A self-aggrandising writing guide

Hello all, I am currently going through a wicked bout of writer's block, in fact I've been going through a mental writer's slowdown for a while now. So I thought it might help clear the flowing stream of creativity to look back at what I do, and write up a guide to how I do it (in the second person so I don't feel self-conscious).

I am aware that on a website filled with erotica, this is the wankiest thing someone can do. I am not a savant, or even that good a writer, but I at least consider my works unique enough that maybe 3 or 4 people would be interested in looking inside as I take apart the sausage machine. At the very least, my writing was developed through trial and error, and if I summarise what I have learned, maybe it will help others skip a few steps on the simple path to becoming a better writer than me. I will give plenty of examples of where my works have failed alongside my successes, mainly hoping a big dose of self-deprecation will assuage the huge act of ego that is this piece.

If you are unfamiliar with my style of writing (this is a weird place to start reading, but you do you I guess), I mainly focus on humiliation, degradation, or loss of status in my writing. It's tricky to fit in a single category but tends to straddle exhibitionism, BDSM, fetish, and sometimes elements of CNC.

As I write all my stories on a Google document on my phone and could never be bothered to learn how to do Literotica's formatting stuff, I'm going to keep going with my self-made formatting and continue to make people with more time and patience mad at my confusing way of doing section titles.

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Start by finding your story's core

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I used to buy into the school of thought that stories just need to be a series of interesting things that happened. The fluctuations in quality of my earlier works very much correlate with when I felt like having a metaphor or theme running through them or if I just had a series of things I wanted to happen.

These days I now pick the theme I want to explore before I plan any other story parts, it is the scaffolding I hang everything else off of. Even if someone doesn't consciously pick up on it, they will get a feeling something's off if there isn't a consistent theme of metaphor at the centre of your narrative. Having that core allows you to plot a story, and even improvise as you go without the writing seeming hacky or surprising enough to shatter suspension of disbelief.

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Power

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With writings focussed around humiliation, power will inevitably feature in your core. I would even define humiliation as the feeling of having relinquished a form of power that previously brought you mental comfort. You cannot degrade what is powerless without your story simply descending into blind sadism and the internal monologue of the protagonist becoming numb to violation. Power comes in a lot of forms, and can be degraded in a lot of ways, how these trade off against each other is an endless source of core themes for your work. It will inform which Rubicons your characters are willing to cross and how their boundaries are pushed. What characters are willing to utilise/surrender their power for is also deeply enlightening.

So you start with the base unit of power, humanity. Dehumanisation is the ultimate act of power removal, so something that builds on what power we have just through our birthright will have universal appeal while often plumbing the depths of what power characters take for granted. This face of power comes with an expectation of what a human is/has and what we owe to each other. This is challenged when characters have their head shaved, or engage in petplay, or surrender base human comforts such as food or shelter.

Humanity overlaps with respect, despite what some very stuffy people say, respect is not earned, it is inherent from others and very quickly lost. It is uncomfortable to think that a fundamental portion of power is so thoroughly out of our control, but the amount of respect shown to people by others defines what that character is capable of. Now respect can fluctuate, it is not consistent, and it can be enhanced or diminished in the actions of a character, but fundamentally power is interpersonal, between you and others, and respect is the other half of that formula for base power of humanity. Characters can engage in actions that lose the respect of those around them, or characters with not much respect for others can make situations worse when morally they should have been a savior.

Once we rise above humanity, we start looking at civility. Civility is the acknowledgement that someone is a member of society and subject to the social contact, a series of rights and responsibilities generally understood and built off one another. It is usually the power surrendered the moment a character is naked in a public place, and the reactions from others in that situation reveal what parts of the social contract characters feel are inherent, and which are dependent on other's behaviour. Does a character feel that because a woman is naked in public, she has surrendered her right to walk without harassment, or the bodily autonomy usually taken as read? What does that say about the secondary characters, and the society they are in? This is why exhibitionism is usually such a constant feature in my stories.

Above these sources of power, is everything that elevates someone to some form of authority. Authority is not fixed, quantifiable, or even a simple act of one person being above another. A smart person has authority over a stupid person in informational spheres, but that stupid person could be their boss at work. Economic power will often enter the chat, but it is a crude quantification of power that can be actualised in other ways, it is the simplest implementation of the power to get someone to do something they wouldn't otherwise do (pay them). For every formal power structure, there's a myriad of informal ones and the clash between them is a great source of theming. (Such as the classic tropes of the intern blackmailing the boss or a high society woman turning to prostitution to pay her debts.)

As an aside, it has certainly been noticed that there are a lot of wealthy people in my works. This is partially because economic power is so rigid and codified, it's easy to scaffold contradictory forms of power onto, but also wealthy people have a lot more flexibility to end up in fantastical situations than the less wealthy as it doesn't strain credulity for them to spend large on their perversion.

Heading back to theming, think about how powers clash, against each other, against morality, or even against an ideal that is the antithesis of power itself, then you'll find a nice core theme to make the humiliation of your protagonist have impact and consistency.

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Protagonist/setting

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Once you have a theme, all the other story elements can usually be made up in whatever order works for you. I embrace the chaos and let my mind wander around what story elements match the theme I like, but generally either the setting or protagonist come next. (Although sometimes they come concurrently with the theme.)

A good protagonist or setting can really add the interesting twist to your theme that will make your story shine even against others with similar themes, especially if they add a new dimension to the pre-existing themes. Ask yourself who has the power you want to explore, or where is that power most invested in or contrasted with the understood rules of behaviour in that society.

The personality and drives of the protagonist is absolutely essential, one of the things I hate about some stories in my genre is when a character is introduced purely by their status or physical description before immediately thrusting them into whatever humiliating sex act was the intention of the author. It is the erotica equivalent of watching a porn video of someone smashing a Barbie and Ken doll together. Deep characters with relatable motivations make the eventual degradation feel far more real than any physical descriptor.

One thing to be careful about, is in choosing a setting where sexuality is normalised, you need to construct it in such a way that it is still outside of the comfort zone of the protagonist. A stripper going to work at a strip club is not degraded, she is a professional making a living, however a priest's wife sneaking away to try being a stripper without her husband knowing is surrendering something to indulge her sexuality and risking ruin.

It's also worth giving some thought about how a character or setting will isolate the story from wider contexts that would otherwise have everything grind to a halt. Usually people intervene in situations of sexual humiliation, so in your story either people can't or won't, and their reasoning needs to be related to either the character (e.g. nobody wants protect their boss from her choices) or setting (e.g. an isolated island where only the schemers are present.)

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The plot

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Once you have a theme, setting, and character, you would be amazed how wild you can let your imagination run. I try and have the bare bones of a plot when I write, at the very least a point A and point Z, but there is so much room for improvising along the way.

Many authors talk about characters surprising them, the feeling of being so in the zone of writing, the plot is flowing through you, and then the intuitive flow of character behaviours take over and do something unplanned. This isn't just OK, it's indicative of good writing rather than bad. I can't believe how many times people have complimented a specific surprising part of a story and all I can reply is "thanks, I didn't see it coming either." Have a strong theme and clearly defined characters and you'll get these moments of magic too.

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Writing style

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Below is a guide to writing like me, not a guide to writing well, as there is no single way to write well and mine certainly isn't it. But hopefully some gold nuggets of valuable advice can be gleaned from the shovel-full of river sludge I am about to present.

In horror movies, the least scary part is when the monster is revealed in all their glory, up to that point the unknowns were being filled by the audience's mind and thus the monster was always whatever was most scary to each audience member. Similarly my favourite comedic trope is "the noodle incident" where the comedy comes from what is left unknown rather than what is stated.

Much like the above, in erotica, the sexiest thing does not exist in the words on the page but in the imagination of the reader. Your job as a writer is not to 100% have your reader living what you imagined, but to have them 100% feeling the same feelings, sometimes this means a bit of minimalism in your writing and a focus on how the characters feel rather than the minutiae of what they are doing. Consider the following paragraph:

Naked, Connie interlaced her hands behind her head and thrust out her 32DD chest according to Mike's instructions as he continued to take pictures. He then ordered her to change to a new pose, hands behind her back and legs spread so he could get a good shot of her naked pussy. His camera clicked with every press of the shutter confirming a new photo had been taken. He then backed up to take a photo of all of her, her blonde hair, her blue eyes, the perfect smile plastered across her face. Once finished, he calmly walked over to his computer and uploaded the photos onto Facebook.

Now contrast it with this one:

Connie's blush covered every inch of her exposed body and burrowed deep into her core, Mike relentlessly and maniacally kept taking photographs, only occasionally pausing to grunt out a new order. Each pose deepened her shame and seemed to expose more of her most intimate parts. Then he simply stopped. Connie gave herself a moment to unclench her jaw, hoping the nightmare was over, but the pause was not the end of her problems, it was only the beginning. Once the tension in the air couldn't be any more unbearable, Mike cut through the silence with a dreaded announcement that he had finished uploading the pictures onto Facebook.

Both paragraphs were exactly 108 words long, and while the first paints a clearer picture of exactly what is happening, the second leaves the exact poses, the hair and eye colour, and even breast size to the reader's imagination in favour of the emotional feel of the situation. I hope you agree that word for word the second paragraph was more evocative.

There are some writers who do not need to sacrifice detail for emotional impact, they are called good writers and I do not have the patience to count myself among them.

Another tip I would give is to just keep an eye out for if any experiments in writing style would fit with the theme and characters. I've had some success writing stories with fluctuating narrative points of view, phrasing sections as diary entries, podcast scripts, or even as a scientific journal. It's a bit of a gimmick but if they fit the narrative then they can help to give the story a great unique feel.

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Establishing plausibility

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There is a saying about sci-fi and fantasy that I feel applies to the more adventurous erotica I write; I am not aiming to write a realistic story, but I am aiming to write a plausible one.

There's nothing realistic about what I write, I consider my writing the modern form of those ancient fertility dolls, the exaggerated features designed to heighten eroticism beyond what is possible in the real world. Despite many despondent comments to the contrary, I know what I am writing is not realistic, I know a tiny fraction of women have the desires I imbue in my characters and even fewer are willing to indulge them to such a self-destructive extent. It's just sexier to write a story where the protagonist does.

People are willing to indulge a large amount of suspension of disbelief as long as the story maintains consistency. Fantastical leaps of logic, horrible coincidences, reactions no human being would have to a situation, all are forgivable as long as it's not out of keeping with the characters we know and the themes of the story.

Paradoxically, plausibility is also established through variety. People can have the most outrageous of behaviours as long as others do not act similarly enough that your reader thinks you believe that's how people are. If you have a handful of men standing in a lift when your naked protagonist gets in, all of them immediately having sex with her would be implausible, even though that's what you want to happen. You would expect one or two to be disgusted by the situation, maybe one gets out simply because the lift is too crowded, one might start groping her and then get embarrassed and stop, maybe one is gay and doesn't indulge but makes mean comments, one might even get his penis out to have sex with the woman only to have his friend tell him that is gross so he doesn't go through with it. This variety of reactions will make it more plausible when the lift stops at the next floor and in gets a confident woman who immediately begins having her way with the protagonist. (With the other men in the lift reacting in varied but plausible ways.)

This variety does not need to be the enemy of consistency, you just need to ensure that where variation is required for plausibility, the variants that detract from the theming of your story are given a swift exit while those that indulge it are kept around. In the lift example above, if the theme was a character's compulsive people pleasing leading her to embarrassing situations, then the character seeing her naked and deciding to have her way with her would continue the narrative of her self-detrimental people pleasing when she doesn't push them away. However if the protagonist's drive was to swim in the disgust of others, then those who were disgusted may not leave the lift after all, and instead stick around to insult and punish her for her disgusting behaviour, so much that no person wants to take sexual advantage of her predicament.

Finally, plausibility is hugely damaged by the feeling that something "came out of nowhere." This is easily countered within the medium because if you suddenly have an idea or new plot direction, you can always go back over your story and add some Chekhov's Guns so it doesn't come to your reader as suddenly as it came to you. For example, in Zenith's Greatest Hero, I thought of strength draining glyphs as a mechanic for increasing vulnerability, but by the time they were plot relevant, they felt a bit sudden, so I went back and added references to training with strength training glyphs so they were already part of the world when they became plot relevant.

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An example of all this coming together in one of my stories.

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So let's look at how I went through each of these stages to arrive at the finished product of The DomBox (for a long time my highest rated work, my first readers choice award nominee, and the second highest rated single part story in my archive.)

So I started with a theme, for DomBox I wanted to write a story about the destruction of a toxic relationship and building a new sexuality independent of a selfish partner. I had read a few stories where the assumption was that a woman who wanted a relationship that included BDSM sex clearly wants a toxic relationship and I wanted to challenge that.

So I had my theme, then I moved on to what character would this theme fit. The thought of having a character destroying the old to build the new put me in mind of an engineer, which immediately gave me some ideas about an engineer building a device so she could indulge her own fetishes rather than relying on a boyfriend who was clearly a toxic part of her life. As the device would grow and adapt to regain her sexuality, I thought it would also be nice to have it be a commercial success so that her empowerment went beyond simple development of sexual authority. On the surface her humiliation would be an act of submission, but as that submission was to her new life rather than another person, she would be empowered through powerlessness.

So with the theme, the main character, and a general sense of the plot I began writing the story proper.

About half way through I had an idea to add a little gimmick to my writing, a subtle one that I hoped would feel right to the reader even though barely anyone would notice it. I decided to make the plot structure symmetrical. The plot beats to the DomBox are:

-Tarsa attends a fetish Party.

-Tarsa humiliates herself at a hotel.

-Hilda demonstrates the DomBox functionality.

-Tarsa has a big adventure with the DomBox.

-Hilda Demonstrates DomBox functionality.

-Tarsa Humiliates herself at a hotel.

-Tarsa attends a fetish Party.

It was a bit gimmicky but I liked the idea of Tarsa,'s life without Ron being a new and exciting engagement with the same activities that once filled her with dread, and it fit the theme so I went with it.

As I mentioned before, characters did surprise me during the writing of this story. Tarsa's big adventure took a drastically different path to my original intention, Louise's intervention in Tarsa and Ron's argument took me by surprise, and Tarsa telling Ron why he didn't understand the DomBox's programming just before the fetish party showed an attention to technological detail not shared by the author.

Also, in terms of continuity informing plausibility, I lost count of the number of times I went back to add or remove DomBox functionality based on plot beats as they emerged. I also retroactively went back to give Louise a dog, just so that the dog walker would be familiar with the world and so wouldn't be too shocked by Tarsa's behaviour to indulge her.