Give me your thoughts about my take on tension building. And please teach me your way of doing it.

[pink_silk_glove]

My take on your numbered analysis of the three stories above is that there is insufficient attention paid to the motives of the characters, their thoughts, their feelings. That's where tension REALLY comes from.

Motive, motive motive - the three biggest things missing from lit stories.

Stories on lit generally suffer from weak/flimsy or complete lack of motive.

 

[TheNovelist2000]

I think this focus on "tension" and "obstacles" when writing erotica, especially strokers, is unnecessary and unhelpful.

To be honest, I don't know what to make of obstacles.

 

[TheNovelist2000]

That sounds like a short.

Yes, I am talking about short erotica. I accidentally inflated it with strokers. Strokers are not necessarily shorts. To be exact, I am talking about 3-5k parts, where each part depicts a specific sexual encounter. E.g. Take the story ' Stepdaughter Fills in' mentioned above. The first part is about the stepdaughter going on a date with her father, and they do anal at the restaurant. The second part is about a threesome with the mom and daughter at home.

The key to tension is decisions for the characters to make. It really boils down to that. The vast majority of lit stories have character A eager to fuck character B and character B quite willing to oblige. These aren't decisions, so there is no tension. "I really want you but I can't because I love someone else, but damn how I want you!" (very basic example) puts a decision to the character and that decision point creates tension, and after the decision there are potential consequences which uphold that tension -

Okay! I’ve been thinking about how to maintain sexual tension since I started this thread. My take is that the more time characters spend doing things unrelated to their sexual agenda, the less sexual tension there is.

For example, let’s say the “agenda” for the day is for two characters to have anal sex. If the author keeps writing about them filing taxes or praying (unless the prayer somehow involves wanting a bigger butt), the sexual tension drops.

Now, imagine two different authors writing the same story — two people having anal sex.

Author A starts with the mundane details of the guy’s life: a paragraph about his job, another about his looks, and another about how he has to file his taxes. Then he meets the girl. They meet up at a café and talk about cats before finally getting to the topic of her butt.

Author B, on the other hand, starts with the café scene right away, adding just one or two lines to explain that he met the girl on his way to file his taxes. From there, they immediately get into something naughty. Maybe he comments on her looks and jokes about whether she got a butt implant. Then comes the banter, the flirting. She lets him touch her butt. He asks if he can go further. She hesitates, says they shouldn’t, and then they end up doing it anyway.

Author B keeps the reader hooked, while Author A loses the reader somewhere around the cat conversation. The thing is, many authors here insist on writing like Author A simply because they’re novelists at heart — they love indulging in detail and building context, even when it slows down the tension. I think if you write a stroker, such indulgence might hold you back.

 

[TheNovelist2000]

No need to call it the runway. It's already called the plot.

Ok! I don’t know the terms. I didn’t go to a writing school or anything like that, nor do I have a degree in literature. But doesn’t “plot” mean the whole story, whereas what I mean is the part of the plot that leads to the story’s main event? For example, in an incest story, the main event might be the sexual relationship between a mother and son, and in a lesbian story, it could be two women getting together. That contraption used to propel the characters toward their fates (the lead-up)—I call it the “runaway,” since I don’t have a proper term for it.

 

[TheNovelist2000]

Then you have a boring story.

Like seriously. Guy does nothing. Gets lucky. It was amazing. The end. I'm not kidding. This is the most common plot on lit. (yawn)

No, they don’t have the desire only initially. As fate brings them to what is possible, they will come to experience that desire. For example, in Stepdaughter Fills In, the daughter might not initially have the desire to be intimate with her father. But when her mother arranges the Valentine’s date, she begins to consider what is possible. In a story like that, the author needs to spend time showing how that date comes to exist, rather than relying on a character’s desire alone to drive the plot.

 

[ElectricBlue]

To be honest, I don't know what to make of obstacles.

Simple. Don't feel you "need" to have them in a story.

My erotica is generally encounter based, casual at first, then escalating into intimacy. Sort of like in real life, but accelerated because of the fantasy.

How often do real life relationships require tension or obstacles before they work out? Not a lot, really. Real life is fairly mundane, not much happening in between the spicy bits. Why should fiction be any different? Just skim past the "nothing's happening here" bits and get onto the spice. Especially if you want to get to the sex quickly!

People agonise over this too much, I reckon. You're not writing the next greatest erotic novel, so get over the over-thinking and write about what turns you on. It's not rocket science.

 

[TheNovelist2000]

Simple. Don't feel you "need" to have them in a story.

My erotica is generally encounter based, casual at first, then escalating into intimacy. Sort of like in real life, but accelerated because of the fantasy.

How often do real life relationships require tension or obstacles before they work out? Not a lot, really. Real life is fairly mundane, not much happening in between the spicy bits. Why should fiction be any different? Just skim past the "nothing's happening here" bits and get onto the spice. Especially if you want to get to the sex quickly!

People agonise over this too much, I reckon. You're not writing the next greatest erotic novel, so get over the over-thinking and write about what turns you on. It's not rocket science.

I agree!

 

[AwkwardlySet]

How often do real life relationships require tension or obstacles before they work out? Not a lot, really.

Damn it, I should have dated Australian girls!

 

[pink_silk_glove]

How often do real life relationships require tension or obstacles before they work out? Not a lot, really. Real life is fairly mundane, not much happening in between the spicy bits. Why should fiction be any different?

It doesn't have to be, but then we don't tell stories about going to the store for a loaf of bread, either. We only tell stories about our more exciting days.

 

[SimonDoom]

But what if the person whose POV we’re reading from has no such desire, and sex only enters their life because of circumstances? How would obstacles come into play then? For instance, if a wife is meant to become a prostitute in the climax, do we necessarily need obstacles preventing her from reaching that point?

An obstacle can be anything. Her reluctance, her scruples. A Nosy neighbor. Her husband's ambivalence. But even in a short story I think there's more "zing" to it if there's some sort of obstacle, something that makes getting from point A to point B interesting.

There's not as much interest in:

"Hey, honey, I thought I'd pimp you out today."

"Sounds great! When do I start turning tricks?"

 

[SimonDoom]

I think this focus on "tension" and "obstacles" when writing erotica, especially strokers, is unnecessary and unhelpful.

When you have a good fuck, are you worried about what gets in the way? No, you're not.

You're in the moment: it's sensation, sound, sex, emotion, intimacy, desire, the visceral awareness of sex, arousal, the feel of your cock, the weight of her breasts, the flush of her arousal blazing on her chest, etc etc. So write about that. Don't fuck about with drama and cock shrinking stuff - just get on with the visceral physical intense intimate stuff. That's how you write stories that get comments like this:

Garter Belts and Whiskey

We all have different tastes. I personally don't find a story as erotic if two people just fall into bed together, no matter how well written.

Even if there's just a simple seduction, it's more arousing if there's some back and forth, some cat and mouse, some uncertainty about how the seduction will go.

Not every story has to be like this, but the OP began his thread by asking about tension and how you create it.

 

[TheNovelist2000]

An obstacle can be anything. Her reluctance, her scruples. A Nosy neighbor. Her husband's ambivalence. But even in a short story I think there's more "zing" to it if there's some sort of obstacle, something that makes getting from point A to point B interesting.

There's not as much interest in:

"Hey, honey, I thought I'd pimp you out today."

"Sounds great! When do I start turning tricks?"

Ok! Got it!

 

[ElectricBlue]

It doesn't have to be, but then we don't tell stories about going to the store for a loaf of bread, either. We only tell stories about our more exciting days.

Selective editing. The next sentence in my post made exactly that point. You've not read my Hardware Store stories, then .

 

[ElectricBlue]

We all have different tastes. I personally don't find a story as erotic if two people just fall into bed together, no matter how well written.

Even if there's just a simple seduction, it's more arousing if there's some back and forth, some cat and mouse, some uncertainty about how the seduction will go.

Not every story has to be like this, but the OP began his thread by asking about tension and how you create it.

He then went on to ponder the application of those principles to strokers, or simple sex stories, where the background and build up are pretty much irrelevant.

The principle has done just fine by me. But then, Australian cafés might be different to American ones .

 

[SimonDoom]

Damn it, I should have dated Australian girls!

Hey, it's not too late. Dating an Australian girl is still on my bucket list. And, obviously, I have to try out the cafes.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Selective editing. The next sentence in my post made exactly that point. You've not read my Hardware Store stories, then .

Oh, do those ones actually have a plot?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Oh, do those ones actually have a plot?

The first series is self-contained and tells a complete story. The second lot are vignettes, more a diary. They claim to be nothing more than that. I've commented before that much of my content is more about mood, less about plot.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

(facepalm) Never mind.