Newish writer needs advice!

[DivineDestiny]

er.... I need help?

Hi everyone. I'm DivineDestiny, but you can call me Cassandra or Cas if you're so inclined.

I'm not exactly new to writing as a hobby, but I am new to erotica. I joined early last year, but life got hectic and I only ended up writing a prologue. I'm back now, and have every desire in the world to finish the story.
Here's the prologue: http://www.literotica.com/s/the-dark-one-prologue

I'm thinking of changing the title, seeing as there's a few stories in Nonhuman called "The Dark One." I'd love suggestions! I'm going to go in and edit a few things in the prologue in a few days.

My real issue is in writing the next chapter. I have eleven pages (Times New Roman font, 12 point, 1.5 spacing) but there isn't exactly anything sexy or steamy going on yet. I'm worried that it's going to slowly and I'll lose reader interest; however, I feel like I need the exposition.

Ashley, our main female protagonist, has had one misfortune after another befall her. She's average in terms of height, looks, and weight. She's depressed, and its hinted that she's self-harmed in the past. She's as flawed as our angel, and I really want the reader to identify or feel sympathy for her... my concern is that she's too average and mundane to be exciting. A lot of the humans in Nonhuman stories adjust very well to learning that their lovers are not, in fact, human. Sometimes they even turn into the race of their significant other. But I want Ashley to be realistic. She's not head over heels in love with Tierran right away, and she's frightened of him in many ways. She questions her own sanity routinely. She's a normal woman in an extraordinary situation... and being a fickle writer, her fate is up in the air. She might survive, or she might die.

I suppose I just need some advice. Is 11 pages of exposition too much? Will anyone even be interested if there isn't sex in the first chapter? Is Ashley too boring for my audience? Also, I don't feel like a little bondage is out of place, especially with the nature and development of Tierran, but I don't remember seeing any light bondage in Nonhuman, so I don't want to push my luck.

Just some general help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
DivineDestiny

(P.S: posted from my mobile, so my apologies for any odd typos or errors.)

 

[8letters]

How many words? A page in Literotica is about 3700 words and that's what I am used to thinking of.

One possibility is to publish the story and see what type of reception it receives. I have no idea what readers in Nonhuman expect and I would think that they would be very different from the categories I know. They may love a story with that much background. If your story was too slow, you can always delete it, restructure the story and publish it under a new name with a note about what you did.

On the other hand, my feeling is that a common mistake of new authors is to spend too much time introducing the characters to the readers and therefore lose most of the readers before the story starts.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

"Ashley, our main female protagonist, has had one misfortune after another befall her. She's average in terms of height, looks, and weight. She's depressed, and its hinted that she's self-harmed in the past. She's as flawed as our angel, and I really want the reader to identify or feel sympathy for her... my concern is that she's too average and mundane to be exciting. A lot of the humans in Nonhuman stories adjust very well to learning that their lovers are not, in fact, human. Sometimes they even turn into the race of their significant other. But I want Ashley to be realistic. She's not head over heels in love with Tierran right away, and she's frightened of him in many ways. She questions her own sanity routinely. She's a normal woman in an extraordinary situation... and being a fickle writer, her fate is up in the air. She might survive, or she might die."

Hell just for the sake of getting numbers of slack readers (of which I guess I'm often one!), just stick that paragraph in a 'new' story (changing the grammar so it fits into what you are now doing) and go straight to the sex/erotic stuff and even cut that back to the most minimalistic phrases possible... and then submit that as a new story... and see what happens.

 

[DivineDestiny]

Thanks!

I hadn't even considered that! I could start at with the sex, then have Ashley get up the next morning with a sort of "what have I done" recollection, going back into a sort of exposition. It'd work nicely since... oh, well, I guess I can't say. It'd ruin the surprise.

Any tips on how to write erotica, in a general sense? I've been trying to diversify my vocabulary so it isn't repititious.

P.S: I'm also not exactly sure how many words it is, but I'll find out when I get back to my laptop.

 

[sr71plt]

The best tip, I think, for being able to write erotica is to read a lot of it and take the tips from what you read that arouses you.

 

[SamScribble]

A couple of things:

First, I’ve never understood why anyone would post parts of a story before they had written the whole story. (A sequel, however, is a whole different matter.)

Second, remember that the reader only needs to know what the reader needs to know. If they really need eleven pages of backstory they will read eleven pages of backstory. But in order for them to really need it, they must first be ‘hooked’. They have to want to know what happens next? And the backstory must help to answer that question. The moment they don’t care what happens next, you’ve lost them.

Good luck.

 

[DivineDestiny]

A couple of things:

First, I’ve never understood why anyone would post parts of a story before they had written the whole story. (A sequel, however, is a whole different matter.)

Second, remember that the reader only needs to know what the reader needs to know. If they really need eleven pages of backstory they will read eleven pages of backstory. But in order for them to really need it, they must first be ‘hooked’. They have to want to know what happens next? And the backstory must help to answer that question. They moment they don’t care what happens next, you’ve lost them.

Good luck.

Thank you for the advice. I actually did have it all written... but I wanted to change direction. I felt like there wasn't enough romance and that my characters weren't believable, or even likable. Thus: total overhaul.

And you're very right... I think I'm trying to shove too much down the audience's throat at once. I'm going to trim it down until it's what they need to know, not absolutely every detail bouncing about in my head.

 

[JackLuis]

Advice for long writers, Put in some dynamic tension into the characters in the first 1000 words or less. Add or build on that, as the characters dance before your flying fingers and bring in more crises until a dramatic...

[CENTER]Ahw shit, I got nothing.[/CENTER]

 

[DivineDestiny]

Advice for long writers, Put in some dynamic tension into the characters in the first 1000 words or less. Add or build on that, as the characters dance before your flying fingers and bring in more crises until a dramatic...

[CENTER]Ahw shit, I got nothing.[/CENTER]

Ooh, I'm happy to see that I sort of have that already! I might as well call call Chapter 1 "Sexual Tension." I'd explain the situation, but it sounds too convoluted without reading it. XD

 

[JackLuis]

OK now add a different tensor in the same, or another character so that it seems that the characters will 'drift apart', then add the resolution of both tensors in a multiorgasmic explosion. END

 

[Tigersman]

Suggestion

If you really want to learn how to write this from a woman's perspective search for a copy of Jacquline Susann's "Yargo." She wrote this in the 50's I think. When she died her publisher rediscovered the story, read it again, then published it. He had told her originally it would not sell as women were not accepted as authors in science fiction back then. Good luck.

 

[TamLin01]

There's no way anyone can know if those 11 pages are good writing or the makings of a good story without reading them. It might be too much information or it might not, but we would have no idea.

Here's a question, though: What do you feel makes the character uninteresting? And why are those elements of her character there if you feel like they don't work? Just being ordinary isn't uninteresting, ordinary people can be (and, actually, usually are) fascinating. If this is a boring character, that's your first big problem. Fix that before you do anything.

 

[jomar]

Hi, not having the sexy for awhile is ok if it's a good story. Don't know how you're going about the exposition, but readers tend to dislike an info dump. Sprinkling the background among the real time action is more interesting and adds creasing lawyers of understanding of characters thoughts, feelings and reactions. Best luck!