Has anybody else found it difficult to write a second story?

[Squeeze_Tight]

A little under a year ago I published my first story on literotica. I enjoyed writing it and I'm pleased with the finished product to this day.

It didn't get a tremendously high number of reads but the feedback was largely complimentary. It felt good to write the story and great that it made random strangers happy.

I always intended to write more, but it struck me that the ideas that whirled around my head felt like very much the same formula with slightly different pieces. Perhaps this is a problem with writing a story based on a combination of personal experience and my own kinks and fantasies - that is to say it's hard to create work of variety when the feelings that inspire them are unlikely to change very much.

Is this a problem others have had? Do you tend to write the story you want to read (as I did) or do you approach the piece differently?

 

[SimonDoom]

I haven't had a problem exactly like this, but I know exactly what it is like to finish and publish a story in a spirit of excitement, and then have something of a creative letdown that makes it harder to keep up the pace and write the next story. It's a creative/emotional roller coaster.

I have three practical suggestions. They may or may not work for you but they've worked for me (when I actually follow them, which I often don't).

One, read a lot. Read other people's erotic stories. See how other people do it. Read stories that are like yours, and read stories that are very different from yours. You may read something and think, "That's interesting. I'd like to try doing something kind of like that, but in my own way." At least half my stories are inspired by this process.

Two, try to think outside the box. You wrote a BDSM story. Now try writing something totally different. How would you apply your own writing concepts to a different erotic subject? Look at it as a problem to solve. I do this and I find it helps sometimes. For instance, I'm a straight guy, but I want to write a gay male story. It's really interesting to approach and figure out how to do that. I think it's a neat creative/erotic challenge to imagine yourself as someone whose kinky interests are different from your own.

Three, just keep writing. Don't wait for inspiration. I'm terribly inconsistent about following this principle, so I'm not the best example to follow, but I'll bet if you polled some of the most prolific and successful authors at Literotica they'd tell you they do this. They just keep writing. Writing can be a source of inspiration. I find this works for me. If I wait until inspiration hits, it's very frustrating. But if I force myself to write, regardless of motivation or inspiration, I'm almost always happy with the results. For some people, this seems counterintuitive, but I think in practice it's often successful.

Good luck!

 

[Handley_Page]

A little under a year ago I published my first story on literotica. I enjoyed writing it and I'm pleased with the finished product to this day.

Is this a problem others have had? Do you tend to write the story you want to read (as I did) or do you approach the piece differently?

Yes.
And I still have the problem

 

[MillieDynamite]

I have many, many, many ideas for tales. But getting them brain to a word file can be difficult. Other times, the story flows so fast, it's almost scary.

 

[HeyAll]

The only thing that gets easier is finding your technique and style. And knowing that you have the ability to do it.

But the key to follow-up stories is to always look for new inspirations. Inspirations are everywhere. If you have new ideas, then the desire to write will continue.

 

[Squeeze_Tight]

I haven't had a problem exactly like this, but I know exactly what it is like to finish and publish a story in a spirit of excitement, and then have something of a creative letdown that makes it harder to keep up the pace and write the next story. It's a creative/emotional roller coaster.

I have three practical suggestions. They may or may not work for you but they've worked for me (when I actually follow them, which I often don't).

One, read a lot. Read other people's erotic stories. See how other people do it. Read stories that are like yours, and read stories that are very different from yours. You may read something and think, "That's interesting. I'd like to try doing something kind of like that, but in my own way." At least half my stories are inspired by this process.

Two, try to think outside the box. You wrote a BDSM story. Now try writing something totally different. How would you apply your own writing concepts to a different erotic subject? Look at it as a problem to solve. I do this and I find it helps sometimes. For instance, I'm a straight guy, but I want to write a gay male story. It's really interesting to approach and figure out how to do that. I think it's a neat creative/erotic challenge to imagine yourself as someone whose kinky interests are different from your own.

Three, just keep writing. Don't wait for inspiration. I'm terribly inconsistent about following this principle, so I'm not the best example to follow, but I'll bet if you polled some of the most prolific and successful authors at Literotica they'd tell you they do this. They just keep writing. Writing can be a source of inspiration. I find this works for me. If I wait until inspiration hits, it's very frustrating. But if I force myself to write, regardless of motivation or inspiration, I'm almost always happy with the results. For some people, this seems counterintuitive, but I think in practice it's often successful.

Good luck!

That's a very thoughtful answer, thank you.

The second one in particular sounds incredibly difficult. It's not that I can't put myself in the shoes of a different kink, more that I'd struggle to stick with the story if it isn't something I'd search for. It is a very interesting suggestion, though.

 

[Squeeze_Tight]

Yes.
And I still have the problem

But you do seem to have produced a number of stories!

 

[Squeeze_Tight]

I have many, many, many ideas for tales. But getting them brain to a word file can be difficult. Other times, the story flows so fast, it's almost scary.

Do you have a method of looking for ideas, or are they always sprouting in your imagination? I find the writing flows for me....when the idea is vivid.

 

[Squeeze_Tight]

The only thing that gets easier is finding your technique and style. And knowing that you have the ability to do it.

But the key to follow-up stories is to always look for new inspirations. Inspirations are everywhere. If you have new ideas, then the desire to write will continue.

Yes, the desire is the most consistent part of the puzzle.

 

[vanmyers86]

” ‘I can always think of things,’ said Mrs. Oliver happily. ‘What is so tiring is writing them down."
From "Cards on the Table" by Agatha Christie. I totally agree.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I really had no intention of writing a second story, but by the time I finished the first (a 13 part series), I had the bug.

For my second series, I tried to do everything as opposite as I could from the first. It seems to have worked.

 

[MelissaBaby]

The only thing that gets easier is finding your technique and style. And knowing that you have the ability to do it.

But the key to follow-up stories is to always look for new inspirations. Inspirations are everywhere. If you have new ideas, then the desire to write will continue.

Listen. Listen to everybody, any chance you get. You hear two girls on the bus bitching about their boyfriends-listen. The people at the next table in the restaurant-listen. Old lady talking to herself in the laundromat-listen. Drunk telling a story to the bartender-listen.

You'll get a million ideas and as a bonus, refine your ear for dialogue.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Do you have a method of looking for ideas, or are they always sprouting in your imagination? I find the writing flows for me....when the idea is vivid.

I've talked a methodology before. I concentrate on my story as I'm drifting off to sleep. But when I have ghostwriting projects I can't do that.

 

[lovecraft68]

This is my process and feel free to make fun of it. Like many of you, I get a lot of ideas, sometimes just seeing a couple or individual could conjure up an idea.

But...there are levels of ideas, the passing "That could be a story" the "You know, I could write that." and the "I really need to write that."

Complicating it is any of those three levels can appear at any time even to the same story, one time you think of it, its right there, another time its...meh.

When I finish something and try and figure what's next, I lay there before I go to sleep and picture a spinning case, like something on a lazy Susan, and the I roll whatever ideas I've had rattling around past my mind-okay maybe this is more like one of those spinning vendor machines

as each idea goes by I kind of put the feels out for it...meh, meh, WTF? Nope, um...nah...and finally there will be a "Yeah, that's the one!"

This is why my wife always says that you couldn't pay her to be in my head even for a day.

 

[NotWise]

I always intended to write more, but it struck me that the ideas that whirled around my head felt like very much the same formula with slightly different pieces. Perhaps this is a problem with writing a story based on a combination of personal experience and my own kinks and fantasies - that is to say it's hard to create work of variety when the feelings that inspire them are unlikely to change very much.

I started writing for Lit because I wanted to write, and Lit gave me an outlet. I can see how, if you started writing to get the story you wanted to read, it could be difficult to move on.

There seems to be a lot of people here who write the stories that they want to read. Maybe the idea is just to think of another story you'd like to read, and write it.

 

[MetaBob]

A little under a year ago I published my first story on literotica. I enjoyed writing it and I'm pleased with the finished product to this day.

It didn't get a tremendously high number of reads but the feedback was largely complimentary. It felt good to write the story and great that it made random strangers happy.

I always intended to write more, but it struck me that the ideas that whirled around my head felt like very much the same formula with slightly different pieces. Perhaps this is a problem with writing a story based on a combination of personal experience and my own kinks and fantasies - that is to say it's hard to create work of variety when the feelings that inspire them are unlikely to change very much.

Is this a problem others have had? Do you tend to write the story you want to read (as I did) or do you approach the piece differently?

No, but the seventh novel is proving to be a challenge. It would probably help if I didn't have six separate books in development at once.

Maybe the idea is just to think of another story you'd like to read, and write it.

What he said.

My recommendation? Write for a contest. The deadline will help focus your efforts and limit their scope. One candidate for which I've written the past two years: https://www.literotica.com/s/the-2021-literotica-summer-lovin-contest.

I took down my 2020 contribution when it was subsequently published.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

A little under a year ago I published my first story on literotica. I enjoyed writing it and I'm pleased with the finished product to this day.

It didn't get a tremendously high number of reads but the feedback was largely complimentary. It felt good to write the story and great that it made random strangers happy.

I always intended to write more, but it struck me that the ideas that whirled around my head felt like very much the same formula with slightly different pieces. Perhaps this is a problem with writing a story based on a combination of personal experience and my own kinks and fantasies - that is to say it's hard to create work of variety when the feelings that inspire them are unlikely to change very much.

Is this a problem others have had? Do you tend to write the story you want to read (as I did) or do you approach the piece differently?

If you think about it; pretty much everything that could be written, has been written, what has been written is simply a slight to major variation of an old idea, or theme. We've been practically retelling the same stories for ages. Example; Rick & Morty was originally supposed to be a dark humor animated Back To The Future, but the creator changed a few things. Not only was there an animated version already, but the basis of the movie by time travel, and changing the past has been done several times over, especially by Detective Comics. I get what you mean, though; on a personal level you don't want to write the same story you just wrote. But even if you did, just because the premise is the same, doesn't mean it's going to be the same story. Think about it; many authors here write a bunch of the same shit, somebody could write mostly gay stories, and each one will be different, plots, characters, situations... all those deviations.

This is my personal opinion; don't write for clout. You shouldn't really be writing for people in a manner of speaking, you should be writing for you, to show people the story you want to tell. I read a story once on the registry that wasn't bad, until I kept reading, and saw how many chapters it was, and realized it jumped the shark about where it should've ended, because the next thirty or so chapters were capping for those that must've been crying out "more, more". Writing the story you want to read is basically writing the story you want to tell. That's what I do, even if it's a "commission( write a story from the story ideas section)" from somebody.

Write that shit, so what if it's the "same", write it anyway. You're not obligated to publish here. Getting it wrote/typed down will clear your head, you might even get an idea for another story, writing one- you'll see a complete deviation from what you're writing, and that deviation is probably a whole new story. I used to have a notebook I kept in a backpack(that was stolen) that had stories in it, sometimes just a scene or two. It had various writing stuff in it. Those ideas are just going to haunt your brain until you write them down, or forget them.

I never found it hard to write a second story. I started with something I intended to publish, and made a world out of it, by including a story I was writing on one of my blogs, based off one of my favorite movies, where I didn't like how a certain mechanic functioned. I intended on making a universe, and everything I wrote either fit in it, or it didn't. Some of it is on here. Some stuff I wrote anyway, and I wanted away from that universe, to just write without concern, so to speak. When I started posting stories here, it wasn't hard posting the second story, nothing I was posting was written exclusively for here, it was already written, and was probably posted somewhere else, already.

 

[PBAnnie]

A little under a year ago I published my first story on literotica. I enjoyed writing it and I'm pleased with the finished product to this day.

It didn't get a tremendously high number of reads but the feedback was largely complimentary. It felt good to write the story and great that it made random strangers happy.

I always intended to write more, but it struck me that the ideas that whirled around my head felt like very much the same formula with slightly different pieces. Perhaps this is a problem with writing a story based on a combination of personal experience and my own kinks and fantasies - that is to say it's hard to create work of variety when the feelings that inspire them are unlikely to change very much.

Is this a problem others have had? Do you tend to write the story you want to read (as I did) or do you approach the piece differently?

Just stick with it. I published my first story here sixteen years ago. My second story is currently scheduled to be published here this coming October.

 

[MetaBob]

Just stick with it. I published my first story here sixteen years ago. My second story is currently scheduled to be published here this coming October.

How do I favorite this post? I guess I'll have to read your stuff, instead.

 

[gunhilltrain]

A little under a year ago I published my first story on literotica. I enjoyed writing it and I'm pleased with the finished product to this day.

It didn't get a tremendously high number of reads but the feedback was largely complimentary. It felt good to write the story and great that it made random strangers happy.

I always intended to write more, but it struck me that the ideas that whirled around my head felt like very much the same formula with slightly different pieces. Perhaps this is a problem with writing a story based on a combination of personal experience and my own kinks and fantasies - that is to say it's hard to create work of variety when the feelings that inspire them are unlikely to change very much.

Is this a problem others have had? Do you tend to write the story you want to read (as I did) or do you approach the piece differently?

If you're using your own personal experiences: well, you can use that for a setting, but try to imagine it with a completely different plot happening there. Or you could base it on people you know, but have them do something that they never really did.

That sounds a bit vague, I know. I guess I can toot my own horn here. I'm about to publish a story about sex on a Greyhound bus. The bus trip is mostly based on a real one I took. The people in it, including the girl involved with the act, are loosely based on people I knew or met on the trip. But it's fiction; it never happened! I have a whole bunch of dialogue between the two main protagonists that I just entirely invented.

What do they talk about when not actually seducing each other? Well, since they pass through Joplin, MO, they talk about Bonnie and Clyde's big shootout that happened there. And since they will go through St. Louis, they talk about scenes in the movie "Meet Me In St. Louis." That dialogue is all fictional.

 

[vanmyers86]

What do they talk about when not actually seducing each other? Well, since they pass through Joplin, MO, they talk about Bonnie and Clyde's big shootout that happened there. And since they will go through St. Louis, they talk about scenes in the movie "Meet Me In St. Louis." That dialogue is all fictional.

Coincidentally, one of the most poignant conversations I ever overheard took place in Joplin, MO, about a year after the devastating 2011 tornado. Two average guys, middle aged, wearing jeans and baseball caps, met in a store I also was shopping in and started talking.
"How long was it before you could wake up and not cry?" one asked in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he was asking about something utterly commonplace.
"Six months, give or take," his friend said. "How 'bout you?"
"Still working on it."

 

[Rob_Howard]

I think the replies before mine have covered all the things that I wanted to say.

The only suggestion that I can give is that if you really want to write a second story, and you don't seem find an idea or inspiration for it, you can very well reuse the characters from your first story. You already know the kinks, motivations, personalities of the characters in your first story. You can use these in a different setting, like after a week, month or year from the events in your first story. The story itself can be standalone and need not be converted to a series.

It's easier to reuse the characters, than to create a whole new set of characters again; at least for me that's the case. I find creating new characters more exhausting than creating a new plot for the story.

 

[PBAnnie]

"How long was it before you could wake up and not cry?" one asked in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he was asking about something utterly commonplace.

"Six months, give or take," his friend said. "How 'bout you?"

"Still working on it."

That's the worst conversation I could ever imagine. It's just three lines but expresses volumes of pain and heartache.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Yes and No. My first one took a year to finish. The next one was written during lulls in the first. Then the writers block hit me for a while. Then in spurt and long arduous days and nights I finished the third one. Since then it has been about the same for each story.

Then there are the times that ideas just flood the brain and I not have about 100 or so starts. It's been hard to choose which one to finish as new ones still clutter my mind.

In a lot of them there is a point that I just can't continue, even though I know what comes next and next after that and so on.

Then when I do finish one, the editing process begins. Ugh.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Coincidentally, one of the most poignant conversations I ever overheard took place in Joplin, MO, about a year after the devastating 2011 tornado. Two average guys, middle aged, wearing jeans and baseball caps, met in a store I also was shopping in and started talking.
"How long was it before you could wake up and not cry?" one asked in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he was asking about something utterly commonplace.
"Six months, give or take," his friend said. "How 'bout you?"
"Still working on it."

My story takes place long before 2011, or maybe I would have included it. At the risk of thread drift, there is a 1997 movie called "Gummo" which supposedly takes place in the aftermath of the devastating tornado that struck Xenia, Ohio in 1974. It wasn't filmed there, the tornado is rarely mentioned, and it's one of the strangest damn films I have ever seen.