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Musings about Porn Writing
14 years ago
General
Hi, dear readers. I'm still not dead, am still around, and am itching to write a new story (but still badly struggling my usual shyness to begin, so no promises). This itch to share something is the right mindset to push my last, rather depressing but long obsolete, journal down the history.
So, I'd like to talk about some aspects of writing porn. I'll point how I consider myself a beginner and am _not_ taking the stance of a legitimate teacher here: take my ideas with a grain of salt and feel very welcome to criticize and comment them, I want to learn.
So, here we go!
== 1 - Behind the scene ========
I began writing, in general not just porn, for two main reasons: the first was I loved to tinker with imaginary things and to invite the others in my imagination. It's a great one, which I still pursue and study. The second was the classical "if you can't find it anywhere, do it yourself". This one was rather a failure, but a highly instructive one.
I bumped into two obstacles it took me a long while to put words on. The first was explained to me by Ernst Gombrich's "Art and Illusion", a book that, among many things, studies the relations between art and perception. If I had to summarize the idea in one sentence, I'd quote it (maybe approximatively as it's from memory and from the French translation): "The artist doesn't draw what he sees, he sees what he draws."
To elaborate, one may naively believe he has a mental canvas he can draw pictures on in his head and that's very similar to a real world one. From there, getting the picture out of your head would be as simple as having the right technical skills to do a copy... only that's not how your brain works. To fit in your head, the world is analyzed, split into a web of partial and subjective bits of informations, "digested" into something very different from a drawn image.
In reverse, when imagining things you create this kind of web. Translating it to paper is non-trivial and often impossible: for example an awesome drawing is made from awesome-eliciting pieces. Depending on your tastes, those can be a sweet color scheme, beautiful facial expression, vivid inking and so on. When imagining an awesome mental image, on the other hand, you can very well just produce the "awesome" label and paste it on nothing, skipping the specifics. Convenient... until you try to dump the mental picture into reality, which is all about the specifics. This is especially treacherous as while huge missing parts in a drawing are obvious they are much harder to perceive in a mental web.
The result of this is that art, in a form you can communicate to the others, only exists when you actually _make_ it. I took a graphical example but it works for writing and every arts as well. It's not that taking some time thinking and building in your head is useless, far from it, but you can't fully split creation in a mental conception step, then a concrete realization step: the concrete realization is always part of the mental conception.
And so, if you think you "have it right in your head" and try to get it out unaltered, you are doomed to failure. This will not work and will make you a sad creator. Or else, you can embrace an other way to work and its great assets: you can get surprised and keep discovering things despite being the creator and you can build piece by piece creations far out of your grasp if attempted at once as a whole, to tell my favorite ones.
The second obstacle is simpler, also related to perception. Imagine you are telling a joke and compare it to listening to one you don't know. Imagine that you are a magician, who spent years training on his tricks, and compare it to watching one making doves appear out of nowhere and vanish. Or an actor before a green screen and then a spectator of the movie.
I could keep pilling up examples but you get the idea: when writing, you are behind the scene. You will not be able to experience your story the way your readers will from this special point of view. So, writing the story you'd have loved to find but couldn't? It's a great way to spot a fresh idea fitting your style, but as far as treating yourself with that missed story... don't get your hopes too high, you'll still need an other writer to do the job.
Again, it can be a huge frustration when you are bashing your head on that wall like a fly unable to understand transparent glass stopping its way but can be the source of great experiences if you go with the flow: you may be unable to get what the reader gets from your story, but you'll enjoy exclusivity on other things. Also, it doesn't mean you can't enjoy your story from a reader's point of view _at all_ which, combined with the other benefits and with the control on where it goes, can be very rewarding.
== 2 - Intensity VS Depth ========
Now, lets concentrate more specifically on porn. In my first attempts at it, I tried to go for an intensity rush: raw fetishism, little distractions around to dilute it. I wanted it hot and strong and didn't care for any excuse plot. Not that I didn't like a good story and good characters, but you know how it is: "there's a time for anything", "I only have so much blood and can't properly irrigate my brain and an erection". In short, I felt like porn and a deeper story would conflict and hurt each-others.
Spoiler: this wrong idea came in great part from reading poor porn with the previously mentioned excuse plot. "Excuse" as in artificially added over but not interacting with the porn. In short, if you can skip the non-sexy parts without the sexy ones losing some of their value or the other way around, the writer did it wrong.
So, back on the intensity rush attempt: it worked, to some extend. It was quite OK, for small stories, but not as strong as I'd have hoped (for me at least, as explained in the previous chapter they may have worked better for the readers) and made me feel constrained. By cutting all the fat away, you concentrate specifically on the strongest aspects of your favorite kinks, which is good but highly specific: there's a real risk of writing only the same thing over and over soon if you don't broaden your field of exploration. Furthermore, it prevents you from using one of the best aspects of the media, but I'll get back on this (wait for the "haunting" mention below).
I then tried to broaden the boundaries, which led to the stories you can read here, and as I was expecting the intensity dropped sharply... although not that sharply if you look at it the right way, and part of the drop is probably due to me getting used to the new approach and not fully exploiting its possibilities. Anyway, it felt like an improvement!
The main key to improvement was I found a way to connect the story and porn. In my case, domination and submission are at the center of my kinks and they happen to be able to blend in more general contexts. I could play on the D/s relationships and construction to create "relevant" scenes without a directly sexual content. The link meant the character building and their relationships made the sex better and the sex was meaningful in the character building and relationships.
From there, the way pacing in general works in storytelling is by your side and makes everything better. Many resources agree: trying to get the highest _perceived_ intensity by cranking your material's one to eleven and never letting it drop only works in very short works. Otherwise, the receiver adjusts (or worst gets tired up) and the efficiency of your efforts drops.
A more optimal curve of intensity oscillates around a line starting low and gradually increasing, typically with a brief peak at the start to grab the attention and a deep drop at the end for a feeling of closure. This construction prevents habituation and is full of upward slopes enhancing the feeling of intensity, giving you a stronger experience from the same material.
That's neat in itself but where it gets awesome is this construction for optimal intensity... _requires_ some well dosed drops of it every now and then. You get a perfect opportunity to squeeze your world building and softer character interactions in those valleys without hurting the pace. Best of both worlds!
A good use of pacing and weaving the story and porn altogether allows to create raw and hot, yet deep and interesting porn and to make full use of one of my favorite aspects in writing: how "haunting" it is. Stories are excellent at planting seeds in one's imagination, teasing the reader to play with the world and characters on his own later instead of "just" enjoying what you give for the time of his reading.
So, I'd like to talk about some aspects of writing porn. I'll point how I consider myself a beginner and am _not_ taking the stance of a legitimate teacher here: take my ideas with a grain of salt and feel very welcome to criticize and comment them, I want to learn.
So, here we go!
== 1 - Behind the scene ========
I began writing, in general not just porn, for two main reasons: the first was I loved to tinker with imaginary things and to invite the others in my imagination. It's a great one, which I still pursue and study. The second was the classical "if you can't find it anywhere, do it yourself". This one was rather a failure, but a highly instructive one.
I bumped into two obstacles it took me a long while to put words on. The first was explained to me by Ernst Gombrich's "Art and Illusion", a book that, among many things, studies the relations between art and perception. If I had to summarize the idea in one sentence, I'd quote it (maybe approximatively as it's from memory and from the French translation): "The artist doesn't draw what he sees, he sees what he draws."
To elaborate, one may naively believe he has a mental canvas he can draw pictures on in his head and that's very similar to a real world one. From there, getting the picture out of your head would be as simple as having the right technical skills to do a copy... only that's not how your brain works. To fit in your head, the world is analyzed, split into a web of partial and subjective bits of informations, "digested" into something very different from a drawn image.
In reverse, when imagining things you create this kind of web. Translating it to paper is non-trivial and often impossible: for example an awesome drawing is made from awesome-eliciting pieces. Depending on your tastes, those can be a sweet color scheme, beautiful facial expression, vivid inking and so on. When imagining an awesome mental image, on the other hand, you can very well just produce the "awesome" label and paste it on nothing, skipping the specifics. Convenient... until you try to dump the mental picture into reality, which is all about the specifics. This is especially treacherous as while huge missing parts in a drawing are obvious they are much harder to perceive in a mental web.
The result of this is that art, in a form you can communicate to the others, only exists when you actually _make_ it. I took a graphical example but it works for writing and every arts as well. It's not that taking some time thinking and building in your head is useless, far from it, but you can't fully split creation in a mental conception step, then a concrete realization step: the concrete realization is always part of the mental conception.
And so, if you think you "have it right in your head" and try to get it out unaltered, you are doomed to failure. This will not work and will make you a sad creator. Or else, you can embrace an other way to work and its great assets: you can get surprised and keep discovering things despite being the creator and you can build piece by piece creations far out of your grasp if attempted at once as a whole, to tell my favorite ones.
The second obstacle is simpler, also related to perception. Imagine you are telling a joke and compare it to listening to one you don't know. Imagine that you are a magician, who spent years training on his tricks, and compare it to watching one making doves appear out of nowhere and vanish. Or an actor before a green screen and then a spectator of the movie.
I could keep pilling up examples but you get the idea: when writing, you are behind the scene. You will not be able to experience your story the way your readers will from this special point of view. So, writing the story you'd have loved to find but couldn't? It's a great way to spot a fresh idea fitting your style, but as far as treating yourself with that missed story... don't get your hopes too high, you'll still need an other writer to do the job.
Again, it can be a huge frustration when you are bashing your head on that wall like a fly unable to understand transparent glass stopping its way but can be the source of great experiences if you go with the flow: you may be unable to get what the reader gets from your story, but you'll enjoy exclusivity on other things. Also, it doesn't mean you can't enjoy your story from a reader's point of view _at all_ which, combined with the other benefits and with the control on where it goes, can be very rewarding.
== 2 - Intensity VS Depth ========
Now, lets concentrate more specifically on porn. In my first attempts at it, I tried to go for an intensity rush: raw fetishism, little distractions around to dilute it. I wanted it hot and strong and didn't care for any excuse plot. Not that I didn't like a good story and good characters, but you know how it is: "there's a time for anything", "I only have so much blood and can't properly irrigate my brain and an erection". In short, I felt like porn and a deeper story would conflict and hurt each-others.
Spoiler: this wrong idea came in great part from reading poor porn with the previously mentioned excuse plot. "Excuse" as in artificially added over but not interacting with the porn. In short, if you can skip the non-sexy parts without the sexy ones losing some of their value or the other way around, the writer did it wrong.
So, back on the intensity rush attempt: it worked, to some extend. It was quite OK, for small stories, but not as strong as I'd have hoped (for me at least, as explained in the previous chapter they may have worked better for the readers) and made me feel constrained. By cutting all the fat away, you concentrate specifically on the strongest aspects of your favorite kinks, which is good but highly specific: there's a real risk of writing only the same thing over and over soon if you don't broaden your field of exploration. Furthermore, it prevents you from using one of the best aspects of the media, but I'll get back on this (wait for the "haunting" mention below).
I then tried to broaden the boundaries, which led to the stories you can read here, and as I was expecting the intensity dropped sharply... although not that sharply if you look at it the right way, and part of the drop is probably due to me getting used to the new approach and not fully exploiting its possibilities. Anyway, it felt like an improvement!
The main key to improvement was I found a way to connect the story and porn. In my case, domination and submission are at the center of my kinks and they happen to be able to blend in more general contexts. I could play on the D/s relationships and construction to create "relevant" scenes without a directly sexual content. The link meant the character building and their relationships made the sex better and the sex was meaningful in the character building and relationships.
From there, the way pacing in general works in storytelling is by your side and makes everything better. Many resources agree: trying to get the highest _perceived_ intensity by cranking your material's one to eleven and never letting it drop only works in very short works. Otherwise, the receiver adjusts (or worst gets tired up) and the efficiency of your efforts drops.
A more optimal curve of intensity oscillates around a line starting low and gradually increasing, typically with a brief peak at the start to grab the attention and a deep drop at the end for a feeling of closure. This construction prevents habituation and is full of upward slopes enhancing the feeling of intensity, giving you a stronger experience from the same material.
That's neat in itself but where it gets awesome is this construction for optimal intensity... _requires_ some well dosed drops of it every now and then. You get a perfect opportunity to squeeze your world building and softer character interactions in those valleys without hurting the pace. Best of both worlds!
A good use of pacing and weaving the story and porn altogether allows to create raw and hot, yet deep and interesting porn and to make full use of one of my favorite aspects in writing: how "haunting" it is. Stories are excellent at planting seeds in one's imagination, teasing the reader to play with the world and characters on his own later instead of "just" enjoying what you give for the time of his reading.
I know that feeling of "this is exactly what I want to write... but I can't write it properly!". The second part I barely overcome. I need to set a deadline and then just push at it. I give up on world-building depth and just allow vague detail so that the reader will fill in the work. I create the mood and a scene, but little actual context.
I hope we both break through the blocks.
About vague world-building and letting the reader fill the holes... it's actually a good thing to leave some room for the reader's creativity and encourage him to use his imagination and deduction. It is something I personally need to work on: I'm decent at building detailed worlds and at explaining clearly but can easily "overbuild" more that I really can use in a given story and over-explain where I should only suggest. So your own focus can be an asset and a good starting point.
It sounds to me like you're a "bottom-up" writer (as opposed to "top-down"): you start from the details, the specifics, actual story bits written without too much planning, and then tie things up together until you get the big picture. _If_ you want more depth, I'd suggest not changing your habits to add more planning but instead starting the same and then working on your editing skills: throw what you can on the paper, then examine and ask questions... which will help you finding alternative options, holes to fill up and incoherences to work on, gradually enriching your writing without losing your momentum nor getting lost in paths irrelevant to the story.
Then again, detailed world-building is just _one_ of the good things you can do while writing and if it doesn't match what you really want to create, don't feel pressured to run after it just because "that's what a writer should do". :)
For example, deliberate open vagueness has its charms as well, letting the reader invest your story in more flexible ways: writing is a lot about compromising between control and openness, everything the writer sets (+control) is material he offers to his readers but is also closing some doors (-openness) so you want to both consider how interesting the stuff you give is and how much freedom you leave for the visitors of your imaginary realms. There's no ideal balance, each point of the gradient will fit better some writers' styles, stories and readers' tastes than some others: keep an open mind and consider all your choices.
I wish you the best with your writing!