Promises Progress And Payoff

Don't you hate it when people don't keep their promises? Especially when those promises involve giving you a blowjob.

This happened to me recently. Kind of. I was involved in beta reading a story from another author, one to be posted in the Humour category. Their group of characters was messing around at a party early on, playing a board game and one of the women promised to give one of the men a blowjob in return for an advantage in the game. It was a joke, both between the characters and between the author and their readers, and I understood that. Nonetheless, I still expected that, once the inevitable sex scene started, the promise would be kept. After all, a blowjob is a fairly common opening gambit in a sex scene. As it was, I read the rest of the story expecting a blowjob that never actually arrived. In a weird way it stopped me enjoying all the other, perfectly pleasant, sexy fun that actually was going on, and there was plenty of that.

Obviously, when I wrote my feedback, bullet point number one was

yo, where's my blowjob?

or words to that effect, and, in fairness, the author saw my point and graciously amended the story to include it. But it still remains a good example of an author being slightly out of whack about what they promise their readers and what they actually deliver.

Both when writing my own stories and when reading and giving feedback on the work of other writers, one of the tools I often use is that of

Promises, Progress, and Payoffs

. It's fairly simple -- you can pretty much get the idea just from the three words above, but I still find it's often a good lens through which to look at problematic stories. That is to say, when I'm reading a story and have the feeling that something is off with it, I often try to tie my gut feeling into one of promises, progress, and payoff so I can better nail down what exactly is wrong with it.

If you are reading a story and you find yourself thinking,

what is this story even about?

this is often an indication that a story's promises haven't been made clear. If you are reading a story and thinking about skipping ahead to find out when the characters finally get round to doing a certain thing (it's Literotica, so that thing is probably fucking) then there may be a progress issue. Finally, if you finish a story and you're left feeling that somehow you wanted more, then there was obviously a problem with the payoff.

I was introduced to the concept of promises, progress, and payoffs through the lectures of Brandon Sanderson, the best-selling author who also teaches a course at a university about creative writing in Fantasy and science fiction. I believe he coined the alliterative name for it, but as a whole, I don't think he claims any of the ideas are particularly novel. I should add that, while I've watched a lot of his YouTube videos about writing, I still haven't read any of his books, so don't take this guide as any kind of endorsement of him as a writer. I must get round to him one of these days.

There are three or four main times when using the PPP framework might be useful. If you are someone who plans their stories extensively, you might want to look at your outline notes to see if it checks all the boxes. Else, if you are someone who writes more instinctively, you may want to keep it in mind when in the middle of a scene. Whichever way you write, once your draft is finished, you may want to look over it with PPP in mind to make sure your story fits its main advice. Finally, as mentioned above, if you are reading or giving feedback on other people's work and are trying to understand why parts of it aren't working for you, it may help to turn to PPP to try and explain things.

It should be stressed that PPP is just one possible tool that can be used. There are plenty of other tools. Some authors like to look at agency. Some see stories in terms of a three-act structure. Another tool that I often use, for example, is that of motivation analysis -- deciding what every character in a story wants and then reading through every action they take to check that it makes sense in terms of their supposed motivation.

And of course many authors, and, let's face it, practically all readers approach a story without ever consciously thinking of any of these things at all. This isn't a magic formula to automatically write stories or an exact science for making a story perfect. It's a hopefully useful mindset to adopt

sometimes

at various stages of writing.

Promises

The promises that most books make start well before the opening sentences. The cover art, the blurb on the back, and even the section of the bookshop you found it in tell you a lot about the probable contents of the story before you've even opened it.

Literotica stories tend to have a lot less of this surrounding information. You get a category, a title, and a few words of description. Regardless, these often make big promises to your readers.

Consider a story that starts with a scene in which a husband and wife meet a brother and sister for the first time at a swimming pool. What you expect to happen next is likely to be shaped by whether the story is found in Group Sex, Incest, Loving Wives, Lesbian, Gay, Transexual, Exhibitionism and Voyeur and so on. Each of the categories has its own types of content that readers are coming for. Some authors lean into this and write stories that specifically cater to one specific category. Others write the stories that they want and then try to fit them into whichever category seems nearest.

I said

types of content

very consciously just now as even within a category there are many different templates. The ongoing war in Loving Wives between those who believe that infidelity should be punished and those who reveal in wild willing cuckoldry is well know on Literotica, but to avoid controversy, I'll stick to the safer waters of Incest. These stories are often distinguished by the types of relationships between the main characters. Readers want to know if the story is, say, mother-son or brother-sister before they click it open and the majority of authors realize this and make absolutely sure its reflected in either the title or description.

How I Fucked My Mom

or

My Sister is the World's Best Cock-sucker

might not be subtle titles, but the reader will have little doubt going into them what is promised within.

On the other hand, I've heard some Literotica authors say that they purposely give a story an ambiguous or arty title specifically to avoid this kind of over-simplicity. Call your story, for example,

Mysteries

and give it the description of

I find her and then I find myself

and you attract the kind of reader who is open to not knowing what, hopefully, surprising and original, things are going to happen in the story. Does it work? I've no idea -- I suspect you'd get fewer readers, but maybe more who will actually enjoy the story. It's probably a good time to make it clear that there's nothing wrong with promising a surprise, either a big one or a small one.

But let's suppose that the reader has indeed clicked on your story and see what happens next.

One point that Sanderson makes is that he doesn't believe that the first sentence of a story is as important as it's often made out to be. It is good to have a killer first line, (

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

), but as long as your first sentence isn't absolutely terrible, the reader will probably push on for a few more sentences and hopefully a couple paragraphs. I worry that this is more true of a book that you've actually had to purchase or at least taken the bus down to the library for. On Literotica, the back button is always easily accessible and often very tempting. But, I don't fundamentally disagree -- you have a certain amount of time to tell the reader what is on offer before their patience runs out.

One thing you will have to establish quickly is the tone of the piece. Stories generally can be exciting, humorous, sad, and so on and while the default for Literotica is sexy, is your story going to be funny sexy, horror sexy, romantic sexy? As general advice, if you're writing a comedy piece, it's probably a good idea to put a joke in the first paragraph and make it one of your better ones. On Literotica, there probably needs to be something sexy shown or at least hinted at fairly quickly, even if it's just a curve of a breast or the hint of a six-pack through a sweaty T-shirt. This is true on Literotica as much as it is anywhere, but there are a number of special factors with erotic writing.

Firstly, you probably need to establish where the story lies on the romantic and sexual spectrum. Some stories are all about two people meeting and falling in love, others are about two people meeting and sticking bits of themselves into each other. Either one is fine and the same readers might enjoy both kinds of story, depending on their mood. Even so, they probably want to know which type of story yours is shortly after they start reading. The crude way of doing this is that if your hero looks deep into your heroine's eyes within the first couple of paragraphs, it's probably a romantic story. If he looks at her tits, it's probably the other kind. More sophisticated authors can find a way to make sure something either suitably sweet or suitably steamy happens relatively quickly.

One of the other things your reader will want to know is who is going to be having the sex. If you only have two characters then this will probably be fairly obvious. As you add more, you risk confusing your audience, or making them wish that your main character hooks up with someone else.

(This happens to me a lot. In my youth, I once attended a student production of Romeo and Juliet where I found the actress playing the Nurse to be substantially more attractive than the one playing Juliet and, thus, felt that a lot of the tragedy could have been avoided if Romeo had just gone for the looker. That wasn't quite as bad as the recent pantomime of Aladdin I went to with my daughter where, given the choice between Princess Jasmin and the actress playing Aladdin's monkey...well, let's just say I haven't been that sexually confused since Helena Bonham-Carter was in the Planet of the Apes reboot. Anyhoo...)

One place I see this more than anywhere else is when people are writing college stories. Our hero has a room-mate who has a hot girlfriend who has a hot room-mate, who has a well-hung boyfriend who has a hunky room-mate who has a hot girlfriend who has a plain and conservative room-mate who is going to do some rather out-of-character thing the first time she gets invited to a party with hard liquor and weed. All of them will get horizontal at one point or another in this epic fantasy modeled on the author's own college years, but we get to meet them all on the first day of the semester in the corridor of the dorm room and we don't know that Nancy (cheerleader, red-head, Social Science major, medium-sized breasts) won't be getting hot and flustered until chapter 15, even though she's currently getting the same billing as Stacey (amateur thespian, blonde, History major, enormous-sized breasts) who will be on all fours by the end of the first page...and quite possibly never again after that.

This also sometimes happens when supporting characters are sexualized on the same level as the main characters. If next-door neighbour Mindy has the same big bouncy bosoms described in the same detail as actual love interest Mandy, then the reader is naturally going to be expecting the hero to be getting some kind of fun with those bags at some point in the story when in truth the writer was just struggling to fill what they thought was a mandatory paragraph about Mindy and had gone for a whole page without typing the word 'breasts'.

I recently read a story in the Incest category about a brother and sister coming home to their mother for a weekend celebration. Unusually, the writer hadn't flagged the main coupling in the title and description and, as a result, I was confused for the first two or three Literotica pages about which two of the three were going to hook up. It didn't help that the Point of View changed between all three of the characters. In a strange kind of way, it kind of worked for me, because the story involved a family mystery and so my expectation was set early on that not everything would be spelled out, but for other people wanting particular things, it might have driven them to distraction.

As well as spelling out who the central characters are, you're probably going to want to be making a promise to the reader in terms of why the characters are hot. Why do we want to see these particular two (or three...or seven...) people bone? Some authors like to include paragraph-long descriptions of the main characters' physical assets. How to approach this is another essay in itself, but suffice to say, if you're going to do this, do it well. Readers generally know how easy it is to write 'she was blonde, six-foot tall, and had 46DD breasts' and are unlikely to be overly impressed however big you make those numbers. Often the

hot

promise can be made with just a few quick phrases which invoke a particular stereotype: 'Playboy Bunny', 'sexy nurse', 'the cougar next door'. What's that you say? Your characters are more nuanced and deep than that? Sure they are, but that nuance can come later as the story unfolds.

You might also want to make a kink promise. Sometimes you'll already have done this -- maybe 'sexy nurse'

is

the kink you're fulfilling. Other times, you might need to hint at things to come. Even within a specific category, there are going to be proclivities that readers are more or less into. Supposing our story is going further than just 'sexy nurse' and is specifically focusing on how our bed-ridden male character came to enjoy injections on increasingly intimate body parts with increasingly large needles. This is going to get an 'oh hell, no' from a lot of readers and it is probably best to get it out in the open early on that this is what's the story is going to be about. Perhaps the hero is still oblivious on page one about his pointy and painful future, but open the story with him getting a normal injection (described maybe in just a little too much detail) and you're going to clue in the readers about what might be on offer. And get a great, big 'oh hell, yes' from the people who are the natural readers of the story.

If all else fails you can always start the story by saying 'I never suspected I would come to enjoy being injected on increasingly intimate body parts with increasingly large needles,' but this is inelegant at best.

On the other hand, be wary about making false kink promises. You may just have wanted an excuse for your heroine to miss the five-forty from Paddington, but start your story with her being caught short and desperately searching for a loo and you risk unduly exciting those readers who are into water sports.

Finally, and most importantly, a reader will eventually need to grasp the point of the story. Most stories can be analyzed in terms of some kind of conflict. In erotica, this conflict can be very simple -- the main characters is not having sex with anyone and would quite like to have it with someone. Another common starting point, is that the main character is married but sexually unfulfilled. Something has to give. With these type of conflicts, the story is typically finished when the main conflict is resolved. Not all stories resolve the central conflict. Sometimes the story comes full circle and the character remain trapped in the same situation as they started. These type of stories tend to be downers.

Generally, for a story to be satisfying, the reader needs to get a handle on what the conflict is and also, critically, why it is hard to resolve. If the main character is an enormous nerd loser, then finding any kind of romantic partner may be a challenge. On the other hand, if the main character is a ten out of ten super hunk, then there needs to be a reason why having sex with the superfine air hostess he's just spotted is going to be more of a challenge than usual, even if the challenge is just 'having sex in a plane's toilet is actually harder than you might think'.

Having said all this, you don't need to make all your promises at once.

As story might start with the heroine receiving a particular sex toy and a sexy outfit in the mail. Those, in themselves, represents initial promises. She may go upstairs and spend a thousand words trying them on and out and that, in itself, can represent a mini-promise, progress and payoff cycle. Only towards the end will it be revealed that the reason she's brought these items is to go to a bondage club that evening. Now a new promise has been made to the reader. Once she gets there and maybe had a round of warm-up fun with a friend, it's again revealed that she is the special guest of the evening and the story gets even more lavish with its promises.

You can make new and exciting promises to the reader all the way through the story. The trick is of course to make sure that the reader is indeed excited and accepting of these promises. If you have spent the first three chapters of your story with the male main character hooking up with a hot fashion model, then if chapter four starts with the revelation that she has an equally hot sister who's feeling horny, readers, by and large, are going to be happy. If she suddenly has a hot

grandmother

, they might not like the new direction so much. That's not to say you shouldn't write these kind of stories or that there isn't an audience for them. I'm sure there is. That audience is going to be happier, nay salivating, if your sexy granny is around in chapter one.

So starting out, we have tone, character, hotness, kink and conflict promises. We'll come back to promises later but for now we need to progress onto...well, progress.

Progress

If you pick a book off the shelf, you will have a pretty good idea, from its general heft, how long it is going to take you to read, and, moreover, as you progress through it, you'll have a pretty good idea how much is left. Similarly, you are aware when you go into a movie that it is likely to last two to three hours.

On the other hand, clicking on a story entitled, say, 'Hot Sex Chapter 01' on Literotica, makes me slightly uncomfortable. I might be all in favour of that hot sex generally, but how much time am I being asked to commit to it? Individual submissions have a word count and a page count and when the whole of the story is contained in that one posting, you'll know how much you're going to be expected to read, but that 'Chapter 01' means you know you're getting a fraction of the story, but how big a fraction? And don't get me started on 'Chapter 001' or indeed 'Book 01 Chapter 01'.

I'm a great believer in making it clear upfront how long your story is going to be. Simply saying, at the start of the file that this is chapter 1 of 3 is a courtesy to your reader, as it confirms that the story is complete. But a lot of authors on Literotica don't seem to know how long their stories are going to be and post individual chapters as they are done.

I think this is okay and, anyway, it's pretty much inevitable whatever I think. And you can have the opinion that, as long as Hot Sex Chapter 1 delivers on the hot sex, then that's going to be enough to get me to read Hot Sex Chapter 2, and if that also delivers the goods, then...

It's important to make the distinction between what I would call

episodic series

and

story series

. An episodic series, like say a sitcom, has the same set of characters in each submission, but each story is self-contained. This week our sex-mad couple has sex on a train, and next week they will have sex in a cable car. It helps to have read a few different episodes to who the characters are, but it's probably not going to matter if you miss or skip an episode if, for example, you have vertigo and find cable cars more terrifying and not a suitable place for relaxing sexy fun.