Personal Issues

[Whispersecret]

Do you as a writer have recurring themes in your writing?

Personally I find my stories returning to

It's what's inside that counts.
Love conquers all.
Money isn't everything.

Typically my male characters are wounded some way and are redeemed by the female. Also, my females usually are either virgins or new to some aspect of sex that the male introduces her to, masterfully, of course.

I'm sure this says loads about my psychological make-up.

How about you? Are there things that appear in your writing time and again?

 

[Svenskaflicka]

From what I can tell, I have a real thing for people consenting to having sex, and that the guy really satisfy the gal, preferably orally.

And for some reason, I, who don't like anal sex myself, have a lot of it in my stories.

Go figure.

 

[Wicked-N-Erotic]

I like svenskaflicka tend to make sure the sex is consenting. Also my female characters do things I don't normally do myself such as anal and swallowing. I always try to add a touch of romance to every story no matter what the plot is.
Wicked

 

[ronde]

My female characters are usually strong, but feminine. They often carry their beauty wrapped in a plain package, and have experienced trauma or heartbreak at sometime in their lives.

Male characters have run the gamut of stereotypes. They tend to also be strong, but with an inner sensitivity they only show when the right woman comes along.

I think instead of "love conquers all", my stories tend to say everyone will find someone to love, and that love will endure.

As you say, a psychiatrist would have a field day sorting through the subconscious motivations for all this.

My writing also tends toward people of humble means rather than the more affluent of society. There's no psychology here; I come from that stock, and writing about them is like writing about my family. Few of my family would ever do the things my characters do...,well, there is this one cousin....

 

[Quasimodem]

"Sex arises from unlikely origins," but those are only my stories on Literotica.

To quote Svenskaflicka, "Go figure!"

 

[Route66Girl]

You're on a roll tonight, WS! One interesting thread after another. Mind if I just sorta follow you around the board for a while? (Aren't we all supposed to be writing something? Sigh.)

Anyways, after having thought about your question for a whole two minutes, here's the one theme that pops into mind: metamorphosis. It always seems like no matter what the plot or who the characters are, there's always a huge change that happens, and it usually involves a loss of innocence. However, with that loss, comes wisdom. My characters almost never walk away from the story the same people they were before.

 

[Madame Manga]

Very interesting subject!

A sort of navel-gazing by proxy--we analyze our stories to delve into our heads. ;-)

Well, all I can come up with off the top of my head (this is the kind of thing I need others to point out, I think) is vive la difference! In other words, I believe that men and women, while having a lot in common, do not think and behave in identical ways, were never meant to, and cannot be molded into genderless good citizens no matter how hard the public schools may try. This essential difference can lead both to serious misunderstandings and delightful surprises.

I tend to emphasize sex differences in description and circumstances--my men are big and sometimes uncouth, and my women are small and somewhat over-refined. The collision creates the plot, and each rubs off some of the other's rough edges along the way!

I can hardly think about a plot without thinking about a primary couple at the center of it. That doesn't mean I am into strict traditional gender roles, because I'm not, and it doesn't mean that I leave out gay and bi characters, because I don't. Men are men and women are women no matter who they sleep with...and at the same time I'm truly fascinated by transsexuals and other ambiguities! You have to establish black and white before you can explore what shades of gray are all about...

MM

 

[M.A.Thompson]

Without intention (or so I thought) the first story I ever wrote and submitted to Lit dealt with loss; a man yearning for something he could no longer have. After that, I began to notice that theme reappearing in whatever new story I attempted to put on paper. Only once was I able to escape this theme (which became my second submission) but I continued to grow increasingly frustrated with the three or four stories about loss and wanting that were clogging up my hard drive.

What this lead to was a careful period of introspection in which I realized that this recurring theme was an emotion deep inside me that was trying to come out. The result was my ever personal and well received third submission.

Did this cathartic writing experience cure me? Hell no. The stories I am currently working on continue the M.A.Thompson legacy of sadness and desire but perhaps that’s what theme is, the soundtrack of the writer’s life playing softly in the background of his or her story.

 

[sachiaiko]

Okies, well I have some common threads in all of my stories as well.

I have an insane fascination with fantasy, something that cant be real however much fun it may be. Like vampires, werewolves, faeries, elves, you get the idea I’m sure. I think a big part of its is the passion I associate with these creatures of fiction. There is something alluring in the unattainable.

I notice I am especially into vampires and were-animals (all in human form, but with the supper-human traits). Vampires are wholly erotic in my mind, the need for warmth and closeness and blood. While I myself do not like any form of pain, I find it very fun to write about and read about when there is some form of love involved. There is something about making *wild uncontrollable* love, and these characters bring that up for me. Something highly interesting about a character who can smell passion and fear and long for the chase and hunt as much as the culmination. Ya know? Eh, whatever.

I have noticed I have a *very* hard time writing a “fling” because it just goes against my grain period. Love making to me is just that. You can FUCK and still have it be making love, so long as the emotion is there, or the intent of the emotion is there.

I also write mostly about the woman being a virgin, and I think this comes from having a very bad first experience, and liking to write about a man who can be animalistic and passionate and demanding and still very loving when it all comes down to it. Anyhoot, these are a few of my noticings

Nik

 

[Sabledrake]

Not so much in my erotic writings, but in my books I have noticed some recurring themes.

My fantasy novels tend to delve into matters religious (the latest one is about a dark elven warrior-priestess), which I think is my weird way of trying to explore in my writing a subject that has never been dealt with in my real life. I was raised without any specific religion, and it's always fascinated me in an academic sense.

In various projects, I have noticed a tendency to have female characters with strong relationships with their fathers. This is likely a wish-fulfillment thing since my own dad has never been particularly close to the family (and less so once he got into the Civil War and became obsessed; the only way to talk to the General now is to be willing to wear a hoop skirt or a woolen uniform).

Sabledrake

 

[sirhugs]

My stories all have something of me in them, but some more than others. I like to stretch, and talke a dare. About a third of my stories I wrote on a dare. My first story, and its 3 sequels, are based on my real fantasies , inspired by a real event, but fictionalized.

My male characters are often sensitive, sometimes virginal - I was a 'late bloomer' in real life, and recal the angst of not knowing the secret code.

My 'mature' story is the least like me. I'm not 70 years old. But some of the sex reflects real fantasies of mine. Other elements are from story Ideas, where the 'dare' came from.

My real life is rather dull, so stories closely reality based would never cut it.

 

[NaughtyMike]

Yes, the theme that keeps popping up in my stories is that sex is a very wonderul beautiful thing betwen two people. With 3 its fantastic.

 

[PaulX35]

Great Thread!

Intriguing question, as it tends to reveal a lot about the author

Part is maybe my (academic) background, part is dislike of many non-thinking floozies appearing in some stories, but I make most of the women featuring in my stories self-confident and smart.
It also allows more depth maybe in character development?
I also appreciate consent-aspects, even when moving into taboo-ish regions. I often develop it from the self-confidence, that makes crossing lines a choice rather than something that just takes a character.

One thing that I like in my stories is scents. Scents are underrated! Scents are erotic, intimate and extremely personal, and they make smashing ammunition for in-depth erotica.

 

[SlickTony]

All I can really say, considering that I have only five stories out so far, is that my female protagonists are much more aggressive and confident than I am IRL. The only exceptions to this are the women in my Lot series (and the exception to that exception was the older sister) and actually, Survivor I and II aren't my usual kind of thing--I wrote those just to see if I could do it--I was answering a challenge to write about something I was uncomfortable about.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Who would have thought that authors would be interested in duscussing their own works?

Aside from exploring our own personal fantasies of what would be interesting and fun sex, and aside from strokers, it seems to me that stories fall into one of two categories:

(1) You can find or learn true love through sex

(2) You can be redeemed by sex

I think women favor (1), and men favor (2).

 

[BigTexan]

Aside from exploring our own personal fantasies of what would be interesting and fun sex, and aside from strokers, it seems to me that stories fall into one of two categories:

(1) You can find or learn true love through sex

(2) You can be redeemed by sex

(3) Good people ruined by sex/love/jealosy.

(4) Bad people hurting others through sex.

BigTexan

 

[sirhugs]

(3) Good people ruined by sex/love/jealosy.

(4) Bad people hurting others through sex.

BigTexan

(5)the ' all women are sluts' theme
(6) the ' all men are pigs' theme

 

[Guest]

Re: Great Thread!

One thing that I like in my stories is scents. Scents are underrated! Scents are erotic, intimate and extremely personal, and they make smashing ammunition for in-depth erotica.

I agree with you, Paul! I try to hit all of the senses in a story, using them to multi-dimensionalize (is that a real word?) and pull in the reader.

I am too much of a newbie to have "themes". I am working on the craft of showing right now.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Big Texan & Sirhugs

Big Tex: Now that you mention it, I haven't seen a lot of tragedy in the erotica I read. I think there's just something anti-erotic about watching someone go down the tubes. But I might be wrong. I have read "sold into slavery" stuff in which the heroine ends up worse off than she began. And of course it used to be a hard and fast rule, eons & eons ago, for anyone dabbling in sin to end up a "ruined woman" with syphilis (those innocent days) or in a nuthouse or both. (See "Reefer Madness")

Sirhugs: I don't know if anyone writes thinking all the opposite sex is rotten, but again I might be wrong. That everyone is ready to screw at the drop of a hat is a porn convention,but I wouldn't call it a theme.

I want to pursue this in a separate thread.

---dr.M.

 

[BigTexan]

Re: Big Texan & Sirhugs

Big Tex: Now that you mention it, I haven't seen a lot of tragedy in the erotica I read. I think there's just something anti-erotic about watching someone go down the tubes. But I might be wrong. I have read "sold into slavery" stuff in which the heroine ends up worse off than she began. And of course it used to be a hard and fast rule, eons & eons ago, for anyone dabbling in sin to end up a "ruined woman" with syphilis (those innocent days) or in a nuthouse or both. (See "Reefer Madness")

---dr.M.

No tragedy in erotica? You may be right. If so then I'll have to go and write one right away.

Look for it soon.

BigTexan

 

[christo]

A lot of my stories have deliberately absurd situations. I have a goofy sense of humor and I like fooling with the readers expectations. I think too many stories are very, very serious, and I try to inject some humor into them to make them characters and the story more engaging. How successful (and funny) I am is open to debate.

Many of my stories involve older women seducing younger men, which doesn't surprise me because I have a thing for older women. What does surprise me is how many stories involved men getting anally penetrated by women. I've only had that done to me a few times, and I loved it, but maybe I never realized how MUCH I loved it, because it's a recurring event in my stories. I might be sick.

More and more I find myself interested in stories about love and romance as opposed to sex. At times describing the physcial act becomes boring, because I want to get on with the story.

 

[Quasimodem]

Originally posted by dr_mabeuse
. . . And of course it used to be a hard and fast rule, eons & eons ago, for anyone dabbling in sin to end up a "ruined woman" with syphilis (those innocent days) or in a nuthouse or both. (See "Reefer Madness") . . . ---dr.M.

It was not tragedy that was objectionable in movies during the days of the Hayes Commission. It was the enforced, simplistic view the commission compelled writers and directors to employ, when trying to portray the realities of adult behaviour, including sex.

On the other hand, 'Reefer Madness' was a boneheaded propaganda film noted for its over-the-top, bad acting, directing, and downright misguided portrayal of the facts.