manyeyedhydra
patreon
Dissecting a Succubus - "AProudMaleFeminist gets Creamed"
🕑 Added 2018-11-07 14:05:14 +0000 UTC Okay, I did say I'd give patrons some insight into my creative process. Although I... uh... might have gone into greater detail and length than I originally planned on this one (it was supposed to go up on Monday). I've also added it as a word .doc as it's probably a little too long to be a good fit for a post.So, on with the dissection:
Okay, we're not actually going to dissect a succubus. That would be yuck.
This is part of something I said I'd offer patrons – a behind the scenes look at my writing process. I'm hoping it will be useful for people looking to write their own sexy succubus smut, and interesting for people that might be interested in this kind of thing.
First up on the autopsy block is my most recent story – "AProudMaleFeminist gets Creamed."
Most of my stories start with an idea for a succubus/monster girl and a sex scene. In this case it was a creamy titwank where the succubus has the special/magic ability to squirt warm fluffy aphrodisiac cream from her nipples.
One of the main advantages of using supernatural creatures in erotica is you can have them do things that regular humans can't. Use this wherever possible. It won't work for every reader, but it gives the stories a little extra exoticism.
I like the predatory succubus stories, so in this case the function of the creamy titwank is to both keep the prey too blissed out to fight back, and to induce them into ejaculating all of their fluids (as a proxy for life force) between the tits, where the succubus absorbs them (and also brings in another fetish by implication, as the succubus's breasts will expand as she drains more from her victim).
This now gives me the erotic element and the horror element, which is what I'm aiming for with my stories.
Next up is the protagonist and a back story.
(Sometimes I come up with the protagonist and back story first, and find an appropriate succubus/monster girl to add later. This is not usual, though.)
The easiest approach is to just skimp on that entirely and have SomeDude pick up/get picked up by our succubus in a bar. This is the approach done with most modern porn as it gets right to the important in'and'out stuff as fast as possible. I don't personally like it. I want my stories to also function as regular horror stories (albeit with a lot more erotica/porn elements).
In this case I made the succubus an escort. A supernatural creature that lives off sex would naturally gravitate to that profession.
SomeDude hiring an escort that turns out to be a succubus predator is the classic horror twist.
We can do more. The next idea that hit me was to make SomeDude a serial killer type. It's not exactly an original twist, but those stories tend to be fairly satisfying from a cosmic justice perspective. You can also add some uncertainty to the obvious twist, as there can now be some ambiguity as to who will end up with the upper hand.
(This is also where a writer has to be careful. I could subvert expectations and have the killer brutally slay the succubus, but while it would be an unexpected twist for my readers, it would also likely not be a welcome one to read about a hot succubus waifu getting her entrails carved out. Know thy audience.)
Nothing too fancy so far. This is all fairly straightforward stuff.
Then to build up the killer. One of the things I've been experimenting with is updating the classic villain tropes to reflect modern culture. In this case I thought it would be fun to have the killer protagonist masquerade as a male feminist ally. This touches on current events – the outspoken male feminist on social media turning out to be a creeper and abuser of women in private has happened so often now it has become its own meme. It's also an update of a trope that's always worked well – the person claiming to be good and virtuous being anything but. The classics are the child-molester priest (which I've done in "Succubus vs Cleric") or the murderous doctor ("Streetwalking with a Succubus").
The risk here is that we're in fairly highly charged political times. People identify with groups strongly and can see negative portrayals of characters from the same group as an attack on them personally. Feminism is one of those hot-button political issues where anything perceived as remotely critical will draw flak.
My advice for tackling topics like this (and it should be applicable for both left-wing and right-wing sacred cows) is this:
1) Don't be browbeaten. Write the character you want to write. Don't let yourself fall into mindset of wanting to avoid offending people. That results in bland gruel characters that will please no-one.
2) Be fair. Whatever your own personal opinions, try not to let them run roughshod over the rest of the story. You might think you're making a good point or fighting the good fight, but it usually comes across as cringey. Most readers don't like being preached at.
The goal is to tell a good story with interesting characters. Everything is subservient to that.
So back to our bad "male feminist ally". I'm not trying to say every "male feminist ally" is a creeper (or killer if you twist that dial to the logical highest setting), so this is where we need to work in a spot of foreshadowing to hint they're not what they claim to be.
This is where I had to rework a lot of the original dialogue. Originally, I had Parker spout a lot more buzzwords to establish his male feminist credentials. I didn't like it. It was cringey and failed point 2) above. I pulled out the editing chainsaw, sliced a lot of the crap out and changed his reasoning for his username to this:
"No no," Parker said. "I wanted to make a statement. Most of the men on there are sexist pigs. I wanted to let women know I wasn't like them, that they didn't have anything to fear if I booked them."
This is a nice early hint. Why is Parker a proud male feminist – because he wants to improve the world for women? Nope, he wants to beat his chest and prove he's better than other men. That's a clear hint his motives are slightly off.
The next bits are with his joke and "You can go on top" comment. He's not ceding control. This is classic topping from below. Basically, he's saying, "You can do what you like, but actually, I'd like you to go on top and fuck me cowgirl style", and because it's his room and his money, he's clearly ordering her to get on top and fuck him cowgirl style.
None of these things are what I'd call 'bad', but they're there to plant a seed in the reader's mind that there is a disconnect between what Parker is saying he is, and what he actually is. This is so that when the twist lands, the reader can think "Ah yeah, I had a feeling he was a jerk."
The final clincher is this:
"That's not how it works," Parker said.
Because humans are stupid and don't know what's good for them, he thought but didn't say.
This should be a very obvious tip off that all is not well in Parker-land. Then, when he thinks about what he has under the bed, the reader should start to fear for our little escort.
Well, obviously not, because it's one of my stories and she's obviously a succubus. That is one downside to being very well known for a certain type of story, but I still have to write it on the assumption some readers will never have read anything of mine before.
The main twist (for me) here, is that the succubus isn't very powerful. I liked this idea. I like stories where both main characters have cards hidden from the reader. The reader knows something is up, that explosions lie on the horizon, but they don't the hands of either character.
I didn't quite get it right, for reasons I'll get into in a mo.
Before then a bit on the erotica. As I've devoted a lot of this dissection to Parker's background, I'll have to pick another story to go into more detail on the erotic aspects (Ideally a "hotter" one).
My general advice is to be descriptive enough so that the scene doesn't feel too mechanical. But also be sparing enough with the flowery language so that the reader doesn't feel a unicorn has just barfed all over the screen of their porno.
Her touch was gentle and he felt a pleasant prickle akin to static wherever she touched him. Her hands slid lower and around him. They roamed all over his naked chest. She leant into him and pressed her boobs against his back. He felt their round pressure—like two soft sponge balls—and the little nubs of her nipples at the centre of the them. With her arms wrapped around him, she began to rub her breasts against him in slow circular movements.
That felt... pretty damn nice.
Parker felt little prickles of static—pleasant little tingles—wherever her nipples brushed against him. The tingle spread up to his scalp. An ASMR, but triggered through touch rather than sounds.
The goal here is to transmit that same pleasant little tingle to the reader. If they can almost feel Corene rubbing her breasts against their back, it puts them right in the story and sets things up for nice stuff later (at least until I pull the rug out from under them when the horror part of erotic horror kicks in).
Last thing is the phone call at the end. I always like to sneak in references to my other stories. It makes each story seem like part of a bigger universe. The trick for this is to make it a light seasoning. It should add something for readers familiar with my other stories, but not get in the way of the main plot for readers who might be coming across my work for the first time and not have the faintest idea who Nicole is.
Now for the parts that didn't work as well as I'd like.
I mentioned earlier that I like stories where both characters have knowledge hidden from the reader. Unfortunately, I also have a policy of never writing from the non-human's perspective. The reason for this is I think exoticism is important for succubus erotica, and the moment the author starts writing from the perspective of the succubus, it takes away some of their mystery. It was one of the things I never liked when the vampire craze was running through horror. Writing from the vampire perspective (especially when done badly, as it frequently was) turned them from mysterious monsters into wangsty humans with mutant vampire powers.
In this case, though, it hamstrung me from letting an interesting cat-n-mouse plot develop. Corene is weak enough that if Parker had no interest in sex, she'd likely have been overpowered and butchered within about five minutes of the bedroom door closing. Except this isn't revealed to the reader until after Corene does her creamy tits trick to put Parker firmly under her control. Everything's pretty much done and dusted at that point. It's all over bar the Bad End draining.
The other thing I wasn't happy with, and will likely change when I come to put the story in a collection, was the final reveal of Parker's motivations at the end.
While the title and male feminist stuff is deliberately bait-y, I originally envisioned Parker as an Elliot Rodger type. That make his back story very straightforward – couldn't get the women, tried being the good male feminist, still couldn't get the women, then started killing them out of bitter frustration.
Then I muddled it with the "true face" line, to imply that section was just an act as well. I suspect I fell into the 1) trap I outlined above. It would have been better to keep the 'justification' simple and then have Corene puncture it when she points out none of the other awkward men who hired her felt the need to tie her up and slice her to bits.
One thing that did catch me by surprise was this line:
"Giving them a brief moment of sexual bliss is the one time I feel like I'm more—better—than just a hell-spawned leech."
That line was unplanned and came out of the blue while I was working on the 2nd draft. I like it because it gives a little more depth to Corene's character. Originally, I had her as a weak succubus that chooses to snack rather than feast (and kill) more out of fear of the repercussions than choice. That line implies she's a little more complex. Given how frequently I'm asked to create 'friendlier' succubi/monster girls, I can see Corene being a good character to use again for a 'nicer' story.
Whew, that was a lot (a helluva lot!) more than I thought I'd be writing, especially for one of my more middling stories (I'd grade it a B-/C+, although it did score higher on Literotica than I was expecting).
I hope you enjoyed this insight into my creative approach, and that there's something useful here for fellow writers.
I was thinking of making posts like this a more regular occurrence.
But maybe not too regular! This should have been out Monday and ended up being a little more detailed than I originally planned!
If there are any of my other stories you'd like to see get the full dissection treatment, let me know in the comments below.
Now it's time to get back to giant boobie demons and Petalina's naughty garden…
Comments
Many-Eyed Hydra
I think it's a weird quirk of my type of Erotic Horror. Cosmic Justice is a long-established trope of regular horror. People like to see a jerk (especially a seemingly untouchable jerk) meet a horrible end. For erotic horror it gets a little more complicated, as I think people want to put themselves in the role of the person having sexy stuff done to them (even if there's a risk it will end up fatal), and that's more difficult if the protagonist is a total jerk. I try to make the nastiness of the ending independent of the jerkiness of the protagonist to keep readers guessing, but - oddly - I think cosmic injustice (so long as it's sexy rather than icky) might work better for succubus/monster girl stories. I do like writing a good jerk meeting a horribly icky end though. ;)
Random Guy
## The next idea that hit me was to make SomeDude a serial killer type. It's not exactly an original twist, but those stories tend to be fairly satisfying from a cosmic justice perspective. ## Maybe that's just me, but villains as protagonists make the story bland. Not being able to root for the protagonist makes it far less engaging.
Many-Eyed Hydra
Yup. I think it's been just over ten years. I don't think I've found the bottom of the imagination well either. So many stories I still want to write!
apurpletoast
Interesting stuff! Also interesting is that if the publication dates on lit are correct, I've been reading your stuff for over a decade. Time flies or what?
Many-Eyed Hydra
Yes, that could be a good one. I was messing around with sequencing on that one (inspired by a section of the One Piece manga, I think, strangely enough). I was happy with how it worked.
JustinAZ
Would love to see a dissection of “A Night at Mchooligans.” It remains one of my favorite stories of yours.
Many-Eyed Hydra
Wrapdance would be a good one. The story behind the inspiration for it is also amusing. "Last Night of Freedom" would be difficult. I was in such a time crunch to get it finished I don't remember much about writing it. SS3 is something I plan to do. I'm trying to write myself back into form with the Lit shorts again, and ramp back up to serials (with SS301 being the obvious one).
Wakozi
I think "Wrapdance" or "Last Night of Freedom" would both be good stories to dissect. The first one being one of your older stories, which surley is interesting to see on how you approched your stories back then. And the second one obviously with Nurse Honey, which is one of your most liked character I would assume. Not to mention with "Last Night of Freedom" you can go into Nurse Honey's creation a little bit without revealing too much information that would become important in SS3 (as long as you plan on doing SS3 (I hope))
