Does an erotic writer know shit?

[CharleyH]

I feel comfortable writing things I don't necessarily have first hand experience with, so long as my knowledge base supports what I'm trying to write.

I don't feel the need to investigate fetishes in person or in research that I have no need to portray in a story. Why would I seek to know more about pony play or scat if it's not something I plan to indulge in personally or weave into a story?

Well I write articles and will hit you up on my next one - FEM DOMS, if you think you are?

 

[oggbashan]

I try to extend my range beyond what I know from personal experience or inclination to attempt to write for specialised tastes.

Sometimes I am successful for that limited audience at the expense of unpopularity with the wider reading public.

I'm still stuck halfway through my story on hairy and sweaty South Indian women's armpits. Once that's complete the next challenge is inflation i.e. blowing people up like balloons. That's a new one for me. There is the parallel fetish - deflating people like letting air out of balloons. Can I make either attractive, plausible to the target audience and accessible to most readers?

Probably not - but I'll try.

Og

 

[Kamilia Ross]

I know I'm new here, but I want to say that writing pornography in the first place is really a push for me.
It's even more of a push because the first thing I'm writing is BDSM.
I'm not interested in it.
I don't have any experience in it.
But I'm getting help. I was told to put myself in the place the character is being stuck into and that it would be good enough.
I just hope it's right.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Wanna come over and practice?

Sure! Practice makes perfect, I hear- I need lots and lots of practice!

You won't laugh when I fuck....

I mean- fuck up?

You'll just let me try it again?

 

[rgraham666]

I write about fantasies. All my stuff is almost entirely figments of my imagination.

Will I write something outside 'vanilla'? Maybe. If my imagination takes me there.

But currently, I'm pretty happy with vanilla. I'm afraid I don't quite understand people who always have to look for new thrills. If I could get in real life a quarter of what I write about, that would be plenty enough for me.

 

[CharleyH]

thats a great game!


Charles:
i learned that being safe...being sane...being consensual is the basis for all my beliefs be it in the bdsm arena or otherwise. i sought out techniques and learned what i liked...how about you?

definitely with lovers, but what exactly is safe, sane and consensual in erotic writing- sounds a bit conservative to me.

EDIT: Spelling

 

[Stella_Omega]

definitely with lovers, but what exactly is safe, sane and consensual in erotic writing- sounds a bit conservative to me.

EDIT: Spelling

Conservative is in the mind of the... beholder? experientialist?

You can not say that someone else's sexual tastes are too conservative. Or you lay yourself open to hearing them tell you you've gone too far.

Charley love- what, exactly, do you have in mind? Your gnomic questioning gets a little... tiresome.
I don't like guessing games- especially not in a BDSM scene.

 

[CharleyH]

I try to extend my range beyond what I know from personal experience or inclination to attempt to write for specialised tastes.

Sometimes I am successful for that limited audience at the expense of unpopularity with the wider reading public.

I'm still stuck halfway through my story on hairy and sweaty South Indian women's armpits. Once that's complete the next challenge is inflation i.e. blowing people up like balloons. That's a new one for me. There is the parallel fetish - deflating people like letting air out of balloons. Can I make either attractive, plausible to the target audience and accessible to most readers?

Probably not - but I'll try.

Og

Well, hairy and sweaty is odd (or not) in most conventional environments Og - No? This is my point - few GET IT

 

[Guest]

definitely with lovers, but what exactly is safe, sane and consensual in erotic writing- sounds a bit conservative to me.

EDIT: Spelling

well, i apply what i know to be safe...sane...consenual in my writing. this also goes along with technique. if you know how to do something well, then that shows in your writing...this all comes back to what lucky said.

 

[CharleyH]

Conservative is in the mind of the... beholder? experientialist?

You can not say that someone else's sexual tastes are too conservative. Or you lay yourself open to hearing them tell you you've gone too far.

Charley love- what, exactly, do you have in mind? Your gnomic questioning gets a little... tiresome.
I don't like guessing games- especially not in a BDSM scene.

I thank you for your equally tiresome response, my love. If you knew? Would you have to guess?

 

[CharleyH]

well, i apply what i know to be safe...sane...consenual in my writing. this also goes along with technique. if you know how to do something well, then that shows in your writing...this all comes back to what lucky said.

Why does writing have to be sane - safe and consensual? Writing is fantasy- no? For some.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Why does writing have to be sane - safe and consensual? Writing is fantasy- no? For some.

Well, I don't think that it needs to be those things, but I certainly think that it can. Some people fantasize about physical thrills; others are more interested in emotional stability. It's quite common for people to view those things as in some ways opposed to each other. I'm not saying that they are, necessarily - only that since it's common to see very inventive kink and emotional depth as divergent paths, there's a place for "vanilla" sex for that reason at least.

I'll go further; I think there are stories that can be spoiled by too much time spent writing inventive sex. Mine, for instance. I've got at least two that are being rewritten for exactly that reason. The physical elements got distracting, and then the emotional elements either didn't ring true or couldn't be seen behind the sex. Possibly that means that in some ways I'm moving away from erotica and toward something else, but I think that even a good erotic story can still be spoiled by making the sex too deliberately spectacular. If that's the story - if it's inherent to those people and their characters to have really graduate-level sex - then undoubtedly it will entertain. But, as I recognized when reading a story about an alleged virgin milking a man's cock with her vaginal muscles, there's such a thing as sex that in and of itself might be interesting, but that in the story isn't right.

Shanglan

 

[LadyJeanne]

I'm still stuck halfway through my story on hairy and sweaty South Indian women's armpits.

Armpit hair is natural. Natural. That's the key, my friend, to Kerala women armpit hair fetish.

For the first 5 years of their lives, Indian boys are raised by their mothers, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers. Indian households, and Indian society, is very indulgent and permissive for small children. Boys are revered.

Then, as boys grow up, they are, to a large degree, separated from those lovely women who gave them everything their little boyish hearts desired. They spend the rest of their lives yearning to get back into that warm, female-centric, nurturing, accepting cocoon - armpit hair and all...

 

[BlackShanglan]

I've often thought that persuading women that having body hair was unnatural and revolting was one of the greatest marketing coups ever pulled off. I'm curious; does anyone have a date/place/culture where that idea first began?

 

[Kamilia Ross]

I've often thought that persuading women that having body hair was unnatural and revolting was one of the greatest marketing coups ever pulled off. I'm curious; does anyone have a date/place/culture where that idea first began?

http://www.quikshave.com/timeline.htm

Will that help?

 

[LadyJeanne]

I've often thought that persuading women that having body hair was unnatural and revolting was one of the greatest marketing coups ever pulled off. I'm curious; does anyone have a date/place/culture where that idea first began?

I'm sure the biggest impetus was one of marketing...when was the first razor marketed to women?

Apparently the Egyptians and Greeks thought hairless was youthful and innocent. Which is, apparently, desirable.



history of depilation

 

[Stella_Omega]

I thank you for your equally tiresome response, my love. If you knew? Would you have to guess?

If you tell me, I wouldn't have to guess, and we'd save so much time

I used to hate it when vanilla women would come into the leather bar. They'd be so bright-eyed and eager, and treat us like a petting zoo. They'd perch their little butts on a bar stool, and act sort of flirty, and sort of snotty. As if they could get a spanking by acting pissy yet puppyish.

Since lesbians inhabit such an insecure part of the world in the first place, and queer women are relegated to an even smaller corner of the lesbian world, not many leatherdykes were ever willing to play rough trade games with a total stranger.
I can't play guessing games like that- suppose I guessed wrong, and some brat got mad at me? It's become a litigous society, and I have a family to protect. I'm not going to leave marks on some debutant with my singletail whip, unless she can tell me that's exactly what she wants, nor am I going to turn her over a bar stool abd pull her skirt up, unless she lets me know that's why she came in.

But we all want romance, and we all- women especially- want Prince Charming to read our minds, magically. More's the pity.

If I learned one thing during my most active time in the leather community, it was that there's no shame in speaking up about what you really want. If there's one point in my stories that IS fantasy- it's that my characters do, sometimes, read each others minds.

 

[entitled]

i don't know jack shit, but can bs my way through it enough to get by - if i want to. That being said...

I'm not going to leave marks on some debutant with my singletail whip, unless she can tell me that's exactly what she wants, nor am I going to turn her over a bar stool abd pull her skirt up, unless she lets me know that's why she came in.

But you'd do both to me, wouldn't you?

 

[BlackShanglan]

http://www.quikshave.com/timeline.htm

Will that help?

In the most amazing way! Who would have imagined such a thing existed? I am very much obliged

And amen, Stella. I think that's everyone's favorite fantasy - the person who knows precisely what one wants. That's something I miss about roleplaying online - that ability to take a half-step out of the scene and "nudge" one's partner either through clever use of hints or through side messages or what have you. If only real life would supply the equivalent.

 

[Stella_Omega]

i don't know jack shit, but can bs my way through it enough to get by - if i want to. That being said...

But you'd do both to me, wouldn't you?

yeah, and I wouldn't bother to ask either
But.. that's because, of course, I know what a bad little girl you are....

 

[Stella_Omega]

In the most amazing way! Who would have imagined such a thing existed? I am very much obliged

And amen, Stella. I think that's everyone's favorite fantasy - the person who knows precisely what one wants. That's something I miss about roleplaying online - that ability to take a half-step out of the scene and "nudge" one's partner either through clever use of hints or through side messages or what have you. If only real life would supply the equivalent.

yeah, I know... That's probably what started me writing seriously once again. My fantasy lover was perfect, just perfect... nothing but perfect... untill I realised that his perfection was incredibly boring to me as a reader. I deconstructed him, added some flaws and neuroses, and made a much more interesting person out of him. It made me much more forgiving towards my real life partner, actually. And as I say, my-our- experiences in BDSM taught me to ask for what I want. What a difference that makes!

 

[LadyJeanne]

In the most amazing way! Who would have imagined such a thing existed? I am very much obliged

And amen, Stella. I think that's everyone's favorite fantasy - the person who knows precisely what one wants. That's something I miss about roleplaying online - that ability to take a half-step out of the scene and "nudge" one's partner either through clever use of hints or through side messages or what have you. If only real life would supply the equivalent.

You want commercial breaks during sex?

 

[NoJo]

Do we writers know enough about fetish as writers or do we stay, as authors, in a realm of our somewhat vanilla or cultural experience, and never venture forth beyond traditional BDSM and fetish?

I've gained enough experience in the practice of BDSM to feel qualified to write about it. I'm just not that good at writing about it, probably because my heart isn't really in it. The only aspect of it that now interests me is present in a much more subtle and exciting way in ordinary relationships, both sexual and non-sexual.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Why does writing have to be sane - safe and consensual? Writing is fantasy- no? For some.

Yeah, it's fantasy. But it has to be emotionally authentic.

If you can't get a handle on the eroticism of some paraphilia, then you're basically just faking orgasm, and your readers (your lovers) will be able to tell. They won't be taking you to bed a second time.

I can usually find the eroticism in any sort of encounter or fetish. Even if it turns me off, I understand why it turns some people on. (Strangely, incest is the one perversion that I can't feel anything good for. Incest seems anti-erotic to me.) I'll bet I could even help Og with his hairy armpit story if he needed it. (I can see the sweat droplets gilstening in her hair even now.)

On the other hand, I'm not interested in gratuitous perversity, or playing "kinkier than thou" for the sake of trying to appear naughty. Pay me, and I'll be your literary whore, but on my own I'll stay in those waters I like best.

 

[oggbashan]

Yeah, it's fantasy. But it has to be emotionally authentic.

If you can't get a handle on the eroticism of some paraphilia, then you're basically just faking orgasm, and your readers (your lovers) will be able to tell. They won't be taking you to bed a second time.

I can usually find the eroticism in any sort of encounter or fetish. Even if it turns me off, I understand why it turns some people on. (Strangely, incest is the one perversion that I can't feel anything good for. Incest seems anti-erotic to me.) I'll bet I could even help Og with his hairy armpit story if he needed it. (I can see the sweat droplets gilstening in her hair even now.)

On the other hand, I'm not interested in gratuitous perversity, or playing "kinkier than thou" for the sake of trying to appear naughty. Pay me, and I'll be your literary whore, but on my own I'll stay in those waters I like best.

I find some fetishes a real challenge to get a feel for the erotic posssibilities.

If the fetish is sufficiently obscure, there are likely to be few stories or scenes written about it, so any attempt is likely to be well-received. If I get it wrong, the readers are likely to tell me. This happened with my 'Unbirth' stories. The eventual version of 'The Virgin Unbirth' evolved from interaction with the now-defunct Yahoo Unbirth Group.

Thank you, LadyJeanne, for the explanation about South Indian women. Much of the Indian pictorial erotica I have found seems to be based around 'Aunties' who don't look old enough to be Aunts.

I suppose a 'young' aunty might be the first available female that an Indian male has a physical desire for.

Og