I got something about the foreskin on a horse's penis wrong.
I have a chart saved onto my computer that details all the sections and parts of the vagina, just so I know how to describe the image in my head. Don't be ashamed to ask people questions, or Google things you don't know. Your writing will be all the better for it.7. Try to plan out the sex before you write it
This is more a personal thing, but I always like to make a detailed outline of how the sex scenes will go down before I write them. Sex is a relatively complicated act--especially if you want to make it intense, as I often do--and so having a complete idea of what's going on before you put it into prose form is always a good idea.8. Read other clopfics
I don't read as many clopfics as the average user, I don't think. In fact, my mature filter is usually on. However, when I do, I always take time to analyze the sex scenes and ask myself, "Okay, what decisions did this writer make to result in this scene?" Being able to look critically at a piece and see what works/what doesn't is a great skill to have for any genre of literature. I keep a whole Bookshelf on this site called "Reference," which is filled with clopfics I think are particularly good, so that I might go back and study them to see how to write a particular act/scene.That's about all I can think of right now. Here are some resources to help you on your quest:
The Erotic Thesaurus - The Holy Grail of writing clop. This document contains research from nearly two-dozen acclaimed clopfics, and includes tips for writing most any sort of sex. Whenever I write clop, I make sure to keep this open for reference.The Clopfics and My Little Fetish group listings. Great place to start reading. I would suggest sorting by rating when looking at the fics, and taking the ones at the top.
Ezn's Guide - Should be required reading for all new fanfic writers. It's a great, albeit pretty basic guide on the mechanics of writing, as well as some of the skills that make writing fanfiction unique.
Advice From the Masters - A site blog post from a few years ago containing tips from SleeplessBrony and ButterScotchSundae, two clop masters, on how to write the genre. Always worth a read.
EDIT: Something else I just found. Marshal Twilight wrote a very extensive clop guide a few months back, and reading it over, it looks really good. Check that out as well.
Just my two cents on the topic. I hope this helps anyone looking to make some headway into the genre.
Not a bad take on it. Clop--or even erotica in general--ins't easy to write. People tend to think, "gee, if I write about two characters mindlessly fucking, and nothing more, others will like it." That is not true. Clop is just as emotional as it is physical (basically what you said about AJ and Sunsets relationship in A Stable Relationship). Without emotion,it is just mindless sex, and that is boring.
When it comes down to it, clop takes time and patience. I have written one before, and yeah, it was well received, but it wasn't featured (Mainly because it had to compete with two other clop stories from better writers ). What does that have to do with anything? Simple. Clop does not guarantee an easy feature like so many assume. I cannot tell you how many times I have read comments saying blah blah blah easy feature, or blah blah blah sellout. I can't prove it, but I am about 75% certain that no more than 2 mature stories will grace the featured page at a time. Again, I can't prove it,but I don't recall a time with more than 2 since I came here. I could be wrong, and most likely am. When is comes to that, your story has to stand out among the others that were posted,and even there is no guarantee.
And not all clop is the same. All authors are different and have different styles. Authors who have more experience writing tend to do it well due to previous experience. They know how to structure, pace, and make believable characters. Newer writers won't have that luxury. And even then, those with experience writing won't always succeed at clop their first time (though there are a few exceptions I can think of here). Clop is an art, not a science.
Thanks, that really helped me with something that I am currently writing. It's not exactly a clopfic, but there is something like that in it. :-)