The Mind Game
Hallo again, all you fuzzy little bags of fluff and liquid love!
Something recently occurred to me while editing a piece of prose. The writer had gone into detail on a nice, steamy scene, and there were throbbing members here and slick thrusting there and bodily fluids everywhere. It was exactly what you'd expect from a piece of furry smut. It was even well written and well described, dripping colorful adjectives and solid metaphors liberally. From a technical angle, it was perfectly adequate.
But even with all that, it simply did nothing for me. It didn't even seem to do anything for the prose, even though it was presumably the centerpiece of the work. I had to go back and reread it, because I just couldn't fathom why I wouldn't be happy with perfectly valid "hot yiff." It took me a little while, but I think I finally figured out what was bothering me.
Even though sex is a physical activity, the eroticism of it is all a mind game. In other words, sex is only hot because you think it's hot. You can have as much detail about the positioning as you want, but it's nothing more than textual body tetris without insight into the character's mind. This is a conclusion that's been simmering for a while, and when I read back through my own writing, I can see my old pieces making exactly the same mistake. It's tough to see the difference, insidious, even, but (at least for me) it makes all the difference.
Originally, I floundered about trying to back this argument up. I *like* the positioning, I want to know what characters are doing, when, and how hard. It matters, it really does. But as I thought about it, that's all part of the fantasy; part and parcel to the mind-game. Think about it this way: how excited were you when you met up with that special someone, knowing for a fact that in four hours, you two *might* just be slick and oiled up on the bed, rubbing on and over and in each other? That excitement, the anticipation, the dreams and fantasies in your head when you imagined it, those are hotter than even the hottest sex you could have at the end of the anticipation.
This isn't to say that the physical act of sex is bad. Quite the opposite, but imagine what the sex would be like without the anticipation, without the fulfillment of dreams and fantasies. Would it be as hot? Hell, can you even imagine it? I can't. Those fantasies are so integral a part of the sex that I can't remove one from the other.
Okay, I take that back. I can imagine what it's like. I've played around when the fantasy just wasn't there. For whatever reason, the person just didn't interest me, or maybe they had kinks or fantasies of their own that were so alien to me that I couldn't understand them. Oh, sure, I had my fun, but it wasn't *hot*. It wasn't something that I looked back on two days later and thought "Man, that was great. I'm getting hard just remembering it." That's what the anticipation is for; that's why the fantasy matters. It's the difference between just a mechanical anatomical activity and the erotic.
I don't want to say this is a newbie mistake, because that's not technically true. There's lots of people new to writing who grasp this concept perfectly well. No, I'd say that it's a mistake made by people who aren't experienced with sex. I've seen it time and time again, chatting with people new to the scene, sometimes virgins, sometimes not, but always inexperienced. There's a focus on the physical, this overwhelming drive to insert tab "A" into slot "B". They'll talk about it and they'll write about it, to the exclusion of all else, as if that's the highlight of the show.
It isn't. It's a part of the circus, yes, but it's the sideshow to the mind-game's center ring. Give me sensory input. Give me perspective. Tell me how your character had been craving this, how they'd imagined just how it'd feel and, oh, it feels even better than they'd imagined. Show me how this is fulfilling the fantasy, how this is the culmination of the character's hopes and dreams. Make *me* feel just how the character's kinks are being tweaked, and how all the right buttons are being pushed. That's the difference between an instruction manual and erotica, and sorry, I don't fap to instruction manuals.
Just to show how much I believe the above, I have plans for a new story (probably in the next month or two.) The story will be the build-up, the anticipation. I'll write the fantasies and the dreams, with nothing but imagination and longing instead of physical contact. Maybe it'll be during the car ride, maybe it'll be while waiting for the plane to land. I haven't decided the scene or genre yet, but the story will stay within the protagonist's head, seeing just what he's hoping, just what he's praying for. Then the story ends just as the object of his affection walks into sight, with just the coy smile as a promise of what's about to happen off-camera.
I don't know if it'll be a good story, but it'll be a good exercise.
-Kandrel
P.S. Listening to Guns and Roses' "Pretty Tied Up" takes on a whole new meaning when you're a fox. "Pretty tied up, hanging upside-down!" Mmmm... Okay, dammit, I know I just spent a whole post saying that the physical is just a scene, but that's a scene I want in on!
Something recently occurred to me while editing a piece of prose. The writer had gone into detail on a nice, steamy scene, and there were throbbing members here and slick thrusting there and bodily fluids everywhere. It was exactly what you'd expect from a piece of furry smut. It was even well written and well described, dripping colorful adjectives and solid metaphors liberally. From a technical angle, it was perfectly adequate.
But even with all that, it simply did nothing for me. It didn't even seem to do anything for the prose, even though it was presumably the centerpiece of the work. I had to go back and reread it, because I just couldn't fathom why I wouldn't be happy with perfectly valid "hot yiff." It took me a little while, but I think I finally figured out what was bothering me.
Even though sex is a physical activity, the eroticism of it is all a mind game. In other words, sex is only hot because you think it's hot. You can have as much detail about the positioning as you want, but it's nothing more than textual body tetris without insight into the character's mind. This is a conclusion that's been simmering for a while, and when I read back through my own writing, I can see my old pieces making exactly the same mistake. It's tough to see the difference, insidious, even, but (at least for me) it makes all the difference.
Originally, I floundered about trying to back this argument up. I *like* the positioning, I want to know what characters are doing, when, and how hard. It matters, it really does. But as I thought about it, that's all part of the fantasy; part and parcel to the mind-game. Think about it this way: how excited were you when you met up with that special someone, knowing for a fact that in four hours, you two *might* just be slick and oiled up on the bed, rubbing on and over and in each other? That excitement, the anticipation, the dreams and fantasies in your head when you imagined it, those are hotter than even the hottest sex you could have at the end of the anticipation.
This isn't to say that the physical act of sex is bad. Quite the opposite, but imagine what the sex would be like without the anticipation, without the fulfillment of dreams and fantasies. Would it be as hot? Hell, can you even imagine it? I can't. Those fantasies are so integral a part of the sex that I can't remove one from the other.
Okay, I take that back. I can imagine what it's like. I've played around when the fantasy just wasn't there. For whatever reason, the person just didn't interest me, or maybe they had kinks or fantasies of their own that were so alien to me that I couldn't understand them. Oh, sure, I had my fun, but it wasn't *hot*. It wasn't something that I looked back on two days later and thought "Man, that was great. I'm getting hard just remembering it." That's what the anticipation is for; that's why the fantasy matters. It's the difference between just a mechanical anatomical activity and the erotic.
I don't want to say this is a newbie mistake, because that's not technically true. There's lots of people new to writing who grasp this concept perfectly well. No, I'd say that it's a mistake made by people who aren't experienced with sex. I've seen it time and time again, chatting with people new to the scene, sometimes virgins, sometimes not, but always inexperienced. There's a focus on the physical, this overwhelming drive to insert tab "A" into slot "B". They'll talk about it and they'll write about it, to the exclusion of all else, as if that's the highlight of the show.
It isn't. It's a part of the circus, yes, but it's the sideshow to the mind-game's center ring. Give me sensory input. Give me perspective. Tell me how your character had been craving this, how they'd imagined just how it'd feel and, oh, it feels even better than they'd imagined. Show me how this is fulfilling the fantasy, how this is the culmination of the character's hopes and dreams. Make *me* feel just how the character's kinks are being tweaked, and how all the right buttons are being pushed. That's the difference between an instruction manual and erotica, and sorry, I don't fap to instruction manuals.
Just to show how much I believe the above, I have plans for a new story (probably in the next month or two.) The story will be the build-up, the anticipation. I'll write the fantasies and the dreams, with nothing but imagination and longing instead of physical contact. Maybe it'll be during the car ride, maybe it'll be while waiting for the plane to land. I haven't decided the scene or genre yet, but the story will stay within the protagonist's head, seeing just what he's hoping, just what he's praying for. Then the story ends just as the object of his affection walks into sight, with just the coy smile as a promise of what's about to happen off-camera.
I don't know if it'll be a good story, but it'll be a good exercise.
-Kandrel
P.S. Listening to Guns and Roses' "Pretty Tied Up" takes on a whole new meaning when you're a fox. "Pretty tied up, hanging upside-down!" Mmmm... Okay, dammit, I know I just spent a whole post saying that the physical is just a scene, but that's a scene I want in on!