Stretching your writing skills

[eroticstoryspinner]

If you have written non con reluctance you know that Laurel basically vetoes sex scenes where the characters don't get pleasure from the act. I have a work in progress where the POV character is mature, monogamous, and winds up with her plea deal rejected and is immediately enslaved under very different circumstances than she was expecting. I am deliberately avoiding the " collar makes me a slut" trope. Going to be a lot of guilt and angst. But it's stretching my creativity. What sort of things do you do to push your writing envelope?

 

[SimonDoom]

If you have written non con reluctance you know that Laurel basically vetoes sex scenes where the characters don't get pleasure from the act. I have a work in progress where the POV character is mature, monogamous, and winds up with her plea deal rejected and is immediately enslaved under very different circumstances than she was expecting. I am deliberately avoiding the " collar makes me a slut" trope. Going to be a lot of guilt and angst. But it's stretching my creativity. What sort of things do you do to push your writing envelope?

Interesting question. My off-the-cuff answer:

1. Write a story in a completely new category of kink.

2. Take a familiar idea/theme but write it from a completely different perspective.

3. Write a story with a deliberately different prose style than my usual one.

4. Work on expanding the range of character motivations that I'm familiar with. Try to make my characters deeper and more realistic.

Those are a few I can think of, right off the bat.

 

[PeytonMirabelle]

Gamble

Just take chances.

Most writers could probably find a niche of stories that are their strong point and never deviate and that's fine, some great stories are produced that way. But if you want to stretch, I think going outside your comfort zone and trying something different is a great way.

For first (my only) series on here, I'm trying to hop categories with each successive chapter, so that no chapter is in the same category as the one that preceded it. Risky, in terms of gaining and keeping a readership? Maybe. But it's going okay so far and I'm having to burn some brain cells to keep the situation consistent for the overall story.

I also tried a story where there were no clear protagonists or good folks, which is something I've never tried. It's not scoring as well. Shrug, win some and lose some, but the attempts have been good for flexing the mental muscles.

 

[ChloeTzang]

.....But it's stretching my creativity. What sort of things do you do to push your writing envelope?

Me, I pick something in a category or subject matter that I've never tried before and go for it. The two stories in my sig at the moment both fall into that category. It does stretch the envelope, but I find it's really fun....

The other thing is, take a very unsympathetic character, get the reader into her head and empathizing with her, and seeing things from her perspective, and buying into it. I tried to do that with Trexy, in "Halloween in Roanapur." And Trixie, in "White Wedding." Love them both....

 

[KeithD]

Mostly I just look for extreme kink niches where there isn't much on offer yet.

 

[PennameWombat]

Me, I pick something in a category or subject matter that I've never tried before and go for it. The two stories in my sig at the moment both fall into that category. It does stretch the envelope, but I find it's really fun....

The other thing is, take a very unsympathetic character, get the reader into her head and empathizing with her, and seeing things from her perspective, and buying into it. I tried to do that with Trexy, in "Halloween in Roanapur." And Trixie, in "White Wedding." Love them both....

That was the core of my idea in City of Angels. An alien arrives on earth in 1963 and takes over a human woman, Janet’s, body. She seduces men and women and after sex sucks out their life forces, how she feeds. She also hypnotises people to have sex in the LA Public Library and the congregation at Janet’s church to strip down and have sex in the streets. All the while the remnants of Janet’s consciousness is locked away in her head and the alien “Janet” enjoys the human Janet’s horror. But the alien “Janet” was also confused when the human Janet was almost happy when “Janet” sucked out Marsha’s life force. Marsha was a closet lesbian secretly in love with the human Janet who, not out of sync with 1963 feelings, was disgusted by such thoughts. The alien used that to get close to Marsha, they had sex and last we heard, Marsha was in a persistent vegetative state in a hospital. The human Janet was horrified at the sex but happy about Marsha’s suffering.

All this to cause news items in the hopes her missing mate (a male alien) will see the news reports and know she’s in Los Angeles. But I tried to make her sympathetic in ways, she loves and would never hurt children, is aghast at racial discrimination (“all humans taste the same”) and she really just wants to be reunited with her missing mate. It’s never quite made it to ‘Hot’ but has always been above 4 (currently at 4.30). The couple of comments appreciated the ‘reach’ and the story but beyond that I can’t tell if that ‘reach’ is what keeps the rating a bit low.

I’ve also done well with stepping into other categories, my one Fetish entry (A Dream of Age and Beauty) and my first recent First Time entry (Chlorine Dreams). Both well received.

 

[RetroFan]

Me, I pick something in a category or subject matter that I've never tried before and go for it. The two stories in my sig at the moment both fall into that category. It does stretch the envelope, but I find it's really fun....

The other thing is, take a very unsympathetic character, get the reader into her head and empathizing with her, and seeing things from her perspective, and buying into it. I tried to do that with Trexy, in "Halloween in Roanapur." And Trixie, in "White Wedding." Love them both....

I've written a couple of stories with unsympathetic protagonists before and it is a good challenge. Like Dino from 'Sexy Savannah From Number 9', a misanthropic, self-pitying, selfish and lazy slacker who has a rotten lot in life but who you don't feel an ounce of sympathy for. Or 'Grumpy Humphrey' from 'Grumpy Humphrey's Easy Wife', who is the high school teacher everyone hated; boring, inflexible, unapproachable and grouchy. His cheating slut of a wife is an absolute Jezebel who makes a fool of him all over town, but you don't feel too much sympathy for Grumpy Humphrey.

The most challenging story I wrote was a body swap story series, where a nerd swaps bodies with his twin sister's jock boyfriend. It was a real challenge to refer to the character by their real name in the narrative, but have other characters refer to them as the other name but I only messed up one time. Sadly, the IT crowd didn't appreciate my efforts, many seemed to think I wrote it just to annoy them personally and only two days ago I got a comment telling me how much it sucked.

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

Me, I pick something in a category or subject matter that I've never tried before and go for it. The two stories in my sig at the moment both fall into that category. It does stretch the envelope, but I find it's really fun....

The other thing is, take a very unsympathetic character, get the reader into her head and empathizing with her, and seeing things from her perspective, and buying into it. I tried to do that with Trexy, in "Halloween in Roanapur." And Trixie, in "White Wedding." Love them both....

I am working with that with a very unsympathetic character in the Penal Slavery stories. It's challenging on a lot of levels.

I think Ilona Andrews did an outstanding job of taking the stone cold killer amoral warlord. character Hugh from the Kate Daniels books and created a plausible redemption story in the Iron and Magic series.

 

[Emirus]

I had my first story (Cherry) rejected because the victim didn’t enjoy being sexually violated by a character for whom the description vicious and unsympathetic doesn’t come near to describing them. I resubmitted it with the addition of one sentence which altered the intent of the story. It was balanced to some extent by the description of what she did to him and the state she left him in. I could have understood it if the description of the sex act and the non reluctance had been lurid but it wasn’t.

I read a story recently, submitted earlier this year, about retribution for the sexual violation of a young woman by a rich, horrible man. Revenge was exacted and he really didn’t enjoy it. Maybe it’s the background to why it’s occurred and how the sexual violation and victim’s reaction are written which makes the difference as far as Laurel is concerned? Who knows? Perhaps, because of the stories being scanned instead of read, it’s just the luck of the draw?

I think all you can do is write a story you are happy with and see what happens.

 

[vanmyers86]

Funny this question should come up today. I was just now listening to an interview with Neil Peart, the late drummer and lyricist for the band Rush. He mentioned a technique I think could work for a lot of people, including myself.

To paraphrase, he said the band had different personae they adopted for different situations and to get through blocks. If a writing session wasn't working for Rush, well, now we're a new wave band called The Fabulous Men. How would The Fabulous Men tackle this? Or maybe today we're Rockin' F. Let's try this song from that POV.

I think this technique would allow any kind of artist to step outside their own perception of who they are and what they do and go to a no-fault safe zone where anything's possible. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but you'd always learn from it and return to your default position better for having experimented.

 

[Voboy]

When I was looking to stretch, I started writing to contest themes. Sometimes, I've deliberately written in categories in which I have no interest as a reader, like BDSM or Incest. My on-again, off-again SF stories stretch me.

I did, for awhile, write commercially. That was a whole different ballgame, with time and money pressures to which I sometimes responded well, sometimes poorly. If I was looking to really push myself, I'd probably go back to that.

 

[yowser]

Excellent creative and common sense advice from the crew, my only addition is a technique employed by one faculty member at my university. He said almost all his research papers began with a title. He'd think up a good title, then do the research to support it. I am not sure this would work for everyone (as his good titles didn't come out of nowhere but from his expertise and experience), but a good title (or for me, a provocative first sentence) sometimes primes the mind-pump.

I have a back pocket crammed with first sentences that set up a potential story, the latest:

'I was almost happily married.'

 

[yukonnights]

Funny this question should come up today. I was just now listening to an interview with Neil Peart, the late drummer and lyricist for the band Rush. He mentioned a technique I think could work for a lot of people, including myself.

To paraphrase, he said the band had different personae they adopted for different situations and to get through blocks. If a writing session wasn't working for Rush, well, now we're a new wave band called The Fabulous Men. How would The Fabulous Men tackle this? Or maybe today we're Rockin' F. Let's try this song from that POV.

I think this technique would allow any kind of artist to step outside their own perception of who they are and what they do and go to a no-fault safe zone where anything's possible. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but you'd always learn from it and return to your default position better for having experimented.

This resonates with me. It seems to point out the first step in the process of challenging/stretching one's routine. The rest then — hopefully — follows and unfolds in a somewhat organic way. I'm often teased for the HEA stories I write — and I write them because that's the easy path for my personality to go down.

With the above "Rush" approach, it'd be like warming up and stretching before starting to write — forcing a shift of my brain into that of an ugly harsh sadist and then unleashing havoc into the world in the form of fiction.

Or... I could just remain lazy and write Happy Ever After I could console myself for not challenging myself because there's enough challenges in the world just now — why challenge myself more? I need to think about this some more....

 

[SimonDoom]

I had my first story (Cherry) rejected because the victim didn’t enjoy being sexually violated by a character for whom the description vicious and unsympathetic doesn’t come near to describing them. I resubmitted it with the addition of one sentence which altered the intent of the story. It was balanced to some extent by the description of what she did to him and the state she left him in. I could have understood it if the description of the sex act and the non reluctance had been lurid but it wasn’t.

I read a story recently, submitted earlier this year, about retribution for the sexual violation of a young woman by a rich, horrible man. Revenge was exacted and he really didn’t enjoy it. Maybe it’s the background to why it’s occurred and how the sexual violation and victim’s reaction are written which makes the difference as far as Laurel is concerned? Who knows? Perhaps, because of the stories being scanned instead of read, it’s just the luck of the draw?

I think all you can do is write a story you are happy with and see what happens.

Was the revenge sexual in nature? If not, then it wouldn't violate this Site's rule.

What this Site bans is snuff and torture porn. It doesn't ban death and murder and torture, provided the death and torture and murder are not presented in an erotic way. The point is that it doesn't want to feature stories where death and torture are presented as arousing. Erotic nonconsent is therefore only OK if the subject enjoys it.

 

[Voboy]

Excellent creative and common sense advice from the crew, my only addition is a technique employed by one faculty member at my university. He said almost all his research papers began with a title. He'd think up a good title, then do the research to support it. I am not sure this would work for everyone (as his good titles didn't come out of nowhere but from his expertise and experience), but a good title (or for me, a provocative first sentence) sometimes primes the mind-pump.

I have a back pocket crammed with first sentences that set up a potential story, the latest:

'I was almost happily married.'

I like this.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Or... I could just remain lazy and write Happy Ever After I could console myself for not challenging myself because there's enough challenges in the world just now — why challenge myself more? I need to think about this some more....

May I suggest, Yukon, that there continues to be a place for "tried and true, don't go changing your style, now," stories and story writing, coz when the world is going to hell in a hand cart, some folk just want that predictable stuff. They want to know there continues to be a "safe place" in their lives, and you are one of those places. As am I. If we go changing our spots too fast, folk are going to find another leopard.

Consider yourself like Linus's security blanket - and remind yourself how long Charlie Brown's been around.

It's unsettling enough when Chloe goes writing short stories, without Yukon getting hisself another moose .

 

[SamScribble]

What sort of things do you do to push your writing envelope?

I try to do what I do but do it better and better. I don't always succeed. But that's it. The end.

 

[NotWise]

I spent some time over the last year trying to expand and improve what I've done before. Looking back at it now: I wrote a story to experiment with different story-telling elements, I wrote two stories from dreams, I've written quirky stories, and I've written a story to push my comfortable pace.

The hardest thing I've done is commit myself to finish a series I started a long time ago. I need to learn to buckle down and write a story even if I'm not necessarily "feeling" it. It's an essential skill.

 

[Rustyoznail]

TBH, just seeing that I have 11 stories published over 18 months is a bit of a stretch of my writing skills.

If somebody said to me five years ago I'd be loitering here doing erotic fiction, I'd have laughed and laughed and laughed...

Seriously, I have done a couple of things to stretch. One is competitions, second is to take a series from another author and (with her permission and input) move the characters to Australia, third was to write a coherent story that could only use the words spoken by a minor character from a game.

 

[SimonDoom]

Another idea: just go weird.

I've written a lot of incest stories since I started here but haven't written any since July 2019 unless you count the two ministories I wrote for the 750 word contest. Instead, in the last 12 months I've written stories about:

Aliens from outer space that look like human penises and take over the world

A Hemingwayesque takeoff about a bullfighter who seduces a woman in a bar

And Hobbits having sex with an Elf while on the way to Mordor

They're all based on ideas that just popped into my head. Don't overthink it. Just try something new.

 

[HeyAll]

Regarding pushing writing skills, if it's already been done a lot, don't do it.

By not sticking with the conventional approaches, you're forced to create something new.

 

[RetroFan]

It's probably easy for me to say as my specialty is writing erotic stories set in the past, but have you ever tried writing your stories in a past setting? Writing stories set in the past is a good challenge for a writer, and really satisfying when it works out well.

 

[jehoram]

When I was in college, back in the day when the only computer on campus took up half the basement level in the library, I took a creative writing course. The instructor's technique was to take a famous short-story author with a distinctive style and have us write a story in that author's style. It was harder than you think to set your own style aside and try to see the world through the lens of that author.

 

[Voboy]

When I was in college, back in the day when the only computer on campus took up half the basement level in the library, I took a creative writing course. The instructor's technique was to take a famous short-story author with a distinctive style and have us write a story in that author's style. It was harder than you think to set your own style aside and try to see the world through the lens of that author.

Ooh. That would be tough.

There was a time when I was writing commercially that my publisher asked me and another writer to swap signature characters and "write the other's character." That? That was incredibly difficult for me, though it sold well.

 

[patdown]

Most of my stories are from the 1st person male perspective,, I make a point of trying to write some in the 1st person female and some in the 3rd person so they aren't repetitive.