Writing Process

[titusfabulous]

Despite more than ten years of erotic message board membership, I've posted only a few times, under sundry and now-retired screen names. But I've decided to make an effort because I like to write stories and, lately, haven't been able to write much and am interested in how others write.

Do you plot? Or just write and see what happens? Do you write by hand or type it on a computer? Do you write the story chronologically or bounce around? What are your inspirations? Are names important? These are just examples. Share anything about how you write. I am curious in a catholic way.

(Forgive me if a thread like this already exists.)

 

[pumpkindice]

Despite more than ten years of erotic message board membership, I've posted only a few times, under sundry and now-retired screen names. But I've decided to make an effort because I like to write stories and, lately, haven't been able to write much and am interested in how others write.

Do you plot? Or just write and see what happens? Do you write by hand or type it on a computer? Do you write the story chronologically or bounce around? What are your inspirations? Are names important? These are just examples. Share anything about how you write. I am curious in a catholic way.

(Forgive me if a thread like this already exists.)

I try to avoid plotting if at all possible, because when you write, your characters always go off in directions you never saw coming, and you want to preserve that. Often times, the best parts of a story are the parts you didn't plan out, but where the characters told their own story and just did stuff. I never write thinking I control these characters, I always write to just sit back and watch what they do.

I have to write chronologically, as it helps to structure my story, perhaps I'll write a non-linear story someday when i have more experience.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Recent threads, same topic:

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/how-did-you-learn-to-write-erotica.1555755/#post-94438306

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/to-plan-it-or-pants-it.1539735/#post-93401804

https://forum.literotica.com/thread...d-again-after-10-years.1559451/#post-94678460

https://forum.literotica.com/thread...ll-i-read-what-i-write.1541406/#post-93521118

 

[NotWise]

Recent threads, same topic:

The links under "Similar Threads" (below) also include some useful suggestions.

 

[shakna]

My answer is a definitive "Yes". To all of them.

Some of my stories require a lot of architecture, because they involve a vast number of interconnected threads, and lore. (That'd be the Toofyverse - The twenty-fourth emperor is declared in the twenty-fourth chapter, etc.)

Others, I write, rewrite, and reorganise until it fits nicely. (Arcana's Path).

Some, have no goal, no direction, and just meander along wherever the mood happens to take me. (Official Choices).

I've found that names do carry weight and meaning. Not that you can't easily overcome them, but name's tend to fit in a particular generation, and so audiences will automatically assign an age to the character based on the name, alone. Even if you had a different age in mind. So I tend to be careful, and sometimes rename, early on in working something together.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Despite more than ten years of erotic message board membership, I've posted only a few times, under sundry and now-retired screen names. But I've decided to make an effort because I like to write stories and, lately, haven't been able to write much and am interested in how others write.

Do you plot? Or just write and see what happens? Do you write by hand or type it on a computer? Do you write the story chronologically or bounce around? What are your inspirations? Are names important? These are just examples. Share anything about how you write. I am curious in a catholic way.

(Forgive me if a thread like this already exists.)

Other's have pointed to similar threads for some of your questions - regarding things that haven't been discussed at length elsewhere...

I write on a computer. I'd be interested in knowing if anyone here actually still writes by hand. A word processor is much more convenient for any number of reasons.

I write the first draft cronologically from a 'plan' that's in my head. There's no point in writing the end until my characters have had their say on what it should be. That said, after the first draft, I usually make at least one significant change to the story that can involve serious rewriting of nearly everything. For example, for one story, I changed my late-shift protagonist from studying for a career in computer science to being a budding artist and made major alterations so that the love-interest was now his muse including a whole new first scene. Similarly, I realized after writing about 70% of a story that the plot would be smoother if one of the characters to have an eating disorder and that ended up needing major changes to her point of view in mutliple places. I like to have 'an' ending in mind so the story can finish, but it doesn't have to be 'the' ending if something better comes along while writing.

Names are not generally that important - a lot of my characters are Pauls, Davids and Roberts and I don't generally put a lot of thought into them. Occassionally a name will have a certain cadence or connotation that is useful for a story - my thirty-year old virgin was called Susan based on the Terry Pratchett idea that nothing exciting has ever happened to a Susan, similarly my stripper character needed a real name and a stage name, so her real name was Karen on the basis that there was no way a reader could mistake that for a stripper's name.

I don't really have any inspirations for erotica - I read on this site a lot, but don't necessarily have any famous works to draw from.

 

[HeyAll]

I start writing when enough pieces are in place; theme, overall plot/premise, the feel of the story and style of the writing. The main thing is that the main plot has to be really good. Otherwise it's a chore.

I type everything.

I like getting the intro done quickly, then I usually slow down in the middle to figure out where it goes and justify all the actions. The thing about plotting is that it's erotica, so it ends with sex. But the fun parts of erotica are in the middle where the buildup is.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Interesting comments about names.

Names are important to my stories. My characters are based either on real people - in which case I'm sort of stuck, but by the same token, their name is a key part of that character's portrayal and somehow adds to their veracity. Or, they're completely fictional, in which case they have to "sound right" for the story to work.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Some advice here says names are important, and others say they're not. One pointed out that names can be generational, and I think that also depends on where the author is from and which audience they are writing to attract.

I can't speak for all parts of the U.S. even, but in the northeast (at least 50 years ago) names were generational and ethnic based on race and even first-world family origin. You wouldn't find a German-American or Irish-American with the first name "Mario", or an Italian-American with the name "Sean".

Some names (at least in the area where I grew up) were considered "old" names. A girl wouldn't be named "Bertha" after about 1940 or 50, because it was used so often previously, too many people had a grandmother named Bertha.

And I found picking a name like "June" for one character in my story was problematic, with the main female character "Jan" (short for Janet). When I wrote the chapter, my wife had trouble reading it and keeping track in her mind whether it was June or Jan speaking, because the chapter focused on those two in a back and forth dialog, and the names were too close. So, on re-write (find and replace makes it obvious now that pen and paper writing is not for me), I replaced June with Karen. But even that name now (within the last two years) carries negative connotations in the U.S.

So, IMO names can carry a heavy weight to many of your potential readers.

 

[oggbashan]

I plot extensively in my head before I start to write. I know the intended ending before I start.

I type on my desktop with Grammarly switched on.

I write chronologically. I do not go back if I can avoid it.

Inspirations? Too many to list. It could be a photo, a phrase heard or seen online, a passing stranger and then 'What if?'.

Names are important to me mainly because my most usual flaw is to change a character's name during the writing. The new name might better fit the character or might just start as a typo. I usually start with vanilla names and as the characters develop another name might be more suitable.


Because my eyesight is compromised editing is vital. I use Grammarly and then Word 365's editor, before printing off in large print and going through the printout with a pen in hand. In a normal story, despite Grammarly and Word I would expect to find 15 to 20 errors in the first printout. Then a second 8-10 more errors and a third..

 

[Blind_Justice]

I've started out writing from the gut, taking some situations which happened around the gaming table and turned them into full stories. That approach works very well for one-shots or episodic formats, but when things turned into parallel stories sharing the same setting, I needed to make sure that timelines matched up and characters were accounted for between stories. So, besides having a folder full of character and location sheets containing crucial information on looks, mannerisms, sexual preference and geographical features (for locations, not characters, duh), I added plot point summaries and began to work off detailed outlines.

My "Mud & Magic" series has completely been written along an outline in regards to the overarching plot. I leave myself some flexibility in regards to exact events in the story (I've had one of the major characters die on me), but the larger plot points (like Rhys' childhood crush turning insane which many people called "pulled from my ass") had been there from the beginning. I already know how the thing will end, but I'm still working out the final battle's choreography to make it suitably epic.

I type everything on the computer and keep stuff tucked away in setting-specific folders.

My insprations? Mostly sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks I stole from my father's library when I was young, supplemented by way too much game fiction than is healthy. I've pretty much read most D&D-associated novels through the early nineties, along with Shadowrun, Battletech and Warhammer 40k fiction. I'm trying to write along those lines, only with more overt sex scenes. I mean, we're adults after all, right?

Names, much like detailed descriptions, are very important. They are the "handle" the reader can grasp on to. I don't go full on "Fantasy Name generator" on my characters, instead I try and give each of my peoples a distinct sound to their names. The humans in my fantasy setting skew towards the old Anglian names while the elves have more musical names, few harsh consonants. So, even if I don't explicitly spell it out, a reader versed in my setting can quickly glean where a particular person comes from.

 

[KeithD]

My muse works out much of the point of the story and the plotline before dropping it into my consciousness. If something gets delivered that I think isn't baked enough to start writing, I bury it in my mind again until it is. Most everything that my muse delivers gets written. I rarely outline and then only for something that will be at least a novella and only enough chapters to get me into it. I always have an idea where the story ends, but I'm not always right and it doesn't bother me if I'm not. The fun for me is the discovery along the way, not in filling out a form that I've already filled in the lines for. I usually do a little research--the setting, the character's names and any other place names I'm going to use before starting the writing so that the flow of writing isn't interrupted to look for them later.

And, yes, on the names. They should be readily distinguishable one from the other in the story.

 

[titusfabulous]

This is so fun that so many people replied! I assumed this would be lost in the e-ether.

I still write by hand about 20 to 30 percent of the time, always on an old timey yellow legal pad and with the pen of my current mood. It's strange how important that is to me. I move between flair pens, fancy roller ball pens (I like the black Sharpie 1.0s) and cheap ballpoints. Fonts also cause me consternation. In my brain, stories belong in certain fonts. I think this started after reading an earlier edition of The Maltese Falcon -- I think it was printed in the 1940s -- and it was in a hard and boldly stamped Century font. The reprints of Raymond Chandler's novels are similarly fonted. Now, in my heart, detective fiction of that era BELONGS in that font. Bodoni also fits there.

[segue back to writing by hand here]

Computers allow for endless as-you-go editing, and I'll end up babying a sentence or paragraph or chapter, ad infinitum, and never make progress, unless there's a deadline (I am, often, paid to write). Writing by hand forces me to get something out, even if it stinks. A novelist friend of mine once told me that he can't fix what he hasn't written. Also, if you're a big sappy romantic about writing, like me, it's fun write-by-hand while sitting at bars. It usually leads to conversations.

Typewriters also make you write. Like writing-by-hand, they, too, have permanence.

About names: I mentioned that because of Elmore Leonard. He said that he couldn't write a character until he had that character's name right. I am the same way. I've changed characters and stories because of names, and one of my undying quibbles is everyday names in fiction. To me, names are the fastest way to tell someone about a character. It's among the things that stuck with me about Charles Dickens. I hate that he came up with "Edwin Drood" before me.

About The Magicians: Janet and Julia got me, too. But then I thought, maybe that's who they are in Grossman's imagination, and those characters just could not be anyone anyone other than Janet and Julia. Art is fun that way.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Interesting comments about names.

Names are important to my stories. My characters are based either on real people - in which case I'm sort of stuck, but by the same token, their name is a key part of that character's portrayal and somehow adds to their veracity. Or, they're completely fictional, in which case they have to "sound right" for the story to work.

If I have a character based on a real person - I even have a couple of people loosely based on my ex-wife - I usually change their names. Most of them I haven't seen in years, decades even, but I still do it. Recently, on another site, I did have three people for which I used their real first names but I didn't use last names at all. One of them passed in 2010 and the other two I haven't seen since 1996, so I doubt they would ever find themselves on this site. I was also a bit evasive about the location of the office building where we all worked, but if one has Google maps and the mind of a detective, it might be possible to pin it down.

Also, the personalities of these people and what they did has been highly fictionalized.

 

[RachelPost]

When it comes to names, I think the name has to fit the personality of the character. For example, calling a younger woman Gertrude just seems off. Calling an older woman Jazzy feels the same way.

I tend to have a plot in my head, develop characters as needed. I try to write visually, I want people to see the story unfold. Then write. As I do, characters refine themselves. The plot may change, even scenes get thrown out.

 

[SimonDoom]

I start with an idea. Sometimes it comes from something else I read, and sometimes I don't know where it comes from. I like edgy erotic ideas. Like, "What if a teddy bear showed up on a woman's doorstep one day, and it wanted to have sex with her?" Yep, I wrote that.

Then I figure out the characters and the plot. I'm a plotter. I pretty much always figure out what's going to happen in the story before I start writing. Very often, I write the last page of the story long before I get to the ending. I like to know where my story is headed as I write.

I write exclusively at a desktop computer, using MS Word.

I'm somewhat less creative with names than I would like to be. One reason for that is that my stories tend to be set in vague, bland, anonymous, suburban American locations. I'm interested in focusing on the sex rather than on times and places. But I think I could be somewhat more varied than I have been. I DO think names are important to a story.

I sometimes bounce around as I write. If I'm in Act 1 but I think of something I want to write in Act 4 then I jump forward and I write it.

I am the opposite of pumpkindice on the subject of controlling my characters. I do not sit back and watch them. In the words of Vladimir Nabokov, my characters are my galley slaves. They do what I want them to do.

 

[KeithD]

I start with an idea. Sometimes it comes from something else I read,

Or it can be just a glance at something. Just back from a book festival program with my next story churning in my mind. The working title is "The Man Across the Aisle." It's pretty well formed in my mind already. As, usual, I worry about length (for Literotica, at least, which celebrates verbosity), but that usually works itself out as I plug it into the computer.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I had a series nearly ready to post, when the Karen meme kicked off. Suddenly my female lead's name wasn't near-neutral any more. I went through half a dozen names using find&replace (and repairing when I decided Kerry didn't work either, forgetting I had a minor character called Kerry already...) I went for Laura, instead.

Sometimes a character's name is part of the image in my head, other times I just use letters until a long way through the story, though by the time their names are fixed they aren't usually all alphabetical - but aside from Ali and Becca in Wheelchair Bound?, I have housemates Alec, Ben, Charlie and Delia in Third Time Getting Lucky, and a 750-word story about Alex, Bob, Cassie, Duncan, Ed and Fran...

 

[ElectricBlue]

I am the opposite of pumpkindice on the subject of controlling my characters. I do not sit back and watch them. In the words of Vladimir Nabokov, my characters are my galley slaves. They do what I want them to do.

I'm like pumpkindice. My job as writer is to keep up with my characters, and write what they want me to write.

Pre-conceived plots and endings simply don't happen in my written world - I've had characters arrive and a plot turn happen in the space of a paragraph. Keeps me on my toes!

 

[TadOverdon]

Usually I start with a couple of characters and a situation. I put it in a file. Mom's got a son in prison, blames the father. Mom's a lawyer, etc.

Occasionally, it's a setting instead of characters. A tropical island where everyone uses a local sex drug.

Over time, different sexual scenarios will occur to me and I'll jot them in the file.

If enough scene ideas occur - "scene" being defined here in the porn film sense, those parts of the story that include sex - then it begins to look like a book and I'll start sorting the scenes and dropping them into their place in the book. Chapter Six - Mom does the starting line-up of an NBA team in a lavish hotel room.

So, I'm writing bits of prose, description, lots of dialogue. Finding images online makes everything more specific, and I save those in the story's directory. Here's a bedroom. Here's a lavish city penthouse. Here's a kaftan that looks sexy, that kind of thing.

As it all gets more specific, more characters occur. It's not a hotel room. Mom works with a wealthy woman who owns the team. So now Mom and her boss are taking on the players.

Etc, etc and so forth.

 

[titusfabulous]

Usually I start with a couple of characters and a situation. I put it in a file. Mom's got a son in prison, blames the father. Mom's a lawyer, etc.

Occasionally, it's a setting instead of characters. A tropical island where everyone uses a local sex drug.

Over time, different sexual scenarios will occur to me and I'll jot them in the file.

If enough scene ideas occur - "scene" being defined here in the porn film sense, those parts of the story that include sex - then it begins to look like a book and I'll start sorting the scenes and dropping them into their place in the book. Chapter Six - Mom does the starting line-up of an NBA team in a lavish hotel room.

So, I'm writing bits of prose, description, lots of dialogue. Finding images online makes everything more specific, and I save those in the story's directory. Here's a bedroom. Here's a lavish city penthouse. Here's a kaftan that looks sexy, that kind of thing.

As it all gets more specific, more characters occur. It's not a hotel room. Mom works with a wealthy woman who owns the team. So now Mom and her boss are taking on the players.

Etc, etc and so forth.

I fancy this, especially the part about writing "bits of prose, description, lots of dialogue" and then assembling them later. I did that today while driving home from writing in public.

I passed through an old money part of town and saw a lady in a new black Mercedes station wagon checking the mail at her reproduction Georgian mansion. The mailbox was next to the intercom (Are they still called that?) and in front of a wrought-iron gate that served as the opening through the brick wall surrounding what I hope are called "the grounds." I liked that, despite being landed gentry, she still checked her own mail.

Later, in another old money neighborhood by a river, I saw a giant, gaudy mansion stuffed in a too-small lot and wondered why these aristocrats couldn't afford more land. The house had a thousand rooms but neighbors four feet away on either side.

I wrote scraps about these things in a Google document on my phone to save for later. These kinds of moments turn into stories for me. I think about the people who exist in these places and the terrible things they'd do. Good plots start with desperate problems.

 

[SimonDoom]

Or it can be just a glance at something.

Yes, it can be anything.

What I have found is that I more I write erotica the more ideas I have. I watch a TV show or a book and wonder, "How could I make that erotic?" I have a brief interaction with someone, and it gives me an idea. I see a story in the newspaper. I look at things differently from the way I did before I started writing.

That's part of the fun of it, for me. It's not a zero sum game. There's no limit to the number of story ideas one can come up with, and the number goes up over time, not down.

 

[TxRad]

The writing process is very simple. Place one word behind the other until you have a story. Of course there is always that thing about some assemble required.

 

[dmallord]

My contribution to Literotica on writing discusses my approach to a structured scripting of the storyline. https://literotica.com/s/how-to-develop-a-good-story-01 It also, peripherally, touches on the 'pantsers' or by the seat-of-the-pants writing style many in this thread use as their framework for writings.

Outlines help me significantly corral the major events, chronology, and to a large degree the characters and how they are projected to interact with one another. That said, nothing in my roadmap is fixed in stone and, as I use my word processor, things can jump track to some unexpected event(s), as noted by others here. Though the corralling process helps significantly in diminishing my editing time. [I do my outlining with a 'mapping technique' on paper.]

Before my Army days, I was a fast typist; about 60 wpm on a manual typewriter. Post Army I am now a 'pecker.' [I don't have enough fingers left to hold a pen or pencil for long nor hit the keyboard as quickly either. That has a major influence on how I rely upon structure to assist me. You can probably see that given my limitations.]

A note on names! I was 'taken to the woodshed' by a reader over mistakenly mixing of two characters' names from a previous story in my follow on storyline! My new story mentioned a 'Rita Moreno' that should have been 'Gloria Moreno.' The observer was really taking me to task over that to the extent of letting me the exact paragraph where I stated her name was Gloria in the first story and when on to point out the place that I referenced 'Rita's name' in the same story, chapter and verse and further more she was the wife of... The idea here, is it is very important for some readers that continuity of character names is highly important, and for goodness sakes don't mix their names up the way I did!

Note: I don't put much thought into character names having some kinship with the characters personification, though. I do refer to a 'popular names' list and an old telephone book for last names once in a while when I need a foreign name for a person.

 

[TadOverdon]

I fancy this, especially the part about writing "bits of prose, description, lots of dialogue" and then assembling them later. I did that today while driving home from writing in public.

I passed through an old money part of town and saw a lady in a new black Mercedes station wagon checking the mail at her reproduction Georgian mansion. The mailbox was next to the intercom (Are they still called that?) and in front of a wrought-iron gate that served as the opening through the brick wall surrounding what I hope are called "the grounds." I liked that, despite being landed gentry, she still checked her own mail.

Later, in another old money neighborhood by a river, I saw a giant, gaudy mansion stuffed in a too-small lot and wondered why these aristocrats couldn't afford more land. The house had a thousand rooms but neighbors four feet away on either side.

I wrote scraps about these things in a Google document on my phone to save for later. These kinds of moments turn into stories for me. I think about the people who exist in these places and the terrible things they'd do. Good plots start with desperate problems.

Yeah, a lot of snippets wind up being emailed to myself in restaurants. LOL

Someone's clothing will get my attention. Twice now I've flat-out stolen a woman's entire outfit from ankle boots on up. It was eccentric enough to fit my current main character. Annoyingly, as I transcribed it I found myself thinking that I made it sound just like Diane Keaton's tennis outfit in "Annie Hall."