Pushing/finding your boundaries

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

WARNING — This is a ramble!

So, today I wrote what’s probably the most 'pornographic' scene I’ve ever written. After writing it, I wondered if I’d gone too far with the sex…

When I started writing, it was straight to brother-sister stuff (easy, since I don’t have a sister). Then, readers wanted a mom-son/daughter thing and I eventually did it (less easy, since I have a mother). As that’s been happening, the sex has also gotten more explicit. My early stuff was a tad sterile and I was scared to even say the word 'sweat'. That was mainly because I was shy/worried about offending readers.

In a way, writing erotica has been a good experience for expanding my horizons. On the same note, it has also made me question some of my fetishes/turn-ons. As a (relatively) heterosexual man, writing mainly for other heterosexual men, every women that appears in a story is presumed bisexual. Sometimes I try too hard to get to grips with that; where characters have paragraphs of exposition about their sexuality. (Not sexy and readers complain.)

So, writing becomes very introspective. I’m sure I’m not alone on this one, so how do y’all deal with the complexities of putting your deepest desires in black and white? Do you feel that you’ve done some self-discovery? Have you worried yourself at any stage?

 

[KeithD]

I increasingly push boundaries and move into new fetishes but it's more to find and add to underserved niches and to explore deeper into fetishes than it is introspective exploration of deeper personal arousals.

 

[NotWise]

So, writing becomes very introspective. I’m sure I’m not alone on this one, so how do y’all deal with the complexities of putting your deepest desires in black and white? Do you feel that you’ve done some self-discovery? Have you worried yourself at any stage?

Putting my deepest desires into black and white hasn't been a problem for me -- maybe I'm not doing it right.

My challenge, which is ongoing, is to describe intense emotional interactions. I thought I took a big step a year or two after I started publishing here. I'm getting there, but I probably have more to go.

 

[SimonDoom]

Pushing and exploring new boundaries is a big part of the fun of erotica for me. I use erotica as a way of exploring kink and fetish concepts I'd be unlikely to explore in real life.

For instance, I'm in the process of writing a pee fetish story. I'm going to make it the most outrageous, over-the-top story about pee that I possibly can. Nothing held back. I don't have any personal experience with the things I'm writing about. It's a matter of letting the imagination run wild.

I don't get bothered by the things I write about. It's fantasy stuff, for me.

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

Pushing and exploring new boundaries is a big part of the fun of erotica for me. I use erotica as a way of exploring kink and fetish concepts I'd be unlikely to explore in real life.

For instance, I'm in the process of writing a pee fetish story. I'm going to make it the most outrageous, over-the-top story about pee that I possibly can. Nothing held back. I don't have any personal experience with the things I'm writing about. It's a matter of letting the imagination run wild.

I don't get bothered by the things I write about. It's fantasy stuff, for me.

I feel I can benefit from this approach! At the moment, a writing little toe-sucking makes me blush but I like the idea of going all in and letting the imagination run wild.

 

[oggbashan]

I have written about some weird and wonderful fetishes and have written some really odd stories like 'Getting Nude with Chairman Mao'.

But I have one failure. There were several Yahoo Adult Groups for South Indian Hairy Armpit fetishes. At one time between them, there were over 30,000 members.

I tried to write a story for those groups but I couldn't convince myself to make it sexy enough. My part-completed story is in Oggbashan's Stew Part 03 story 44 but it will never be completed. And now Yahoo has deleted all those Yahoo Adult Groups so even If I wrote it, I wouldn't have an audience...

 

[gunhilltrain]

I have written about some weird and wonderful fetishes and have written some really odd stories like 'Getting Nude with Chairman Mao'.

But I have one failure. There were several Yahoo Adult Groups for South Indian Hairy Armpit fetishes. At one time between them, there were over 30,000 members.

I tried to write a story for those groups but I couldn't convince myself to make it sexy enough. My part-completed story is in Oggbashan's Stew Part 03 story 44 but it will never be completed. And now Yahoo has deleted all those Yahoo Adult Groups so even If I wrote it, I wouldn't have an audience...

You might find a new audience here or on some other site. I never knew that Southern Indians had an interest in hairy armpits. There is a less intense fetish for that in the United States and Britain, based on some websites I have seen. Also, not every man wants women who shave their crotches. That was not done as much years ago.

The Japanese have some interesting things going: tentacles, bukkake, futanari, etc. I should try to work some of that into a story (well, tentacles don't do anything for me.)

 

[SyleusSnow]

I don't have much interest in kink and extremes. I get it, but piss, armpits, and midget nuns wrestling in canola oil just seems unnecessary

But some readers have said my stories are too vanilla. So I played around adding some mild bondage and ass play in Warmer by the Lake. That got mixed results, so lately I've tried stepping up the stakes and yearning like in On the Side.

Seems to work for the readers, and it's so less messy

 

[oggbashan]

Tentacles? I have done tentacles:

The Giant Squid

 

[SimonDoom]

it's so less messy

Messy is fun. I've already done lobster bisque. It was time to move on to pee.

 

[KeithD]

Tentacles? I have done tentacles:

The Giant Squid

As have I in the sr71plt account:

https://www.literotica.com/s/ungeheurer

 

[HeyAll]

In recent years, especially in the past year, I've been looking for ways to expand my erotica, both in plot and sex. Also writing different perspectives in the same story, or writing 1st person present tense for a character, and switching characters to 3rd person.

It keeps things fun and lively.

The same for sex acts. Sometimes I'll see something that inspires me.

For instance, I listened to the audiobook for "Topping from Below" by Laura Reese (highly recommended) and there was piss stuff from a dom. It inspired me to try that with two lesbian stories and the reviews were strong.

I think people are open to reading new things if it's not gross or abusive.

 

[Blind_Justice]

I had my biggest "boundary-pushing" moment last night when I wrote a wholly unpleasant, racist, misogynistic businessman. I hope my readers will see him for what he is - a corpse-to-be no one in their right mind should feel any empathy with and not a vehicle for my own views. Still made my skin crawl when I read his segment. That was actually a first for me.

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

I think people are open to reading new things if it's not gross or abusive.

I definitely agree! When I just started, I was like a lot of new authors who come to the forums for advice. Basically, I wanted to write the most 'inoffensive' stories possible. Then, I realised that readers will go with you if you ease into new terrain.

We’re all pretty open minded on here. Readers and writers.

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

I had my biggest "boundary-pushing" moment last night when I wrote a wholly unpleasant, racist, misogynistic businessman. I hope my readers will see him for what he is - a corpse-to-be no one in their right mind should feel any empathy with and not a vehicle for my own views. Still made my skin crawl when I read his segment. That was actually a first for me.

I’m in a similar position with a thriller-esque story I’m writing. Every time a character does something truly reprehensible, I need to remind myself that it’s to advance the plot. Then, just hope the readers see it as such.

 

[AlinaX]

I find it an entertaining challenge to take something odd and spin it into something erotic, but I often worry that I've been here so long that I'm effectively normalising the extreme.

The "every woman is bi" thing is perhaps inevitable, but I usually like to be more explicit about characters' sexuality. It doesn't need more than a few tangential remarks here and there, e.g.:

While Jane, Katy and Lydie all took after our mother, more or less, with blonde hair and angelic looks, and in the younger sisters' cases her vivacious temperament, Mary and I were very much our father's daughters with dark hair and academic dispositions. We were also, by chance, the two queer ones. I was maybe a five on the Kinsey scale, altogether too fond of cock to really call myself a lesbian; and Mary was aroallo - entirely uninterested in romance, but certainly no virgin.

She glowered at me as I poured her a cup of tea. "I've just endured two days of Katy and Lydie playacting as lesbians for George's sake. They even tried to get me to join in. I thought at least here I'd find some rationality. Instead..."

 

[TadOverdon]

The problem, IMHO, isn't that "every woman is bi in heterosexual porn" as it is that "no guy is bi in heterosexual porn." O-kay, that's not as true as it used to be. But it's still too true. Bi chicks are there for the male straight readers.

I've been doing the opposite of the original poster. I started writing flat-out pornographic sex - "a bit of the old in-out" as Little Alfie called it in A Clockwork Orange - and I'm trying to go at it just a little more obliquely or subtly now, at least where porn vocab is concerned. There's a book that I'm posting chapters of here on lit right now that I didn't have much to do with. My partner wrote most of it with someone else. On the one hand I'm kind of cracking up over some of the porno adjectives and description and dialogue in the sex scenes, and on the other I'm going "okay, I think if that's what they're going for, they're right in the center of their lane." LOL

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

I find it an entertaining challenge to take something odd and spin it into something erotic, but I often worry that I've been here so long that I'm effectively normalising the extreme.

I think that mixing it up is what avoids the normalisation. The people at the far fringes of some fetish communities are so fixated that I think it becomes unhealthy.

 

[LAHomedog]

WARNING — This is a ramble!

So, today I wrote what’s probably the most 'pornographic' scene I’ve ever written. After writing it, I wondered if I’d gone too far with the sex…

When I started writing, it was straight to brother-sister stuff (easy, since I don’t have a sister). Then, readers wanted a mom-son/daughter thing and I eventually did it (less easy, since I have a mother). As that’s been happening, the sex has also gotten more explicit. My early stuff was a tad sterile and I was scared to even say the word 'sweat'. That was mainly because I was shy/worried about offending readers.

In a way, writing erotica has been a good experience for expanding my horizons. On the same note, it has also made me question some of my fetishes/turn-ons. As a (relatively) heterosexual man, writing mainly for other heterosexual men, every women that appears in a story is presumed bisexual. Sometimes I try too hard to get to grips with that; where characters have paragraphs of exposition about their sexuality. (Not sexy and readers complain.)

So, writing becomes very introspective. I’m sure I’m not alone on this one, so how do y’all deal with the complexities of putting your deepest desires in black and white? Do you feel that you’ve done some self-discovery? Have you worried yourself at any stage?

I believe in real life as long as it is a legal act and consensual between adults there is no such thing as "too far" when it comes to sex. (Remember I said: legal act.)

In regards to my stories on here I let the characters tell me what is okay, what is hot, what is a turn on, what is a turn off, what is too far, and where the boundaries can be pushed. Every character like every human being is different and only they can tell you if something is right for them. If it is, I believe it will also be for your reader.

 

[Sextified]

When I first started out writing again, I sort of set myself the goal of writing in every possible category, and to do so convincingly. I finally got around the things you are dealing with right now by concentrating on what the CHARACTERS wanted to experience. As long as I kept that in mind, I found that I could write just about anything.

Eventually I had one truly reprehensible male character, who was bent on stealing his best friend's wife, marrying her, then stealing her inheritance. He was selfish, domineering, abusive, and kept pushing the illicit affair towards rougher and rougher sex.

The woman had known only love, concern, comfort and pleasure from her adoring husband, and the thought of taking an infamous womanizer into her bed, and submitting to his desires lured her over the edge.

The scene where he finally unmasked himself, during their most extreme and rough sex to that point in the story, was one of my fans favorites. Especially with women readers. I kept switching POV's from him to her and back, and it was hard for me to write his feelings honestly. Eventually, she admits to herself she LIKED the edgier sex, and wondered if she really worked at it, she could teach her husband to perform the same way.

Cuddling afterwards, the louse finally slips up when verbally teasing her about them both getting a divorce and running away together. For her, the appeal of the college fling that never happened, at least not until much later in life ended. Dead cold.

Story-wise, the shock of being betrayed so badly sort of frees the woman to explore all of her other fantasies, and being rejected sets the louse down a truly awkward spiral, where long repressed desires for other things break loose and overwhelm him.

< < < < > > > >

If you worry or have a lot of reluctance about things in your real or fantasy life, put those thoughts into your characters, even if they are about different kinks. The source of their anxiety will come across to your readers as being real, even if the subjects aren't really connected at all in your own head.

Sometimes, just off handedly writing NEAR a kink is even better than being TOO explicit about it.

< < < < > > > >

I had one woman that was always curious about what it would be like to be a guy, and able to stand up at a toilet. When she is living in rather cramped quarters with a new boyfriend, she is getting ready for the shower, and he needs to relieve himself. All she does is come up behind him, hug him tight, then hold him steady while nature takes its course. Nothing kinky about it, and when she pulls him into the shower, their daily routine for sex under the steaming hot water is unchanged. But for her, the taboo is finally broken, and she feels that she can BEGIN to express herself safely around him, about the other more daring things she wants them to both explore.

< < < < > > > >

In another scene, I have a woman who just recently admitted that she wants to sleep with her bisexual best friend. They have a entire weekend all alone in her friend's huge house. At one point, before things have gotten too serious, they decide to take a shower together. Knowing that her friend is still too nervous about everything they both want to try, the wife holds her friend tight from behind. Then she rubs and teases the inexperienced woman into a very frustrated state, compounded by the fact that she had been to shy to go to the bathroom before they got under the water. Once she assures the struggling woman to let go, while she is being held, it sort of breaks the ice for them. Nothing dirty or explicit, or even remotely disgusting. Just something that is normally so personal and private shared, and that finally allows them to cautiously explore what they really had been wanting to do FOR each other in bed for years.

< < < < > > > >

My old website is/was MUCH more restrictive than Lit is here. I had to sort of dance around the edges of a lot of subjects, and that made the challenge of writing even harder, which was VERY beneficial to me in the long run.

Personally, I have a very big problem with depicting Abuse, Degradation, or Humiliation, in any substantial form. I normally don't even allow my characters to submit to such things for very long, or at all.

The work around I ended up for such things, when they were needed, might help you too.

I divorced the 'normally expected' feelings about the sex acts from the character's desires or expectations.

Many people don't really understand the true roots of their own fetishes and kinks. They just know that they want to experience them, but in a way that they won't get hurt, ridiculed or have their lives turned upside down while doing so.

It's a matter of perspective. As a writer, I know what my characters really want, and also what they fear most. I have one real life friend that had a horrific experience with someone choking her during sex. She has since come to both love and hate the idea. It became an instant trigger that stopped all desire within her, and for her partners, whenever they even touched her neck. Yet she still liked thinking about it and watched porn featuring it.

So I slowly crafted a few scenes for her to read, where it was used erotically, with trust, as a means to show loving control. The arc had her learning to put her own hands on her lover's neck during sex, then progressed to her holding herself while he made love to her, then eventually she learned to ride him, and place his hands around her throat. She learned to be in control of her own fears, and like the IDEA of being restrained like that again. She came to the realization that the mere potential threat was enough for her desires. She didn't need to be actually choked, or frightened, or abused. It was a symbol of her surrender to her patient lover, and of his responsibility to take care of her, always.

So where most scenes could look Horrifying and Violent to a third party observer, because I am in my actor's heads, the readers really know what is going on.

Writing about the kinks and fetishes my Characters want to experience, and how conflicted they feel about crossing the lines they had set for themselves, has helped me to confront some of my own issues. And by writing such scenes, in an introspective way for my characters, they have helped others deal with their problems, too.

Including my close friend.

 

[oggbashan]

I think that mixing it up is what avoids the normalisation. The people at the far fringes of some fetish communities are so fixated that I think it becomes unhealthy.

Fetish is always one of the most difficult categories to write for. People have very specific expectations and can react badly if your story is close but not exact enough.

 

[Payne_Hall]

What’s strange about writing for me is the story I started with was decently on the extreme side, with things like nails, needles, whips, blood, watersports humiliation, and everything in between. I held onto it for a while, thinking “no one else in the history of ever is going to like this”. But I would go back and edit it every so often and it was such a romantic story, at least to me, that it would make me smile. Even when I had an account made, I still didn’t post it for approval until I got drunk on Jack Fire one night.

And then people did like it.

But what’s funny is I was trying my hand at incest recently and wrote some of the dialogue part and blushed. The sex is vanilla except they’re related, but apparently, I don’t know, that’s the thing that made me blush. So here we are.

As a funny side note that’s off topic, I have a favorite writing spot and it’s surrounded by 300 some odd stuffed animals. That’s where all these dark stories are created.

 

[ElectricBlue]

So, writing becomes very introspective. I’m sure I’m not alone on this one, so how do y’all deal with the complexities of putting your deepest desires in black and white? Do you feel that you’ve done some self-discovery? Have you worried yourself at any stage?

Why worry? Your sexuality is what your sexuality is, and if you don't know what it is by now, introspective erotica might be useful. You're only exploring your own head.

Go for it, tease yourself, stretch your boundaries. Just because you write a fetish cross-dressing story doesn't mean you're going to rush out and buy stockings. Although if you, do, check with someone who knows first, to buy the right brand. And the right size .

 

[AlphaLyon]

I don't have anything to add that will help you, but I do want to say that all of these threads where writers rant and are open about their limitations/insecurities makes me feel so much better and not alone in my own, so thank you for sharing this (OP) and for the advice (everyone else).

 

[Bramblethorn]

So, writing becomes very introspective. I’m sure I’m not alone on this one, so how do y’all deal with the complexities of putting your deepest desires in black and white? Do you feel that you’ve done some self-discovery? Have you worried yourself at any stage?

IME writing can be a good way to work out my own thoughts about some topics. I feel like my latest story, in particular, helped me learn some things about myself both kink-wise and otherwise. Sometimes it's easier to understand one's own foibles when placed into a fictional character than in the mirror.