Agency as a Writer's Tool

[AwkwardMD]

I can't say that I completely agree with what you said there. While it is true that Rand is the one pulling others in a certain direction, that doesn't really happen until later in the series. Also, one could argue that almost every male character gets pulled in the same way by Rand, so there isn't really any gender bias, except when it comes to Rand himself. There are many male characters who are Warders and they get pulled in certain direction by their Aes Sedai. There are also many other female characters who are pulling the threads, even Rand's throughout the series. Moirraine at start, later it's Wise Women and Cadsuane etc. So I don't really see what you intended with that example. I mean, I agree that Jordan didn't really impress with his characterization of women, yet it wasn't because he didn't give them agency in my opinion. Also, I don't need to be explained the forms of agency, I am just saying I haven't really seen many women without decent agency in the types of stories that I read or write, thus the question I asked...

1. it doesn't happen until later (it still happens)
2. It happens to other characters too (it still happens)
3. It happens to men too (it still happens)

These are not arguments against my point. You are admitting it, if indirectly, while proclaiming that you don't read stories where this happens. I can't make you see what's right in front of you if you don't want, or aren't ready, to see it.

Horse, meet water.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Right. You have moved from being patronizing, to just plain condescending. I believe I have a pretty good idea why, yet I'd rather not get into it in a place where I post for the fun of it, so I'll just step out of this conversation.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Right. You have moved from being patronizing, to just plain condescending. I believe I have a pretty good idea why, yet I'd rather not get into it in a place where I post for the fun of it, so I'll just step out of this conversation.

Still not an argument against my point. You have read a story where a character with surface-level agency still ends up getting railroaded to events and a relationship they expressly did not want.

This is your avatar, the thing you want people to think of on sight when you contribute, and to associate with you. It's a perfect example that was under your nose the whole time. I get that ego probably won't let you consider that Mr. Rigney was anything less than Tolkien's heir, but that series is deeply sexist from top to bottom.

I didn't do anything to you except call out your hero. Pretending like I insulted you is a disingenuous way to back down from a bad position, but you do you.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I'll own this: I love the Wheel of Time. I read books 1-9 at least six times. Then I read 1-10 once, 1-11 once, 1-12 once 1-13 twice, and 1-14 once. I would do really well in a WOT Trivial Pursuit game. It's an interesting series with a lot of neat things to say, but it handles women really really badly.

I didn't understand that at first. I only got there later. With big, complex works, there are always going to be parts that are great and parts that aren't, and it can be hard to reconcile that as a fan, especially when you start tying part of your identity to it (say, by making it your avatar). It's easy to assign undue importance to it, and take criticism of it as criticism of you.

This is a thread about stories that get women right, and that requires some media literacy. What does it mean to get women wrong? What does that look like? Realizing it's more pervasive than you thought inherently means admitting you were blind to it before, but being hyper offended is not a good look and we can all see through it.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Wow, you have actually managed to move from condescending to the next level and I have no idea how to even call it. I'll just clarify some things, for the sake of others who might read this, and then I'll just honor what I've already said and shut up. First of all, when I mentioned stories I read and write, I obviously meant only in regards to Literotica stories, hence the mention of three Lit categories. The fact that I am using a Wheel of Time avatar is obviously the thing that is stinging you the most for some reason and probably the thing that prompted your attitude. You are trying to paint me as some silly teenage WoT fanboy and you are even saying you called out my hero? Who is my hero? Rand? Jordan? That is some spectacular bias right there, as you decided to attack me on the basis that I like Wheel of Time. I like the books because of the fantastic worldbuilding and imagination, despite the numerous flaws the series has. But you took the fact that I put WoT symbol as an avatar in a place that is basically a fun forum as a proof that I am a mindless fanboy idolizing Jordan, because obviously this avatar is the soul of me.

 

[TheRedChamber]

What you're describing there is power. Very often power and agency go together but they're not the same thing. In the Simpsons, Montgomery Burns has power but Homer Simpson has much more agency. Even when Burns is up-ending Homer's life, the focus of the show is on the choices Homer makes, and to a lesser extent those of his family.

Well I suppose in a story about Homer Simpson, you'd expect Homer to be making many or most of the significant choices and this have the most agency in that particular story. My question would be..


Supposing we have two characters who are in some way abused by their boss at work And wants to quit
Character A has savings for a year and excellent employment prospects
Character B has no savings would struggle to find another job and they and their children would be out on the streets in days.

Do the two characters have the same degree of agency? I've discussed similar situations with my wife several times in our real life and I'd say B has a 'bad choice' whereas she'd say B has 'no choice'


To return to Kumquat queens earlier statement

What makes a story about a woman with agency is that being shown. She considers her options. Maybe shutting up and letting someone do terrible things to her is her best option, but if the story tells us that she's decided that, that's still agency in my book. Non-agency is all the stories where stuff is done to her but we never hear her thoughts on the matter or why she's going along with it.

At an extreme level, in one of those NonCon stories where the victim wakes up already chained up, is it possible for them to display any agency at all? I'd argue not and thus power and agency are very strongly linked.

 

[AwkwardMD]

At an extreme level, in one of those NonCon stories where the victim wakes up already chained up, is it possible for them to display any agency at all? I'd argue not and thus power and agency are very strongly linked.

Entirely possible.

https://literotica.com/s/isolated-property

It takes a little while for the whole thing to play out, but it's there.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Entirely possible.

https://literotica.com/s/isolated-property

It takes a little while for the whole thing to play out, but it's there.

I'm not sure I see the point? I was expecting it to be about how she escaped - in this kind of story if the writer gives a chance for escape then clearly agency can be shown on your way out.

In this one she attempts some fighting back, but ultimately her struggling and all her combat training don't meaningfully influence the plot (although they do 'colour' the story)

Does this represent agency or not? This is the sort of thing that confused me. I suppose it is better to fight back than not (except as Kumquat notes, in real life often it wouldn't be)

 

[SimonDoom]

Well I suppose in a story about Homer Simpson, you'd expect Homer to be making many or most of the significant choices and this have the most agency in that particular story. My question would be..


Supposing we have two characters who are in some way abused by their boss at work And wants to quit
Character A has savings for a year and excellent employment prospects
Character B has no savings would struggle to find another job and they and their children would be out on the streets in days.

Do the two characters have the same degree of agency? I've discussed similar situations with my wife several times in our real life and I'd say B has a 'bad choice' whereas she'd say B has 'no choice'

My response to this is that these questions have nothing to do with the concept of agency, properly understood. If one were to accept the opposite premise, then it would suggest that agency is tied directly to how much money, status, and power the woman character has, and that doesn't seem right at all. That's not what the sponsor of this event is getting at.

The agency of a character in a story is not the product of the character's circumstances. It has to do with the way the author describes the character's choices. A person with no money can have agency. A slave can have agency. If you are unsure about that, read William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner.

I think you are focusing on the wrong thing, and that's what's tripping you up.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I'm not sure I see the point? I was expecting it to be about how she escaped - in this kind of story if the writer gives a chance for escape then clearly agency can be shown on your way out.

In this one she attempts some fighting back, but ultimately her struggling and all her combat training don't meaningfully influence the plot (although they do 'colour' the story)

Does this represent agency or not? This is the sort of thing that confused me. I suppose it is better to fight back than not (except as Kumquat notes, in real life often it wouldn't be)

It's a multi-chapter story. I'll spoil.

In chapter 1 she finds that (nearly) all of the safety precautions she took were circumvented by her captor. In later chapters, she successfully keeps her mind clear despite overt attempts at brainwashing and conditioning. At the end, she succeeds in gaining a measure of trust, in order to be left alone unchained for short periods of time, and the first thing she does is get the gun she hid in chapter one and kill him.

Avery's options were always limited, but she did what she could where she could.

 

[Bramblethorn]

An interesting "wrinkle" is that the hobbits' super power in LOTR, if you will, is that they are less susceptible to the One Ring's power than other seemingly stronger inhabitants of Middle-earth. Frodo falls under its spell at the very end, but is saved by Gollum, in a sense. Sam is never corrupted, and willingly gives it back to Frodo. Bilbo is able, with reluctance, to turn it over to Frodo, through Gandalf. All of them show the ability to make important choices under conditions of extreme duress, including the ring's power to corrupt.

Yep, and Tolkien keeps coming back to that theme that service to others is its own kind of strength. Sam is the most prominent example, but there's also Merry's and Eowyn's loyalty to Theoden, Pippin's and Faramir's to Denethor - the willingness to be part of something greater than oneself without needing to be the boss. If one shoehorned them into a four-colour superhero framework, those characters would be "henchmen", but the story is so much about their choices.

That reminds me of another example: Natalie Zina Walschot's "Hench". It's a story about a woman who does temp work for supervillains, in a "gotta pay the bills and I'm not really hurting anybody" kind of way, until she gets badly and unnecessarily injured by a "superhero" and gets serious about bringing the heroes down. For most of the story she's the minion to another supervillain, but it's very much her story not his.

 

[TheRedChamber]

My response to this is that these questions have nothing to do with the concept of agency, properly understood. If one were to accept the opposite premise, then it would suggest that agency is tied directly to how much money, status, and power the woman character has, and that doesn't seem right at all. That's not what the sponsor of this event is getting at.

The agency of a character in a story is not the product of the character's circumstances. It has to do with the way the author describes the character's choices. A person with no money can have agency. A slave can have agency. If you are unsure about that, read William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner.

I think you are focusing on the wrong thing, and that's what's tripping you up.

No, I get that and you could argue that writing character B as quitting in my earlier example displays more agency than character A, because they're making a more difficult decision whereas A quitting would be relatively less difficult and interest to the reader.

But equally a character who has the ability (power, status, combat skills) to make more choices in any given circumstances is going to be easier to write agency for.

A slave witnessing the murder of his master, say, has a clear agency for that story beat of what he wants to do with that information, but the author is going to have to limit that characters agency in many other aspects or it's quickly going to become unrealistic.

But agency in fiction is a strange dance of the choices the authors offers the characters and the choices they make (while still being puppeteed by the author). Does Bella have more agency because Meyers offers her the choice of both Edward AND werewolf dude (Jacob?)

Alan: "Hey, Betty want to fuck?"
Betty: "Sure."

Who is displaying more agency in the above example? Alan is being more active, but both are making the same basic choice - perhaps it depends on their reasons but assume they just both think the other is hot.

 

[Lifestyle66]

This thread is a group of authors throwing out their PERSONAL opinions on what defines "agency" with regards to women and sex.

A quick Internet search shows Psychology Today's 2014 article discussing this topic.

"There is a new buzz term in sex education land, and it's called “Sexual Agency.” When people talk about any kind of personal “agency,” they are referring to an individual's ability to act in a way that accomplishes his or her goals. To have agency in any corner of your life is to have the capacity to behave or act in a way that will bring you the outcome or results that you desire."

It goes on to give more specific examples:
"ability to give consent to participating in or declining a sexual activity
choosing how you define your sexuality, such as: gay, straight, bi-sexual, asexual.
choose your gender
choose whether or not you want to engage sexually
choose safer sex practices or birth control.
to stop right in the middle of ANY sexual activity."

The issue I'm seeing in the examples given others here are all over the place. And there seems to be an insistence by some here that if the female character doesn't explicitly state her goals/motivations and the story doesn't specifically state she has choices, then she doesn't have agency.

But many of the critics here are complaining of things like how those agency rules work in a marriage, claiming the husband is being a dictator taking his wife's agency! But the reverse is true, too, that the wife takes her husband's agency per their marriage agreement!

Many and even MOST of the stories on this site and even the LW category have women fitting into the "ability to engage in the sexual activity she wants." Cheating wives have agency and are doing what they want! The issue in those BTB stories is with the consequences of her prior promises and commitments in the marriage!

So, what do you want with the call for stories involving women with agency? Is it a story where the woman makes her choices and faces no consequences?

 

[MelissaBaby]

So are y’all saying that the word to drop from next year’s event announcement is “agency”?

Somebody is going to get their nuts in a knot over this event every year.

As for me, I've got a WIP that ought to be ready in time to submit, in which all the characters have agency, because I don't know why anyone writes characters who don't.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Well I suppose in a story about Homer Simpson, you'd expect Homer to be making many or most of the significant choices and this have the most agency in that particular story.

That there hits on a key difference between "power" and "agency".

"Power" is an attribute of the character. But "agency" is a function of the character and of how the story is told. The exact same character can be low-agency in one story and high-agency in another. In the Ned Flanders Show, Flanders and Homer are just the same people as they are in The Simpsons, but Flanders will generally have more agency and Homer less.

I don't recall the story names, I'll leave that to the hardcore comics nerds, but there are at least three different stories where Superman intervenes with somebody about to jump off a building.

In one of them, she steps out off the building before Superman can get there. As she's falling Supes whooshes in, plucks her out of the air, and then sits her down and tells her things aren't as bad as they seem.

In the second, he flies up while the would-be victim is still on the ledge. They acknowledge that yes, he has the physical power to stop her from killing herself... but he agrees not to, because her choice matters and he wants her to choose to live rather than him forcing that on her. They talk, he offers sympathy and understanding - and a genuine choice - and in the end she decides not to jump.

Within both of those stories, Superman is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, yada yada, and the would-be suicide is just an ordinary human. The power is not much different. But I'd argue that both characters have more agency in the second than in the first: Superman in choosing whether to use his power to forcibly save her life or to honour her choices even when they might be wrong, her in choosing whether to keep going.

My question would be..


Supposing we have two characters who are in some way abused by their boss at work And wants to quit
Character A has savings for a year and excellent employment prospects
Character B has no savings would struggle to find another job and they and their children would be out on the streets in days.

Do the two characters have the same degree of agency? I've discussed similar situations with my wife several times in our real life and I'd say B has a 'bad choice' whereas she'd say B has 'no choice'

They don't have the same choices available, but whether that translates into less agency for B depends on how the story is told.

If my story is "sadly B couldn't quit because they need the money, now here's how A had to choose between three exciting options for the future!" then B has less agency.

If my story is "of course A quit, but B couldn't. Now let me tell you about how B wrestled with the dilemma of whether to murder their boss, or start stealing from the till, or just suck it up", then I'm giving B agency.

Everybody who's alive and conscious has choices. Sometimes they have a lot of great choices, sometimes those choices are restricted and crappy. But the author still has the option of putting the spotlight on those choices.

To return to Kumquat queens earlier statement


At an extreme level, in one of those NonCon stories where the victim wakes up already chained up, is it possible for them to display any agency at all? I'd argue not and thus power and agency are very strongly linked.

Do they try to appease their captor? Do they end up succumbing to NC-fantasy-land Stockholm Syndrome and embracing their captivity? Do they mock the captor, or try manipulation to change their situation? Choices. From a crappy menu, but still choices that an author can choose to focus on, or not.

Hannibal Lecter spends all of Red Dragon/Manhunter and much of Silence of the Lambs physically imprisoned, but even before he engineers his own escape he's far from a passive player in the story.

 

[Lifestyle66]

When it comes to "agency" for the author's challenge, "You'll know it when you see it!"

 

[Bramblethorn]

No, I get that and you could argue that writing character B as quitting in my earlier example displays more agency than character A, because they're making a more difficult decision whereas A quitting would be relatively less difficult and interest to the reader.

But equally a character who has the ability (power, status, combat skills) to make more choices in any given circumstances is going to be easier to write agency for.

I agree with "easier", but the easy path doesn't always make for a better story.

Let's not get too distracted by extremes here. Most of the stories people write here - and hopefully all of the ones people write for this event - aren't about women waking up in chains. They're about scenarios where it wouldn't be terribly hard for female characters to have meaningful choices, to be more than just somebody's fantasy fuck. It shouldn't be terribly hard to write those women with agency.

 

[AwkwardMD]

This thread is a group of authors throwing out their PERSONAL opinions on what defines "agency" with regards to women and sex.

A quick Internet search shows Psychology Today's 2014 article discussing this topic.

"There is a new buzz term in sex education land, and it's called “Sexual Agency.” When people talk about any kind of personal “agency,” they are referring to an individual's ability to act in a way that accomplishes his or her goals. To have agency in any corner of your life is to have the capacity to behave or act in a way that will bring you the outcome or results that you desire."

It goes on to give more specific examples:
"ability to give consent to participating in or declining a sexual activity
choosing how you define your sexuality, such as: gay, straight, bi-sexual, asexual.
choose your gender
choose whether or not you want to engage sexually
choose safer sex practices or birth control.
to stop right in the middle of ANY sexual activity."

The issue I'm seeing in the examples given others here are all over the place. And there seems to be an insistence by some here that if the female character doesn't explicitly state her goals/motivations and the story doesn't specifically state she has choices, then she doesn't have agency.

But many of the critics here are complaining of things like how those agency rules work in a marriage, claiming the husband is being a dictator taking his wife's agency! But the reverse is true, too, that the wife takes her husband's agency per their marriage agreement!

Many and even MOST of the stories on this site and even the LW category have women fitting into the "ability to engage in the sexual activity she wants." Cheating wives have agency and are doing what they want! The issue in those BTB stories is with the consequences of her prior promises and commitments in the marriage!

So, what do you want with the call for stories involving women with agency? Is it a story where the woman makes her choices and faces no consequences?

This is not a meaningful guide for how to write stories, because it fundamentally assumes that a person making a choice is making a choice. Stories are about characters, made up people, and literature is full of characters that are really just mouthpieces for the authors, and that's where the distinction lies.

Let's say I write a story where "My husband" really wants to get fucked. I mean, he really, really wants it, so he goes out and robs a store so he can go to jail and just get reamed day and night in prison. He was just so excited to get arrested, and become the bottomiest bottom in whatever white nationalist group would take him.

This technically fulfills a checklist as long as I make it pretty clear that he wants this, but it does not pass a smell test. It reads like I, the author, am mad at him, and that I want to put him in a position he would not choose for himself given any level of desire for some hard anal, and I've just done this all for my own reasons. No amount of me saying "But this is on his bucket list" or putting words in the mouth of "My husband" would justify this series of events qualifying as agency on the character's part. It serves me, the author, in venting my theoretical anger at my real husband, and I'd be disingenuous to argue otherwise.

I've read one of your stories, and I said the same thing then. The husband and wife were inorganic, doing whatever the story required of them regardless of common sense or previously stated motives, to fulfill the overarching authorial mandate of making a series of sexual pairings at an orgy happen as quickly as possible. Then, later, when there should have been in-universe consequences ("We were supposed to stay together!"), those were handwaved away to meet the needs of the plot. It wasn't consistent.

EDIT: I am not suggesting you are mad at your wife, only that you may not have fully interrogated why you have the character of Jan make some of the choices that she makes.

 

[TheRedChamber]

When it comes to "agency" for the author's challenge, "You'll know it when you see it!"

It's more a case of you'll know a lack of agency when you see it, but that tends to be the extreme cases. We've already had heated discussion over the Wheel of Time qualifies (fwiw I tapped out of that series around book 7 but from what's discussed I can see both `Fate fucks with agency' and 'Fate sure looks like male fantasy')

I think one issue I'm seeing is that some people regard agency as a binary state, characters either have it or they don't and as long as they do everything is golden, whereas others view it as a spectrum. I'm happy my female characters meet a basic sniff test (except maybe in some earlier writing) but feel the concept of agency in fiction is still a bit too slippery to put it to work improving my stories.

I agree with "easier", but the easy path doesn't always make for a better story.

Let's not get too distracted by extremes here. Most of the stories people write here - and hopefully all of the ones people write for this event - aren't about women waking up in chains. They're about scenarios where it wouldn't be terribly hard for female characters to have meaningful choices, to be more than just somebody's fantasy fuck. It shouldn't be terribly hard to write those women with agency.

To be clear I'm discussing the NonCon example because I believe that to truly understand a concept you have to bend it to breaking point. Can you write an abduction story where the victim finally decides that captivity is what she wants and still get to call that agency. It sounds like bullshit to me, but what if we include 3k words of psychobabble about how unhappy her childhood was?


A little, but maybe not much up the spectrum, we had a poster earlier arguing that a submissive story met the criteria because 'she choses to submit'. Well fine I guess, but maybe not for this competition. Does it matter if (in a 10k story) she submits within the first 500 words or do we need 9000 words of indecision first?

 

[Lifestyle66]

This is not a meaningful guide for how to write stories, because it fundamentally assumes that a person making a choice is making a choice. Stories are about characters, made up people, and literature is full of characters that are really just mouthpieces for the authors, and that's where the distinction lies.

Let's say I write a story where "My husband" really wants to get fucked. I mean, he really, really wants it, so he goes out and robs a store so he can go to jail and just get reamed day and night in prison. He was just so excited to get arrested, and become the bottomiest bottom in whatever white nationalist group would take him.

This technically fulfills a checklist as long as I make it pretty clear that he wants this, but it does not pass a smell test. It reads like I, the author, am mad at him, and that I want to put him in a position he would not choose for himself given any level of desire for some hard anal, and I've just done this all for my own reasons. No amount of me saying "But this is on his bucket list" or putting words in the mouth of "My husband" would justify this series of events qualifying as agency on the character's part. It serves me, the author, in venting my theoretical anger at my real husband, and I'd be disingenuous to argue otherwise.

I've read one of your stories, and I said the same thing then. The husband and wife were inorganic, doing whatever the story required of them regardless of common sense or previously stated motives, to fulfill the overarching authorial mandate of making a series of sexual pairings at an orgy happen as quickly as possible. Then, later, when there should have been in-universe consequences ("We were supposed to stay together!"), those were handwaved away to meet the needs of the plot. It wasn't consistent.

EDIT: I am not suggesting you are mad at your wife, only that you may not have fully interrogated why you have the character of Jan make some of the choices that she makes.

I offered a common definition for everyone to use as a guide for their own ideas of "agency", as what I believed was the thread intent.

You seem to have a lot of issues attempting to inflame and direct with "what ifs" which you might believe will inflame some homophobia in me. [Rather transparent.]

I'll take the higher road in this case and just say I and my CURRENT wife [not a feminist, BTW, as opposed to the first wife] are not mad at each other and get along exceedingly well. My character, Jan reflects a lot of my current wife's traits, and the choices Jan makes are often those my current wife would make! [Yes, she'll even admit to her narcissism as "It's always about ME!" This makes writing my first-person stories much easier, even though I'm "not a very good writer", O. I chose to write what IS or at least IS VERY POSSIBLE.

And also, BTW my own familial trait of "handwaved away" consequences comes from an upbringing by overworked parents who tolerated each other for more than 65 years. In other words: "Just STFU and keep working!" When you grow up, you might just realize yours is not the only world out there.

 

[FelHarper]

Isn’t agency what most fiction is about? Isn’t the hero’s journey about having a choice and choosing to act in a way that is noble and altruistic?

Well then, what about horror? Few things are more horrifying than being trapped and unable to escape from inevitable doom. And this is exactly the formula we often see play out in the erotic horror genre. In a sense, the lack of agency is the basis of the horror, though not always of the hack and slash type. It can also be tragedy and heartbreak and regret.

Knowledge is crucial for agency, as without enlightenment, the archetypal hero is unable to vanquish evil. So, agency is both the freedom to choose and the wisdom to choose well.

 

[SimonDoom]

Isn’t agency what most fiction is about? Isn’t the hero’s journey about having a choice and choosing to act in a way that is noble and altruistic?

Well then, what about horror? Few things are more horrifying than being trapped and unable to escape from inevitable doom. And this is exactly the formula we often see play out in the Erotic Horror genre. In a sense, the lack of agency is the horror, though not always of the hack and slash type. It can also be tragedy and heartbreak and regret.

Knowledge is crucial for agency, as without enlightenment, the archetypal hero is unable to vanquish evil. So, agency is both the freedom to choose and the wisdom to choose well.

I would agree with the point about freedom, but not necessarily about wisdom.

In horror movies, people make stupid decisions. They have the power of choice, and they choose wrong. They go down the stairs into the dark basement, and everybody in the audience screams, "Don't do that!" and they get skewered by the psycho killer. In horror movies, having the power to choose foolishly is a big part of the appeal.

 

[FelHarper]

I would agree with the point about freedom, but not necessarily about wisdom.

In horror movies, people make stupid decisions. They have the power of choice, and they choose wrong. They go down the stairs into the dark basement, and everybody in the audience screams, "Don't do that!" and they get skewered by the psycho killer. In horror movies, having the power to choose foolishly is a big part of the appeal.

Oh, I agree! If you make stupid choices, you might as well have no choice at all, and we are thrust right back into horror.

 

[Omenainen]

I think one useful way to approach agency is to either ask the “why would she though?” or swap the story altogether. Not every story’s every side character needs to have agency, but let’s assume a heterosexual erotic story, written from the male perspective. The one mentioned in this thread, the protagonist smitten with the pretty lady and finally winning her over, for example. Say you’ve written the first draft so you know how the story goes. Now, if you read it over and imagine if being told from the woman’s point of view, does it still make sense? She needs to have her own goals in life and her own reasons for pursuing this relationship. If the reason he gets the girl is “he really, really wants to” it is not good enough. Any reason stemming from her and somehow demonstrated in the story is good enough.

 

[Omenainen]

I'll take the higher road in this case and just say I and my CURRENT wife [not a feminist, BTW, as opposed to the first wife] are not mad at each other and get along exceedingly well. My character, Jan reflects a lot of my current wife's traits, and the choices Jan makes are often those my current wife would make! [Yes, she'll even admit to her narcissism as "It's always about ME!" This makes writing my first-person stories much easier, even though I'm "not a very good writer", O. I chose to write what IS or at least IS VERY POSSIBLE.

As to me saying you don’t write as well as you think you do. What I meant, and still stand by, is that as an author you’re supposed to sell ideas to the reader so that they’re somehow plausible. Yes, real people make all kinds of unbelievable decisions and have very unlikely events happen to them, but it’s not good fiction to write about them with the footnote of “this really happened so you have to believe it!” You’ll have to justify it somehow within the story. That’s what good writing is. It’s not about the premise, or the content, it’s about making it feel like it could happen that way. Verisimilitude, I think the word is.