It’s far from a secret that I like writing erotica that has a lot of story in it. I love using sex as a device in the story, not as a main focus. Sex exists in the worlds I create, it doesn’t create them. A lot of readers take umbridge with this,  especially from other sites. It’s very amusing to me that chapters 1-5 of Being More Social did so well on sexstories.com and yet chapters 6-10 that brought more complicated emotions into the picture were taken considerably less well. Trying to please everyone is obviously a futile attempt, and I’m very glad and privileged as many people like my stories as they do, but I always find it funny when someone tells me, “Hey, dumbass, this website is for sex stories, go write a YA novel or something.” I mean, I did. It was called Being More Social. It just has a lot of sex in it, and a bit more plot than some would like. I find it fascinating that people that like plot-heavy stories despise plot-light stories and people that like plot-light stories despise plot-heavy stories, but more on that another time.

If you asked me whether I liked making things as realistic or not in my stories, I don’t think I’d know how to answer that. On one hand, I like constructing scenarios rooted in reality to the extent where people are reminded of someone they know when they read dialogue from Nicole or Phil or Paul or Chris or something. On another hand, there are times when readers tell me that no one talks like the characters I write, and that a lot of the time they’re too blunt. After mulling that over, I think I like that.

I love the idea of bluntness in emotional writing. If someone is feeling something in emotional writing, they express it fully. We don’t do that in the real world because we worry it’s too trivial or we don’t want to bother people or we try to downplay it to ourselves, as if admitting our sadness or anger makes it more real than if we just keep it to ourselves. The idea of a story where people talk like they think is fascinating to me. The adventures characters go on in my stories are often dramatic and heavy, and yet also emotionally charged, sometimes emotionally fulfilling. I wonder if the worlds I write would be reflections of reality if we talked like we thought, and that my stories are ‘unrealistic’ because we don’t like talking about our emotions.

Of course, I’m sure my dialogue can be unrealistic in other ways too. I’m far from perfect – faaaar from perfect when it comes to writing. I have no real training in creative writing, spent three years writing the same story, I make embarrassing spelling and grammatical mistakes all the time, and I’m not even going to school for writing or language. When I started writing erotica, I did it because I loved to create stories, and perhaps because the blunt emotional language of the worlds I create was a fantasy for me, a place where people could be open with their intentions and desires, sexual or non.

Realistically, anyone can want what they want, to write or read, in erotica. I think that my style is a tad on the niche side. Not everyone wants a story with their sex, and less people still want a story with this particular writing style. Popularity has nothing to do with objective goodness in erotica either way. The more popular stuff isn’t necessarily the best. The less popular stuff isn’t necessarily the best either. I know a lot of creators like to cling to the ‘niche’ label and somehow use it to justify being better or having a better writing style than another. The presence of emotional monologues in my stories doesn’t make them inherently better. It just so happens that some readers read it and go, “Oh wow, this is cool” and others read it and go, “Huh. This is… stupid.” Neither one of these readers is ‘correct.’

You ever notice those emotional monologues in my works? Occasionally a character will just spill their guts for half a page and be open, vulnerable, and let you know about them as a character. The other person says very little, and usually no sex happens at these parts. Why do I write those? To be honest, I’m not quite sure myself. As many could guess from reading BMS, I used to be a theater kid, so it’s possible I like the use of monologues from plays, where characters will walk into the spotlight and telegraph emotions to the audience. It’s also possible from growing up that my best memories were what kids these days refer to as ‘life chats,’ where you sit in a car or an empty room or something and just talk for hours on end, gradually getting more open with your emotions as time goes on. I genuinely love blunt, emotional openness, and wish we participated in it more as people. Perhaps my writing is a nudge in that direction to encourage people to be open. Granted, it gets my protagonists into a lot of trouble, but what’s life without a little spice, huh? I’ll talk to you all next week.