On Art and Practice (Motivational)

 I don't usually do posts like this, but I think it might help some people out, especially as the New Years' comes close. 

I had always wanted to learn how to draw, ever since I was a kid.  But I never had time.  

Then, suddenly during the pandemic, I had time.  

I started doodling and taking classes and a close friend requested erotic futa art, because she couldn't find any online she really liked.  So after a LOT of training and work and revising, at the start of 2022, I gave my friend this:

Yep, I actually looked at THAT skeletal, badly drawn abomination and said "Good Enough" and shipped it!  (I didn't even realize I had put the wrong YEAR on the caption, 2021, not 2022!  I just double-checked my emails to confirm, it was sent Jan 1st 2022.)

If you squint past the horrible proprotions and clumsy shading and BAD composition, you can SORT OF see a story going on there (futa girl is proposing to straight girl on this romantic cliff face overlooking a beach- I even drew a horrible RING), but that frankly embarassing picture was only ONE YEAR away from me being able to do something like THIS (click to make larger):

 

I mean, ohmygod- the characters are actually THREE dimenional now, with SHADOWS and everything!  And the smooth lines, the dramatic posing- even the 'story' is so much clearer!

But my point is, if I had looked at that FIRST picture with ANY sort of critical eye, I would have thrown down my pencils and NEVER drawn again. Which meant I would have NEVER gotten to that second picture a year later, which I'm decently proud of.  

And my gut says there are a LOT of people out there right now at the level of that first picture, whether it is with their drawn art or their erotic writing, frustrated or despairing that the clunky broken result on the page doesn't look at ALL like the beautiful, flawless, stirring, image they had in their head.  And they want to give up!  

So I decided to show you all the frankly embarassing first attempt at 'art' I made, to hopefully give folks an idea of what type of improvement is possible in just ONE year of steady practice.  How much better will YOUR art look one year from now?   

How about TWO?  

THREE?

(Ohmygod even the FACES in that first picture still make me cringe- but how good will my faces look NEXT year?)

You really have no concept of how GOOD you're going to be if you just keep practicing- I certainly didn't, and I sometimes feel like a pretty smart cookie with a good bead on things- so don't stop!  I was doing a sort of 'year in review' of my sketchbooks and came across that first disaster, and I was so shocked (and embarassed!) by how FAR I had come in just one year, I figured SOMEONE out there might be motivated to keep putting in the daily work, if they saw that improvement too!  So keep going, no matter WHERE on the curve you are!

That's the end of the purely motivational speech- the rest of the below is only for the digital drawing artists who want to know exactly WHAT I did in those 12 months to improve- if that's not you, thanks for reading this self-indulgent post, and have a Happy New Year!

***

Okay, so you're a digital artist who wants to make hot chastity or CFNM or ball-busting or futa art or maybe just draw HOT women in your spare time, what's the FASTEST way to improve?  Here's what I did:

1. The simplest, most basic, and FASTEST way to learn how to draw hot women I've found is this $37 course by former Disney artist Paris Christou: 

https://toonboxstudio.com/p/how-to-draw-cherry

His video lessons are short and fast, and Paris gives you the SIMPLEST way to draw decent heads and eyes and hands and nice body shapes- he was an animator so I find his teachings are the most EFFICENT path to make a lot of slim, elegant women.  (Animators have to make HUNDREDS of stills to make just 1 minute of animation, so Paris doesn't do ANY wasted work!)

It was Disney, so your results will look a lot like PG Disney princesses, but with a little imagination you can make it PG-13.  And Disney Princesses are already long-legged, elegant, with big cute eyes, and his way of drawing HANDS is the most rock-solid I've seen.  A great way to start if you know NOTHING about drawing women.

2. If you want to graduate from PG/PG-13 to R-rated women, my best recommendation is Alvaro Munoz's $10 "How to Draw Women" book here: https://coaxdreams.artstation.com/store/816V/learn-to-draw-women-capturing-the-female-form

(I'm not getting paid by any of these, by the way.  In fact it's the opposite, I paid THEM for their products to learn and get better in 2022!)

Munoz is a master of drawing CURVY alluring women, and it's from his book I first learned the idea of drawing women's butts as SQUISHY water balloons, instead of hard, solid bowling balls, which makes them a lot sexier (boobs too!).  You can see the butt squishing around the boy's arm on the girl here, that idea I got DIRECTLY from Munoz: 

Munoz is behind the great 'coaxdreams' deviant art page, if you want to get a sense of his work look here: https://www.deviantart.com/coaxdreams

His book has a lot of great high-level tips on how to make your drawn women more alluring and sexy, but it's definitely not Disney, and definitely not for beginners (not a lot on how to use basic fundamental shapes to make ribs or legs or heads, for example.  Go to Paris Christou for that!)

3.  Those were the things I PAID for, here are two great FREE Youtube channels I also learned a lot from:

If you want FUNDAMENTAL line drawing concepts delivered VERY well, I recommend "Draw Like A Sir", starting with a video like this: https://youtu.be/9m4Hf_6U4Rc

If you want DIGITAL shading concepts from a working Blizzard character artist, I recommend Marc Brunet, like this one of his about shading: https://youtu.be/_p7p4g58l9Q

I use Draw Like a Sir to learn line work (pencils, inks, digital line art), and Marc Brunet for colors and digital shading.  Marc's a little sillier than Sir, but always seems to draw hot elfish women holding swords, so the implications are obvious.  

Besides that, if you're specifally into BALL-BUSTING art, one of my big inspirations is 'madtomy' on DeviantArt- one of my things to try and learn in 2023 is how madtomy gets that 'action blurry' look, here is one of my favorites: https://www.deviantart.com/madtomyart/art/Pinup-kneekick-921405246

Here's one with that good 'motion blur' I talked about: https://www.deviantart.com/madtomyart/art/Ballbusting-stories-preview1-908288513

Maybe by the end of 2023, I can do action BB scenes 1% as well as madtomy does!

Those are the biggest ways I've learned in 2022.   Just one more thing to mention:

4. Pin-ups are about a STORY.  

I see a LOT of great art around (especially commissioned work) where the whole message is "Hot girl stands around".  Like, lots of great linework, very cool shading, good pose, good proportions, sexy image, but it's nothing BUT an image of a hot girl sitting or standing.  

You'll see this a lot in OLDER 'pin-ups' too, where the whole point was "Hot girl at beach."

To ME (everyone is different) 'pin-up' art specifically has to tell a STORY, and a story means the reader understands: 

A. Here is what was SUPPOSED to happen

B. Here is what DID happen

There's a BEFORE and AFTER, a SET-UP and PAY-OFF implied by only the IMAGES on screen, that I find missing from a lot of modern 'pin-up' work.  Think about which is hotter: 

-A hot naked girl

-A hot naked girl having SEX

-A hot naked girl having sex with a muscular LARGE dicked man

-A hot naked girl having sex with a muscular large dicked man while her HUSBAND walks in, with flowers and chocolates in hand and a shocked look on his face but an obvious SUDDEN erection in his pants (or whatever story you're trying to tell)

Right?  In the last idea, there's a SET-UP and PAYOFF, which the first idea doesn't have, no matter HOW well drawn.

And I think a pin-up story should be obvious at a GLANCE, like I tried in that Santa piece: 

Right?  Maybe the Futa was rushing naked out of bed to deliver milk and cookies she had forgotten to put out, but the female Santa decided she wanted something ELSE instead- (or whatever story you want to tell yourself!)

But there's a BEFORE and AFTER, and really what makes it obvious is the falling plate of milk and cookies- such a small detail!  (And not techincally 'sexy'.)  I don't do it perfectly, I'm still learning, but that's what I feel is missing from a lot of modern pin-up art, so I wanted to make a special point about including such details.  

You're going to think I'm weird, but the absolute MASTER of this was... Norman Rockwell.  I won't link to any of his images here (copyrighted and a lot of them feature children and WAY too wholesome to include on this smutty smutty blog), but if you want to see the BEST IN THE WORLD at telling a story without using ANY words, google Norman Rockwell's magazine covers.  

Even if your artwork is VERY early on, you can make your pictures 10,000% more interesting to readers by including some Norman Rockwell touches to your composition- highly recommended!  

You can also look at some of Art Frahm's old work, some of them have a story going on, like this girl suddenly losing her panties: https://www.etsy.com/listing/800480320/vintage-pin-up-girl-art-frahm-2382

Frahm's work is hard to find, he's long gone, and there's MUCH more written about Rockwell's process, and Rockwell's story-telling is a lot better anyway.  

I hope all that helped, if there's any specific topic you erotic artists want to learn about, (I could do a whole blog post on JUST how to draw perfect nipples every time) or if you want some gentle pin-up art critique, always feel free to email me, at pfdee@comcast.net!

Happy New Year, and looking forward to seeing how YOU have improved in the next 12 months!

A New Femdom Author is Born! (Chastity, father/daughter, link to another's work!)

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A Missed Connection- Please Try Sending Your Story Again!

One of my long-standing offers is that any budding femdom author can email me for feedback on their short story, or tips on how to make a scene hotter, or how to self-publish to Amazon or Smashwords, etc.  Over the years, maybe 2-3 people have taken advantage of this, which is fine. 

But recently, someone tried to email their story to me, and when I tried to respond, their email address didn't work anymore!  It totally, like, couldn't accept incoming messages at all!

So ba****@b**************.com, if you're out there, try sending me your 12,004 word story for review again!  This time let's use my NEW email address, pfdeee@gmail.com (the extra 'e' is for 'erotic') and see if that works!  And check to see if you can accept incoming emails, to be able to get my review back!

And this offer stands for any other new femdom authors out there too- as long as your story doesn't contain any illegal stuff (underage characters, snuff, etc.) and you wanted some feedback on if scenes work, or how to make it hotter, feel free to email me, and I'll try to help, no matter how out there it is!

Stay frosty,
PFD

What it takes to write great femdom fiction

So I just posted a simple little CFNM/gynocracy story on this site called "Adjusting", and I thought aspiring writers might want to get a peek behind the curtain of what it takes to write something like that.

"Adjusting" clocks in at just under 6,000 words, making it a short story for me but a Lord-of-the-Rings length epic novel for most online e-book resellers.

So how long do you think I spent writing it? 

I hope it seemed simple and effortless, because that's what I was going for, but in reality, I've been working on different drafts of "Adjusting" for 3 months now:

That's TWELVE drafts from 6/25 to 9/26, or exactly 3 months.  Now, I wasn't working full time on the story, every day.  I definitely took big breaks.  But each of those drafts were full of big changes.

I had drafts where Brad didn't get stroked at all until the last third.   I had drafts where Elle made him cum, drafts where he made himself cum.  That tickling section I took out and put back in like three times.  (And I'm still not sure it doesn't bog down the flow of a simple story.)

But most of all, I wanted things to just FLOW.  Most of what I was polishing between each draft came down to making sure each sentence led effortlessly into the next for the reader.  So things just moved.

Compare "Adjusting" to a normal Literotica story that starts off with 5 paragraphs of "Peternia was an island that was made women-run in the Great Revolution of 2021 and here laid out are its entire social structure and political aims..."

Or a story that has recurring paragraphs of "Brad knew Elle didn't want him to cover his junk but he also knew he really loved showing his penis off to Brittany but he also knew that he was smaller than average but he also also knew that really turned him on..."

So I tried to get rid of flow-breaking exposition and do everything in the moment.  To make it feel like a visceral roller coaster, with tight turns and sudden drops.  That's what I think makes a great short story.  You guys will have to tell me if it worked.

 Where did the story idea come from?

A lot of erotic readers comment "You should do a story about a gynocracy!" or "A world where men are kept naked and horny ALL the time!"  And I totally, 100% appreciate the effort and intent of reader comments- they're half of what keep me writing!  But those aren't enough to start a story.

There's no tension, no frisson in that type of comment or story seed.  So why did I write "Adjusting"?  Simple:  It was Brittany's line:  "So?  How are you guys adjusting?  With all the changes?"

Imagining two smug women having a drink and casually laughing about one of them moving to an island where the other's mate suddenly can't wear any clothes was SUCH an image- I could just HEAR the giggle in Brittany's voice when she asked that- I had to write this story.

That was the seed, the genesis of the whole story, and everything, down to the tone of the piece and even the ending, followed from that.   After 3 months of work.

Does it follow my rules for femdom writing?

I made my 8 rules of Femdom Writing for a reason- mainly to give me a way to describe good femdom writing to others, but also to remind myself.

In "Adjusting", there are four main escalations to the action:

1. Brad comes out naked and is exposed to Brittany for the first time
2. Brad gets stroked by Elle
3. Brad gets stroked by Brittany
4. Brad is made to cum loudly and explosively

So with those four pillars in place, all I had to do was string "supporting text" between them and I had a story.  If you really want to become a better femdom writer, see if you can go back to the story and spot the difference between a pillar and a supporting cable in the text.  (Hint: the cables are all typically Brad's reactions to things or fallout from what just happened.)

This follows my Rule of Escalation.

Look at the end- Brittany HAS to end with the Promise of More.  If she had just said "Cool, we'll never do that again." that would have been such a let-down.  This is why the last rule exists. 

We don't feel things unless Brad feels them, Dialogue being Hard but Hot, etc etc, I think I did a pretty good job at following the rules this time.

Is this helping any?  I hope it's helping.  Anyway, I don't talk about this stuff to toot my own horn (toot-toot) but truly, to improve the level of femdom/erotic writing I come across out there.

Because if 10, 100, 1000 of you all start writing hot femdom/CFNM/SPH/denial/humiliation stories I can get lost in, I can finally retire!

Stay frosty my friends,
P.F. Dee

Announcing the World's Biggest Fan-Written SPH Anthology Contest!

I'm thrilled to announce submissions are now OPEN for the first ever P.F. Dee-sponsored, fan-written, Small Penis Humiliation (SPH) anthology contest!

The rules are:

1.  All submissions must feature small penis humiliation as an element.  How much of an element this plays in the story is up to you, but you know how I love me some humiliation, and I'm the only judge in this contest!

2. All submissions must be in by November 30th, 2016.  The earlier you send them, the greater chance they will make the anthology, since I will have to edit them before publication.  Which reminds me...

3. All stories will be edited by P.F. Dee before publication.  This is probably the biggest benefit of entering this anthology contest for new authors, to be professionally edited with FULL feedback given on your story, and why an editor might make the changes I did.  All edits will be run past the author via email, with final approval on edits to me, but final approval to publish resting with the author.

Basically that means I'm going to make the edits I see fit to make the story as hot as possible in my eyes, but the author gets to decide if that edited story, after they see my draft, gets published or not.  I'll try to respect the original vision of the author as much as possible, and I'm sure some of us will go back and forth on email a lot, but I've got a pretty clear vision on how fast and fun I want this anthology to be.

Don't worry, I'll work with you to make it great.

4. All authors will get an after-story page to take credit for their work and share links to find their other work.  While the overall book will say "Edited by P.F. Dee." every accepted author will get a page after their story saying "This author believes in this and that, and more of their stories can be found at this link...." 

The main purpose of this anthology is to give some new femdom authors some exposure (tee-hee) to my audience, and vice versa.  So plan that author paragraph and submit it with your work!

5. The final e-book will published on P.F. Dee's Smashwords site, and the price will always be free.  I'm not making money off of this; the point is to expose new SPH authors to my audience (and the world)!

6. All stories must follow the usual erotic fiction rules: no characters under 18, even in flashbacks or 'fantasy' realms.  Yeah yeah, I know.  It's a Smashwords rule, not mine. 

7. And finally... every single story MUST start with the line "I always knew I had a small penis..." Yep, every accepted story will need to have that as its first line.  You can take it where ever you want to go from there.  But I want to see all the interesting stories that branch out from that common point, and I think it will give the overall anthology some cohesion.

Those are all the hard and fast rules.  Folks that want to win this zero-dollar contest and get into the book would do well to keep in mind my 8 rules of femdom fiction, handily summarized in this infographic here.  It's one of the main criteria I'm going to use to judge the entries!


So that's it.  I've never tried this before, I don't know if anyone will respond, and I don't know how long this editing process will take.  But as noted SPH enthusiast Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "Do not go where the path may lead.  Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." 

Submit all entries by November 30th to: pfdee@comcast.net.

And have fun!

I'm on Literotica! (And what other erotic writers can expect when they submit to Literotica)

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Writing Basics: When should I end a scene?

So as I'm diligently working on the next chapter of Sex Powers University, I'm helping a few other femdom authors sharpen their work with edits or writing tips.

(Didn't know that you could send me your femdom fiction and get detailed critiques of how you might improve?  You can- I'll reply to anyone that sends me a femdom story at pfdee@comcast.net!  All I ask is that you specifically state what you want critiques on (dialog, flow, is this hot?, plot, pacing, etc.) and be open to comments.  You can send a first draft, but you'll get more out of it if you send your second.)

And recently someone asked this awesome question: "I don't have a feel for 'flow' when writing. When is it appropriate to add breaks? A longer story with multiple scenes?"

This question looks simple but has a profound impact on the pace of your story.  Some people break scenes too often.  Some, not enough.  If any of you have ever found yourself doubting yourself or looking for rules on when to end a scene, read on.

In my philosophy, there are only three sections of any scene: The Ramp Up, the Linger, and the Ramp Down.  (Picture it like a line graph.)

In the Ramp Up, you want to establish quickly and clearly what the Goal of the scene is.  Timmy is nude in his sister's room and needs to escape without being caught!  Jeff needs to convince his secretary to not tell all the other office girls about his tiny penis!  Whatever.  But establish it fast, along with some Goalpost, some way to measure progress towards or away from that Goal.

In the first example, Timmy's proximity to his room and the noise from his unaware sister's slumber party downstairs are two ways for us to tell how well things are going in his plan to get his naked butt safely back to his room.  The Goal comes first, then the Goalpost so we, the reader, are given clues (and can anticipate!) progress towards meeting that goal.  

Some methods also call this The Dramatic Question.  WILL a nude Timmy trapped in his sister's room be able to make it back to his room without being caught?  However you want to look at it, establish Goal and Goalpost early, steadily increasing reader excitement as this section goes.  Hence the term, Ramp Up.  

Once established, now the scene can Linger.  This should take up the most words in your scene- it's the entire reason you're writing it after all!  Let the main (submissive) character twist in the wind, let him/her have a success, a success and then failure.  

Timmy opens his sisters door and doesn't see any one.  (Success!)

He creeps down the hall, heart pounding, little dick hard, and almost knocks over the lamp on the hall table but catches it before it crashes to the ground!  (Success!)

But then he steps on the creaky board in the floor and the girls in the slumber party downstairs stop talking for a minute!  (A small failure.)  

Nah, that's pretty lame failure.  How about:

Holding the caught lamp, Timmy looks up to see his sister's best friend is at the top of the stairs, her mouth wide open in shock as she looks at him!  (That's better.)

Again, the Linger bit should take the most space inside your scene. This is where you take time to wallow in the situation that made you want to write the scene in the first place, where you throw in all that hot, teasing dialogue from your dominant female hurricanes that make you tingle when you think about it. You've done the set-up work, enjoy the rewards.
.

(Suzie's slowly pads towards a deer-in-the-headlights Timmy and giggles "And what are YOU doing up here, nudie boy?  And why is your little thingy SO hard?")

And remember, going from the Ramp Up to Linger, we STILL haven't had any breaks in the scene.  We haven't thrown in a  "***" and a few lines of white space.  It's still one continuous scene, and I'm getting to the rules on when to end it.  

Finally, after the scene's big Dramatic Question has been answered (Will nude Timmy make it back to his room safely?  Nope, Suzie just caught him.) then you need to Ramp Down.  This is a section letting down reader interest in the original goal and tying up any loose ends.  You don't necessarily have to slow the pace, just unwind and disconnect from the current goal.  (Because the next scene will have its own, different, Goal and Goalpost). 

(Suzie takes the lamp out of Timmy's shaking hands, sets it back on the hall table, and grabs his hard little cock instead.  "Come on, nudie boy- let's go show ALL the girls downstairs the naughty little fish I just caught!")

In this case, the lamp was a loose end.  You can't start a new scene without telling readers what happened to that lamp!  (I'm sort of kidding, but not really.  Imagine if the scene broke right after Suzie saw him, and the next scene started with Timmy in the middle of all his sister's friends, nude.  That would feel a little jarring, right?)  

So at the simplest level, that's how I measure a scene's flow: Ramp Up, Linger, Ramp Down.  You identify which section you are in and see if the action and paragraph pace is appropriate for it.  

So when do you break a scene?  My way is unconventional, but I say break it whenever you want to switch from one Goal to another.  Some people say only break when there is a break in time ("5 days later...") but I say it's better when there's a break in Goals.  

In our second example, Jeff's first goal is to convince his secretary not to tell anyone about his really small penis, that she saw when he accidentally emailed his nude pictures to her instead of his mistress!  He tries to bribe, then threaten her, and that backfires (big failure).   She gets out of her chair and starts heading towards the secretaries room with her smart phone in her hand and a BIG smile on her face.  His new goal is to convince her not to tell the other secretaries about his tiny penis RIGHT NOW!

Even though those two scenes take place with absolutely no time between them, I would throw a *** between his secretary getting out of her chair with a smile on her face and Jeff begging her not to show the pictures to all the girls in the break room as they go down the hall.  

This works because we are switching between one Goal and another.  Breaking there lets you have a new Ramp Up as they get closer and closer to the secretaries' break room (Goalpost), and that increasing tension draws the reader forward. Constant, high tension gets exhausting.  You need changes in tension, acceleration and deceleration, and ramping up and down over short ranges like a sports car is much more exciting than no scene breaks in a chapter at all, which is like accelerating a loaded cruise ship. 

So that's today's writing tip: if you're stuck or doubting your scene breaks, plot each scene as a Ramp Up, Linger, and Ramp Down.  And then break the scene after the Goal set up in the Ramp Up gets resolved in the Ramp Down.  

Hope that helps!

P. F. Dee

How much money does a self-published erotic (femdom) author make?

This is a question I get every now and then.  Now, I'm not the Stephen King of Femdom fiction or anything (Stephanie Queen?) but I'm farther along than someone who's never published for money before, and since the numbers are in for 2015, I thought sharing this data might help some first timers out.

I'm going to part the kimono and show you all my sales numbers, what prices I've charged and why, and go over some other self-publishing tips, hopefully convincing some of you potential authors to get in on the fun!

I mainly self publish on Smashwords.com.  I've got some of my books on Amazon too, but even though the potential audience is a million times bigger on the Big A, my Smashwords books outsell them 100x.  Don't know why.  But Smashwords does seem a more welcoming gathering place for all sorts of erotica.

One nice thing about Smashwords is the sales reporting, which they report instantly and pay after each quarter of a year.  Here are my numbers for the four quarters of 2015:

A couple of interesting things stand out.  First, there are two high quarters and two low quarters, and they correlate to when I release my books.

Sex Powers University #2 was released on February 14th, and its sales gave a bump to the Q2 payment (the Q1 sales), of  $459.86.  My Sister Forced Me Into CFNM was published June 29th, and it gave a bump to the Q4 earnings (Q3 sales), of $444.87.

(Even though 'My Sister' was published before the 7-16 cutoff date of the Q3 earnings, most of the sales happened after that, rolling into the Q4 earnings.  The CockSitter's Club #1, published Dec 26th 2015, will show up in early 2016's earnings.)

So that's one data point: each new book I publish causes a spike of about $200-250 in the next quarter's earnings.  But much more importantly, in quarters where I DON'T publish any new books, I still have sales of around $200, from new readers just finding my old works!

This 'long tail' is what tips self-publishing from 'not worth it' to 'worth it', if you can produce quality.  It's totally worth it to spend 3 months of nights and weekends making an awesome ebook, going over draft after draft even when you don't want to, making it more and more polished, if it will make you $50 every three months for the rest of your life.

(The 'long tail' is a business idea that, since electronic products cost almost nothing to stock, the real value comes not from the initial burst of sales, which a lot of authors stress over, but from the next 10 years of slow, trickle-in sales.  My ebooks on Smashwords may very well sell tiny numbers for the next 100 years, long after my death.  It doesn't cost me anything, it doesn't cost Smashwords anything, and if people still get joy from it, why not?)

But what does it take to create that long, somewhat dependable stream of revenue?  

1. A LOT of titles. 

I've got 11 ebooks on sale at Smashworks right now, so many that I can't fit my entire Smashwords dashboard into one screenshot:

(And there's more!)

Back a few years ago, when I only had 4-5 titles, my dependable quarterly revenue was about $75-100.  If some reader suddenly finds you, and loves you, the process of them slowly buying your books in sequence is what causes that 'long tail'.

2. Quality Work

There is a LOT of free femdom fiction out there.  Some of it is okay (and inspires me!) but a LOT of it is worth exactly what you pay for it: free.

I've always felt that, if you're paying for a book, it should be much, much better than all those free stories out there.  What do I mean?

Well, finish the story by paying off those character arcs!  If the main character starts the story with a problem, have them grow and learn something by the end!  (See The Cocksitter's Club #1, or The Sissy Sort #1 for when I did this.)

Take the time to actually write out the dialogue scenes, don't just 'plot summary' over the best parts!  (i.e, "The hot girls kept the boys nude all day, teasing them about their needy, erect penises constantly, in ways that would totally be super hot to hear and are the whole point of the story if I wasn't too lazy to write out an example of them right now...")

We've talked before about why Dialogue is hard, but hot.  It's the soul of your characters, and many free stories skimp on it, because they're not being paid by the word.  But you are.  

Let's talk about prices.

My general rule has been, charge about $0.99 per 10,000 words.  Sometimes I go higher, sometimes lower, but that's what I shoot for.  I believe ebooks should always cost less than a paperback book.  Paperbacks of 100,000 word sci-fi novels (my other vice) go for about $7-10 at Barnes and Noble.  So that's why I shoot for the 30,000 word, $3.99 range.

Also, that seems to be about the length where I can stretch out and really explore the idea without losing tension or beating the premise into a dead horse. Your mileage may vary, but that's what I'd shoot for if I was a new author. 

Finally, let's talk about FREE.

I believe that the first book in a series should be free.  Not right away, but when the second book in a series comes out.  Why?  Because there is a LOT of bad erotic fiction out there.  Readers have to trust you to spend money on yours. 

And if you want to earn a reader's trust, first give them trust.  Give them that free ebook.  If you're as good as you think you are, they'll buy more.  Check out the sales of my first book ever, "Gods at Eighteen #1: Kylie's story":

 Yep, all of 40 people bought it when I was charging money.  But after I made it free, 2691 people downloaded it!  (Probably less, since for some reason folks download these books 2-3 times).

But still, that's about 1,000 readers who tried my work, because it was free!  My best selling book, BTW, is the one right after that, "Gods At Eighteen #2: the Drake Cheerleaders Incident,":

So maybe 1,000 people downloaded the first free book in the series, and then I sold 163 copies of my second.  That's a better deal than any advertising, marketing, or "social media"  I could ever pay for.  It pays to make your first book free.  Do it. 

(Not saying I don't want fans to talk on forums about me or do social media marketing if they feel like it.  I'm just saying the kinds of social media marketing I could PAY for are dwarfed by the return on investment of making my first book free.)

But how much does it COST to be a self-published erotic author?

Time, mostly.  A 30,000 word ebook takes me about 3 months of nights and weekends to write, edit, edit, format, edit and edit again, if I'm doing anything else in life.  Maybe one month if I focus only on the work.

That's the only cost, your time really.  Smashwords and Amazon are free to list on, and covers are pretty cheap. 

I don't believe starting femdom authors need to pay someone to design their covers.  Just go to www.shutterstock.com and put in a search for 'sexy' and 'isolated'.  The 'isolated' tag means your image will come up with a white background, and then it's pretty simple to put text to make a simple, but sexy cover that fits the tone of your book:

 

That's pretty simple cover, right?  You could make that without paying someone $500, right?

You can get the rights to 5 images like that on shutterstock.com for $50, which is $10/image.  If you write quality work in the $3.99 range, you'll make that back in 3 sales, so yeah, not much of a cost there.

Once you become the next Stephanie Queen (payoff of joke!) you can hire someone to make you professional covers that look horrible, but if you're starting out, I say go with the simple, isolated look.

So what have we learned from all this?

 

I could look at those earning numbers two ways.

I could say: "I spent all year writing femdom fiction and all I got from it was a lousy $1,345.90!  I'm so pissed- that's not even a minimum wage job!"

OR I could say: "Holy shit!  I just got paid $1,345.90 to do something I love, that I would probably do for free anyway, and that hundreds of people really enjoy!  Life is awesome!"

I choose the second path, and any author that wants to make it has to as well.  This is a hobby, one that I love, but would do less of without that financial incentive.  The fact that I can get paid anything at all is bonus, and those dollars cover the cost of covers and force me to do that fifth editing/rewriting pass that I really hate but still do, because if people are paying me money for this, I'm going to make the best product I can!

I hope any aspiring erotic/femdom authors got something out of seeing my earning numbers for 2015, and if you want me to do this again in 2016, let me know!

(We'll see what affect releasing a new Sex Powers University Episode every month for the first six months of the year has on earnings.  For those looking for an update, the first draft of SPU 3.1 just got done this week, and now I begin the horrible but necessary process of cutting the fat out of the story.  Five. Times. In. A. Row.)


**EDIT 3/20/16**  Doing taxes on self-published writing income BLOWS.  Make sure you save receipts of any possible writing related expenses, or you'll lose about HALF of your income to taxes.  BLOWS.

**END OF EDIT**

Anyone making resolutions to write more femdom fiction in 2016? Download this graphic to help you out!

A while ago I did a 8 part blog series on "Writing Better Femdom Fiction".  It was just a set of rules I've stumbled across to make my writing more fun, and a few, not many, people read those posts.

But IN CASE there are any aspiring femdom writers out there who want to do more in 2016 than they did in 2015, I've summarized those rules into the infographic below.  You can download it, make it your desktop, whatever, I just want more folks to write more awesome femdom stories for me to read!

Enjoy and happy 2016!

Why You Are Getting Femdom Writer's Block Right Now (And How To Fix It)

It happens to all of us: we get a great idea for a femdom story, put down about 1-3 hot and heavy pages, but then our energy to keep writing dribbles away like a ruined orgasm: 

Just last week I was writing the next installment of “The CockSitters Club” (a world where all men must stay in chastity belts 24/7, and a group of girls have a business holding men's keys while their wives are on vacation).

It was called “Victoria's Litter”, and was about a sitter who strips her charges nude and keeps them like literal dogs during their entire stay (always crawling on all fours, no talking, must eat and use the bathroom like a dog) and it seemed like SUCH a hot idea when I first thought of it, but after I got about 5 pages into it.... meh.

On the thread on www.orgasmdenial.comthat inspired this post, someone commented: “I've started numerous [femdom] stories in the past years and they go nowhere.”

Why does this happen to everyone?

The answer is, because your story has lost its charge.

Let's talk about what causes causes a story to be 'charged' or not. 'Charge' is an idea from vanilla romantic fiction, where a man and woman love each other for some reason, (providing attraction) but can't be together for some different reason (providing repulsion).

Think of the main characters like two highly charged metal plates, one positive and one negative. The opposite charges attract- the plates REALLY want to be together! But if you let them touch (the main characters have sex), there's a zap of power, the charge between the plates equalize, and there's no tension in the story anymore.

So the best-selling romantic fiction authors are like circus strong men, holding these two massive, highly charged plates just inches from each other, keeping them close enough so a few sparks can jump across the gap (a look here, a quick kiss there) but never letting them touch (complications of the plot) no matter how hard the plates attract.

It's this 'charged' tension of attractive and repulsive forces that keeps readers reading and writers writing.

(Oh, and it almost goes without saying, if you keep the main characters too far apart- too much repulsion- no sparks can make the jump between the plates. No tension there either.)

So let's tie this back to what we're writing: fast, fun, femdom fiction. Two of my previous blog posts for writing better femdom stories gave us the following rules:

1. The women are the stars, but the men must have a big choice to make.
2. Always leave room for escalation.

And in the first post I talked about my favorite way to achieve 'charge', which was:

Take something the main character really wants, take something they really hate, and make it so they can't get one without the other.

The nerdy boy can't go to prom with the hot girl unless he agrees to let her lock him in chastity.

The rich stock broker can't keep his past embezzling a secret unless he strips nude for his secretary every day.

The adventurer can't get the golden idol without sneaking into the mountain fortress of the tough Amazon warriors.

All those plot starters have charge, because they take a good thing and a bad thing and make them a package deal for the main character.

So why did “Victoria's Litter” fail for me, and why do some of YOUR femdom ideas peter out?

Because I didn't leave room for escalation (the boys were basically nude, locked and helpless from the middle of the first scene) and they no longer had any choices to make (Victoria had thought of everything).

The electric plates had touched; the tension was gone. I tried to recharge the plates (the boys have to attend a garden party for Victoria's friends as dogs, complete with anal plug tails!) but it was too late.

Charge gone, tension gone, writer no longer felt like writing.

But don't worry, I'm still revising “Cocksitter's Club #1: Lori's Interest” for release in September, and I've started a page one rewrite of “CockSitter's Club #2” for September release as well.

And this time I'm making SURE to leave room for the Universal Locking Law to escalate things for the boys, and giving them meaningful choices to make to keep the charged plates from touching!

Try the same thing out if you find your own interest waning in a femdom story you're writing. Ask yourself:

• What does the main character want? What does he hate? Are they tied together?
• What important choice does he have to make? Are there a series of smaller choices he can make on the way to let me escalate things?
• Am I maintaining 'charge' by keeping the desired things close together, but NOT touching?

That should get you writing again.

That's all for now, I've got to get back to writing, too. And look out for this related topic, coming soon:

Writing Better Femdom Fiction- 8 (finale)

Lesson 8: The best stories end with a hint of more to come.

This lesson is pretty obvious and it's great weather out, so I'll keep it short.

Femdom stories are monster movies. The monster has to be dealt with at the end, but no one in the audience wants to see it killed. The monster is what they came to see. It's on the movie poster.

So your main character makes the Big Choice in the Finale (where else?) and solves the situation.

For now.

Then, after your climax (literally and figuratively), have a small, low-key, catching-your-breath scene. The characters are recovering. They are planning for the future. And the future involves... more of the same teasing that this story covered!

It can't be exactly the same, but it can't be totally different as well (remember lesson 6: Stay on Target). It should be the same tag, but in a different setting.

Jason's going to New York.

One of the aliens has survived.

Godzilla is dead... but she had a baby!

You don't have to go deep into description, you never even have to write that sequel. Just hint at more to come. Leave the door open. Give a hint. And your audience will be happy.

SPOILERS FOR MANY PF DEE BOOKS FOLLOW.

At the end of Kylie's story- she's fully okay using all of her Powers on her family. (Quite an arc from the beginning scene.)

At the end of Dude Ranch- Dexter's girlfriend is going to keep him CFNM, outside of the ranch!

At the end of The Drake Cheerleader Incident- well, I fucked that one up. No hint of more.

At the end of Summer Break- the cousins are back for Christmas! (Same tag, different setting.)

And at the end of Sex Powers University 1, that little scene with the three students and the headmistress, (after the climax), Troy agrees to come back for a second term. (Solidifying the big choice). We don't know WHAT'S going to happen to him next time around, but the fact that it involves 'Futanari' and that Troy doesn't know what those are, gives us a good sense of the adventures to come!

SPOILERS END

So that's it- always leave them wanting more.  It puts a little lift at the end of the tale, a little energy and anticipation to leave the audience in a hopeful state.  

Alright students, if any of you make it this far, no assignment this time.  You've gone through eight lessons, and now you're on your own. Now you've got 4 weeks to write your own short story (usually 3,000-10,000 words, but you can go more or less) using all these principles. Feel free to bounce ideas off me in the comments.  Or we can trade anonymous emails and I'll edit the best I am able.  

Afterwards, post the stories on orgasmdenial.com, and if any of them hit all my principles well, I'll ask you if I can post it here or link to your site.

I'm going back to writing Sex Powers University 2 now, so I don't know if I'll run this class again for another set of students.

If there is a lot of buzz in the comments and readers ask for more, I may write another set of classes: "Everything I learned about how to self publish erotic fiction on Smashwords.com".  That will teach folks how to format for ebook standards, create sexy covers with little effort, and publish their work so everyone can read them for profit!

Have fun, and I really do hope this helped.  I can't wait to read your stories. 

P. F. Dee.

Writing Better Femdom Fiction- 7

Lesson 7: Unless there's an arc, it's not a femdom story, just a femdom setting.

At the end of Cocksitter's Club 1, Robert resented Lori watching over him and he didn't know what he was going to do about it.

At the end of Cocksitter's Club 2, Robert didn't get to cum, but the new, exciting teases from Lori gave him some sort of satisfaction and he fell asleep happy, for the first time in weeks. He liked having a cocksitter.

At that point, all your author instincts should have been yelling “Something bad's about to happen!”

And look what happened in Cocksitter's Club 3: Lori led Martha into making Robert wait another week to have a chance to cum! And then humiliated him in front of another girl! Robert didn't want that! He made a small choice to deal with Celeste (the bank loan) but The big Choice still looms, waiting for the finale like it should.

And in Chapter 4, he made it (not masturbating in front of the girls, asking Lori to put on his belt instead) and emerged out the other end of the story a changed man (being able to thoroughly please Martha when she came home and looking forward to Lori sitting him next time).

He started one way, learned some sort of lesson and ended up changed. It's called a character arc, and without it, all you have is a neat femdom setting, not a femdom story.

Consider this plot: A man hates eating his own cum. His girlfriend gains psychic Sex Powers and forces him to eat it all the time. And at the end, he still hates eating it!

Huh.

That story just feels lame, doesn't it? But that could be a whole book, with escalation (first eating ounces of cum, then GALLONS!), and hot teasing dialog (“How does that taste honey? Yummy yummy?”) and gut punches and all the other tricks I've gone over, but at the end... it fizzles out. He still hates eating cum? So what was the point of it all?

Consider this plot instead: A man hates eating his own cum. Really hates it- can't even think about doing it. His girlfriend gains psychic Sex Powers and blocks his orgasms until he gives in and takes just a little taste. Then she escalates, using her feminine wiles and new Powers to make cum eating erotic and sexy (basically Pavlov's dogging him) even if it still humiliates him. And at the end, when they are relaxing nude, in a hot tub with all her sexy friends, the girls make a half-serious plan to have him eat the cum of all their boyfriends's orgasms, for a whole sex-filled weekend... and his cock stands straight up!

What's the arc? He's come to like the very thing he once hated, even though it's still very humiliating to admit. This is the same arc I tried to have in The Dude Ranch, even though I barely knew what I was doing at the time. When Dexter's cock gets hard in the very last scene, it's a sign that this “temporary” kink that he wanted to explore only on vacation will become a permanent fixture in his life, even at work!

There is a fundamental arc in most good sissy stories: at first, hetero man doesn't want to wear panties because they are unmanly, but by the end, he's blushing and helping his wife shop for him at Victoria's Secret because it turns him on so much!

If you don't have the characters change and learn something from their travels, all you have is a static, unchanging femdom landscape for someone else to come along and build a really awesome story on. Writers call that static landscape a setting, and they will laugh at you if you tell them it's a story.

A school where boys have to be kept nude and teased all the time? That's just backdrop, man. Every day is like every other day until somebody starts an arc, you dig?

An island where strong sexy women rule, trading nude men like cattle? Sure, dude, that's a hot setting, but like, what's changing? A proud modern man shipwrecks on the island and refuses to be tamed? I guess. But then he comes to love it, and starts helping the amazons lure more men from the modern world to the island? Now you've got something.

As the name implies, arcs are not straight lines. At a minimum they have three points (the Starting point, the Turn for the Worse, and the End), not two points like a line. The Start and End points are pretty self-evident, but the interesting point is the Turn for the Worse.

As they say in the movie biz, that's when shit gets real. Up until then it's been all fun and games (Lori reading him Kelli and Tammi). But in the Turn is where some of the fun ends (Lori convinces Martha to keep him denied as Robert thrashes and protests = fun innocent cocksitter is gone).

So focus on the Turn most of all.

And don't just tell us how much the character has changed, show us.

Robert didn't want a cocksitter before. Now he requests one.

The sissy hated panties before, now he sighs and puts them on, even when his wife is away.

The man locks up his own chastity cage.

He hands over the key.

So many little gestures can mean so much, if they are part of an arc.

Alright students, if any of you are left, assignment time! Find a femdom story on Literotica whose premise pushes all of your hot buttons, but whose characters don't go through any kind of meaningful arc. Remember, the key is the character grows or learns something about himself/herself, not just ends up in hopelessly worse situation by the end.

Give us a Google searchable title of the story in your comment (links don't work for comments?), and then, give one way you could rewrite the story to give the main characters an arc. What could they learn about themselves through that journey?

If you do the exercise well, and have been following these lessons, maybe you'll learn a little something about yourself as well.

OH! See what I did there?

Hope this helps, and see you next time,

P.F. Dee