Chapter Six of Final Answer has been released! I hope you all enjoy it, and enjoy the direction of the story. I’m already working on the next chapter, as well as other pieces. Dinner Break should be coming out quite soon.

In order to get a grasp on what people like, I try to read the latest popular online sex stories frequently. Even though the quality on a lot may be… questionable, and even though it’s not often the same type of story I write (for example, a flash-in-the-pan one-off stroke story with quick clear action and very little preamble), it’s insightful. It’s easy to tell a lot about which sex stories are the most popular. It tells me what fetishes are more popular at the moment, what dynamics people like, and more importantly, what’s absent tells me what people don’t like as well.

I’m not vain; I don’t think my stories don’t have mainstream appeal because people just don’t want actually well-written stories or some kind of coping excuse I tell myself. Truth be told, while I know I can write dialogue well and have a mind for keeping track of multiple characters’ conflicting motivations, I’m not convinced I’m actually a good writer. I think I serve my niche well, but that’s about all. A lot of erotica writers have their niche, to the extent where if you read one story of theirs, you’ve read most of them. I don’t think I’m excepted from this rule. I think my stories don’t have mainstream appeal because they’re slow and a tad too wink-at-the-audience, to the level of… what I can only describe as shameful.

This might be why Being More Social was my most popular story: when I was – dear God – a decade younger, I was a lot less experienced with writing, and I was eager to get cheesy and use tropes. To my younger mind they were more fresh and novel, and now I think I have this subconscious pride that prevents me from getting too trope-y. I keep having this instinct to not make things unintentionally goofy, and so I don’t employ coincidences and big stupidly important events enough. On a whole, I think this is a mistake.

Don’t get me wrong, going too far in the other direction is also a mistake. A clear calling card of the amateur high school story writer that wants instant drama is to have a school shooting scene out of nowhere or something. These events often become the writer transparently pleading for the reader to think this is the most dramatic interesting thing ever. A lot of writers confuse “development” for “big events” and so, chapter after chapter, big events happen and each chapter becomes this flavor-of-the-week of huge coincidental events. Not by accident, one of my writing mantras has become, “Coincidences happen, but they mustn’t happen too often.”

I’m at the other end of the spectrum though. One of the reasons I’ve realized I enjoy Final Answer is because it’s following a school club that has planned events, and events both freshen up the story and also give a main character (and therefore also a reader) something to look forward to. If I look back through my other chapters I wouldn’t say that I haven’t included events, but… I think I haven’t given them the fanfare and internal monologue hype that they deserve.

I think every writer gets stuck in a whirlpool of sameyness, and it’s their own responsibility to pull themselves out. The most versatile writers do this all the time, and any authors you think of that write the same story over and over are bad at it. I think I’m… lower to average? I can occasionally crank out a story that breaks from my usual style, but the same pacing and overall feeling is there. I’d love to write new stories, and if any of you think “Bashful always does this, I’d love to see a story where this doesn’t happen,” don’t feel bad about telling me! Heck, I’d love to hear it, whether it be here or via Discord or email or something.

In the meantime, one resolution I’m adopting is to give big events and desire for them within characters more weight. I’ll see how that manifests. I’ll talk to you all next week.

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