What’s been your most formative writing experience since being on Lit?

[EmilyMiller]

What ever I desire? This could be dangerous.

If you fall out of the treehouse you mean…

Emily

 

[subdudeme13]

Let me check my list of desires.
Nope
Maybe tied to the tree.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Let me check my list of desires.
Nope
Maybe tied to the tree.

The bark would probably abrade.

Emily

 

[KeithD]

Cowriting with Sabb as Shabbu, and especially the "Tree of Idleness" stories. https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=859383&page=submissions

 

[subdudeme13]

The bark would probably abrade.

Emily

Yes it does.

 

[EmilyMiller]

So my turn… I guess it’s actually a two-for-one…

By March 2023, I’d written a lot of short (around 1-1.5k words) strokers. I’d written longer (up to 20k words) quasi-autobiographical stories where plot and characterization weren’t exactly a challenge. And I’d written two made up stories, one based on a framework that someone had asked me to write about, another set within my own historical reality and so with some of the work already done.

It had kinda gone OK, I suppose.

Then - on this thread - the good citizens of AH set me a task: write a tentacle porn story.

I was kinda aghast. I did some research (people here suggested sites) and I found it was mostly Earth girls getting raped by bad special effects (it was the live action sites that had been recommended to me). Frankly, I was gonna bail.

Then I thought, what about finding a way to make it consensual? I didn’t fancy a mythological creature or someone under a spell (a bit too Beauty and the Beast). And I like SciFi, having read a lot of it.

So I came up with this idea of a space tentacle monster. I like octopuses (not like that) and so it was a space octopus. I wanted to up-end the non-con bit, so - leveraging my own experience - I thought what if a lover / dom could precisely know your red lines, better than you do yourself? What if they could anticipate and meet your every sexual need? What if they could become anyone or anything you wanted to fuck? So the space octopus became telepathic and a shape-shifter.

But that also got into issues of consent and privacy around telepathy itself (a theme which stretched into episodes two and three of the eventual trilogy). I also thought, this is SciFi I don’t want the telepathy and shape-shifting to be magic. So I thought a lot about a hard SciFi explanation. I was kinda proud of what I came up with.

And suddenly I was off writing and it was fun and the plot flowed. And I was writing a story of a complexity and level of world building I never knew I was capable of. It was a watershed for me creatively.

And… at around the same time, @Djmac1031 and I started to talk about stories, and then share Star Wars jokes, and then share snippets of stuff we had written. And… over the course of what became The Coleoidphila Trilogy, we became partners in grime, helping each other to write better smut.

This collab was also a really major thing for me and I have benefited greatly from his advice and ideas and humor.

So two formative things at pretty much the same time.

Emily

 

[EmilyMiller]

Yes it does.

Not had sex outdoors much. In tents yes.

Emily

 

[subdudeme13]

Trees make great binding post. There are all sorts of things to do. I know one girl that, I think, liked being caught. There was the ranger in the park, then the woman walking the dog.

 

[subdudeme13]

Not had sex outdoors much. In tents yes.

Emily

PS Watch out for ticks.

 

[EmilyMiller]

PS Watch out for ticks.

I know. Ugh!

 

[EmilyMiller]

Trees make great binding post. There are all sorts of things to do. I know one girl that, I think, liked being caught. There was the ranger in the park, then the woman walking the dog.

Yeah - not really a public exhibitionist kinda gal. One of my characters, yeah, me, not really.

 

[subdudeme13]

Yeah - not really a public exhibitionist kinda gal. One of my characters, yeah, me, not really.

To each his own. I am not an exhibitionist either. Though there was the time on the railroad bridge over the highway. I am not sure people knew what they were seeing.

 

[EmilyMiller]

To each his own. I am not an exhibitionist either. Though there was the time on the railroad bridge over the highway. I am not sure people knew what they were seeing.

OK a hotel balcony. But limited view from below or elsewhere in the hotel. Not quite the same.

Emily

 

[subdudeme13]

Sounds great! Do you scream?

 

[EmilyMiller]

Sounds great! Do you scream?

With spiders, yes.

 

[Djmac1031]

I've been meaning to get to this, thanks @EmilyMiller for tagging me in an earlier comment, jogged my braincells lol.

My first few stories were pretty basic. My third story led to what's become my longest running series.

My first real attempt at world building was one I wrote for Halloween, Night Of The Giving Head. But is was basically a parody of the classic zombie movie.

Then I had this idea about two strangers, a man and woman, waking up naked and trapped together in a mysterious room.

I struggled for awhile over what became The White Room, and while it felt like a fucking novel, it turned out to be only 4 LE pages.

Still, it was something VERY different from what I'd been doing so far. And the positive reception to it made me think I could expand my horizons.

Flash forward to meeting and becoming friends with Emily. And a joke between us became one of my wildest stories, The Devil And Angel Em, and that it turn has led to a shared universe of stories between us, cross referencing each other's stories, building continuity, even sharing characters.

My partnership/ friendship with Em has been formative in other ways as well. She's helped inspire several other stories, as well as being my go to proof reader and just someone I can bounce ideas off of, especially when I'm struggling with a story.

Em even inspired my best 750 word story, Reunion.

Not just with the AI image challenge. But I'd written a story and hated the results. It was Em that encouraged me to try again and one of her suggestions directly inspired my second attempt.

Rambling. Sorry not sorry lol. I know some of you are probably tired of hearing about our partnership, maybe others suspecting it's... something else.

But meeting Emily has not just been formative to my writing, but crucial to it.

She said I taught her a lot. But it's very mutual. And I just wanted to publicly thank you, Em.

 

[EmilyMiller]

She said I taught her a lot. But it's very mutual. And I just wanted to publicly thank you, Em.

So sweet. Thank you .

Emily

 

[intim8]

I just wanted to publicly thank you, Em

Me too. This guy's a pretty valuable writer to have on here, and apparently, it's all your fault.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Me too. This guy's a pretty valuable writer to have on here, and apparently, it's all your fault.

He was a valuable writer long before me

Emily

 

[Syzoth]

The idea that I had for my very first story involved BDSM and gloryholes at a sex club. I was very excited to write it, but it was WAY out of my scope at the time. It wasn't until after I wrote and posted several stories... and did some research... that I felt confident and capable of writing it.

And now it's one of my best reviewed stories on Literotica!

If anyone is interested, it's called "Mandy's Sexcapade: the Gloryhole".

 

[TheSoaringCrow]

for me, once I started writing my first story, my brain has kept coming up with different ideas, almost to the point I could start a hundred at once time. my biggest problem is keeping things clean and simple. working on 1 idea while keeping others in the background and focusing.

Heya, what has helped me is writing down (typing, voice recording, whatever your preference) character profiles. I try to write a basic outline with plot points and conflicts, but as I'm writing, I end up in left field at times. But keeping character fidelity is what is going to help keep your stories straight from one another as you work on one project or the next. I have about 8 stories started at the moment as, just like you, I come up with random story ideas, and I have to get them down while they're still fresh. When I jump from one to the other, I pull up the attached profiles and can easily pick up where I left off, even when writing sequels. Hope this helps, and best of luck!

 

[TheSoaringCrow]

Again, I’ll hold off on my - rather obvious - one for a bit and let others post.

It could be a story that you thought yourself incapable of writing before.

It could be a story that was hated, but which gave you determination to prove people wrong.

It could be writing in a new category and this opening new creative channels for you.

It could be adopting a style that’s unnatural for you and managing to do a half decent job.

It could be writing a pure, totally unrealistic stroker and finding it was well-received and lots of fun.

It could be writing a 50k story when all your previous ones had been under 10k (or vice versa).

It could be something entirely different.

What was it for you?

Emily

Mine was a stand alone story I posted in loving wives. It hosted a kinky wife and bisexual husband where the wife wanted to surprise her husband on his 40th b-day with a mild bondage gangbang, that later resulted in a cuckold pregnancy. A wild idea, I know, but I started writing it and just kept going with the flow.

Being bisexual myself, I made a note at the beginning just asking readers to respect the LGBTQ+ theme if they decided to provide feedback, as there were also trans characters, and that's ALL the commenters focused on. A few read it and rudely told me I posted in the wrong category, but I stood my ground and told them that without the love of the wife, none of the events would have happened in the story, followed by the direct category description from Lit, which I felt matched this story.

An author who told me I was stupid for posting it there, I guess posts stories in there ironically? None of his stories had a loving wife. They all involved a cheating wife who was then humiliated in the most childish, misogynistic way with the husband coming out as the hero, revenge attained. The comments for his stories praised him, and condemned the wife character.

At the end of the day, though, I feel proud that I was professional in my response, considering that this was my first major run in with gatekeepers here on this site. It's still posted in loving wives, and I smile as a random reader follows it now and then. I even received a couple of supportive comments and an email. So, I will continue to challenge myself with writing in different genres, and I will post those stories wherever they damn well fit! lol thank you for the prompt!

 

[Helgamite]

Heya, what has helped me is writing down (typing, voice recording, whatever your preference) character profiles. I try to write a basic outline with plot points and conflicts, but as I'm writing, I end up in left field at times. But keeping character fidelity is what is going to help keep your stories straight from one another as you work on one project or the next. I have about 8 stories started at the moment as, just like you, I come up with random story ideas, and I have to get them down while they're still fresh. When I jump from one to the other, I pull up the attached profiles and can easily pick up where I left off, even when writing sequels. Hope this helps, and best of luck!

I use google doc to write mine, on the side of the screen, it has a built in summary area, where i can write down the statistics and general purpose of my characters.

I like google doc, plus it helps my editor, as he can get access to it thru an email link and we can both work on the story at same time. so if something needs changing, I can get on and change it while he watches.

 

[Writer61]

I have two, but one flows from the other.

After writing a paragraph about the back story of one of the main characters in a yet-to-be-published story I realised that her tale could be a piece in its own right. That was the genesis of 'The Fall of Laura' series and it opened my thoughts to how different stories/series could be connected.

In turn, that led me to write/plan stories against a common timeline and thus see how characters might reappear, which gives me a better idea of who they are. It takes some effort to maintain continuity but I like doing that sort of thing.

The 61verse has been created!

 

[tenyari]

My greater learning experiences took place outside the bounds of this site, in other erotica communities that no longer exist.

It was feedback on Usenet's Alt.Sex.Stories that made me realize I could write. My story AI Girl - which was posted here in 2002 probably went up on Usenet a week or so before that (been a while, hard to recall). It got into the Clitoride awards that year as I think a Silver. When I reread it a year ago I saw an absurd number of issues needing editing...

And it was a later long serial story there that took me several years to complete that made me realize I could get an audience. That story was never posted here.

That same serial story made me realize I really loved the first person limited perspective flawed narrator style. The reader is given the story somewhat incorrectly - based on the POV character's perception of events. And the POV character doesn't see much of what's going on. Yet somehow I have to push a plot forward. It's dramatically more challenging than third person where you can actually describe what's happening.

That story also became a space where I explored some 'what if' ideas about myself. The protagonist was someone in a rough situation who made a lot of bad choices. And in some of them there I was exploring the idea of "in my own life, if I had done this moment differently, how would things have gone?" - with one of the story characters being someone taking that other path.

So... I learned to use writing for self exploration. Even in very unreal situations - I might just be exploring an emotion by casting it into a context that has elements I recognize alongside the 'story / genre' fantasy.


A smaller thing that I did get from the forums here was using software to read my story back to me as a part of editing. So if we have to constrain to 'learned from this website' then that would be my entry.