(I was making this beginner’s guide to clopfics in order to help people entering the contest I’m going to run soon. But it could probably help some people outside that contest, too, so I thought I’d post it here.)

So you want to write a clopfic?

Great! Let’s see if I can help you! I don’t know if I’ve earned the title of ‘clopfic expert’ or not, but I’ve definitely got some experience in the subject, and I can offer some advice about how to write them. Before we begin, I want to make completely clear: None of these are absolute rules! Every rule can be broken. The key is to know the rule, know why you’re breaking it, know what you stand to gain by breaking it, and know what you stand to lose by breaking it.

Now, let’s get on to some helpful advice!

Clopfics are fics.
It seems kind of obvious, of course. (That’s why it makes a good starting point.) But clopfics are stories just like any other story. And like any other story, it should have a beginning, middle, and an end. It should have plot and conflict. It should have compelling characters whose actions make sense in the circumstances. It should have good grammar and style just like any other story.

A lot of writers who have written before but not written clopfics before might be tempted to go into it as if it’s a completely different kind of writing. It isn’t, not really. The only real difference is that instead of trying to make your reader cry (as in a sad story) or laugh (as in a happy story) or be scared (as in a horror story), you’re trying to get your reader to be horny. All good writing will elicit emotion in the reader -- in a clopfic, the emotion you’re trying to elicit is being turned on.

All the normal rules and advice for writing any other story still applies ... and there are volumes of that available elsewhere already. In this guide, I’m going to focus mainly on things that specifically apply to erotic fiction, sometimes only to pony erotic fiction.

Put the measuring tape away.
We don’t need to know whether his cock is 12 inches or 12 centimeters. We don’t need to know she weighs 110 pounds or that she wears a D-cup bra. Most of the time, it’s far better to just describe things in relative, subjective terms. Erotic authors often get too obsessed about the numbers, but the numbers usually don’t mean anything important. Measuring things can easily get obtrusive and break people out of the fantasy you’re trying to build, and they’re often awkward to put into prose.

Not to mention, if you use metric measurements, you’re alienating everyone who’s more comfortable with imperial measurements, and vice versa. Remember, you have an international audience here! Seeing a measurement you have to look up into understand is guaranteed to break you out of the fantasy!

Sometimes, the numbers can be important ... usually if they’re important to a character in the story. In that case, the best way to give the numbers is probably to have the characters talk about it. If it’s important to the character, it will be important to your reader, too.

Story Structure.
Like any other story, a clopfic usually works best when it has an introduction at the beginning, a gradual buildup, a (literal) climax, and then a little bit of falling action at the end. This -- very conveniently -- also follows the pattern of really good sex: First getting to know your partner a little, then some foreplay, then escalating things, then the big orgasm near the end, then relaxing from all the excitement.

The climax of the story doesn’t have to be an orgasm, of course. There are more creative ways to do things. The climax could be when they finally kiss. Or it could be when he finally forces himself to pull out before it’s too late. Or any of a hundred different possibilities. The important part is that the climax of the story is the moment when all the building tension is finally released.

Slow down there, buddy!
One very common mistake in newer clopfic writers is the tendency to rush to ‘the good part’. If you have to do that during your first draft in order to get it on the page, okay. But then when you’re revising, you can go back and fill in the rest better.

Take it slow. The foreplay and gradually building tension is often the best part of a clopfic, so pay plenty of attention -- and give plenty of description! -- to that. Take time for your characters to undress each other (if they’re wearing clothes), and take time for your characters to explore (and describe) each other’s bodies before jumping right into the act itself. Your readers will enjoy the sex itself more if they can visualize it better, and the best time to build up an image of what your characters look like is during the foreplay and build-up.

It doesn’t have to be extreme.
Yes, there is a place for ten-foot cocks and boobs with their own measurable gravitational fields, but not every clopfic needs to be like that. In fact, most clopfics are better off being more restrained and more realistic. Unless the crazy over-the-top extremes are the exact fetish you’re going for, you’re probably better off keeping things as realistic as possible. Not every mare needs to have a 10/10 perfect stunner of a body, and not every stallion needs to be hung like a Clydesdale. Things can be very sexy even if your characters have flaws or aren’t the absolute most attractive mare/stallion who ever lived. In fact, it’s often a lot sexier that way, rather than always having a bunch of body-builders humping away at Amazon princesses.

This applies to the sex itself, too. It doesn’t have to be an all-night fuck fest that leaves its participants passed out from exhaustion at the end. The stallion doesn’t have to pound into the mare like a jackhammer, and that blowjob doesn’t have to go all the way down her throat. It’s often sexier to do things more slowly and tenderly, especially in the beginning. If you really want to get to the extreme stuff, it’s usually better to build up to it rather than jumping into it right away.

Less is more. You can often turn your reader on more with a subtle tease than with a full-power sexplosion.

It doesn’t have to be perfect.
A little fumbling, a character accidentally falling off the bed, an awkward line a character didn’t mean to say, or even a cock that doesn’t get or stay hard when the stallion wants it to... A little bit of things not going according to plan goes a long way toward selling the realism of a clopfic. During real sex, it’s rare for everything to go perfectly, so when you read a clopfic where everything goes perfectly, it can sound a little unbelievable.

Don’t worry. It might seem un-sexy for things to go wrong sometimes, but if you work it in the right way and have characters respond to it naturally and believably, it can actually make things even sexier!

Call a spade a spade.
Nobody wants to read about how he jackhammered his fuck-stick into her chocolate starfish. But they might want to read about how he pushed his cock into her ass. While there is a place for figurative description, it’s usually not the best way to describe actual anatomy and what your characters are doing with it. Even if you find yourself using the same basic words repeatedly to describe certain body parts, it’s usually better to stick with the basic words than to try and find some fancy euphemism. Also, some newer erotic writers just don’t feel comfortable typing out ‘cock’, ‘ass’, ‘pussy’, etc. Just do it. You’re writing a clopfic, so you need to be comfortable writing the kinds of words you’ll find in a clopfic.

Feelings are more important than choreography.
While it’s important to be clear who’s doing what and where, it’s far more important to get across how they feel about it. Your reader doesn’t really care whether she’s stroking him with her left hoof or her right hoof, but they do care whether he’s enjoying it or not. Remember that the most important sex organ is the brain. The emotional and mental components of what’s going on are always more important than the physical actions themselves.

They’re characters, not assemblies of various body parts.
Every character in your clopfic should be unique. Not only should they have a uniquely different body type (lots of different body types are sexy for different reasons!), but they should have a unique personality, unique feelings, a unique way of seeing the world, and unique wants and needs. At all costs, avoid just having a story where you only mash different meat bodies together. It’s easier when you’re starting with characters that already exist in MLP, but remember that they are all unique characters. They’re going to look and act differently from each other. Having sex with Fluttershy should be very different than having sex with Rainbow Dash. Getting a blowjob from Twilight Sparkle should be very different than getting a blowjob from Rarity. Foreplay with Pinkie Pie should be very different than foreplay with Applejack. If you could change the character’s name without needing to completely rewrite the rest of the story, you know you’re doing it wrong.

Why are they anthro?
This doesn’t have to be the case if you’re just the type who really prefers human/anthro/pony over the other choices, but if you’re using humans, humanized ponies, or anthro ponies, you should have a reason for doing so. For me, that reason usually comes down to the type of foreplay I want for the story, or sometimes certain fetishes. If the taboo of nudity is a big part of the story, you’ll need humanized or anthro. Likewise if you want to make a big deal about what clothing someone is wearing and the process of taking it off. But when you’re not doing those things, I find it’s usually better to stick with regular four-legged ponies. If you are going to go with human or anthro, use it! Have fun unhooking her bra, unbuttoning his pants, and pulling down her panties. It’s a terrible waste when in a human or anthro fic, the characters just whip their clothes off with hardly any description at all. Even worse when their clothing is never described in the first place!

Write what you know.
You don’t have to be a sexpert to write a clopfic, but your clopfic will be better if you’re writing things you’re familiar with. Draw upon your own personal experiences. Even if you’re a virgin, you have some experiences to draw from: how it felt when the girl you had a crush on smiled at you that one time, the time the hot substitute teacher bent over and you could see all the way down her blouse, what it felt like to masturbate for the first time.

And when personal experience fails, research comes in. And that’s not just watching porn! (Even if that is the most fun kind of research.) Go online and search for what you need to know. Read first-person accounts of what it feels like. Read advice columns from sexperts about the problems some couples have and how to overcome them. Read other clopfics and take note of how they describe things. (Never copy it directly, but it can give you inspiration.)

Show, don’t tell.
Yeah, I know. You’ll hear this a lot everywhere. But it’s important. Instead of telling us that she’s getting horny, show us her tail rising up. Instead of telling us that he’s shy, show him blushing and trying to change the topic whenever somepony mentions sex. Instead of telling us that he likes the feeling of his sister’s mouth on his cock, show us the way it makes his pulse race and makes it hard for him to breathe. Instead of telling us that she likes putting her mouth there, show us how she looks up at him with a twinkle in her eye as she does it.

There are times when it is better to tell than to show. But the most heated and emotional parts of your clopfic are not the time for tekling.

POV
Just like any other story, clopfics work best when you establish the point of view. It can be fun -- and it can result in a perfectly good clopfic -- if you’re hopping between different ponies’ heads and telling us how each one of them feels about everything that’s happening ... but it’s often more effective to establish a particular point of view character.

In a first-person story, that point of view character is obviously the one called “I”. In first person POV, it’s easy to remain focused on that character, what they feel, what they see, etc. In order to describe how any other character is feeling or what they’re thinking, you have to piece it together from clues the main character can see or feel. You can’t just say that another character is unhappy about something -- you have to show us from the main character’s point of view how the other character is frowning and scowling at the floor.

Second person stories work exactly the same way, except with “you” instead of “I”. But even in clopfics, I don’t recommend using second person POV, especially not for beginners.

Third person (limited) POV might seem more difficult, but it’s really the same. Pick a single character to be your POV character, and then write it basically the same as a first person POV story, except instead of “I”, you’re using “he”, “she” or his/her name. You still can’t just come out and say what other characters are thinking/feeling -- you have to describe how the POV character knows what they’re thinking/feeling.

Most of all ... have fun!
If your story doesn’t turn you on, chances are it’s not turning anybody else on, either.

Chances are that there are a lot of other people out there just like you. So if you write the kind of clopfic that you want to read, you’ll probably find lots of other people out there who want to read a clopfic just like that. If you’re reading over what you’ve written and it’s really getting to you, that’s a great sign!

If you still have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments below. I’ll do my best to answer them, and it might even result in adding more sections or more clarification to this guide if you ask about something I hadn’t thought of yet.

7085880
Kudos to you.

A lot of this advice would work for dark/horror too as well as other types of stories.
Nothing says fun like just dumping stuff in the reader's lap without any buildup.

Interesting. I've never contemplated doing a clopfic, but there's good advice here regardless of the genre.

Not bad. I should get back to my writing.

Also that whole international alienation bit with measurement? Not a thing. I come from an island where we use both and it only helps younger geberations learn and grow. Regardless that was a very good point to bring up to let the reader's imagination take shape instead of always giving a cookie cut layout of what the author prefers.

7085997
Wait, how can you say it's not a thing just because you specifically come from an area where both are used? Presumably your case is excluded since you don't have a foreign measurement.

7086038
Well never heard of anyone causing an issue over measurement preferences. Its like someone saying they should exclude the dollar sign or word from shopping because we use not just US Dollars but, Korean Won, Japanese Yen, Phillipino Pesos, and more.

Money is money and as long as both parties agree its fine. I could learn a thing or two from the other person who decides to shall their unique currency with me. It's useful information as well.

This was helpful; i have a story that requires intimacy between 2 characters and wanted the moment to be very romantic and beautiful. I wasn't really sure how 'far' the topic went in regards to explicit language and subject content, but this information made it much more clear. Now, at least, I have some sort of guide for the scene I originally removed and can now put the scene back into the story. I'm hoping it will make a relatively 'heavy' story have some deeper meaning. Thanks!

You're right. Personally, I don't like to be mentioned in a clopfic the size of its parts. That creates frustration. Also, even if they are loaded, they must be realistic, unless they are fetish.
The ponies of Equestria are small, so their members could not be the size of the horses of the earth. The same with the anthro and humans. A human-pony hybrid pony could not have a giant and thick member of a land horse. Normally the average size of a human is 4 to 6 inches, so in anthro it should be the same, not as shown in some fics, and nsfw images. That of the thick members, larger than 8 inches, huge breasts and futa, in a romantic clopfic, is unpleasant, it is no longer realistic or passionate. Disproportionate sizes, personally, are only suitable in a fetish clopfic.