Story Ideas

Probably the question I've gotten the most, the entire time I've been writing for Lit., is how do I come up with my story ideas?

Easy, I cheat =)

The vast majority of my story ideas come from other people's stories.  Whether I find something inspirational in their writing, or I start wondering "Well, what if something similar happened but with this result?" or I find the concept sexy but am somehow left unfulfilled by the execution.

The latter actually happened very recently.  Venus School of Sex, which I am currently in the middle of writing, came about after I downloaded an erotic story off of Amazon.com called "The Madame X School of Sex."  It's a hot little book with sexy writing, but it ended way too soon as far as I was concerned.  The main character, Sara, has the major hots for her boss, Quinn, (who has the major hots for her back) but she has no idea that he's into her. She wants to explore her sexuality, and she's a wee bit on the submissive side, so she signs up for the school where Quinn used to work. Madame X is an old buddy of his and she calls him up so that he can come back to the school as Master Q, an instructor, and Sara's "handler" (think, guidance counselor / study buddy / etc.).  He's masked so she has no idea who he is... and after two days at the school she's lusting after Master Q as hard as she was lusting after Quinn (btw, a couple things happen that make her think he's NOT Quinn, she's not stupid so she did suspect at first).  Unfortunately, on that second day she ends up admitting to Master Q that she's in love with her boss, he whips off his mask and the story ends without the kind of climatic sex scene I was craving after reading all the hot scenes that came before it. I wanted more more more... and there wasn't any.

Boom. Venus School of Sex. Yeah I ripped off the idea a little bit, but that's what happens.  Good ideas get told over and over again in different ways and I don't really think there's anything wrong with that. Also, my school is different, the classes are different (and Jessica actually goes to them) and I've got a love triangle going on.  The actual chapters that I write are completely original, just not the starting idea. So that makes me feel a little better.

But can I take credit for the full idea? No, not really.

However, there are times when stories just kind of happen - the Submission series that I'm currently writing for instance.  I'm not entirely sure how that one got started.  Possibly the whole "war one women" stuff that's all over the news and the constant political fight for sexual control. As far as I know, I didn't pick up the story line from another story.  I also try to fulfill reader suggestions and requests, although sometimes the amount of them just becomes so many that I can't keep up and write the things that I want to write as well.

The absolute best part about writing is when the characters take over and start to write themselves and I find them doing things that I hadn't planned. It's a heck of a lot more fun for me that way.  Originally I wasn't looking forward to writing Jessica's weekend at the Venus School because I thought it would be boring and I was going to just skip it and head immediately into her next week of classes.  Then, yesterday, I thought 'why not give it a shot?'  I thought I'd write her weekend, throw in a little sex with someone (maybe Nick... was trying to figure out if I could convincingly write some flirtatious interactions with Mr. Flood and Mr. Fire) and I thought I could cover the entire weekend with one chapter.

And then the characters got away from me - Jessica being outside of a classroom setting completely changed the dynamic that I was writing and I found myself getting really into it.  Not has Nick not entered the picture yet, but I wrote an entire chapter about her Saturday morning... if I tried to pack in the entire weekend's activities it would practically a novella. Plus, I ended up writing some stuff that... well let's just say I've never written anything like it and I'm really curious to see how people react. I thought it was hot when I was writing it, but then there's always the writer's anxiety over "Will the people reading the story think it's hot? Will this turn them off?"

The hardest part of writing is waiting for my story to be approved so that I can get some feedback.