Around a month ago, I got an amazing email from someone that detailed their growth from hating sexuality to embracing it, and the kind of stories they enjoyed. They also outlined that they believed a bunch of sex stories and sex authors just get entangled in their own fantasies of either knowing all about sex or being a great writer and showing it off. Apparently, they liked Panopticon because it wasn’t that. Whether I agree with that assertion or not is immaterial, I don’t get to choose how readers interpret my stories, but I was incredibly flattered by this. Like I’ve said before, erotica that focuses heavily on plot has a niche appeal to it, and while I’m glad I tried something new, I almost feel like I did a disservice to this emailer by making, two pieces later, Amy’s Fantasy.

As I mentioned, Amy’s Fantasy was my first attempt at making an erotica story that more closely resembled a stroke story. Hell, I might even do a second attempt at it, I have a few ideas. That said, something that strikes me as interesting, a fact I can’t avoid, is that Amy’s Fantasy was my least ever commented on story. Not most disliked, not least read, but least commented on. Within a day or so of Panopticon, I got a few emails about it. Every chapter of BMS or GBM has illicited response. Amy’s Fantasy has been out for almost two weeks now, and interestingly, I’ve gotten one comment on it from a kind reader from Literotica, telling me that they got off to it. I reaped what I sowed, I guess. I’ve made comments before on how stroke stories get the most expected comments and plot-based stories didn’t. I don’t know why I expected this story to be any different.

Of course, there are other factors at play – I chose to plug my Patreon instead of my email whenever I could, it’s a one-off story that built no hype unlike a chaptered story, it’s relatively shorter than all of my other works, etc. Nevertheless, I’m glad I tried something similar to a stroke story, because looking at its effect on the world, I think I’m better off writing plot-based things.

As mentioned, Amy’s Fantasy was based off of real-life flirting I engaged in with someone, and I wonder if perhaps that was a factor. When I was writing BMS specifically, there were a number of times I was completely turned off but had to write a sex scene. Sometimes I even inserted <THEY BOINK> in the file then tell myself to go back and actually write the sex scene later. I hope they don’t mind, but I’m going to quote that emailer’s note about bad smut in their own words:

My experience with erotica so far leads me assume that people who write about sex get very wrapped up in their own romanticization of being a good writer and/or their own fantasies instead of actually writing about the sex itself in a smart way. Their gimmicks, explicitness, or need to be clever is a real mood killer.

I’m not going to lie, I could see that applied to Amy’s Fantasy very easily given its backstory. It was my own fantasy, and it was based on a sexting conversation I had, so maybe there was even me trying to be a good sexter for her that got left in the story. The whole need to be clever thing… well, I think we can all agree that was already a problem with me.

I wonder if I need to actively dislike writing sex in my stories in order to get them to a level of quality that my following desires and/or deserves. After all, I disliked writing it the most when I was at my most popular. Of course, the response to this story wasn’t bad, in fact a good number of people seemed to really like it, and I’m glad. Mainly this is just me spitballing. If you have opinions, I’d definitely like to hear them, in the comments or at basfulscribe@gmail.com. Again, I love every email sent to me, including those scathing me for bad writing or whatnot. Despite what I now believe has been a story slightly worse than my usual output, I’m not going to give up because of that – instead I’m going to take what I learned from the experience and hopefully turn it into better writing. I’ll talk to you all next week.