Constance Daley's Blog - Posts Tagged "experimentation"
Writing Pictures of Lillian
Men love lesbians. All women know this. Society has taught us that lesbianism is hot. To a certain extent society is right, but it is never as simple as society makes it. What makes lesbianism hot isn't that there are two women involved (yes, I know men will disagree with that sentence), but the idea that it is different. Different is sexy.
When setting out to write a lesbian story, I considered the idea of writing about a married lesbian couple. That seemed so forward-thinking and in keeping with our times. But the more I thought about it, the more I realize that it didn't work. It's hard to write erotica about long time married couples having normal sex on a Thursday night, and the same applies to lesbians. To make it work, at least for me, I needed it to be forbidden fruit. So I scrapped the idea of a married couple and went back to the most tried and true lesbian cliche of all. I went for experimentation.
As I started to write the story, I realized that experimentation was more important than I realized. Erotica is about discovery; if the story involves a character doing only things she has done before, it's not very exciting. The character needs to learn about themselves, needs to try things for the first time, for it to be interesting. There's a lot of erotica out there about firsts. First time anal. First time lesbian. First time cuckold. The reason for this is simple. The first time is where we learn about ourselves, where we challenge ourselves. Who wants to read a story called "Her Twelfth Anal," or "Sleeping With My Husband's Brother for the Fifth Consecutive Sunday."
There's another reason novelty matters for the character. Unless you're just starting reading these stories, it's hard for even the most lascivious imagination to conjure new scenarios and sex acts for every story. After all, there are only so many things you can stick in so many places, and only so many people/supernatural beings/furries you can have do it. Because of this, very little is still novel for the reader. Experiencing the newness from the character's point of view allows the reader to share in that feeling, and it's a great feeling. There's nothing like that new car smell or that feeling of being fucked hard for the first time.
So I knew I wanted to do a lesbian story, and I knew it had to be a first time lesbian story. The question was, what was the justification. In my stories I want the characters to behave at least somewhat believably, which means that our heroine has to have a good reason for what she does. The last few years it seems like all my longtime friends are getting divorces, and almost always for the same reason. Their sex life is stale, or it wasn't very good to begin with and they thought they could live with that but discovered they really can't. So that was in the mix, and then I imagined a woman who still loves her husband, but whose marriage is flat. How could she rekindle that? Of course I could have just had her bring a friend home, but the character I had in my head wasn't ready to go that far, at least not yet. I had to have her undergo a progression, and that progression couldn't involve the husband being there.
Luckily we live in a day and age where someone can be there without being there, and I knew the perfect way for her to titillate her husband without setting out to step outside her own comfort zone. Once I knew that she was going to use pictures, the old song Pictures of Lily popped into my head, and a slight change to the name of the song gave me a title and a character name. The rest was simple.
When setting out to write a lesbian story, I considered the idea of writing about a married lesbian couple. That seemed so forward-thinking and in keeping with our times. But the more I thought about it, the more I realize that it didn't work. It's hard to write erotica about long time married couples having normal sex on a Thursday night, and the same applies to lesbians. To make it work, at least for me, I needed it to be forbidden fruit. So I scrapped the idea of a married couple and went back to the most tried and true lesbian cliche of all. I went for experimentation.
As I started to write the story, I realized that experimentation was more important than I realized. Erotica is about discovery; if the story involves a character doing only things she has done before, it's not very exciting. The character needs to learn about themselves, needs to try things for the first time, for it to be interesting. There's a lot of erotica out there about firsts. First time anal. First time lesbian. First time cuckold. The reason for this is simple. The first time is where we learn about ourselves, where we challenge ourselves. Who wants to read a story called "Her Twelfth Anal," or "Sleeping With My Husband's Brother for the Fifth Consecutive Sunday."
There's another reason novelty matters for the character. Unless you're just starting reading these stories, it's hard for even the most lascivious imagination to conjure new scenarios and sex acts for every story. After all, there are only so many things you can stick in so many places, and only so many people/supernatural beings/furries you can have do it. Because of this, very little is still novel for the reader. Experiencing the newness from the character's point of view allows the reader to share in that feeling, and it's a great feeling. There's nothing like that new car smell or that feeling of being fucked hard for the first time.
So I knew I wanted to do a lesbian story, and I knew it had to be a first time lesbian story. The question was, what was the justification. In my stories I want the characters to behave at least somewhat believably, which means that our heroine has to have a good reason for what she does. The last few years it seems like all my longtime friends are getting divorces, and almost always for the same reason. Their sex life is stale, or it wasn't very good to begin with and they thought they could live with that but discovered they really can't. So that was in the mix, and then I imagined a woman who still loves her husband, but whose marriage is flat. How could she rekindle that? Of course I could have just had her bring a friend home, but the character I had in my head wasn't ready to go that far, at least not yet. I had to have her undergo a progression, and that progression couldn't involve the husband being there.
Luckily we live in a day and age where someone can be there without being there, and I knew the perfect way for her to titillate her husband without setting out to step outside her own comfort zone. Once I knew that she was going to use pictures, the old song Pictures of Lily popped into my head, and a slight change to the name of the song gave me a title and a character name. The rest was simple.
In Sex, Few Things Are Inherently Good or Bad
I've had a number of female friends over the years who, while discussing a particular sexual act, will say something along the lines of "I would never let my boyfriend/husband do that, it's so humiliating." I'm always left wondering why they don't take the next step and really evaluate the act in question. There doesn't have to be anything wrong with humiliation, just like there doesn't have to be anything wrong with submission, just like there doesn't have to be anything wrong with pretty much anything in the realm of your sex life. It's about how you feel about each of these things that matters.
Take me for example. I'd make a terrible submissive, but that doesn't meant there's anything wrong with the concept. It just doesn't work for me. I'm not a big fan of being humiliated either (though reading about it really works for me, so who knows), but that doesn't mean that it doesn't work for some women. I've known women who get off on the idea of being humiliated, who enjoy the feeling of shame, and I think that's great. If shame works for you, I'm okay with that. If it doesn't work for you, but you're letting your lover shame you anyway, then that can be a problem.
This whole issue can get really interesting dependent upon the situation. Most women seem to agree that certain things are beneath them, and would never do them. For example, porn stars do ass to mouth, but that's something that most women probably wouldn't do (or at least wouldn't admit to). It's disgusting, they would say, and they may be right. But I had a friend who wouldn't give her boyfriend a blowjob because the thought of that was disgusting. Is she wrong? Nope, not necessarily. Like I said before, your sexuality is your own, and thus it is rarely wrong. The exception to that is if you have an aversion to something because someone else has taught you to and you blindly accepted it.
All I ask my readers is that they do their best to be honest with themselves. If they find themselves dismissing something with a simple word like "humiliating" or "disgusting," then evaluate how those words make them feel. You might be surprised to find that there's a little eroticism of the forbidden awaiting you behind such simple declarations.
Take me for example. I'd make a terrible submissive, but that doesn't meant there's anything wrong with the concept. It just doesn't work for me. I'm not a big fan of being humiliated either (though reading about it really works for me, so who knows), but that doesn't mean that it doesn't work for some women. I've known women who get off on the idea of being humiliated, who enjoy the feeling of shame, and I think that's great. If shame works for you, I'm okay with that. If it doesn't work for you, but you're letting your lover shame you anyway, then that can be a problem.
This whole issue can get really interesting dependent upon the situation. Most women seem to agree that certain things are beneath them, and would never do them. For example, porn stars do ass to mouth, but that's something that most women probably wouldn't do (or at least wouldn't admit to). It's disgusting, they would say, and they may be right. But I had a friend who wouldn't give her boyfriend a blowjob because the thought of that was disgusting. Is she wrong? Nope, not necessarily. Like I said before, your sexuality is your own, and thus it is rarely wrong. The exception to that is if you have an aversion to something because someone else has taught you to and you blindly accepted it.
All I ask my readers is that they do their best to be honest with themselves. If they find themselves dismissing something with a simple word like "humiliating" or "disgusting," then evaluate how those words make them feel. You might be surprised to find that there's a little eroticism of the forbidden awaiting you behind such simple declarations.
