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An 'adventure' is an unusual event, or an event that people mighty actually want to read about. Stories like, “It was a Saturday night. Me and my wife watched TV, went to bed, then made love,” are immediately rejected because literally no one cares about the sexual routine of an average married couple. However, no letter is a hopeless case. You're not allowed to lie – the people who submit the stories have a habit of feverishly scanning the magazine every month to check how accurate their post-edited story is – but you can make it a little juicier by inserting a few marginal plot developments. A few completely believable techniques that never fail include: A) Open the window overlooking the street to find a Peeping Tom watching the scene. B) Add a neighbouring couple who start making furious, shouty love at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME as your protagonists. C) Do 0.5 percent of your readership (the really creepy ones) a favour by popping in a far-too-graphic detail. Like, for example, a woman having a Bellagio fountain of a period, complete with blood clots and no explanation as to why it isn't bothering anyone involved.
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Bar the odd armchair Joyce, most of the readers' letters have absolutely no literary ambition. And why would they? They're reader's sex letters. To efficiently turn the rabble into something readable, you have to remember all the techniques banned by your literature teachers (repetitions, hyperboles, metaphors, every single cliched epithet) and use them all together at the same time.For instance, “He went on top of me and, after a couple of thrusts, he came,” would become: “His rod was swelling and hardening against my thigh. He started to gently rub against my naked skin, up and down. His hand hiked up my baby-doll and he cupped my vulva with his palm. His middle finger flirted with my pink hole. With his thumb, he polished my moist lips and opened my slit, reaching up for my rosebud. His fingers slipped in the dampness dribbling from my love-candy. He fiddled with my button; the juice was dripping everywhere up to my eyelet. His rod remained erect, firmly planted at the base of his belly and crowned with a fine, elegant red stream. He gave it to me, harshly, restlessly pounding me…” Blah, blah, blah.EXTEND THE METAPHOR
I remember one letter written by a woman who’d had a quickie on the side of the highway. Driving back from holiday, she let a motorcycle overtake her; the biker thanked her by raising a foot, she replied by flashing her lights. They both stopped in a rest area, the guy took off his helmet, said “That’s a nice bodywork,” then they had sex in a bush. Now you understand why France is so often touted as the country of romance.
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The main problem with the Union readers who submitted stories is that they adopt a style we’ll call “median”, directly inspired by what they’ve read in the pages of their favourite publication. I know I said to use as many tired cliches as possible, but there are only so many "wet snatches" and "shaved pussies" a reader can take before they completely divert their attention to the porn on the internet with sounds and moving pictures.Change the lexical landscape by using an expression like "dripping slit" or "impeccable notch" and watch as those exact phrases reappear in letters you receive the following month. Also, campaign for the return of Amazonian pubic hair and the inversion of penetrative roles and they'll pop up as a "special report" in a mainstream women's magazine a couple of months later. That way you can tell yourself you're inspiring real journalists and bathe in a brief stream of self-satisfaction.EMBELLISH THE DETAILS
Seriously, who’s going to check whether the protagonists actually drank a 1983 Saint-Émilion? Guess what’s better than morbid obesity: generous curves. And, in the middle of all the action, who can really say she definitely didn’t stick a finger in his butthole?
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A lot of readers include pictures to illustrate their letters. However, they often forget to specify how those pictures were taken. Signifying the presence of a camera during the action is therefore an essential feature in rewriting letters.You could latch it on at the end of a story – "Here are the pictures we took that day!" – or note somewhere that smartphones have made macro-vulva shots far easier to take, but there's not really any way to seamlessly insert the presence of a camera in the middle of whatever sex act you're writing about. I suppose that's not something to get too hung up on, though; in 15 minutes, you'll have forgotten that you just produced the worst literary discharge ever written anyway.YOU ARE A DEMIURGE!
Remember: a reader has never complained about someone turning his wife into a petite bombshell or his hasty fumble with a manic-depressive in a supermarket loo into a sensual explosion of passion and bodily-juices.When you start your work day at 3PM – chain-smoking, dressed in terrifying pyjamas and filling Word pages while half-watching Countdown – make sure to tell yourself that the world is yours and that for each word you write, there is a man somewhere in France screaming as he comes over your words on a piece of glossy paper. Stay tuned for our new series, Allez la France! set to premiere in the next couple of weeks on VICE.com. The first episode is about Union magazine, and its erotica DVDs!More sexy times:People Who Just Had SexThe VICE Guide to Giving HeadThe VICE Guide To Eating Pussy