Authors... How Do You Write?

When I wrote for Bared Affair articles used to be sparked by something non related that I would see on TV or in the papers and then I'd try to fit it into a spanking related context, sometimes an article would give me the idea for a story.

And that ended up being one of the greats, Pinky.... I agree.


B

This is so true, Gg. I once attended a function in Maine while I was still a Fed. I had the pleasure to meet Stephen King there. I only spoke with him for a few minutes, but he told me something that I never forgot.

"You can't write a story about kids in the hood and write the dialogue as though they just graduated form Yale. You have to write dialect exactly the way people speak. I ain't got none, is perfectly correct when it comes to someone who is functionally illiterate. We call one another all kinds of names. Dialogue and dialect means a lot in a story. However, when you're writing descriptive data, the grammar has to be there, because you are now 'showing' you audience, the reader, what's going on. Remember, there are many professionals who read as well. Doctors, Lawyers etc... "

I don't mean to sound like a big shot here folks, 'cause I'm not. I just thought it was a good example.



B

I recently saw a writing topic elsewhere asking what you looked for in a good story and the answers were: character, plot and dialogue. If you can't get those three right you're going to struggle.

The point about dialogue is correct, although quite a lot of people speak with more or less correct grammar if you allow for the abbreviations such as "Going to the shops?" and "Not impressed." A slightly stilted and grammatically correct manner of speaking can indicate an educated foreigner and of course there are regional as well as age characteristics, as when an American Southerner says "Y'all" or a Tynesider says "Howway". There is a dilemma about conveying strong accents in that spelling the word as pronounced can bring the accent to life but makes understanding harder, especially for people not used to the accent.

One was was apparently overlooked: spanking. How cant there be a good story without spanking? (and don't try making the excuse that it wasn't a spanking site).

How? Why, with fire in my eyes and a song of victory and glory on my lips! With my blade clutched in my right hand and my brain alight with bloodlust...

Oh, you said write. Sorry, I thought you were asking something else...

I've learned not to start writing unless I at least know where I want the story to go. Sometimes, I just start writing with an ending in mind, and try to figure out how to get there as I go. Sometimes, I plot the whole thing out in detail. I've found that the former tends to be a lot more frustrating, and using it runs the risk of getting stuck. The latter, however, requires much more patience and discipline (and not the sexy kind of discipline, though I guess if you have a partner who wants to help you out with your writing it can be).

Sometimes, there's trial and error involved in getting the story to go the way you wanted. In the story I'm currently working on, I had to rewrite a scene four times, changing a supporting character's personality a bit each time, before I got a sequence I was okay with (and there's still room for improvement). This gets easier when I've fully developed a character and he or she develops a mind of their own; once that happens, I'm basically just along for the ride! With a good enough model of the characters' personalities, you can just let them interact in the virtual space of your imagination and write whatever they do. Sure, the story is liable to go in a direction you didn't expect, but sometimes that can make the story better.

Now, since Seegee said something very interesting and helpful, I'll throw my two cents at it.


Character

The most important thing about a story is the characters, because without them the reader has no reason to care about anything that happens. Even in a plot-driven story, where the characters are just reacting to external events, they're the thing that anchors the reader in the fictional world. If a character isn't convincing or interesting, then its a weak anchor. The better the character, the more attention readers will pay to his or her adventures.

So, what makes a good character? I would say either a) someone the reader likes and wants to see succeed, b) someone who the readers can identify with, and see themselves in his or her place, or c) both. To do either of these things, you need to make sure the character has believable motivations and acts on them like a person actually might, because otherwise the character just seems like a puppet attached to the strings of plot necessity. A puppet is an inanimate object, and you can neither root for nor identify with an inanimate object.

The trick here is to put yourself in the characters' place. Obviously, its easy to fall into the trap of making all the characters too similar to yourself (and, thus, to each other), but you can learn to avoid that. For one thing, pretend you have that character's motivations. Pretend that you want what that character wants, and then see how much your hypothetical behavior changes based just on that. Next, change your emotional triggers. If this character gets angry or jealous or needy more easily than you do, factor that into their motivations and means of pursuing them. Make yourself feel what the character is feeling, and have them do what that emotion tells you. Finally, try to imagine your character's background and personal history; is this character less trusting and more antisocial than you? More haughty and self-absorbed? Good writing is exactly the same thing as good acting; some small part of the artist's mind must become the character. It really is like running a virtual reality simulation in your mind.

Dialogue

This goes hand in hand with characters, because dialogue is one of the biggest ways we learn about them. Writing convincing dialogue takes a while for most people to learn, and I think its because of an artificial block we put in our way. When I (and many other amateur writers) first sat down to write, I had this idea that writing dialogue was fundamentally different from talking. It didn't occur to me that the same part of my brain that controls speech in the real world is ALSO the part that I needed to use for writing dialogue.

When writing a character's lines, go to that mental simulation of the character I talked about in the last section and ask that part of yourself "what would I say in this situation?" Put yourself in there, and say what comes naturally.

It can help to give each character different dialogue quirks: maybe he really likes a certain word and uses it often, or she likes to dance around before making her point. Adding these details is easy to do after you've worked out the gist of what they would say, but after writing the lines, read what you've written and make sure it sounds natural. Could you imagine a person actually saying this? If not, try again.

I consider myself a very good writer of dialogue, but it did NOT come easily, or quickly. I think I can honestly say that it was the hardest writing skill I've had to master yet. But once I learned these tricks, it became as easy as chatting with someone in real life, because - under the layers of mental method acting - that's really all that it is.

Plot

There are two kinds of stories, basically. Plot-driven stories, which consist of characters reacting to external events, and character-driven stories, where the events are all consequences of the proactive main characters' actions. Character-driven stories are as solid as the characters that drive them; come up with good characters (see above), and a good story will evolve naturally as they interact. It might end up being different from what you originally had in mind, but that's not usually a bad thing (if it is a bad thing in this case, change the characters until you get the result that you want).

Plot driven stories, however, are a little trickier, because everything that happens in them is the author's responsibility. You need to plan out every little thing that happens, and make sure that it all follows logically from the preceding events. For a plot-driven story, you really should sit down and think the entire story through before you start writing, because otherwise everything you do runs the risk of proving an obstacle later on. For instance, if you use a hurricane to make your character leave her hometown in chapter one, you're prevented from having a romantic beach scene along the same coastline for a few in-story days. If the story depends on a romantic beach scene within that time period and geographic area, you've shot yourself in the foot. That may not be the best example (as you could probably just have the character go far from home and visit some relatives on the opposite coast or whatever), but it illustrates my point.

Most stories are driven by a combination of plot and character developments, so you have some wiggle room. External events can be dropped in to force the characters into action, and characters can follow their own initiatives long enough to make it to the next plot event. Just make sure that you never violate either the character's personality (see above), or the causal logic of the plot.

How do I write? A number of ways.
Sometimes I see a situation in the world and wonder how it would be in a spanking context, other times I see in a sort of flash of inspiration how the juxtaposition of two ideas would cause the conflict necessary for a story.

For example in The Tale of Gillian I inverted the beans/cow in the fairy story and by inverting the sex of the protagonist I had a spanking victim.

Other times I have a phrase which just begs to be made into a story, In the worst case it is the title of the story.
This implies to me that the story has to be written as it already exists somewhere in the ether. These are the hardest, which is why Private Panini's Harmonica (c) and The Invasion of the Botty Smackers (c) have not yet been written.

I dream the end and write a story to fit it. Not always, but most of the times. One of the few times I didn't do it, I couldn't decide on an end and presented two ends for readers' decision.

Thank you for these suggestions. I have tried a lot of different ideas for writing, and the stories that I plan out and lovingly assemble and feel are going to be a hit barely cause a stir, while the ones that I post lightheartedly, hardly expecting a response go wild! Who knows what people are really going to like? I suppose I should just mostly write for myself and try to ignore the response (though I admit I love it when I get responses).

The majority of my characters are people I know in real life, or have known in the past, so it is easy to imagine their personality. What I find particularly fun about this is if some random person annoys me? Say they steal my parking spot, or I get a particularly neglectful waitress or something? They will find themselves thrown over a lap and spanked to tears (at least fictionally). I was once in a chat room with a girl that was particularly annoying and she wound up in one of my stories (not posted here). She later actually saw the story in question and got pretty miffed lol.

Like SNM said, I have a few story series, where I haven't actually a clue what my characters are going to do next. They are just models in my head with their own personality and reaction to different stimuli. I really don't know what they are going to do until I sit down at the keyboard and bring them back to life again. People ask me sometimes what is going to happen in one of those stories and I have to admit to my own ignorance. How should I know?

As for dialog, I like the suggestion of eavesdropping on teenagers to get the lingo. I actually don't have to do it in the food court of the mall since I live with teenage girls (step-daughters). They regularly say something bizarre lol. Their friends are the same way! One other way I would suggest is to go to their forums or social media websites and read their posts. If you are at least halfway fluent in teenager and text speak anyway, otherwise it will just look like gibberish.

Thank you again for the suggestions.

Regards,
Christian