I had written a couple dozen smutty stories as a side project in 2016, when I still imagined I could make a career out of writing. Once they were published, I retired off from the royalities, and-- I kid. Never published them, saved them to a USB stick and forgot about them until I was cleaning out my desk years later. I posted them here, figuring somebody might still get a kick out of them, but I also found they still spoke to me - my fantasies, my aspirations, even my insecurities. I started to expand the story and kept on going.

Now I've got a different problem: I have to leave that story behind and move on to another one!

I'm going to go with the "railroad plot". The author in this case has a strong idea of where they want the story to go, but the situation and characters are just props to that end. It ends up breaking the suspension of disbelief and feels really artificial.

Otherwise, I second CuriousAnne for the same reason. If a story does something blatantly unrealistic within the first few paragraphs, I struggle to get much further.

Not sure how late I'm coming to this party, but I've written a story with a similar premise between siblings, and was told by the mods that it's automatically considered an "Investment fantasy" scenario. The distinction isn't just contextual - "investment" stories are considered outright illegal in some jurisdictions, so they have to be kept separate.

On the other hand, "investment fantasies" are a popular genre on this site, so that may not be a disadvantage for you.

Hello, writers and readers! I've been including a status update each time one of my stories are published, but it doesn't seem that my friends/followers get any sort of notification when I post the status. I'm currently a Gold member - are notifications a perk limited to the Platinum crowd?

I don't know how much my insight counts here, given that out of my 75+ stories, most of them are in one category - but when you've got faith in the characters, it gives you room to expand the situations you place them in.

Sure, most of my stories are about spanking, but I feel I've done a lot with that. I've experimented with continuity, with narrative, even genre. I've written a dozen-and-a-half flashback stories, a ghost story, even an art review without really stepping out of the Spanking label (Not all of it has landed with readers, but some of it has - one reader even commented that he'd never before read a story that made withdrawn consent romantic).

What can I say except to try new things and see what works - or at least, see what still feels like it's yours?

Most of my stories are part of one continuity, so I've got over a dozen that were dropped or abandoned when I decided to take the series in a different direction. I don't delete them either - just because they didn't work for the series doesn't mean I can't incorporate those scenes somewhere else.

Dammit, who came up with 'Toy in a Boy'? It doesn't fit the tone of my story, but it would have certainly fit the subject matter!

A more interesting question for me would be: For those who do garnish your stories with real places or events, why?

There's a certain amount of "write what you know", I imagine, and being able to describe a story that takes place in London or Seattle with realistic detail helps the reader immerse themselves in that world. In my case, the characters in my series are based on myself and my spouse, but the situations depicted are... let's say "aspirational" fiction. I wanted to take our sex life in a certain direction, and these stories were me trying to forecast how that would work.