The seed from which your story grew

[ThatNewGuy]

Pick one (or more) of your stories and tell us about the moment its seed was planted. What sparked the idea? An image that popped into your mind? A "what if" scenario? A song lyric? A dream? A conversation you overheard? A character idea you had to bring to life?

This isn't really a process thread (e.g., planners vs. pantsers). I just like hearing how specific stories got their start. If you're so inclined, I'd also love to hear about how your story grew from a seed into its final form.

Here's an example to kick things off. The idea for "Abandoned" came when I drove by a mom-and-pop self-storage facility. What’s the weirdest thing someone has stored in one of those units, I wondered. The image of a pine box coffin sitting on an empty concrete slab popped into my head. Why was it there? Who found it? What was inside? The answers became my Halloween story.

The first thing to sprout from the seed was the opening scene: a fun, awkward conversation between the employee who opens the abandoned storage unit and the woman he finds sleeping inside the coffin.

I had the sense the male MC was meant to find the coffin, but I hadn't settled on why. I worked out an answer and, in doing so, decided he had a secret of his own and a reason to hide it from the woman he'd found. That gave me a fun plot twist to work toward and cemented trust as the story's central theme. At that point, the seed had grown into something I wanted to finish writing.

How about you and your story?

 

[EmilyMiller]

Pick one (or more) of your stories and tell us about the moment its seed was planted. What sparked the idea? An image that popped into your mind? A "what if" scenario? A song lyric? A dream? A conversation you overheard? A character idea you had to bring to life?

Easy.

What if you have agreed, against your better judgement, to write tentacle porn and:

1. Want an at least quasi-scientific explanation for the tentacle monster.
2. Really don’t like the noncon vibe?

You end up writing Coleoidphilia.

Em

 

[AwkwardlySet]

This is actually a very interesting topic.
The last chapter I published is inspired by, believe it or not, He-man cartoon. The silliness of it is truly remarkable. Some of you might remember the original He-man cartoons that aired in 80s and 90s. A couple of years ago I saw a remake being advertised and out of sheer curiosity and nostalgia, I watched a couple of episodes. Needless to say, those were utterly terrible in every way. The blatant and ridiculous political messages, together with horrible dialogue and plot, unlikable characters... So, appalled by what I saw, I started thinking how I would write a He-man story if I had a chance, and after a while, the idea just came to me. Much later when I actually started writing here, I realized I could rework the idea somewhat to make it fit in my fantasy series and so the chapter came to be. Seems like readers liked it too.

 

[alohadave]

My Mom Watches series came from when I was reading a similar story. I had an idea for it that I wanted to try.

I've gone in a completely different direction than the story that inspired it, and that one went completely off the rails. I wanted mine to be a bit more grounded.

I figure that I have one more chapter in it to tie things together and figure out what the future holds for them. But it needs to percolate a while.

 

[SimonDoom]

My first written story (second published) was In The Hallway, a BDSM story about a man and a woman who meet one day in an office building and subsequently engage in an erotic power exchange that lasts throughout the day.

I've spent much of my long professional career in office buildings. So I understand the layout and the dynamic. You're supposed to suppress sexual feelings, be discreet, be professional. So it's a setting that's ripe for creating erotic tension. I got the idea of a story for a man and a woman having a fun sexual encounter.

The key then was to figure out how it would happen and what would drive them. I came up with a conceit, which is highly contrived, but which I thought was clever, and which readers for the most part seemed to like (it's still my highest-rated story).

Both the man and the woman are sexually frustrated young office workers, working in different companies on opposite ends of a building with a long hallway between them. The night before, the man visits a website that tells him the answer to picking up women is to tell them what to do, not to ask them. The woman visits a website that tells her the key to getting a man is to stop saying no, and just say "yes." They have a chance encounter in the office building, and each decides to play by the rules of the website they visited and see what happens. For the remainder of the story, the man makes a point of never asking the woman a question, and the woman makes a point of always saying "yes." Things naturally ratchet up until, well, you know.

Early in the writing of the story, I figured out how it would end, and I drafted the ending with a twist that I liked. The last few paragraphs were drafted before I was more than a few pages into the story. It's one of my favorite endings.

 

[MetaBob]

Pick one (or more) of your stories and tell us about the moment its seed was planted. What sparked the idea? An image that popped into your mind? A "what if" scenario? A song lyric? A dream? A conversation you overheard? A character idea you had to bring to life?

This isn't really a process thread (e.g., planners vs. pantsers). I just like hearing how specific stories got their start. If you're so inclined, I'd also love to hear about how your story grew from a seed into its final form.

Here's an example to kick things off. The idea for "Abandoned" came when I drove by a mom-and-pop self-storage facility. What’s the weirdest thing someone has stored in one of those units, I wondered. The image of a pine box coffin sitting on an empty concrete slab popped into my head. Why was it there? Who found it? What was inside? The answers became my Halloween story.

The first thing to sprout from the seed was the opening scene: a fun, awkward conversation between the employee who opens the abandoned storage unit and the woman he finds sleeping inside the coffin.

I had the sense the male MC was meant to find the coffin, but I hadn't settled on why. I worked out an answer and, in doing so, decided he had a secret of his own and a reason to hide it from the woman he'd found. That gave me a fun plot twist to work toward and cemented trust as the story's central theme. At that point, the seed had grown into something I wanted to finish writing.

How about you and your story?

The Dog Whisperer: Starts with a meeting on a hiking trail between the MMC, FMC, and two secondary female characters, all out walking or running with their dogs. This happened to me, exactly as described.

Flightback: Starts with a meeting on an airplane between the MMC passenger and the FMC flight attendant. She suggests moving him from a row he shares with another passenger to a row by himself. Once passengers are allowed to use their laptops again, he starts writing, grateful for the extra privacy. She stops by a little later, to chat, and had the most beautiful smile he'd ever seen in his life. Maybe he was her "Bob" that day, heh. This happened to me, exactly as described. On another, earlier flight, the flight attendant not only stopped by to chat, she sat down in the aisle seat and we chatted (and flirted, truth be told) for 15 minutes.

Packback: I acted as a trail angel for a Pacific Crest Trail hiker (I've also done a fair amount of backpacking myself).

Personal Assistant: Started with a dream I had, except the FMC in my dream was named Polly rather than Molly.

Valley Winter Loop: Starts with a meeting on a hiking trail between the MMC and FMC, who is gazing pensively into the canyon as he walks up, trying not to startle her. This happened to me, exactly as described.

Were-Tigress: Starts at an estate sale at a bookshop and nearby house, conducted on behalf of their owner, where the MMC and a secondary female character meet. This happened to me, exactly as described. Items in the house weren't supposed to be included in the sale, but the woman administering the sale discreetly handed me the key to that house and said to take anything I might like there, since by that point it would all be given away since he had no heirs and the sale was ending, and as a gay man his conservative family wanted nothing to do with his estate. Imagine being given the key to a wealthy bibliophile's house and told to take anything you might want, for zero cost! Yes, it happened.

In all these cases (plus others), the story begins with a real-life event (some were fairly extraordinary) that I wrote down, thinking it might seed a fun story, but I had no idea what that story might be.

Before long, the characters I sketched told me what that story needed to be. We came up with the ending (always happy even though there are bumps in the road) together. All I did was write down what they told me, which was better than anything I might've had in mind, though of course I did sometimes have to wrangle what they told me back into something that wasn't a different story altogether. And agonize over every word.

By the way, the female main character of Valley Winter Loop has Dissociative Identity Disorder, among other issues. Who knows, maybe I have it, too, with all these characters running around in my head telling me what they want their stories to be and becoming something like real people to me along the way. But maybe that's true for all writers.

I'm thinking about spending a month or two on the Camino de Santiago later this year. There might be a story in that, too ...

 

[MrPixel]

For my "Off Campus" series? Easy. Two years ago my wife and I were curious about a tavern nestled in an old-style downtown hotel, in a small city an hour away from a naturist resort we frequent. The tavern was absolutely classic - dim and moody, with well-kept 1950s decor, and so obviously a venue for many an assignation. The attached hotel and its café also reflected the bygone era. We loved the ambiance as just oozing romance, and the story about a similar but much larger version blossomed.

What's sad is this hotel has just been sold to a developer for conversion into senior housing, with no recent news about what is going to happen to the bar.

 

[Trionyx]

https://www.literotica.com/s/eddies-christmas-gift I saw a young fellow living in a nursing home and wondered about his sexual needs. The story evolved from there.
https://www.literotica.com/s/bettys-story There are two mirror image houses with one driveway down the road from me. I know there are two couples who are close friends living there. I wondered about how they might interact sexually.
https://www.literotica.com/s/same-time-next-summer I knew two happily married women who would travel and camp each summer throughout the west to get a break from kids, family responsibilities and husbands. I wondered what might cause them to become intimate with each other.
https://www.literotica.com/s/summer-on-the-pct Always wanted to do the entire trail.

 

[onehitwanda]

Walking with Sam: Watching Top Gun Maverick and seeing both Tom Cruise and Jennifer Connelly growing old put me into this weird mindset of sort of nostalgic sadness. Then the music for "Where you Belong" got stuck in my head for a week or more. I went walking, and saw a woman walking her dog - alone but happy - and the what-if was planted. What if I were young and alone? What if she were alone and the dog was all the love she had? How would someone like a younger me possibly get close to someone like her? What would make a woman like her open up to a younger woman?

And then the story came to be.

 

[vzb]

Pretty much all of my story ideas (including the one I finished and posted) come from the movie theater in my brain. You know that thing where you're idly fantasizing, often lying in bed when you can't sleep, so you just dream up fantasy scenarios that will never happen in real life? And some of them are erotic, even though you're not masturbating? And some of those get replayed kind of often? I'm sure it's not just me. I've actually done a lot of "writing" in bed. Like, I'm stuck on this scene: how would that interaction go? Or, how might these characters actually do this weird thing in a plausible way?

The one exception I can think of: there's a youtube channel that's just an adorkable young couple doing comedic reviews of video games, slickly edited and filled with memes & pop culture references. The videos are often funny or clever, and the couple is just very likable as a couple, so it's kind of heartwarming. And, I have a wholesome crush on the girl. So, naturally, I've got about 1/3 of a story written about a (lightly fictionalized) version of this geeky gamer-girl getting seduced by a charismatic jock and cheating on her loving fiancé. Still trying to figure out how to write part of it.

 

[Zootonius]

A favorite of mind comes from a slice of real life. I was 18, bicycling home just after dark. By the road was a woman looking at a flat tire. I stopped and asked if I could help. She admitted she never changed a tire, so I, of course, offered to do it. Got the spare on, giving her a lesson with it. She offered to pay me for my trouble which I gallantly refused feeling very good about myself for rescuing a damsel in distress. She went her way and I went mine. But the "thought, what if..."

In hindsight, it must have been scary for her, after dark, a busy road but in a sparse residential area.

 

[Djmac1031]

Oh, I could do this all day if you let me lol. I love the exploration and discussions of where stories come from.

The very first story I wrote here is called The Doctor Is In...Me.

https://literotica.com/s/the-doctor-is-in-me

It sprang from a very simple reality. I had an attractive woman doctor, I'd discussed some sexual dysfunction issues I'd been having with her, and as part of her examination she'd given me a prostate exam.

There was absolutely nothing sexual about that real world encounter.

Anal play has never really even been on my radar beyond some curious self exploration, with mixed results.

But the story stemmed from my thoughts on what might lead to some type of erotic situation between "myself" and the doctor.

What if I'd gotten an erection during the exam? What if I'd found her prostate exam actually arousing?

I didn't want to write a typical "fuck and suck." You know, the doctor sees his cock, immediately gets excited by it, sex ensues.

So I starting thinking about how it MIGHT happen in a way where it's sexual, but still possibly "realistic."

In the real world, would the doctor do what she did in my story? Probably not. Almost definitely not. "Medical procedure" or not, it still crosses a boundary of professionalism.

But readers found my story "realistic" enough that it got a great reaction. Enough so that I tried my hand at a sequel, digging into the doctors mind on why she acted the way she did.

Unfortunately I kinda wrote myself into a bind there because the only real way to continue it would have been to turn it into a relationship thing where the doctor and patient eventually become more than that. And that wasn't the story I set out to tell.

Although I have been given some fun ideas as to how it could continue by readers, some very interesting directions it could go. I just haven't ever gotten around to writing it.

I was a new writer at the time, and all excited by reader feedback begging for more. I've learned a bit since then, enough to know sometimes you just need to leave a story well enough alone.

 

[Seadog777]

y the road was a woman looking at a flat tire. I stopped and asked if I could help. She admitted she never changed a tire, so I, of course, offered to do it. Got the spare on, giving her a lesson with it. She offered to pay me for my trouble which I gallantly refused feeling very good about myself for rescuing a damsel in distress. She went her way and I went mine.

Many years ago, I did this as well. I left to go to the store.
When I got home, my wife was wondering why the hell I was so dirty.
I told her about it and got a nice quickie for it.
A few days later, in our local newspaper(this was before newspapers went digital), there was a "Thank you" note in it from her to me.
Lot of phone calls that day.
A few days later, that woman showed up at my door with her adult son and daughter.
Even though she has since passed away, (RIP Martha), our families remain friends today.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

Ooh fun topic!

My prompt for my story Keiko's Charity was inspired by several pieces of art I encountered that covered the same topic - 'Roman Charity', in which a young woman breastfeeds an elderly prisoner (in most cases its her father, in some, her mother). The art museum is usually a must-visit of mine whenever I'm in a new city, so I've been to a lot of them. I was fascinated with how many times this particular topic had been depicted in artwork over the centuries, so I wanted to pay homage to it with a Japanese twist.

I wrote Izumi's Melons because I enjoyed writing about adult breastfeeding so much.

And I'm currently writing a third story on adult breastfeeding because now this is my kink apparently.

 

[ThatNewGuy]

So, appalled by what I saw, I started thinking how I would write a He-man story if I had a chance, and after a while, the idea just came to me. Much later when I actually started writing here, I realized I could rework the idea somewhat to make it fit in my fantasy series and so the chapter came to be.

By the power of Grayskull! How cool that one of your stories had its origin in a cartoon that I remember watching as a kid.

Early in the writing of the story, I figured out how it would end, and I drafted the ending with a twist that I liked. The last few paragraphs were drafted before I was more than a few pages into the story. It's one of my favorite endings.

I liked the ending to your story too, particularly that last line of dialogue. Coincidentally, I also came up with the ending and the last line of dialogue in "Abandoned" when I was only about one-quarter of the way through the story. It was a different ending than I'd originally imagined, but it grew organically from one of the character's struggles. When the scene occurred to me, I knew it was the right place to end it.

The tavern was absolutely classic - dim and moody, with well-kept 1950s decor, and so obviously a venue for many an assignation. The attached hotel and its café also reflected the bygone era. We loved the ambiance as just oozing romance, and the story about a similar but much larger version blossomed.

How wonderful that the ambience of the place was so rich that it inspired a whole story series!

https://www.literotica.com/s/summer-on-the-pct Always wanted to do the entire trail.

Sounds like a beautiful environment in which to develop the characters and their relationship. Started reading this one and look forward to continuing it.

I went walking, and saw a woman walking her dog - alone but happy - and the what-if was planted. What if I were young and alone? What if she were alone and the dog was all the love she had? How would someone like a younger me possibly get close to someone like her? What would make a woman like her open up to a younger woman?

You piqued my interest about how they meet. I enjoyed the first page, especially the sad but lovely scene in the rain on the park bench where Willa points out the inscription to Sam. And this line earlier in the story cracked me up: "I approved in the most approving way I could ever approve of anything, at all, in the entire history of everything, ever." Look forward to reading the rest.

I've actually done a lot of "writing" in bed. Like, I'm stuck on this scene: how would that interaction go?

Same. When I'm in the midst of a story, I work out scenes while I'm doing mindless activities that don't require much focus: shaving, brushing my teeth, walking, showering, etc. I avoid mulling over story ideas in bed, though. Once my brain gets going, I can't shut it off and then I'm up for hours.

I was a new writer at the time, and all excited by reader feedback begging for more. I've learned a bit since then, enough to know sometimes you just need to leave a story well enough alone.

I hear you. One of my earlier stories received a number of requests for a sequel. I wasn't sure I could do it justice (or that I even wanted to try!). So I shelved it and tried writing other stuff. The characters wouldn't leave me alone, though, and an idea for a sequel finally materialized more than a year later. "Abandoned" received some sequel requests too, but I have no plans to continue that story. It ends exactly where I want it to end.

 

[KeithD]

The one I've just started just now, not realizing this was what I'd be writing on today, was inspired by the snipit of a video I saw last night of sex in the reclined passenger seat of a Mustang (the emblem was in the center of the steering wheel on the left periphery of the shot) with a deluge rainstorm going on outside the car. That's not uncommon of the sources of inspiration for me.

 

[Djmac1031]

I hear you. One of my earlier stories received a number of requests for a sequel. I wasn't sure I could do it justice (or that I even wanted to try!). So I shelved it and tried writing other stuff. The characters wouldn't leave me alone, though, and an idea for a sequel finally materialized more than a year later. "Abandoned" received some sequel requests too, but I have no plans to continue that story. It ends exactly where I want it to end.

Not to go off on a tangent about sequels, because I have written plenty including one to a story I originally published 15 months earlier lol.

The difference being i had those ideas previously and wasn't writing them JUST because the first one did well and readers asked me to.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Well... I can tell you my story Sturgis came from the fantasy of fucking a chick on a moving motorcycle.

Twisted Twins(one of my many that need finished) I had the idea two people with phsycically linked arousal...? I can't explain it.

My mind just comes up with weird shit most of the time. I have an overactive imagination.

 

[SimonDoom]

Many of my stories are inspired by other people's stories. For instance, I read a "hucow" story and thought to myself, "That's nuts. I have to try that." Same thing with my mailgirl story. Same thing with my exhibitionist stories. I enjoy stories that feature outlandish circumstances in which people get naked, and I wanted to try such stories myself.

I've been inspired by news reports, like the one MelissaBaby reported about "penis fish" washing up on the beach in Northern California.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

The inspiration for my first story here, "His Daddy's Car" came to me while working to organize a high school reunion.

Tracking hundreds of former classmates down after all those years gave me the idea for a story about a couple who get separated in high school and the circumstances under which they find themselves reuniting years later.

Natural and scientific oddities have played a major role in providing me with inspiration for several stories. From man-made nanobots to naturally occurring microbial organisms, the plots and characters develop to meet the challenges.

Now, where my "Before They Were Stars" series is concerned, the celebrity in question was all the inspiration I needed for each of those.

 

[NoTalentHack]

“In Health,” my most recent, was a result of me contemplating a series of LW stories about the breakdown of marriages caused by failures to uphold the various parts of typical wedding vows: “in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer” and so on. Most of them produced obvious story seeds that had been done a number of times before (in some cases ad nauseam), but as I spun “in health” around in my mind, I came up with something I felt was really novel. It’s not my highest-rated story, because it’s dark as fuck, and I wish I’d polished it a little bit more, but I’m overall really happy with it.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

“In Health,” my most recent, was a result of me contemplating a series of LW stories about the breakdown of marriages caused by failures to uphold the various parts of typical wedding vows: “in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer” and so on. Most of them produced obvious story seeds that had been done a number of times before (in some cases ad nauseam), but as I spun “in health” around in my mind, I came up with something I felt was really novel. It’s not my highest-rated story, because it’s dark as fuck, and I wish I’d polished it a little bit more, but I’m overall really happy with it.

I liked "In Health". You did a good job with it, as with most of your stories.

 

[NoTalentHack]

I liked "In Health". You did a good job with it, as with most of your stories.

Thank you!

 

[Rob_Royale]

I wish I could say it was something deep and thoughtful, but it was really just a woman who left an impression on me when I was young. The wife of a local shop owner. Tall, blonde, and gorgeous. She wore lovely dresses instead of pants/shirts. On Saturdays, he went fishing when the weather was good, so she ran the store. Saturday evenings she went to Pilates or something and would spend the day in the store wearing her tights and bodysuits. I always found a reason to be in the store on Saturdays, and she was quite aware of it.
Getting Busy started out as a faithful telling of that story, with the fantasy fulfillment added. As I wrote though, it grew into something much wilder. I may have to revisit the original idea again. I haven't done an LW story yet.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Easy.

What if you have agreed, against your better judgement, to write tentacle porn and:

1. Want an at least quasi-scientific explanation for the tentacle monster.
2. Really don’t like the noncon vibe?

You end up writing Coleoidphilia.

Em

I think we've established that tentacle monsters . . .

Sorry, I just heard the slamming of brakes on the Bronx River Parkway, but not that sound of metal crunching on metal. Often when that happens Engine 62 and Ladder 39 are the first to respond to get people out of the wreckage. Nothing happened this time.

So tentacle monsters, like vampires, centaurs, werewolves, and many others don't require a scientific explanation. They just are.