1) What is every setting you have ever used? And 2) Where are you, mentally, in your stories?

[burgwad]

Hi. Not a pissing contest, just a moment of self-reflection. Where are you, mentally, in your stories?

Every setting I have ever used: Los Angeles (CA), stinky bachelor's US apartment (bedroom, office/guest, 3/4 bath, front room w/ kitchenette), generic hotel swimming pool, generic hotel room, fried chicken restaurant patio, street-side smoothie shop, sunny French nude beach, desolate windy California nude beach, generic car interior, generic stretch of California highway, generic upscale US suburb, generic upscale US home interior (multibedroom, grand foyer, backyard pool, etc.), therapist's lavish home office, generic middle class US suburb (driveways, dogs, narrow roads, etc.), generic 1990s RV interior, generic middle class US suburban home (bedroom, kitchen, basement), Omaha, generic US RV park, vaguely apocalyptic rural suburb, creepy taxidermist's voodoo chamber/repurposed garage, 4-way stop in the middle of nowhere at night, Waffle House, Black Hills (SD), Helena (MT), touristy US town, idyllic Swedish postcard mountain village, cultish Swedish amphitheater, ultramodern Swedish mini-home, generic US high school (parking lot, hallway, art classroom), gallery opening

Where I am, mentally, in my stories: I like to be in "vacation mode" when I write erotica. Even if we're at home in a story, I focus on characters who are back from school, done with work for the day, just hanging out, etc. The closest I'll let anyone get to "working" on camera is if they're doing some sort of art, or therapy, or driving, i.e., those tedium that still involve relaxation, connection, and calm.

So, shit. Am I just writing what I know? Is all I "know" familiar, bland, and liminal? Might my stories just as well take place in the backrooms? Am I a bad writer? ... Or does something about "vacation mode" speak to the open-mindedness, relaxation, and experimentation I connote with good sex? The answer's probably yes to all of the above, and I hate this, but I'm glad I sat here and thought about it for a minute.

 

[SimonDoom]

When it comes to settings, I tend to write what I know. My purpose here is to write erotica. I'm not interested in researching historical or foreign settings, so I tend to default to generic American office and neighborhood settings so I can spend my time on the kinky stuff rather than on the setting. I admire authors who take a different approach and put their stories in foreign locations that require additional knowledge or research, but that's not what I do.

I enjoy writing stories in office and work settings, in part because I am familiar with them, so it's easy, but also because I think work settings provide many opportunities for fun erotic tension. You're not SUPPOSED to be getting it on in the office, so there's a fun taboo element if you are.

The setting is often dictated by the type of story I want to write. For example, if I'm writing a mom-son incest story, the son must be over 18, but he must also be in close enough proximity to mom so something is likely to happen. So in my stories son usually is college-age and living at home for one reason or another.

For me, setting is subservient to plot and character. I figure out the latter two elements and then I come up with a setting that works with those two elements and that is easy to write.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Most often, my stories are set in Colorado or Oklahoma. I know the two states as I live in OK, and my folks (adoptive) always vacationed in Colorado (for the most part) when I lived with them. My adoptive sister lives in the Denver area, and I visit her often. But I have set stories in many cities and towns around the country, one in Italy, one in Transvania, and many in nonspecific locations. I write primarily in the past, pre-cell phone, after researching the period enough to have my facts straight (probably not all of them).

Where I am mentally, I hope, in the story someplace. After about 8:30 in the morning, I get jolted back to the real world, quite often, by my son. That is why I save my stories till later in the day when I can. I write a lot during naps (which will be fewer and fewer as he gets older). I try to immerse myself in the reality I'm writing, a sort of baptism of words.

 

[lovecraft68]

I'm with Simon, most of my stories take place in my home state of RI or Mass, because I'm familiar with everything and don't need to look things up. I write my stories in present day because I can't be bothered giving readers history lessons or researching it myself.

 

[Auden James]

Well, I haven't read any of your stories yet, burgwad, but, with all due respect, you're writing—by your own admission—seems to be rather generic and bland, going by your thoroughly generic choices of settings and of bland "vacation mode" narrative situations. Of course, I don't know about your characters and plots, but if they conform to the genericness and blandness of your settings and narrative situations, then, boy, good night, and good luck!

 

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

If I were to list every location I've ever written about I'd be here all year so heres a non comprehensive list of some of my more recent locations. Note I did not limit my list to erotic scenes or stories so if you cant find the story the location features in on Literotica it's because it's not there (yet.)

-aggressively boring cubicle
-an older style train
-bar in space
-break room
-castle that's on the inside of a mountain
-cheap college apartment
-city street with neon lights
-combination gas station and tackle shop
-cute little apartment in the city
-Denny's
-desert oasis with a palace
-detective agency in Philadelphia
-eccentric rave club
-farmhouse in Iowa zombie apocalypse
-floating island in the sky
-flying airship
-gas station
-ghost town by the bay
-high tech mansion staffed by robots
-in the streets in the rain
-lab trailer
-little house with a big garage
-mom and pop pizza joint
-nuclear war safehouse
-office supply closet
-old office laboratory building warped into a hellish labyrinth by a retired god overgrown with the living experiments the scientists abandoned.
-rural settlement on the hill
-sports arena
-the batcave
-the shittiest apartment in New York
-tiny spaceship
-warehouse in the side of a canyon

As for where I am mentally in my stories? I don't think I comprehend the question. (Is that something nuerotypicals have awareness of? Damn I'm jealous.)

Writing is just a funky little sandbox I dig into sometimes. I dunno what yall are talking about being different places mentally, I'm too busy building funny looking sand castles in the writing sandbox. There is no self. Only sand.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My list, when I compiled it, looked in places like the one above, but with many many more cafes, galleries, hotel restaurants and city scapes. Trains and buses, and Australian beaches. The outliers were a Dark Ages landscape, an alien angel flying on Titan, and one story set in 1940s LA.

The sense of place is important to me when I'm writing, there is always a real place in my mind's eye. Even on Titan, where I read into the atmosphere and the physics of a large flying creature (although, there might be more artistic licence in that one).

 

[yukonnights]

I typically set my stories in places I know pretty well. I like to use the western US states as that's the places I've traveled a lot. I find it easier to describe and feel more confident about the setting if I've actually been there.

 

[XerXesXu]

Setting: I write what I know and I know London, but London’s a world city and has many exciting locations to offer, that's where I start.

Mentally: Even so, ‘… part of me will always stray, o'er the hills and far away.’ I have itchy feet, and a lust for adventure – I don’t stay in London, I always venture into edgy and exotic parts of the world, 'Along the road to come what may', a sense of dislocation and disorientation always builds tension.

 

[Voboy]

Oy. Once you get over about 50 stories posted, a listing of "every setting you've ever used" is hard to remember. Most of my contemporary stories happen in a fictional coastal area that's probably down in the Chesapeake region, I think; I don't really know. I have a few fake towns down there that I use.

Other stories have ranged from medieval England to ancient Rome to a po-dunk colony on a planet in mid-terraform in the distant future. Occasionally I'll get specific even in a contemporary piece, and when I do I usually intend for the setting to become a "character" of sorts. If I'm paying attention to specific geography, it's because I want my readers to take that geography seriously.

 

[lc69hunter]

Funny, weird question, as I was just thinking something similar, not where the location is, but my head and where I am in my character. In my much younger days, I was activity involved in the cuckold/hot wife scene, and fucked a fair number of husbands at the request of the wife, and had my cock sucked by many more. However, in real life I am a switch, but haven't for many years had a switch as a partner. Because of that, often when I am formulating a cuckold story, I am putting myself in the role of that husband when I am writing, sucking my lover's cock, or getting bent over and taken. I have never been there, but visualize it when writing the story.

Does that make any sense?

 

[TheRedChamber]

This is an interesting question - one that I didn't have much of an answer for at first until I'd really thought about it some.

I was surprised when I counted it up how often characters were actually on the clock in my stories, as I only have one story set in an office. Still, my estate agent is still getting paid even while she give her former colleague a demonstration of the dungeon in the property she has to put on the market and another tale takes place entirely during 4am shifts at a gas station. My hotel bellboy has clocked off, but is still at his place of employment and pretending to be working as he launches his late night seduction. And technically that story set in a strip club was part a 'corporate hospitality' event for the fella and the stripper was at her place of employment too. On top of this we have relationships that start in book shops, shoe shops, hairdressers and restaurants between customers and staff. (Is it acceptable to ask someone who is at their place of work on a date? Maybe not, that's why its the MC's borish mother doing the asking, or else the MC really hopes his crush notices his excellent taste in books). Despite this productivity, it's fair to say that none of my characters are exactly getting burned out by their jobs nor are they in line for promotion.

A lot of my younger characters are said to be studying at university, but they are rarely involved in university life. Instead, declaring a degree ticks off the Lit over-18 rule smoothly and indicates that these characters have some prospects as they typically return to their small town life - hanging around at their parents until they get seduced by the neighbour. I've read a lot of college-stories that start with everyone meeting at freshers week, pairing off and fucking like bunnies, but I haven't gotten round to writing one yet. Maybe because my characters aren't party animals. They'll go for a romantic meal, but are unlikely to hit the clubs and they do very little under the influence of alcohol or other substances - not that they are all tee-total, there's plenty of references to them getting up to that stuff on another day - it's just the stuff that happens to them in my narrative is more likely to be when they are sober or even hungover or jet-lagged. The only two characters I've really written as party animals were completely unlikable misogynists which probably says something I didn't fully conciously intend (come to think of it, since they are testing out and marketing an AI that can scan a club and tell them what the odds are of sleeping with every woman in the room, they are technically working too throughout the story).

In terms of locations, I too use London a lot as the obvious big city choice in the UK. Otherwise it's mainly unspecified smaller suburban towns.

 

[PennameWombat]

Point 2, first. For me, it's thinking about the plot, etc. So, whatever I need to think about to service the plot. My stories take place during any and all sorts of life activities, including work, vacations, schooling, and so on.

As to point 1, as a rule, I prefer not to name my specific location. If it's meant to be a real city or location, I try to describe it with enough detail and accuracy that it can be identified. I will name 'close' landmarks and cities and such that provide more clues. I've done this with the areas around Salt Lake City, Utah, Los Angeles and Anaheim, Chicago's McCormick Place, Las Vegas and Pahrump; Sydney and the surrounding NSW areas, Blue Mountains and Kangaroo Island, in Australia; and a variety of locations across England, including London, Stonehenge and other places.

I've set stories on satellites, spaceships and a few different alien, Earth-like worlds, including a binary planet, one an ocean planet and the other a desert planet.

Within all these... not going to lay out. Homes, coffee shops, restaurants, mountains, etc. An abandoned church. An active church after Sunday services. Whatever I need and feel like. Plenty of my stories are set at what's clearly an American university, (based on a real one), but not named beyond the "Uni." The characters know where they are

But I've also written stories where the location was, say, clearly a city. But. No further hint. Not meant to be. Imagine it's your city. Or not. That's the point. The characters and what they interact with is important, but, saying it is or isn't based on a real location isn't.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Various locations around east-coast Australia, especially Melbourne. A ladies' college in New England and a disreputable warehouse in Boston. The wilds of northern Scandinavia. An anonymous big company in an unspecified country. A couple of English villages. Schiphol. Iceland. Assorted academic conferences. A gay club in a fictional Eastern European country. A nursing home. Fantasy Arabia somewhere around the Empty Quarter.

 

[MrPixel]

Interesting question. So far in my stories, it's mostly hotels, but not in the usual erotica sense since my series is based around a big hotel with a bar and café, owned, run and staffed by the characters. Very little guest involvement, and most scenes take place in the management office (much to HR's chagrin) and private residence wing, though there's occasional craziness in the bar.

Thinking back, stories not part of the series (or tangential to it) include settings in restaurants and bars, a nudist resort, one in a sex nightclub, and two different hospitals. Story I'm working on at the moment is at a swinger resort modeled primarily on a real one.

As far as "where I am", it's everyday life. Problem with that is it doesn't lend itself to a neatly-packaged ending, so the story keeps going on. The important thing is I am having fun. So are the characters.

 

[RejectReality]

For the most part, my stuff is set in suburbia, small towns, or the country, and I suppose you could assume most of it is the Midwest. ( Ignoring fantasy & pseudo historical fiction ) I limit most stuff that happens in cities to generic, unnamed locations, because I've got zero use for cities, and even my scenery-gathering instincts can't compete with my "must GTFO ASAP" instincts. 50k people is overboard for me. Don't even want to drive through, let alone stop. Never mind something bigger. 0-3 traffic lights max for any degree of reasonable comfort.

Lakeside, back yards, and barns/outbuildings come up frequently. So do back rooms/offices for small businesses. Nude day stories have made RVs a thing. Include the fantasy that's set in a parallel world, and you get a lot of woodlands.

 

[RetroFan]

AUSTRALIA - Melbourne & Geelong (Victoria); Sydney, Gosford, Newcastle, Wollongong, Goulburn, Batemans Bay (New South Wales); Canberra (Australian Capital Territory); Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast (Queensland); Hobart (Tasmania); Adelaide & Victor Harbor (South Australia); Perth (Western Australia); Darwin (Northern Territory)

NEW ZEALAND - Auckland

ENGLAND - London, Essex, Sussex, Liverpool, Blackpool, Yorkshire

USA - New York, Boston, Maine, Vermont, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Virginia Beach, Baltimore, Raleigh, Miami, St Petersburg, Alabama, Chicago, Springfield MO, Salt Lake City, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego

CANADA - Toronto

SOUTH AFRICA - Cape Town, Johannesburg & Kruger National Park

EGYPT - Cairo

YEARS MY STORIES ARE SET: 1926, 1936, 1941, 1943, 1948, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1969, 1972, 1974, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

Most unusual place I have used - Ghosties Beach, a beach in the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia appears in my story 'Crazy Cornelius & the Magic Pills. It is a real place name.

Some of my stories have flashbacks, for example my story 'Banging Cousin Becky In Blackpool' is set in 1955, but has flashbacks to 1939 and 1944.

 

[Duleigh]

My settings are places that I've lived and fell in love with:
Western New York State
Southern Ontario
Saskatchewan
Manitoba
North Central Minnesota
North Dakota
South West South Dakota
Montana
Wyoming
Colorado
Texas
New Mexico
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Guam
Korea
Germany
Spain
Italy
Turkey
Saudi Arabia

There's other places I've lived but didn't spend very much time there, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, I need to know more before I write

Where I am mentally when I write - Happy, I'm enjoying the experience.

 

[oggbashan]

With nearly 500 stories as Og and Jeanne, I would find it difficult to list them all but:

1960s UK, London, on the road, France, then two fantasy planets - Tripletit, Shelacta, Sextiple...

Various historical periods - 100 years war, Civil War, WW1, WW2.

 

[Northstar4695]

Let's see, the settings: Northern Italy in the mountains, Northern England in the hills, New England, the waters off Northern Spain and on land in Galicia, an unnamed southern European beach town, a college in New England, and most recently an unnamed US city in the Northeast. My next story, which will publish sometime this month, is set on a lake in the northern Appalachians.

I started publishing during the more restrictive period of the pandemic. Travel escapism was part of the allure and the setting is an important part of my stories. I want readers to imagine a beautiful place or a cozy spot and be transported there with a beautiful partner.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Location is very important to me and I usually try to incorporate landscape into the story, in the way a portrait painter uses the background to complement or reflect on the subject of their painting.

Most of my stories have been set in a semi-fictional Maine. I have a whole fictional geography in my head, where Londonderry and Port Harmony and Saw Whet and Beartown and Merganser Pond fit right in alongside Bangor and Portland.

I have also set stories in Montreal, Boston, Los Angeles and Detroit, as well as an unnamed industrial city somewhere in America.

Where am I in the stories? Usually, I’m inside one of the characters heads. The “god’s eye view” stuff usually forms in my mind before I actually start putting down words.

 

[yowser]

Smalltown USA, Cambridge (both), Jackson Mississippi, East Anglia, Midlife Earth, Nilgiri Hills, San Francisco, London, Berkshires, Buenos Aires, Southampton, Cape Cod, Melbourne, Toronto, Papua New Guinea. All fits in my head, somehow.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

Most of my stories are set in South Florida, usually Miami. I have a few set in the Midwest--I'm not sure if I named a specific city or state in those. I have two set in NYC, and a few in invented locales. For the most part, I stick to Miami.

 

[Blind_Justice]

Settings (and historical periods) I've used: Munich and Deggendorf, Bavaria, Germany ca. 2015; Marburg, Germany, ca. 1997/8; Los Angeles, Berlin and cyberspace in 2030; several starships, late 21st century and my own take on the typical high fantasy continent across several centuries.

My role in those stories: Apart from "Dramatic License", which is based on my own past, I am just the "camera" sitting behind my characters. I don't like self-insert- or wish-fulfilment characters. My line of thought usually begins with "what if..." and leads into weird places. I love to saddle my protagonists with gifts which are blessing and curse in equal measure - be it Rem's ability to instinctively understand and modify any piece of tech or Rhys' magic - and watch them while they try to master their powers.

 

[blackstallion21]

This is an inviting prompt, but it doesn't work for all writers. I can't answer either question because all of my stories come from a different frame of mind and I have different feelings coming from all directions.

Some of my stories are based on true stories and others are fiction, but I wouldn't discredit any of my work because it appeals to different people differently...