I’ve talked once or twice before here about the samey-ness that can creep up on writers, particularly erotica writers. Too often, a character can seem a little too much like another character, or a plotline can seem like it was recycled from a writer’s previous story. Some of this boils down to style, which is hard to shake off, especially once it’s established. That would be why a writer’s second story may seem like a departure from their first, but an erotica writer’s twentieth story seems, very often, like all of their previous stories. Plus, when we hunt for patterns, we find them. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing.

Some online erotica writers write their stories with the same style of dialogue and the same flimsiness of events. For instance, I haven’t been shy in criticizing mypenname3000 before for his cookie-cutter dialogue and paper-thin premise which crumples at the first sign of sex. He does churn out stories with impressive speed and I frankly admire his work ethic and commitment to his craft, but as even he once admitted in a comment I saw, this leads quickly to burnout. I can only imagine the fact that he gets the same types of commissions over and over doesn’t help.

Other erotica writers write what I can only describe as “suspiciously similar” stories. Rawly Rawls, another famous online erotica writer, tends to not just specialize in the mother-son incest dynamic, but seems to almost exclusively write those stories, right down to the same descriptions of events. When reading a story of his, if you took a drink every time a wedding ring sparkled or the mother’s husband was either mind-controlled into numbness or too wimpy to fight back, you’d die of alcohol poisoning before finishing the story. Is that inherently a bad thing? Not if you really enjoy those stories. I happen to not enjoy incest as a starter, so I have read his work more… academically than for its intended usage, and it did make me raise an eyebrow how the shy geeky protagonists always learned to be “better people” by dominating their mothers and watching their fathers get wimpier. A psychologist would have a field day with that kind of material. Nevertheless, if you enjoy writing it and your readers enjoy reading it, what’s the harm?

A lot of my stories also follow a similar kind of protagonist. A lot of my stories tend to feature a shy and/or awkward male protagonist that isn’t great at making the first move and happens to get some sort of seductress to fall into his lap. Adam has Nicole, Quinn has Taylor, and even Aaron from The Good The Bad and the Molly has Holly. I tend to write women making the first move in a lot of my stories, and if I were to psychoanalyze myself, I imagine that would be from my desire to ensure people consent during sex. I’m straight, so the people I look for consent from is women. What’s the easiest way to know they consent? When they make the first move. Pack it up lads, mystery solved.

In Final Answer, I have tried a little to spin this formula on its head. Thanks to an incredibly flexible and patient commissioner, the first story featured very little sex and even featured the first sex interest to reject the male protagonist. More importantly, he asks and she denies. Granted, a moment like that happened in Mutual Benefits too, but under different circumstances and with an immediate reversal. With Final Answer, I got to be a bit… slower, and more deliberate. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Final Answer has become a very hotly anticipated story, especially now that the focus has shifted from Sarah to Rose. Speaking of…

Another very obvious trope of my stories is the First and Second Girl. The story opens with a first love interest (or sex interest) for the male protagonist, but as the story develops, it’s clear the male protagonist has more feelings for the Second Girl. Adam crushes on May but falls for Nicole. Aaron starts out having sex with Holly but truly loves Molly. Quinn tutors Taylor but falls for Morgan. One reader has even argued that it’s “obvious” that Rose and Jason are going to fall in love in Final Answer, which puts me in a bit of a Catch-22. If that happens, the commenter gets to go, “Ugh, see? You’re so predictable.” If it doesn’t, the commenter gets to go, “Ha! You got called out and hastily changed it last-minute!” The good thing is, as much as comments emotionally affect me, I don’t mind people thinking they can change my mind by demanding it, because that rarely works. I have a very strong idea of how Final Answer is going to go, but I got that revelation by staring out the window on a long train ride. Unless the commissioner vetoes it, I already know what the next move is. Maybe it’ll follow the trope, maybe it won’t. You’ll find out.

Interestingly, this trope allows nuance to form. A very interesting comment I got a day or so ago was about how Quinn tends to think with his heart, while Adam thinks with his genitalia. Both still follow the trope, yet the stories play out differently depending on their motivations. I think I really like that interpretation. It allows for individuality and human nature to take over. I’ll be the first to admit: did I write these characters actively thinking of that distinction? Not in the slightest. It was a happy accident. Perhaps that’s another reason not to write consciously thinking of bad habits or tropes. Plus, again, if people like shy and/or nerdy male protagonists crushing on one girl then falling for another, is it bad that I write them over and over? Even if Adam, Quinn and Jason weren’t different people (and I personally think Jason is so different he breaks the trope a bit), would it be a bad habit that I keep writing them? Where’s the line?

I think I have an answer to that. A bit ago, someone in my Discord server noted after I finished Follow the Leader that they would prefer I write more female protagonists in multi-chapter stories. This person is in luck; that’s one of my active commissions at the moment. What’s interesting is that I discovered, in real time, that there is a line for when tropes become bad habits. If the trope is highly specific, and could accidentally belittle a particular mindset or even a group of people, that’s a bad habit. An extreme example in the erotica writing world would be “All Asian women are submissive” or “Haha, fat people want sex too, what losers!” Both of these are harmful, and neither of them are true. More of the Asian women I’ve slept with have been more demanding in bed, in fact, and… fat sex is the best. Fight me.

My discovery came when I realized I was making one of those dangerous specific tropes myself. I was writing the inner monologue of the female protagonist and realized I made her boy-crazy to an obsessive level. I wrote a meet-cute between her and a boy and she started giggling, getting instantly turned on by nothing, and reduced her inner monologue to “boy boy boy.” After I wrote this part, I paused, then realized that I had done that a bit too often for my liking. Nami in The Mystery of Lakeview Mall, Ariel in Where’s the Free Use, most of the girls in The TA and the Tease, and if you expand to “not just boys,” more characters follow. I didn’t like how I could write a lot of different ways men could be attracted to women, but there was a “standard” way women could be attracted to men, and it involved being obsessive. It didn’t seem right.

I’m not saying I dealt feminism a fatal blow and need to chop my hands off. It’s more like, as a non-woman, I found a flaw in my writing strategy. When writing from the POV of a group I can’t possibly empathetically understand, I accidentally started turning a trope into a bad habit. That, to me, provides the answer. Behold: a bad habit. It’s not just a trope anymore. It gets repetitive, it’s more noticeable than other tropes because of how specific it can be, and an uninformed and naive reader reading my stories one after another might conclude that all women are obsessive and a little unhinged when they get a crush on boys. I’m not a fan. So, I rewrote it slightly, and I hope the story improves for it.

Writing is a tricky skill because it’s not ever consistent. There’s rarely such thing as being “as good at writing” as you were two months ago. You might improve at one aspect of writing, and get worse at another. You might get worse by burning yourself out on it. You might get better by taking a break. And you might trap yourself in the bad habit of writing the same thing over and over, and missing out on where else the wonderful world of writing can take you. I’ll talk to you all next week.

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