Writing Process

[JuanaSalsa]

My writing process:

1. Can't sleep
2. Imagine sex scene
3. Masturbate
4. Get distracted by needing back story to sex scene
5. Why do my characters like *this* kind of sex?
6. Why do they like each other?
7. How did they meet?
8. What is their motivation?
9. Furiously remind myself that the point is the sex
10. Orgasm
11. Fall Asleep

After a few nights of repetition, I have a pretty nice story going. I've only been doing this for 30 or so years before I figured out I could *gasp* write my stories down!

Shockingly, since writing down my sex-inspired stories, I've even thought up, and written, stories with no sex!

 

[Reshbod]

I don't plot out the story but do make a brief outline. I include bits of dialog or parts of the scene. I rarely stick to it but it is a guide post that helps me to organize my thoughts, otherwise I am easily distracted and get very little done.

 

[NC_Coastal]

I tend to create a situation of some sort and let the characters work their way through it. It can be something as simple as a family vacation to the summer cabin or as complex as the wife suddenly becoming interested in the next-door neighbor, who then cucks the husband and takes over his life. Don't overthink it. Just tell a story.

 

[PennameWombat]

My process. Hmm. I guess I have one…

The majority of my stories are part of my “Mel’s Universe.” It’s an alternate history/alternate future timeline (told ya’ll I was a SF&F geek.) which draws inspiration from some long-ago dreams, but the story as it percolated for the last few decades has veered well away from any dream sources. Like my other stories loosely based on dreams, they require significant rework to turn into stories. I recall Jeff Vendermeer writing in “Wonderbook” that “dream logic is not story logic.” For me, I agree. Mel’s physical description (and her friend Shelly’s) but nothing more are based around a couple of quick encounters from… a long time ago. But that’s it. The general timeline is outlined, but not in deep detail, and the direct series focused on Mel and Chris is all in my head, but comes out slowly, because I‘d get bored simply writing that series (sorry, readers, one of whom has chastised me…)

The other stories in that Universe aren’t specifically plotted ahead of time, but any idea I come up with I analyse if it fits and contributes somewhere along the overall timeline. If it doesn’t, and it’s inspiring enough, it becomes a standalone or like the Mermaids, spins off their own universe.

I build Universes because I sometimes have trouble wanting to write without having backstory, setting, and an overall structure. Thus, even if it barely impinges on a story, I can draw on a broader world for depth. I’m not a pure plotter and not a pure pantser, and I don't always have an ending in mind right at the beginning. But every story has to be placed into its universe, even if very little of that ends up in the text of the story.

As to names… one source I use is the “top 100/1000 baby names in <country> in <year>”, based on the time and place of what would be the character’s birth. I mostly just fit to country, culture and time. I rarely look for names that are ‘meaningful’ in some definitional sense for personality, although I do this occasionally. One key example being Sirena Chanteuse as the lead singing mermaid in A Christmas Miracle on Dewdrop. That’s rare for me. In one moderately long story I used no names at all, simply for the challenge of it.

Really, names are for me as a rule simply identifiers and I just want them to not annoy or distract the readers. I’d only ever name a character after a friend or acquaintance if they asked for it, and since none actually pay attention to my writing here, that’s unlikely. There are some coincidental overlaps, where the names are very generic, but that’s it. Same with avoiding actually basing a character on anyone I know, other than the odd element from my own life (like, having soccer players and computer scientists because I can write those with considerable depth.)

As to ideas, anywhere. One story came when I envisioned a scene. But, it made no sense, so 80% of the story was figuring out how two mismatched people got to the that scene. But that’s actually common for me, two people, seemingly mismatched, somehow meet. The how, then why they mesh, and how things go.

Recently, and unusually for me, an interesting name popped into my head. But that one will be a while, although an offshoot looks good for the Halloween contest.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Hmmm.... this again. Well, let's see... before I even start to type, I have the entire story finished in my head as a movie. Not everything is there but the main plot line is along with character names and place the story happens in.

Now things may, will, change as I write, as said before, characters sometimes have a bad habit of taking over not only what and who they are but where the plot of the story is going. Sometimes, I delete entire pages of character takeover to get things back to the way I see them happening.

So, I have over 100 unfinished stories on my hard drive... That means my head is full of 100 movies, plus any new ones that happen to start running. I do include in the file, what the movie is about and the beginning, the middle, and the ending as I saw it in my head, just so I can recall it if I decide to finish them.

 

[Djmac1031]

I'm still relatively new to writing stories so basically I've just been winging it; take an idea, run with it, see where it goes.

Which is great for single shot stories.

I am beginning to realize I need to have an End Game in mind if I'm writing a series or multiple chapter story. Not necessarily the whole plot outlined or planned out, but at least an idea of where it's headed.

I have unfortunately left a few of my series hanging because I didn't have an end in mind and have yet to figure out where they should go.

It's certainly a learning curve.

I have chosen character names a few times based on specific meanings to their names, but generally I just try to pick a variety of names or something that just feels like the character.

I write on my phone. Tedious sometimes, but it's what I use.

 

[KeithD]

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.

Yes, it could be anything. I just came back from a fancy restaurant in an old estate workers' village that has been turned into a boutique hotel, making suites out of once were mid nineteenth-century cottages. Since the cottages were a jumble, the suites are all individualistic and cobbled together too. From the window I faced in the restaurants, which once was a blacksmith's forge, I could see the fully lit bathroom--the side of the toilet and a full view of the stall shower in one of these second-floor suites because it was nearly a full-length window and they hadn't pulled the blinds. I'm back in one of those cottages now, writing a story tentatively titled "Involuntary Voyeur" based on what my mind did with just that much information--a story that hadn't occurred to me at all before I went to dinner.

 

[TadOverdon]

I'm about the opposite of wombat where names are concerned. They matter for some reason a great deal, and when I find the right one it becomes a core aspect of the character in the same way that the names of people I know are.

 

[Trionyx]

If you’re writing about a 30 year old male, for example, google ‘most popular male baby names’ for 30 years before the timing of the story. This gives many authentic and reasonable names to pick from. I agree with avoiding similar names but have learned the hard way to avoid names that have similar endings. I accidentally switched names in a story twice and I believe it was due to them all ending with the letter ‘a.’ (Maria, Sofia and Tina) This can occur also with other sounds such as with -ene (Irene, Kathleen, etc) and -ey (Brittney, Courtney, etc) just to name a few.

 

[oggbashan]

I'm about the opposite of wombat where names are concerned. They matter for some reason a great deal, and when I find the right one it becomes a core aspect of the character in the same way that the names of people I know are.

I try to avoid names that have particular associations for me i.e. ex-fiancées, relations, close friends because that can influence the characters. I have a collection of baby name books from the 1940s to 1980s but even then I can get things wrong such as giving a Sikh name to someone who was a Hindu priest.

 

[TadOverdon]

I try to avoid names that have particular associations for me i.e. ex-financées, relations, close friends because that can influence the characters. I have a collection of baby name books from the 1940s to 1980s but even then I can get things wrong such as giving a Sikh name to someone who was a Hindu priest.

Same here. None of my characters share names with my parents or brothers or my partner's kids, and the aforementioned folk all have terribly common names. I don't think there's a "Mary" in my total output (could be wrong, since I collaborate and have posted under names that others have previously used without me).

I try to avoid women's names that end in "a." I follow the rule about avoiding names that start with the same sound or consonant. I hate names that look awkward pluralized (to me), and I don't want a pornworld full of Smiths and Joneses and Anglo-Saxon names.

All general rules, sometimes honored in the breach. But the Pamieris drove me nuts.

This does not, I am aware, lead to any distribution of names that would realistically mirror any community I've belonged to (again, a world without a Mary?)

As far as Sikhs/Hindus and the like, for whatever reason I try to find names, especially surnames, that are a little ambiguous in being shared among cultures in broad geographic areas, and then don't say exactly where they're from. "Irina" is, variously, Russian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Romanian, Georgian, Finnish, Estonian, et al.

Eastern European, Mediterranean? Sure. Greek, Polish? Reply hazy, try again later. And I mix up given/surname combinations from allied cultures.

 

[Bramblethorn]

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?

That depends on the story. There are three different approaches I can take to this kind of thing:

• Plotter: sketch out the whole story before I write it.
• Pantser (character-focussed): develop the major characters, figure out their personalities and motivations, then let those characters create the story: "what happens next? And next? And next?"
• Plantser: somewhere in between. I plan the emotional shape of the story up front: "they get closer together, A becomes more confident, their relationship drifts from mentor-mentee to one of equals, S gets more emotionally involved than she intended, then A decides it's time to move on and S is upset, and they have to reinvent their relationship as friends". But within that general plan, a lot of it is improvised as I go, and sometimes I'll modify the outline when it seems fitting. ("And then L enters the picture - she's attracted to S, who is completely oblivious to this, but L doesn't want to hurt the relationship between S and A so things get complicated.")

Most of my stories here are written in "plantser" mode. Leaning too hard on "plotter" can leave the characters feeling flat and writing scenes that work logically but not emotionally. Too much pantsing and it can be hard to provide a satisfying resolution to the story.

The exact balance depends on the idea for the story, though. "Red Scarf" began when my partner was sitting in a café and overheard a conversation between two people who were setting up a sugar-daddy/sugar-baby arrangement. So that gives me an interesting scenario, and then there are a lot of possibilities for developing it from there - that pushes it a bit towards the "pantser" end of things.

OTOH, "Loss Function" started with me wanting to write about a particular concept - how we cope with grief and how the representation of somebody that we carry about in our head plays a part in that. That gave me most of the plot right away, and from there I needed to find the right characters to tell that story. Still a little bit of pantsing along the way, but much less so than in Red Scarf.

Do you write by hand or type it on a computer?

Computer. My partner likes to hand-write stuff but it's not for me.

Do you write the story chronologically or bounce around?

Depends on the story. Usually I write in the order that the story is told (not necessarily the within-story chronology, if I'm using flashbacks etc.)

But sometimes I write out of order. Maybe I'm in the right mood to write a specific scene, or I need to iron out the details for an important scene before I write material that sets up/depends on that scene, or I'm stuck on one part and need to jump ahead to write the next bit before I can find the motivation to finish this part. I do this a bit more since I started using Scrivener, which makes it a lot easier to organise out-of-order writing.

What are your inspirations?

Just about anything.

Are names important?

Yes. I usually have some reason for picking the names I do for major characters. For Red Scarf, one of the major characters comes from a high-caste Hindu background, and I asked a Hindi-speaking friend for help with naming her because I wanted to be sure the name worked with that background - as Ogg mentioned, it's easy to come up with a name that fits the geography but not the character.

Sarah, my narrator in the same story, has an obsessive interest in German gothic music. ASP has a song named "Sarah" so it seemed appropriate, and there might also be a little bit of Labyrinth in there.

Lucy, a secondary character, is just a name I picked at random for somebody who was intended to be a very minor character. Then a chapter or two later, I realised I already had a "Lucy" as a minor character in an earlier story I'd written, so I thought it might be interesting if they were the same Lucy seen from different angles. In that case the name fed the characterisation, usually it's the other way around.

 

[StarGazer58]

Writing by hand...

The problem is that I have done my job on a computer for so long that I have almost forgotten how to write cursive. It is like I have lost the fine motor control. Even writing out the occassional check can come out looking like a first grader wrote it.

 

[SamScribble]

Surely, the test of what is the most appropriate story-writing method/process is what works for you. What gets the story out of your head and down onto the page - one sentence at a time, one incident at a time, one character at a time - with the least extraneous effort. If it's a yellow 'legal pad' and about two dozen Black Beauty pencils (as it was for one writer I knew), then go for a legal pad and a couple of dozen Black Beauty pencils. If it's Microsoft Notepad, then go for Microsoft Notepad. This is one of those questions to which there is no right answer.

 

[xelliebabex]

Lately, a find that a good plot bunny grows into an enormous Jabberwocky when I get bogged down in too much detail/back story and I am trying hard to scale back the details that usually wind up with me getting writer's block because of the complex monster I have created in my own mind.

Like KiethD said, length/size matters at lit and the longer the story the more readers you lose though those who stay the course are generous with comments and votes.

 

[JakBird]

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.

To borrow from Mr. Spock, I try to avoid being susceptible to "two-dimensional" thinking when it comes to writing. Thanks to the wonders of word processors, I work in a non-sequential manner. I start with an idea, write it down, and then expand on it in both directions, backwards and forwards, with the z-axis being the plot that binds it all together. What led the characters to this point, and what happens to them afterwards? Enquiring minds want to know!

Do I paint myself into corners with that approach? All the time! Thank the computer gods there is cut and paste. Voila, whole new timeline in the story.

The plot takes shape at some indeterminate step. Yes, I do "bounce around", but it's easy to hit the navigation pane on MS Word. I use chapter titles as little hints to keep track of what's happening.

My inspiration? It starts with everyday life, the mundane, but then I add a few twists in the society as a whole surrounding that mundane existence. I try to stay realistic, but with some literary license (think hard science fiction rules).

Are names important? Only to distinguish the characters, otherwise no. No two characters ever share the first name, so it's easier on the reader to keep track. Nor do I describe the appearance of any character, ever. I leave that solely up to the reader's imagination. It can lead to some surprising results in feedback comments.