New Author Question - One Trick Pony

I’ve published three stories on Lush. (Technically seven, but five are part of a series.) I am working on finalizing my next two stories and I realized something.

It dawned on me last weekend that several things in my stories feel redundant, at least to me. If you redacted my characters’ names across the stories, they could easily be the same people. While the backstories are unique, the banter often feels too similar. And the sex scenes… They feel very ‘rinse and repeat’, right down to me using the same words again and again, only in different ways.

With one of the stories, I am taking several steps back and trying to change my voice and my writing style. Here is the thing; it doesn’t feel natural. I am playing with new words, different phrasings, even different punctuation. Considering that I am a new author with no formal training, the fact that this is difficult should not be a surprise. It has been very challenging. And humbling. But even then, when I get to the sex - Déjà vu.

I am curious if other authors here started in a similar place. How did you move beyond feeling like a one trick pony?

Or am I overthinking this?

Great question! I’m an amateur, didn’t start feeling like I was writing too much of the same, but feel there now. It’s the sex that feels regurgitated over and over.

Here’s my thoughts. There are some brilliant authors (here and in a bookstore) who I could read the first few paragraphs and know they wrote the story because of style or tone or something like that. And that can be a great thing. Poe is an example. I know what to expect, but am excited! Then there’s the Hallmark channel movies and Harlequin romances where you change the city and names and it’s the same story over and over. But both are still popular because they are telling a story a lot of readers will always enjoy.

What kind of writer do you want to be? Eclectic? Or recognizable? Or find a niche that’s popular here?

If you wanna feel fresh sex, I suggest changing the setting first and foremost… and use it. Get outta the bed. Fuck in a seedy crevice in the underbelly of a city. Describe the smells. Have her claw at the mortar in between bricks. Or fuck in the ocean or on a beach where sand gets everywhere, waves threaten to pull them apart. Then it will feel like different sex. Use the elements. Tease in public. Make onlookers part of your scene.

To switch up voice, use different point of views. 1st is more intimate. 3rd you can be more descriptive of everything else around the central character. 2nd is tricky but you can make the reader feel part of the story, talking to “you”.

Just some thoughts…

And enjoy figuring out what kind of writer you want to be. Then be open to changing your mind over and over along the way.

Don’t let stats or overthinking steal your joy of writing!

😊

Thanks, Kimmi. I appreciate the well thought out response! Lots of things to think about.

I think Kimmi has it right. The more you develop your voice as a writer, the more your stories are just going to sound like you. But that's not necessarily a bad thing if you have a voice that people want to hear and will keep coming back for. That said, you could avoid writing until you have a story worth telling rather than retelling the same basic story over and over again. The reason all those Hallmark movies sound the same is because they crank out about 100 of the things every year. If they just produced one every couple of years, they'd probably have more inspired and original ideas. No one here is under any obligation to mass produce sexy stories, though some do seem to approach their participation on this site as a full-time job.

Also, if you're one of the authors who focus more on sex than plot or character (about 80% of the authors on LS), try shifting your focus. People having sex is generally less interesting than how and why they're having sex. If you can establish that well, the sex itself (which I think most established writers here will admit can get repetitive and dull to write about) becomes merely the conclusion and payoff for working through the challenges of the plot, which should be the main part of the story. Unfortunately, there's only so many ways you can write "And then that went in there..." But you have a lot more room to build up the story of how they got to that point, and that's hopefully where you can find more opportunity for something original.

Great points laid put so far.

Think of action movies as well. We've all seen movie gunfights and fistfights at this point. What differs is the reasoning behind it, the characters executing it and the consequences of said actions.

Characters(imo) more make a story than plot, so to help with even the sex part, think of how that character would fuck. Are they more of a soft lover, a rough fucker or a blend of both styles? That can be played with:

Ben's a meek guy and thus more of a love maker. Or maybe for some reason, this meek guy is fucking Cynthia's mouth like a pussy? What could have lead to such a disparity between his personality and fuck-style? This is where character introspection makes the surrounding sex more interesting too. Maybe he is repressed. Why is he repressed? Is this recent or long term?

Anyhow, Tarantino, Ritchie and Shane Black can make you feel the differences in their tales even if you can pinpoint their tone from afar and you will be able to do it too.

I appreciate the thoughtful responses.

It looks like each of you have written a LOT of stories, across multiple categories. I have seen several authors on Lush who are able to seamlessly write from very different perspectives - male vs female, straight vs. bi vs. gay/lesbian, 1st person vs. 3rd person.

I’ve dabbled in 1st person vs. 3rd. One of the stories I will be submitting after the mod break is told from a female perspective. So I am slowly branching out.

I am curious… I am guessing most of you started writing with a unique voice. Maybe you were naturally drawn to a certain category. You were probably happy what you were publishing. You were probably getting positive feedback from readers, which encouraged you to keep writing. But then you started thinking... What else? Eventually, you started to stretch. What triggered that? What was that moment like? If that happened to you, do you occasionally go back to your roots? Or have you moved on and are you more interested in continuing to push yourself as an author?

Quote by CarltonStJames

We've all seen movie gunfights and fistfights at this point.

Excellent point. I have no interest in watching movies focused on people shooting each other or CGI mutants punching each other, and I get bored watching a 45-minute gonzo porn scene where the only progression is the actors changing positions.

I have two multi-chapter stories that I'm trying to finish up, and I'm having trouble coming up with sex scenes that don't read like a retread of a previous chapter. I think I'll sit down right now—it's a gloomy Saturday and I can't text any of the ladies in my phone contacts without appearing too thirsty 😅—and start typing plot and then let the characters decide when and how the sex will happen. 😉 And in the future, maybe I'll aim to wrap up any long stories in, say, eight chapters (25-30K words) instead of a dozen or two.

I don't think I have much to add and find Kimmi's response is really good along with the others. I've only published about 13 stories here but 2 are EPs and 3 are RRs so I figure I don't totally suck. BUT: I have the exact same problem with my sex scenes. I work pretty hard on editing and use the "FIND" feature in WORD to look for repetitive words or phrases in a story. I try to find unusual words or use words slightly out of context to change it up (E.g I once described a pussy as "her sodden eloquence." lol)

I think challenging yourself helps, write outside your comfort zone in terms of your own experiences and gender because this can really help in finding new ways to describe sex acts. In the movie "Shadows in the Sun" Harvey Keitel's author character is telling Joshua Jackson's character about writing and he tells him to use a typewriter instead of a word processor because it forces you to think about every word. That really resonated with me and I try to write with that always in my mind.

Dialogue is another challenge and I try to keep it to a minimum and use short sentences to keep it simple. I find reading a story aloud, especially dialogue is really helpful.

Quote by paddlingincognito

I appreciate the thoughtful responses.

It looks like each of you have written a LOT of stories, across multiple categories. I have seen several authors on Lush who are able to seamlessly write from very different perspectives - male vs female, straight vs. bi vs. gay/lesbian, 1st person vs. 3rd person.

I’ve dabbled in 1st person vs. 3rd. One of the stories I will be submitting after the mod break is told from a female perspective. So I am slowly branching out.

I am curious… I am guessing most of you started writing with a unique voice. Maybe you were naturally drawn to a certain category. You were probably happy what you were publishing. You were probably getting positive feedback from readers, which encouraged you to keep writing. But then you started thinking... What else? Eventually, you started to stretch. What triggered that? What was that moment like? If that happened to you, do you occasionally go back to your roots? Or have you moved on and are you more interested in continuing to push yourself as an author?

I’m a goal setter and also eclectic in many ways. I need to try new things or I lose interest in writing. And the world and what’s going on in my close circle affects me so much it affects my writing. I’ll go dark stories for a bit. I need to challenge myself. I think I go through different eras in writing. I wrote certain things when mourning some deaths. Write different when happy.