Plot-Plot-Plot

When I write, I don’t usually get things as plot. I get an image, a line of dialog or something similar, and then I have to find a way to incorporate it into something that might be called a story. A lot of times, in the middle of that, the thing that got the whole ball rolling gets lost, because it usually wasn’t very good in the first place, but it doesn’t matter all that much because at least I’m writing.

Plots are hard for me. In many cases, erotica is easy in that I usually just have to get two characters in one place with less clothes than they had on in the beginning.* Plots don’t come naturally for me, but I’ve learned a few tricks for getting them on the road.

One of my favorites is to figure out what that character wants and to take it away from them. That usually gets people moving, and if they don’t start moving, you probably didn’t want to write a story about them in the first place.

Another trick is to write out the blurb on the back of the book. It sounds silly and self-aggrandizing, but it really helps focus things.

I’ve actually finished a few things recently, so I’ve come up with a few longer projects. Check out the two blurbs below, both to see how my brain works, and to tell me which of these you might like to see.

Pretender
Jinhai thinks he’s born to live in and die in the pleasure quarters until he falls in with a rebel group that believes he’s the bastard son of the rightful king. Jinhai’s role as the pretender to the throne is made increasingly dangerous when he realizes that his lover from his previous life is none other than Tsai Liang, the emperor’s First General.

Untitled
Maksim makes a profession out of being the villain. He’s led the armies of a dozen of despotic regimes across the continent, and he prides himself on getting out right before the farmboy shows up with the magic sword. The kingdom of Firth should have been no different, but that was before the pretty young high priest starts stirring up feelings that Maksim long thought were dead, and before the farmboy shows up wearing a face that looks a lot like Maksim’s own.

Pretender is me crossing a wuxia*** film with a yaoi manga. It’s sad, angsty, and I’m pretty sure there’s a sad boy in the moonlight scene.

The Untitled piece is meant to be a funny, genre-savvy story about the stereotypical villain from a high fantasy novel. That is, I want it to be funny, but I’m also afraid I’ll take things too dark, and then there will be that awkward silence where no one is laughing but me.

If you have an opinion on which one that you would rather read, feel free to let me know in the comments. I’m not sure if one of these stories will be my next long project, but signs point to yes!
.
.
.
Coming Soon:
Verity and Iskander Go to the Supermarket
An Apple, Maybe
More Writing! More, I Say!
.
.
*This came around and bit me in the ass with Lord of Misrule. I wrote the short story and then was asked to write a novella. Thank Squid that there was enough there to hang a novella off of. You can’t do that with some of my short story characters. **
**If they had asked me for something longer with Dust and Laika from Virgin, for example, I likely would have just written them a cyberpunk caper.
***Chinese martial arts movies. Some examples include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero.