Imagination for Dummies

All right, you’ve read a bunch of porno stories and now you’re trying your hand at some of your own. However, when you start to write you find your work looking like a bad 80s porno except your characters aren't as believable. Don’t worry, imagination deficiency is a common problem (even more common in “pron” for reasons ill get into below), and easily solved with a little work.

Imagination, bringing in a truly original work, is hard in the porno world because in the end every work breaks down into some sort of sexual scene. You can play with method and order of the sex, you can tweak with the stereotypes, and you can even tweak with the reality and universe of the sex, but it still centers on the acts. This admission DOES NOT MEAN YOU WRITE ONLY ABOUT THE SEX! A story that has nothing but hot sweaty lovin’ with no character expansion will be utterly boring to your readers. Yes, they come to be aroused and to eventually cum, but that doesn’t mean you should show them a slideshow of sexual positions. Let them fall in love with your characters, slip into your world briefly and then give them the hot action. This can be done in as little as 400-500 words, but don’t limit your self there. If you feel yourself explaining for a while and delaying the sexual bits, you tantalize your readers, get them in the mind of your characters, and make the characters more real for them when the plot turns steamy. Remember, REAL CHARACTERS EQUALS SEXUALLY SATISFIED READERS.

So, how does one make a real character, you might ask? How does one create a character that the reader can like, fall in love with, or empathize with? Well, the first trick is personality. Most porno writers feel the need to make every character a bland porno movie stereotype with little depth. While this may work in the sticky movies (debatable), it does not work so well in print. So first step is to add depth to the body. The easiest way and often the best way is to add some human quirk to the person that makes them different and unique from the other characters. Perhaps the brunette is a bit shy and naïve and has had bad experiences with anal sex in the past. Here you have the workings of a story. Perhaps, a character will take her in deference to this past or perhaps a character will woo her out of these feelings and bring her to love the butt sex or maybe the characters will respect this fear and turn her on to all the other pleasures of the body. Here two qualities and a single flashback have opened multiple story ideas, plus intriguing character interactions. The depth has done nothing to harm the sexual nature and in fact broadens the sexual nature by broadening its meaning. After you have the basic depths, push them through in the actions of the character. If she’s shy, she’ll be harder to pursue, require a bit more foreplay or maybe require a special personality to bring her out of her shell. If she’s naïve, she lacks experience. She’s tight, maybe gullible, and she’ll be a little more hesitant to try new things. She’ll still do it if you want her to, but she’ll be hesitant. Finally, we talked about the experience above and all the stories it opens up. Hell, one could write a believable and decent anal story with just this character and this premise as a plot. That’s why characters need depth.

Depth is key, but one can expand on that depth and bring more humanity into the story in other ways. For instance, most new writers have a tendency to write characters that are overly endowed in either the tits or cock department and have a superman libido. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have any characters like that, but you should at least consider the draw of more human characters. A smaller dick or at least an average sized dick will resonate with more of the readers and will allow the males to imagine themselves in the character’s place more easily. Plus, it can be more believable. A 12-inch cock has a hard time getting into places, cannot be deep-throated easily and is extremely hard to get into a tight pussy or ass without heavy, heavy foreplay and help. On the flip-side women with size F knockers may sound like a dream come true, but it’ll carry problems for your characters. Such characters cannot do as much acrobatic work with the dick, are prone to back pain, and also will not stand pertly out like a super-heroine. Real size F boobs will sag a bit, hurt if they swing too wildly and are very rare in the world. A size A boob, though tiny has perks. It is small enough to be swallowed, cup in your hand and fits more easily, naturally, and commonly on the thin tight bodies that have such cock-squeezing pussies and asses. I realize these examples only cover the heterosexual reasons for believability, but it works for gays and lesbians as well. Plus, a believable body can fit in nicely with a deeper personality. She’s inexperienced because her small boobs are overlooked. He hasn’t gotten laid much because he’s insecure about the size of his dick. Remember as I said before REAL CHARACTERS EQUAL SATISFIED READERS!

Having two or more believable characters with their quirks and fears and bodies is much of the battle with porno stories, but it is not everything. If you have decent characters, but abandon their personalities once the sex starts, then you have ruined your characters. Keep their personalities during the sex. Have their personalities shape the sex. You’ll have a more exciting and meaningful sex scene because of it. Also, have more of a reason then two or more horny people fuck as the plot of your story. Bring in the reasons. Exploit the ideas of your characters. If you have a horny geek or geekette who can’t get any, how do you have them try? Do they find someone over the internet, learn hypnotism, juggle for a friend, pay a frat boy or a sorority girl $50 for the key to their friend’s room after a kegger? A reason for the sex brings meaning to the sex and meaning makes the story believable and enjoyable.

The final bit of imagination is the hardest to get. While believable characters and a plot that doesn’t fully resemble a bad 80s porno flick can get you a decent enough stories, the ability to make a story truly stand out from the rest as something original is extremely hard. To come up with these amazing twists on the genre that create an intriguing world, I recommend you mix your reading of pron with some good non-erotic fiction stories. A bit of Bradbury, Douglas Adams, H.P. Lovecraft, Kurt Vonnegut, Isaac Asimov, Anne McCaffrey, Virginia Woolf, etc. can help you see the world a little differently and help you create those twists that make really memorable fiction. Plus, the grammar of these kings of the fiction world will do more to help you clean up the style of your work than any English class or editor will. Anyway, good luck, good imaging AND NO 80S PORNO SCRIPTS!