Friday, May 9, 2014

Writing Better Femdom Fiction- 5

Lesson 5: Show the first time, skip the second time.

(Or, the “Yawn, another sex scene?” syndrome)


Everyone's first time is special. The first time you're handcuffed and stripped nude by a smirking female cop, each piece of clothing coming off feels like an event worth writing home about. The first time a wife makes her trembling naked husband bend over her lap for a “corrective spanking”, every little bit of preparation by her is worth focusing on, since each bit is a delicious point of escalation.

The problem comes when femdom authors treat their second time just like their first. The first sex scene in which a wife carefully convinces her husband to take her strap-on is written in great detail with hot dialog over 2 pages. Fine.

But a page later, the next strap-on scene happens, and the same interaction occurs: he's reluctant, she convinces him and ultimately fucks him. And it takes 2 pages again. Hmmm.

And a page later, it happens again. It still should be just sexy, right? After all, it's a man being taken by a strap-on! Up his pooper! So humiliating, right? But if this scene takes two pages again without any escalating element, you'll find your readers doing something that's the death knell for all erotic stories: skipping the sex scenes.

We've talked about the necessity to escalate before, in overall plot, and even inside individual scenes. But this principle supercharges that one to make your stories really tight. If your first sex scene takes 2 pages, and the next one escalates to take 3 pages, and then the next one takes 4 pages, even if you escalate at Michael Bay levels, you'll still have readers skipping ahead.

Consider werewolf movies. (No, not the sparkly vampire kind. An actual, fur-shredding, limb-ripping werewolf movie.) The first time a man transforms to a wolf, we see everything. His shirt tearing off before he changes. His nose lengthening into a snout. His arms growing fur all over them. His hands, turning into long claws. Every little detail is shown to the camera, because this is what the audience came for.

But in good werewolf movies, the second time the man changes, it takes half as long as the first time. Maybe the third time, all we see is a moon-cast shadow projected on a wall, changing quickly from man to wolf. And the fourth time, we don't even need to see it. In one scene, the man is running, ripping off his shirt. Smash cut to black, and in the next scene the wolf is chasing someone down in the forest.

This skimping on “what the audience is paying to see” isn't done solely to save special effects budget. (Although that's the genesis of it.) It's done because good directors (and femdom authors) know that the first time something happens it's cool. The second time it's a little duller, and the third time, outright boring. And you never want the audience to get bored with the whole reason you're making the thing in the first place!

Whatever your main sex act is, face sitting, toe sucking, pegging, stripping, whatever, you want to ration out its use, just like you had a limited special effects budget. You want every sex scene to have punch, you want every interaction to sizzle. And you get that by not repeating yourself.

If you're writing about a college boy home for summer, whose sister learns his horrible secret that he likes to wear her panties and then she takes a whole weekend (and a chapter) to force/blackmail/entice him into dressing up in his frilly feminine best, where does the second chapter start?

If you want to bore your reader, it starts with her enticing him again, having to shave his legs again, convincing him to wear panties again, assuring that no one will know his secret again. If you want your story to move, chapter two starts off with him already in panties, pigtails and blushing, sitting on her makeup bench while she's planning the next step: piercing his ears at the mall!

Look at this week's reading, Cocksitter's Club #3. It starts off with Robert already nude and tied to the bed. Remember how long tying him down in Chapter 1 took? Remember all his emotions and feelings as she secured each of his limbs? Gone. Skipped.

I hardly even mention the central act of any chastity story any more: the taking off and putting on of the cage. Unless something changes, unless Lori has some great line to deliver as she does it, I gloss over his lockings. Gone. Skipped.

I've already built that foundation, now I can step up from there and focus on new things, which will be cooler because they're new. His shaving. The call from Martha. Derrick and Lori fucking for the first time in his house. (Skipped a lot of that set-up too. We don't even hear from Derrick this time.) Having to convince a new girl Celeste to let him cum. (Skipped ALL of that set up. He was nude, uncaged and hard almost before that scene even started!)

That's why the story moves. It's a subtle difference from pure escalation and something I see wrong time and time again in Literotica stories: chapter 1 starts off super hot, but then I skip all the sex scenes in chapters 2, 3 and 4, because they're just repeats of chapter 1's action.

This rule, however, has one caveat:

Show the first time, skip the second time. Unless something changes.

 


The very last battle of a werewolf movie, we slow down and see the long, full transformation again. Every detail. Because there's something different about it. Maybe's he's been poisoned by silver, and there's a little question of if he'll be able to transform. Maybe the moon isn't out yet, and it takes an incredible act of will to do change. Maybe his young honey is watching for the first time, and we see the shock in her face, as her man disappears into the beast bit by bit.

So skip the second time, unless you have something big change. What should change? That's what makes your story special. That's for you to decide.

(For more examples, read my free short story The Sissy Sort. I don't think I have the same thing happen to the main character twice, there is SO much skipped over between the scenes, yet I think it's still the 2nd best story I've written, just because it's so tight and lean while still being hot. And notice how many choices the main character has, even though he is essentially powerless the whole time.)

So, students of my class (those noble few of you that are left), here is your assignment: if the following three scenes were each chapter 1 of your story, where could you start the scene in chapter 2 to make the story move? Post your answers in the comments!

Exercise 1:

Shy guy signs up for art class posing job. Starts off in trunks, then is pushed into speedos, and finally, after the teacher raises his pay, hints at sexual favors to be bestowed on the virgin if he agrees, and subtly threatens to complain to his strict mother that he is being uncooperative, gets him to strip fully nude for the giggling, but well-behaved, female class. Where could the next CFNM scene start?

Exercise 2:

Surprise non-femdom scenario!
Man and woman meet on an overnight train. Flirtation, drinks and raw attraction lead to a night of great sex. Every detail of their stripping each other gets a sentence. Each first kiss of a body part gets its own paragraph. And when they simultaneously climax in heart-stopping passion, that gets its own page.

The next morning... how do you write the second sex scene so that it doesn't get skipped by readers?

Exercise 3:

Wife and cuckhold husband have elaborate ritual when she goes out on the town on Friday nights. He helps her shower, helps her choose a sexy clubbing outfit while he is nude and hard, she locks him in a chastity cage and then a real cage at the foot of their bed. The first chapter ends with her bringing home a lucky man and her husband having to watch from inside his cages.

The very next Friday, the second scene could start at...


End of exercise.

Hope this helped,
P. F. Dee

3 comments:

  1. Exercise 1:

    The shy guy and his strict mother - perhaps her getting him to explain what he has been doing and why he is resistant to getting naked.

    Exercise 2:

    Something kinky! perhaps one of them awakes to find themselves tied to the bed and the other one standing over them?

    Exercise 3:

    her telling him to go and get her a lover perhaps from the same club while she waits for him to return with the "goods"

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  2. Ms. Donna,
    Your answer #2 was spot on- waking up tied to the bed is a good start for the second sex scene!

    On answer #1, I was sort of hoping folks would jump to the second session and have him already naked in front of the class. The scene you describe is more of a connecting scene between sex scenes, I think, but I'd have to see it fleshed out to be sure.

    Your answer #3 is okay. It takes the story in a different focus, but I may have made a badly formed question. To skip the second time, one could have skipped all the set up (bath, dressing, cage) and have the wife, ready to go out, confident and dressed, then she gives her husband some small choice to make while she's out. But I could see your idea working, if the "thing that's changed" is the wife sends him out to convince the stud instead. Could work.

    Did you feel the lesson and exercises were clear, or should I change them for next go around?

    You may be the only student who gets their diploma from this class!

    Thanks,
    P.F. Dee

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Seems clear to me

      I think my style, and aim is different to yours - for me I want to write the woman's perspective - so your tips are very useful but my themes are likely to be different?

      A good course - I plan to finish but time pressures!

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