Alcohol content of your stories?

[NaughteeDragon]

Most of my stories feature drinking of some kind. Like all things, the purpose is to serve the story. A lot of times the presence of booze is atmospheric, it can tell a lot about the scene it’s in.

Wine for a social lubricant while a woman asks her best friend if she can borrow her husband for a threesome. Going and rinsing out their glasses signals the end of the conversation.

Two friends having a beer while having a serious conversation.
A mother and son sharing a stiff drink for courage before they discuss the aftermath of sleeping together.
A mother sharing a bottle of wine with her daughter because she knows it makes her talkative.
A man enjoying a beer with dinner after being on a diet for 2 1/2 weeks.
A man or woman drinking beer because they doesn’t like wine.
A guy having a coke while the guy he’s talking to grabs a beer.

 

[PennyThompson]

I think I've only ever written about characters drinking or getting drunk once, as a prelude to an awkward next-morning during an out of town work conference

"Victoria orders something fruity served in a hollowed-out pineapple. I try a sip and estimate that it's eighty five percent high proof rum. 'Oh fudge, that's strong,' she exclaims with a giggle, and takes another long, deep pull from her umbrella straw."

Inhibitions are loosened and mistakes are made, but I structured it in a way that nobody's sexual consent was violated.

 

[ColtonWrites]

Drunk, or close to it is too close to non consent for me.

IRL story - when I first met my wife, early in our relationship, we had one evening drunk and horny in her apartment. But we both had the sensibility to say "no, first time we need to be sober." So we went to bed just to sleep, woke up a few hours later and had a mutual "You sober? Me too! Still want to do this? Hell yeah!"

16 years later we are still together.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

There is a variety of Orange liqueurs. Are there are derived from Kumquats?

There are - it's a speciality of Corfu, in particular. Tastes very similar to bitter orange, unsurprisingly.

 

[dirk2024]

Alcohol is mentioned in some of my stories, and usually low key. I don't mention wineries, breweries or brand names (yet). It's usually wine or beer, occasionally scotch or a mixed drink. It's a background thing just to bring a little realism to the story.

 

[crookedletter]

Some beer, some wine. In my story set in Cancun some tequila, some margaritas.

I find alcohol is handy as a social lubricant in erotica. You can build sexual tension that way, with people doing and saying things they might not otherwise, letting things slip, their defenses down.

I think the trick -- much of the time, at least -- is to build rather than release the tension with alcohol. A couple thousand words' worth of sexual tension that just leads to a drunken hookup is unlikely to be very satisfying. To say nothing of questions of consent, as others have said.

 

[PapaRomantic]

I rarely drink IRL, and don't feel comfortable writing about it if I don't really have much experience. I can't think of a single alcohol reference in any of my stories - wait a minute, I'm sure there is alcohol in my story "Pete's Pub."

 

[MK_Whimsy]

That's interesting to think about, actually. Nobody drinks in any of my stories, probably because I don't.

 

[Raybies93]

That's interesting to think about, actually. Nobody drinks in any of my stories, probably because I don't.

A lot of boozin’ in my stuff ‘cause that’s what I did during many of my semi autobiographical stories

 

[MK_Whimsy]

A lot of boozin’ in my stuff ‘cause that’s what I did during many of my semi autobiographical stories

You can have mine

 

[AllenWoody]

I'm a regular drinker and, accordingly, alcohol appears on a regular basis in my stories. Not drunkenness or poor decision making -with perhaps one notable exception- but lots of casual drinks over dinner or happy hour. In the story I'm writing now someone *just* made a Negroni for the FMC.

 

[RetroFan]

In some of my stories I have characters getting drunk for comic effect.

For example in my story 'Bigfoot In The Bennington Triangle' which is set at a chaotic music festival in the early 1970s the youngest member of the group Warren is an insufferable, prissy, uptight square until a nutty girl in the group Ellen gives him first grass (literally grass but he thinks it is marijuana) then pills (actually her father's diet pills) to loosen him up. This works, and soon Warren is chugging down copious amounts of booze mixed with a high-sugar content soft drink blue in colour which sends him hyperactive.

Unfortunately, in his drunken, hypo state Warren makes himself the centre of attention, regaling everyone with stories about his older sister Betsy's bathroom habits and how cranky she gets when its her time of the month, completely unaware that Betsy is returning and standing right behind him. When he finally does turn around and sees Betsy standing there less than impressed, he is so shocked that he immediately throws up, covering his sister's jeans with bright blue vomit. And things only get worse during the night when crazy Ellen gives Warren a hand job - the first time he has ever experienced this - and he accidentally ejaculates all over Betsy's skirt, leaving his sister pissed off and very short of clothes to wear during the long weekend.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I don't see anything funny there.

 

[Zootonius]

I sometimes use 'come in for a nightcap' as a trope, with some type of whiskey as the offered drink. But the the drink rarely gets finished before more 'pressing' things come to the fore.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I don't see anything funny there.

Well, a sense of humor is required. ; )

 

[nice90sguy]

To answer my own question, I've only featured alcohol in one of my stories, where it was used as a coping mechanism, and was really there to show how miserable the person was. Not pure fiction in my case, but I was never an alcoholic -- it's not in my DNA; I've never craved alcohol, and never will. I'm addicted to caffeine and nicotine, and could easily become addicted to cocaine -- which is why I absolutely refuse to take it.

 

[MetaBob]

The story I'm working on right now incorporates cocktail names into its titles, and even as plot points. It's looking like a four-parter, with the first two parts of the series already posted, and the 3rd part complete but awaiting final review. I hope to submit it tomorrow:
Travel Nurse, or The Last Word
Travel Nurse, or the Monte Cassino
Travel Nurse, or The Final Ward
Travel Nurse, or The Right Word (in process)

I might just make myself a Last Word now, actually.

 

[RoyalAuthor]

My characters often have drinks, rarely to the point of intoxication, because social drinking with friends and before sexy situations is common in real life, and I want my stories to mirror that. It also helps justify characters suddenly acting more boisterous and explains sudden sex talk. I have a chapter in my ongoing serial about doing drinks around the world at Epcot in Disney World. It allowed for a group of characters to get really open with each other with jokes, innuendos, and general lustiness without seeming like it was out of the blue - you can lower inhibitions for your characters in a natural way.

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

I don’t drink much so it isn’t a big focus of many of my stories, though a glass of wine or a social drink occurs in many stories.

Two exceptions are Les/Junior Pardee, a recovering borderline alcoholic who appears in three of my stories (and a 4th one if I can ever complete it) and an upcoming story where college friends do the college drinking thing only to run into the situation again years later under very different circumstances. Les usually drank Scotch and I haven’t finished the scenes in the upcoming story so I’ll have to consider how their tastes have changed from the traditional college fare.

 

[stickygirl]

Drink appears in a few of my stories, but it's hardly pivotal. My sailors have a lunchtime pint in Falmouth, one MC offers a wine on the beach in Thailand, and there's a mention of a Danish spirit drunk on Greenland ( very topical huh? )
As it happens I've been doing a great deal of research into alcoholism for one of my in-progress MCs, which includes discovering info about AA.
A further as it happens, is that I had a glass of white with my bf at supper ( but I always have a pint of water to go with it )