A quirky writing thing you do in your stories...

[BiscuitHammer]

Anything, big or small, but a technique, or trope, or something that makes its way into your stories.

I've noticed that I time scenes with a specific piece of music. Like I'm expecting the readers to be playing the song in question while they're reading, and the lyrics are right there on the page to pace everything out.

I do it in the Alexaverse constantly (seriously, like at least once a chapter), I've done it in The Great Khan during a duel, and it happens in Time Rider as well. I Do it a LOT.

It's like I've built in a soundtrack for my stories, and it's not just background music, it's integral to the scene and the tone. The Great thing is, a lot of my readers have responded very positively to this quirk of mine. At least two have told me that they have 'Alexaverse' playlists now where they collect the songs I've mentioned and play them while reading.

Very gratifying.

What have you noticed yourself doing? Inquiring minds want to know...

 

[NightPorter]

I've seen some big name authors include a playlist with their books. Theme music of a sort.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Haute couture and buttons. Lots of fucking buttons, being undone slowly. I blame my wife's wedding dress - sixty pearl and loop buttons down the back.

Cafés with outdoor tables. Long car rides, usually to a river. Long beaches far away from people.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

it's [nearly] always mature blonde ladies with big tits.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Anything, big or small, but a technique, or trope, or something that makes its way into your stories.

My stories almost always seem to end up with at least one piece of nerd trivia. One reader told me I'd managed to make warehousing logistics interesting and that filled me with pride.

I usually invoke music at some point too.

 

[lovecraft68]

I tend to reference song lyrics usually to make a joke or an innuendo. For example Nickleback's "You look cuter with something in your mouth" is a line made for porn.

I sort of have a loose mythos within my stories where I'll reference characters or events from another story in passing. I figure I'm mostly amusing myself, but a few readers have commented or sent feedback saying they caught it and thought it was a nice touch.

Lastly, most of my stories take place in Rhode Island. Part of that is its easy for me to reference local places, streets etc so I'm not wasting time researching anything. Another part is following HP Lovecraft who although he created Arkham and Miskatonic which were in Mass, a lot of his stories were set in RI and in his neighborhood.

I suppose I also do it because who the hell gives RI any attention?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Nope... although sometimes I fall into the short, clipped, sentences that Bill Shatner was famous for.

 

[PennameWombat]

Anything, big or small, but a technique, or trope, or something that makes its way into your stories.
<snip>
What have you noticed yourself doing? Inquiring minds want to know...

Guess I should’ve saved this for this thread. Mentioned some of this in some other recent thread…

Certain names.

If you see the name Rachel, she’ll be dark-haired and sexually rapacious. One guy ok, two guys better, three guys and a couple of other women getting close to good. If anyone named Margaret appears she’s in charge.

Redheads always have names starting with ‘S.’

Notable cases of port-wine stains and/or heterochromia in key characters.

Characters that weave in and out and get mentioned but barely (or don’t) appear, but I’ve clearly stated the majority of my stories are in a single, shared universe, so this is natural.

Although certain of my stories feature singing as a plot point, it’s because the lyrics fit the plot. My brain can’t process music in such a way I could time anything to music or relate a story to a playlist, as seems to be a common thread here.

Only very rarely will my female characters wear sandals and they never wear flip-flops. High heels are worn regularly but they’ll never have open toes. It’ll be even rarer that males or females will go barefoot.

Finally, in many of my stories the primary location is never named but it’s meant to be described such that it could be found or figured out (it’s somewhere real). But, when characters from those stories leave their home area, those areas will be named (travelling through Vegas, Southern California, North Dakota, London, Stonehenge, Paris and so on.) How many readers have figured this out, I don’t know, beyond the feedback I received that made clear one reader knew exactly where some of the stories were taking place. That person was correct.

 

[rescatooor]

Guess I should’ve saved this for this thread. Mentioned some of this in some other recent thread…

Yeah, a very recent. I was actually wondering how come I haven't replied here but it's not the same one.

I try to use and describe real places. Reason behind this is that I once took a creative writing class and the guy who lead it could always tell if that was the case. It gave my stories some unique vividness so I try to do that whenever I can. I like to hope that my readers would one day discover that some of the beautiful places are real and you can visit them today. Assuming you are vaccinated.

I personally always like to joke about going to Kensington Gardens at night and frolicking around naked like Peter Pan. Its a joke but also an honest wish.

 

[Haulover]

I've seen some big name authors include a playlist with their books. Theme music of a sort.

J.K.Rowling - writing under the pen name of Robert Galbraith - did something similar in one of her books. Each chapter was prefaced with a quote from a Blue Oyster Cult song.

 

[yowser]

I blame my wife's wedding dress - sixty pearl and loop buttons down the back.

You counted them?

 

[BiscuitHammer]

Yeah, a very recent. I was actually wondering how come I haven't replied here but it's not the same one.

I try to use and describe real places. Reason behind this is that I once took a creative writing class and the guy who lead it could always tell if that was the case. It gave my stories some unique vividness so I try to do that whenever I can. I like to hope that my readers would one day discover that some of the beautiful places are real and you can visit them today. Assuming you are vaccinated.

I personally always like to joke about going to Kensington Gardens at night and frolicking around naked like Peter Pan. Its a joke but also an honest wish.

I do that a lot too, especially with Toronto. But I'm kind of a control freak for doing it in any location I have my characters in when it matters. I recently picked on on Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, and some godawful little artificial town built around a Tesco outside Bristol...

So yes, I completely agree with your need, and please keep it up. I think it's a wonderful addition to any story.

 

[Blind_Justice]

Many of my stories feature sex in showers or bathtubs. Being clean is sexy.

 

[MillieDynamite]

In stories with unlikeable black men (for me they are unlikeable) or cuckold stories featuring black bulls, most of them are named Jamal, Rulan, or Jayden. There are specific reason for this and the black men I knew with those names were terrible people.

 

[RejectReality]

Drinks of water and trips to the bathroom during cool-downs/after sex scenes. Despite my name, it adds a touch of realism while serving its true purpose of passing time.

One sentence/word paragraphs for emphasis/humor.

I never write female POV in first person.

Because my wife despised the word, I very rarely use the word "dick". I have to fight my automatic replacement instinct whenever it makes sense for the character.

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

When I started, I thought I’d be building a consistent world where things like radio stations can appear in multiple stories and serve as touchstones… Never stuck to it because I guess it never served a purpose, or maybe I was just forgetful.

Something that is weirdly consistent is my obsession with streetlights… I just love the image of the only light in a room coming from the lamps outside. Or, walking down a city street in the middle of the night.

 

[Omenainen]

My stories have a lot of sleeping together. Sleeping as in sleeping. Not every story, but I bet most of them. That’s not very quirky, though.

 

[stickygirl]

I think I misunderstood the question
So, I like to include words that, if recited backwards in Hebrew, summon the undead from their shallow graves. I do it in every story: third paragraph down - check them out, but don't hold me responsible for the consequences and no, it isn't a Beetlejuice thing or anything to do with Turkey fancying.

 

[LilyWaters]

Ok, this is super technical and nerdy, but...

I love playing with asyndeton and polysyndeton. In a nutshell, polysyndeton is when you use - and perhaps overuse conjunctions to build up to what would otherwise be considered a run on sentence. Asyndeton is when you eschew conjunctions entirely and just replace them with commas to the a similar effect.

Both of them would show up on Grammerly as "incorrect", but they're so, so good for building tension and momentum, which makes them perfect for erotic writing.

As someone who is interested in the technical constructions of writing, I tend to knowingly begin stories trying to make my writing conventionally and technically correct, and then break down those conventions as the sex intensifies. So, when my characters lose their inhibitions, so does the writing style, if that makes sense.


(Also, kind men with slow hands and knowing smiles.)

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

I have a couple of stylistic quirks that come up over and over in my writing. If I want to draw the action out and emphasize a beat, I’ll repeat the same short sentence with a minor variation. Like this example from a story I’m working on now:

“I could feel him getting harder. I could feel him stiffening underneath my fingers. I reached out and touched his cheek.”

I’m also a fan of sometimes putting descriptions in sentence fragments:

“Mike took the lead and I followed. He was much more dressed than he’d been the day before. Tee shirt, long khaki trousers cuffed at the ankle, a beaten-up pair of sneakers.”

I enjoy maledom and nonconsent stories, but I can’t write them to save my life. (Believe me. I’ve tried!) I’m at my best with a man and a woman who are desperate to fuck each other, but can’t or aren’t supposed to.

 

[BrightShinyGirl]

As someone who is interested in the technical constructions of writing, I tend to knowingly begin stories trying to make my writing conventionally and technically correct, and then break down those conventions as the sex intensifies. So, when my characters lose their inhibitions, so does the writing style, if that makes sense.

Oh yes! This! I often write first-person protagonists, and when the action get intense, their language gets simpler and more fragmented. Like this:

“I could tell he wasn’t going to last very long. I pulled my bikini bottoms to one side and started frigging my pussy. I was so wet. I was dripping onto the wooden floorboards of the boathouse. I imagined Mike’s hard cock inside my cunt instead of my mouth. I imagined him fucking me. I imagined him holding me down and fucking me hard. This was so wrong. What was I doing? Mike was my future brother-in-law. felt like such a slut. But he was so cute. He was so cute and I was so horny, and his dick was so hard.”

Sometime I’ll go even further and just devolve into a stream of consciousness separated by ellipses.

 

[SamScribble]

Food. Many of my characters like food. They like eating it. They like preparing it. Trust me: every recipe in every story can be relied upon to produce a delicious dish of food.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You counted them?

Afterwards, yes. At the time, sore fingers!

 

[gordo12]

The moon in moonlit scenes.

I use a lot of them in stories and finally explained it to readers in xxxxxx. (Edit: sorry that should have been Hidden Boss, not Homeless)

When we were doing a major move between cities and our house was unsold, we rented a house. The master bedroom had a glass roof.

You'd wake up in the middle of the night with the moon shining down on you, or watch it rise. Then when it rained you had the patter of rain on the glass. A thunderstorm at night was something to behold.

I've never forgotten it.

 

[LilyWaters]

Oh yes! This! I often write first-person protagonists, and when the action get intense, their language gets simpler and more fragmented. Like this:

“I could tell he wasn’t going to last very long. I pulled my bikini bottoms to one side and started frigging my pussy. I was so wet. I was dripping onto the wooden floorboards of the boathouse. I imagined Mike’s hard cock inside my cunt instead of my mouth. I imagined him fucking me. I imagined him holding me down and fucking me hard. This was so wrong. What was I doing? Mike was my future brother-in-law. felt like such a slut. But he was so cute. He was so cute and I was so horny, and his dick was so hard.”

Sometime I’ll go even further and just devolve into a stream of consciousness separated by ellipses.

Yep, exactly! I like reading this as well.