Do you plan for a climax in your stories?

[wishfulthinking]

I don't plan a story, so I don't plan the climax. Eek - the sign of an amatuer writer, I know

I do write in chapters, so a climax would be important.

About 70% of the time, the sexual climax is the climax in my stories. The other times, I start out with sex and finish with the story [so people can backclick if need be while I develop the story], or no sex at all. I think I have about 5/30 stories that have no penetration or sexual climax - but I haven't put them in the non-erotic category .

I began to realise from feedback that in my later stories, the climax wasn't the orgasm. I find I tend to stop at a point where I like readers to be able to fantasise their own ending. [They think I'm teasing them, and it is completely unintentional.]

 

[Pure]

i agree on that approach, wishful,

//the climax wasn't the orgasm.//

for the climax to be orgasm, you'd want a story, such as, an anorgasmic woman trying everything for years till a lesbian encounter brought her over the top.

i maintain a fuck could more easily be a climax; but the orgasm, rarely so.

 

[Matadore]

i agree on that approach, wishful,

//the climax wasn't the orgasm.//

for the climax to be orgasm, you'd want a story, such as, an anorgasmic woman trying everything for years till a lesbian encounter brought her over the top.

Yours is a reasonable assumption, Pure. Same plot with impotent man achieving orgasm after suitable struggle to overcome his difficulties would also serve.

For your interest...

I have had some success with a technique that certainly isn't original, but hasn't been mentioned in this thread directly. That is to use a classic story or plot to retell. Mythology is a great example for several reasons. The stories are universal, primal, of the collective unconscious and thus accessible to most readers. I still have to work (sometimes unsuccessfully) hard to write narrative, develop character and maintain consistently rational for behavior, but the skeleton is there for me to appropriate for the reader.

I haven't attempted to appropriate a story plot written by a modern author because that is a very different matter altogether.

Biblical stories, Greek mythology, Celtic stories, Asian myths all are ways of trying to explain and make accessible the human condition...of which sexuality is a major key theme. Thus, interesting to anyone sensitive to questions of creation and origin. "Love makes the world go 'round."

The climax in such tales is pretty clear as most are "teaching" attempts and have a point to make.

Just a thought.

TY for your "work" here. I hope to benefit from the critiques here of my own attempts in the future.

Matadore

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

i agree on that approach, wishful,

//the climax wasn't the orgasm.//

for the climax to be orgasm, you'd want a story, such as, an anorgasmic woman trying everything for years till a lesbian encounter brought her over the top.

i maintain a fuck could more easily be a climax; but the orgasm, rarely so.

What about a TV talk-show host who hasn't had any pleasure with her exes, until she gives up sex for her career on the assumption that it's futile. Then she pisses off a guest, and he ....well, let's just say it's NC/reluctance. And she doesn't want to leave him alone afterward. In her mind, he's the reason that she came, not what he did to her.

 

[BigFatMeat]

Yeah.

 

[musicankane]

I work out the rough idea of the story in my head and then let my ideas flow and expand as i write. As far as the sex goes I usually have an idea of what's to cum, but most of the time it changes as I develop the scene.

 

[Phantom21]

I generally have some emotions that I want to get in, but the story generally takes on a life of it's own. If I plan it out, it never goes that way. I want to go left, it goes right.

 

[Pensri1]

Real Climax

When I write a story, I have basic idea of characters and what might happen, but that is it. My mind plays the character as I write and I follow wherever it leads me. It usually take me several days or weeks to finish so the direction I go may change alot from my original plan. When the climax come it is because I am ready for it to overtake me and my readers, so I just let it happen and enjoy. I hope my readers enjoy it as well

Pensri

 

[AchtungNight]

Drat! Missed out on this poll.

I don't plan for a climax in my stories, I just let it happen. Usually there end up being a lot of them- varying in drama and size. I too let my stories write themselves- mostly.

Matadore: I too have adapted classic stories' plots into fanfiction. The best example on this site is probably "A Request for Help." http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=257112
Glad to know I'm not the only one here who does it.

 

[Emma_Ray_Garrett]

When I sit down to write a story, I have a vague outline in my head. I know what the main plot is, where it will 'climax' and what the end will be.

Then I sit down and right, and sub plots develop throughout the story. Coming to their conclusions throughout the line of the work.

So, I do both. One major 'climax' and several smaller ones that keep action, momentum, and character growth on the right path.

 

[M-Y-Erotica]

I don't start off always, in fact maybe never, writing knowing what the climax is, but I keep rewriting and rewriting until there is one. If tension or excitement is on a scale of 1 - 10 with 10 being high, I aim for something like:

6 - 2- 4 - 6- 4 - 7 - 8 - 5- 8 -9 - 4 - 6 - 8 - 10 - 10 -10 - 4 - 1

I think you get the idea. Tension goes up and down, but notice how even when it goes down I try to keep it higher than earlier down times. So that things escalate and build. Of course, in real stories, you can't always hit these numbers. If they have to do something, they have to do it, no matter what it does to the pretty picture. But still, that's the goal. And if I discover that an earlier scene is more important that the final climax, then I tone the earlier one down and the latter one up until it works. I mean if the most important scene comes half way through, then what's the point of the rest? The problem's already solved; the point made. Of course, if your climax doesn't solve the problem or make the point, then it wasn't a good climax. The climax is supposed to resolve the story and be exciting, not just be exciting.

 

[M-Y-Erotica]

About 70% of the time, the sexual climax is the climax in my stories. The other times, I start out with sex and finish with the story [so people can backclick if need be while I develop the story], or no sex at all. I think I have about 5/30 stories that have no penetration or sexual climax - but I haven't put them in the non-erotic category .

One rule I have given myself lately is that if this is to be erotica then I have to solve the story through sex. I'm not writing a story that is about something else where sex occurs along the way. Instead, I am trying to write a story about the effects of sex on people. Usually for me that's love, but it could be anything. So a constraint is that if people are having problems, they can't solve them by talking and then have sex as step two. Instead, they start kissing and I see what of import falls out of it. It's a tough constraint, but I'm giving it a go.

 

[Oblimo]

I'm one of those jerks who says that if a story does not have a climax it's not a story at all, but a "vignette."

There two subatomic particles of the story atom are:

1) A protagonist comes up against an antagonistic force and either succeeds or fails against it; and

2) The protagonist must change his/her mind about something.

In other words, the protagonist's internal and external motivations must be resolved in a climax, one way or another, for a story to truly occur.

Of course, erotic vignettes can be just as hot (if not moreso) than an erotic story. It all depends on what buttons you want to push.