How do you, as an author, describe breasts?

[OffNSFW]

There is a recent twice-exhumed thread about "the perfect breast size" (thankfully closed now) that made me curious about my own tendencies in describing the breasts of my breast-having characters. So I looked through my currently published stories and gathered as many of them as I could.

Starting with my most recent story first and working backwards...

Scent Like Roses: two male characters, no breast descriptions. But one of them is very well hung, if that counts.

We Dig Your Vibe: an FFM threesome, of sorts. Breast haver #1: "I'm pudgy, and I have the big hips and tits to go with it. People just assume you're an easy pickup." Breast haver #2: "She has an explosion of freckles across her flat chest, and blazing red pubic hair."

The Boogeyman: two male characters. No breasts involved.

Eva's Tale: "I squeeze my chubby tit through my top as I feel a calm, abiding warmth in my entire body."

Plain Jane: "His eyes light up when he sees the spectacular tits that I keep hidden under my giant sweaters. In some ways, all men are the same."

Better Than Porn: another FFM threesome of sorts. I purposely leaned into the cliches of pornography for this one, so I don't know how representative it is. "The two of them get down low with their faces above my lap, their pillowy tits resting on my thighs."

Gift Givers: two lesbian characters. Breast haver #1: "She collected the clothes into a ball against her large, heavy breast." Breast haver #2: "Immediately in front of her, she saw a flat, smooth belly, flanked with tattoos, jewel in the navel, and above that, two stainless steam barbells that shined in the dark against draperies of long black hair and areolas the color of warm umber."

Storyteller: "I untie it, pull up until she says 'when,' then tie it again, careful not to let the string slip and expose her flat chest."

WIWAW - Dear Straight Men: no breasts in sight.

The Virgin Islands: a gay romance between a cis man and a trans man. For what it's worth, the trans man does briefly describe what his breasts were like, pre-top surgery. "If you're thinking of asking how big they were before, they were almost nonexistent. A friend even asked me if there was any point in top surgery since I was already so flat... I didn't think it was funny then, but it's kind of funny now. If I had a shirt on, some people didn't notice a difference. But I could tell."

Pro Gamer Moves: a gay stroker. No boobs.

Hapless Charlie: "God blessed me with a plump, shapely ass. Sure, he gave me a tummy roll, narrow hips, small tits, and a face that usually earns me compliments about my personality."

The Old Man and the Pool: more gay shit.

Take Off Your Robe and Get In: Trans girl sleeps with the mother of her ex-boyfriend. The girl: "I screw up my courage and adjust the front of the robe to flatter my tiny tits." The mother: "Her tits are big enough to show the weight of age. Her areolas are dark."

Summer of Sydney: a whole novella full of breast havers. #1: "She wore the tiniest white bikini, which barely covered her small breasts and apparently hairless pubic mound." #2: "She had big tits for such a slim girl, with big hard nipples and little pale areolas." #3: "Her breasts were two nice little handfuls, with pale, puffy areolas. They hung slightly heavy." #4: "She wore a sheer blue maxi skirt, which did nothing to hide her legs or her hairy pubis, and a necklace of flowers, which did nothing to hide her tiny, slightly downturned tits." #5: "I sucked one of her big, hard nipples, her areola so wide and flat, covering so much of her huge heavy tit."

Locker Room Talk, Dear Straight Men, Dear Straight Men 2: gay, gay, gay.

Ghost of a Flea: " I knelt over her and finished myself by my own hand, spilling my seed on her--first, her thick neck, then her heavy breasts, then her nipples, pale and pink and broad as tea saucers."

Claire's Belly: an age-gap lesbian fling. Breast haver #1: "Cute little tits with dark little nipples." #2: "Big tits, big belly, big bush, big everything."

Erotic Flash Fiction: several ultra-short stories, just one breast description. "Naked, you loom--shaved head, small tits, nipple piercings, thick hips and thighs, big, sensuous belly draping your pubis."

Carefully, I Hurt You: "Your body, strung up by the over-the-door straps with your wrists bound above your head, all big tits and big belly and wide hips and big thighs... god, it's beautiful."

The Pearl Diver: a solo story, of sorts. No breast description in this one, maybe because there are no other humans in the story to observe them.

Strange Luck at the Pool Hall: "She had string bikini tanlines and little tits with light brown nipples."

Sound Sleepers: No breast description in this one.

Johnny Hedonic: gay.

M.U.F.F.: an erotic novel with many breasts. Breast haver #1: "She admires her tiny breasts, little dewdrop nipples, her belly made taut by field hockey." #2: "I thread my arms underneath hers, grip her heavy breasts, so big that they overfill my hands, touch her nipples--so sensitive!--and give her neck little suckling kisses." #3: "She's wearing a pair of black panties with a wide lacy waistband that comes up to her navel, and a matching longline bralette that strains to hold her massive tits." #4: "Her swaying tits, large and full, just a little heavy with age. Big, sharply defined nipples." #5: "She has small breasts, held by a black balconette bra."

She Smiles With Her Eyes: "She stands with her bare, muscular arms and torso out, her small bust contained in a no-frills black sports bra with a wide elastic band."

12 Short Stories About Sex: A lonely man on a bit of an odyssey, told in vignettes. Two breast-having sexual partners in this one. #1: "I slide a hand up her tank top and cup her big, heavy tit in my hand while she searches in vain for a condom." #2: "But she has a physicality that I can't ignore--her long limbs, her tiny breasts, areolas nearly invisible."

The Houseguest: A cuckolding story. One of the few I've written that I've left up, mostly because I like the way it doubles back a couple times to show the same events from overlapping POVs. "She smiles and laughs, a lilting, musical laugh that makes her tummy and her large, heavy breasts bob."

Carol: An FFM threesome with a queer twist. Breast haver #1: "My hips are small, my ass is small, my tits are non-existent." #2: "She's a fat hourglass with big tits and a wide ass."

Against Fogged Glass: a lesbian stroker. #1: "My breasts are big and heavy, veined and pleated with stretch marks." #2: "It barely covers your modest breasts."

There's Always Someone Listening: The sex in this story is heard, not seen. No breast description.

Scent of a Woman: another lesbian stroker, but this one has an anal fixation, so no breast descriptions. If you want a detailed physical description of a woman's anus, this is your story.

Morning Exercise: yet another lesbian stroker, which I guess I wrote a lot of in early days. "She's not as big as me, but she's a healthy, modestly endowed girl. Her nipples are dark, almost purple, with a horizontal barbell through each."

What have I learned here? I think I definitely have themes I return to, possibly certain cliches I've developed. But I can't say I favor any particular kind of breast in my stories, maybe because the breast-having partners I've been with in real life have been pretty dissimilar to one another. Human bodies are beautiful in their diversity in real life. Why not in fiction?

 

[lovecraft68]

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

2menywerdz



I often say something like 'a nice handful.'

I recently borrowed a Seger description, ...., way up firm and high.

 

[onehitwanda]

"Delicious Funbags"

 

[NuclearFairy]

I tend to go with perk=small, bouncy=medium, and bountiful=large.

I mean, I could use more words, I do occasionally with penises. But while heterosexual sex does appeal to me the female form does not, and so I'd get bored fast if I tried to make myself be more descriptive with a females chest.

 

[MK_Whimsy]

I find I tend to be very sparing in how I describe them. Looking over the handful(!) of stories of mine that have female characters, I see I have used a few descriptive terms such as "plump" and "modestly-sized," in this case referring to a non-human character no less.

In general though, I just don't want to belabor it, lol. It's just personal preference I think. I can't see myself going so far as to specify an exact cup size, for example.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I think I specified a cup size once: something like 'might not have been big enough to fill an A-cup.' I don't think I'd ever use cup size as a regular descriptor, unless it came up within the world of the story. Like, guy and girl live together, they do each other's laundry, maybe they have a conversation about how weird it is that there's a D cup and a DD cup but no CC cup, so it's not just a guy who has a magical ability to perfectly categorize boob sizes by what size upholstery they take.

I find myself using breast reveals as an excuse to sneak in information about skin tone -- brown, tanned, pale, whatever. And I think I tend to call them tits or boobs more often when writing from a male POV, and err towards breasts when writing from a female POV even when the female in question would call them tits or boobs.

 

[NotWise]

I rarely describe the size, and then it's usually more or less than a handful. I describe color, texture, feel, symmetry, dangle... I'll let the readers imagine what they want unless some detail of the boob in question plays a part in the story and it needs to be described.

I think teardrops were my favorite metaphor, and I remember using it once. The character was a mature woman.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Story by story:

A Stringed Instrument: Phoebe's breasts: "clothed" (initially). Yvonne's breasts: exist.
Loss Function: Nadja: "her soft curves". Patricia (narrator): exist, presumably?
Anjali's Red Scarf: Sarah: left breast exists, just above a complex mathematical tattoo that probably gets more detailed physical description than all the characters in that story combined. Anjali's breasts: fit the narrator's hands perfectly.
Counting To Eleven: "little crescent-shaped marks where my fingernails had been", "dark areolae" (that one's a hint).
Magnum Innominandum: no description that I can recall. Presumably they exist.
Riddle of the Copper Coin: Adiba's breasts: no direct description but apparently small enough for her to pass herself off as a man. Makaarim's breasts: have "curves". Alluded to as "two mountains" in a riddle-poem but a large amount of poetic license is implied. Rafi's breasts: exist. Penny's: presumably exist?
The Floggings Will Continue: Sigrid's: "smooth, yielding skin". Kelly's: reportedly freckled but our narrator is too gentlemanly to verify for himself, or possibly he just doesn't want a kick in the nads.
The Wasp of St. Judith's: for both characters, may or may not exist.

There might be a few passages I've missed, but that's most of it. I'm not big on physical description.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I looked at one of my stories, a chaptered thing. In the first two thousand words or so, her breasts get mentioned twice, then there's this:

She wasn't too big, she wasn't too small, her breasts fitted nicely in my hand. I cupped a breast in my palm, feeling its weight, feeling its curve. She moved slightly, shifting the breast a little so that a firm nipple was centred in my palm.

"Mmmm," she purred, and I needed no words to know what she liked. We stopped kissing and our sole concentration was my hand on her breast, the tug of arousal between her nipple and mine, the slow way I curved my fingers around the warmth of a soft breast. More than a champagne glass for Marie Antoinette, but maybe a pencil would drop.

 

[ronde]

My descriptions depend upon the personality of the character and I like giving my readers the opportunity to form their own picture as they imagine it.

To my crusty old PI, they're tits. He never speculates on size because he's never met a breast he didn't like. He'll use words like big, little, heavy or if he could hold one in one hand or if it took both hands.

My female characters sometimes talk about their breasts, but that's with another woman or with her male partner. They'll usually just say "boobs" or "boobies". A female character would know her bra size, so she might use her size. Two women might compare their sizes.

Most of my "normal" male characters will use "tits" or "boobs" when talking with other men, again only describing with general words like big, little, and maybe "round" or "really firm". When talking with their significant other, they'll use the word "breasts".

To me, any descriptions that involve measurements are just the writer fantasizing and especially so when I read a description like "she had 44F breasts." That woman would certainly have big breasts, but she'd also be a pretty hefty woman, not the slender stacked blonde she's also supposed to be.

 

[XerXesXu]

I get a lot of mileage out of 'curvy' and 'pert'. I've searched 200,000 words and those are the only two adjectives I frequently use.

 

[PennyThompson]

Hmm, it is interesting to go back and see how I describe some of my characters' breasts for the very first time in a story or series!

Penny Thompson (Penny's Physical Exam): Penny took a deep breath to calm her nerves, then unhooked her bra, exposing perky, freckled breasts. The cold air of the exam room made her shiver, and caused her little pink nipples to grow erect, standing out from her puffy pale areolas.

Marci Hamada (Penny's First Client): Marci nodded enthusiastically, and began tugging up on her sweater. Penny reached down to help her, and soon the chubby older woman was topless. She had the largest tits Penny had ever seen, clothed or unclothed. Her areolas were huge and pink, with little bumps surrounding her big nipples.

Sati Kapoor (You're a Switch, Penny Thompson!): She reached around Sati's back to unhook her bra, then pulled it off to reveal Sati's tiny breasts, nearly flat on her chest, small brown nipples hard as pebbles.

Mikayla Davis (Life Drawing for Developing Artists): She took off her tank top, revealing her deep brown skin. Her breasts were large and soft, teardrop shaped, and her nipples were inverted, forming little shy indentations in the center of her dark areolas.

June (a story in progress, about a werewolf, not yet released ): I shiver in the cold air, goosebumps prickling on my arms and shoulders at the sudden exposure, nipples hardening, areolas crinkling. My breasts swell and expand, and I gasp and grab them with my paws, squeezing them pleasurably. A second pair of dark nipples erupts from my stomach below my normal human pair, growing to a petite half-handful, followed by a third pair of smaller, tender buds.

 

[GlennJenko]

I really dislike "bra descriptors" (e.g 36FF) because it really doesn't put an image of size or shape into my mind. I thus tend more towards simple descriptors that give an image yet still allow for the reader to fill in some blanks. Things like "sizeable," "ample," or simpler things like "fairly big" or "small." I also have a few descriptions that are in relation to hand sizes, to put even more perspective on it.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I looked through the standalone story I submitted today, and here's what I have:

• "she pulled the cups of her bra aside to show off her large, round breasts and their oddly small nipples", which are later described as brown
• "Those beautiful brown boobs hung loose, and..."
• Describing a second character: "...exposing the blonde’s pale tits and pink nipples"

In the most recent part of my ongoing, the narrator just saw his girl's breasts for the first time during a tipsy post-bar hookup:

For the first time I could see her breasts, nipples standing firmly to attention, jutting out hard as bullets, areolas nearly nonexistent. She had enough to fill my hands, I judged, and that was enough. In high school, the first lesbian I’d ever met had told me any boob larger than an apple was a waste. She wasn’t right, but she wasn’t wrong either.

And in an earlier part, he admits to himself that he doesn't know how bra sizing works, really, and internally categorizes his co-worker's bust as "big. Really big." He does later describe someone's boobs as "A-cups, at best," which I guess is internally inconsistent but also fits, I think, with someone who's done laundry and gone necessities-shopping with a long-term girlfriend and basically gets the idea of A = small, D = big.

So I guess I do minimal size descriptions, use boobs to convey information about skin tone, and am more likely to describe nipples than anything about the shape of the breasts themselves. There are some authors for whom boobs are a key piece of the sex appeal of their stories; that's not me.

 

[NotWise]

No-one uses celebrity comparisons? I don't.

It would be dated now, but @YmaOHyd's "A-cups, at best" could become "like Audrey Hepburn's."

 

[YmaOHyd]

No-one uses celebrity comparisons? I don't.

It would be dated now, but @YmaOHyd's "A-cups, at best" could become "like Audrey Hepburn's."

I do actually have a moment in the standalone -- I forgot to include it in the list -- where my narrator is watching Anyone But You:

there was a resemblance, I realized, between April and Sydney Sweeney, though mostly in the lips and boobs

(It's worth mentioning here that, in my opinion, the narrator of that story is a little bit dumb. I can imagine him having that conversation with his girlfriend -- "you remind me of Sydney Sweeney" / "babe, I look nothing like her" / "in the boobs, I mean", and then she punches him in the arm.)

I think the A-cups comparison worked better than doing "like Audrey Hepburn's" in the context of that particular moment; it's part of a paragraph in which it's early morning and the woman is standing under horrible halogen basement lights, wearing baggy shorts, with messy hair and minimal makeup, and the narrator is captivated. I wanted sort of a "despite not trying to be attractive and in unflattering circumstances, she was gorgeous" vibe, and comparing her to Audrey Hepburn, who's still recognized as an international beauty icon sixty or seventy years later, would detract from what I was going for.

Not that that was your point! Or that it had to be Audrey Hepburn. But I wanted to explain where the 'at best' came from.

 

[NoTalentHack]

Mostly from mammary.

 

[NotWise]

(It's worth mentioning here that, in my opinion, the narrator of that story is a little bit dumb. I can imagine him having that conversation with his girlfriend -- "you remind me of Sydney Sweeney" / "babe, I look nothing like her" / "in the boobs, I mean", and then she punches him in the arm.)

I wonder how many women would really complain about the comparison?

 

[ElectricBlue]

(It's worth mentioning here that, in my opinion, the narrator of that story is a little bit dumb. I can imagine him having that conversation with his girlfriend -- "you remind me of Sydney Sweeney" / "babe, I look nothing like her" / "in the boobs, I mean", and then she punches him in the arm.)

I appreciate @NotWise for doing the homework (an attractive girl in a slightly vacuous kind of way), but I'm always intrigued at the number of writers who seem to think we all know who these people are.

It's no different, I guess, than some of my stories referencing Jim Morrison or Leonard Cohen.

 

[PennyThompson]

Jim Morrison

He was the guy that created Kermit the frog, right?

Leonard Cohen

I love him, he was so good as Spock in the original Star Trek!

 

[YmaOHyd]

I appreciate @NotWise for doing the homework (an attractive girl in a slightly vacuous kind of way), but I'm always intrigued at the number of writers who seem to think we all know who these people are.

It's no different, I guess, than some of my stories referencing Jim Morrison or Leonard Cohen.

Part of why I wouldn't do a celebrity comparison as my sole description. There's not enough of a cultural monoculture. Fifty years ago (goodness), you could reference Hot Lips Houlihan and kind of expect people to get it. Sweeney's been in The White Lotus, The Handmaid's Tale and Euphoria, three of the most critically-acclaimed shows of the last decade, and several movies including Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And that's not enough to be a household name.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Part of why I wouldn't do a celebrity comparison as my sole description. There's not enough of a cultural monoculture. Fifty years ago (goodness), you could reference Hot Lips Houlihan and kind of expect people to get it. Sweeney's been in The White Lotus, The Handmaid's Tale and Euphoria, three of the most critically-acclaimed shows of the last decade, and several movies including Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And that's not enough to be a household name.

Yep, not everyone knows the current content. You've named three shows I've heard of but never watched, and one movie I gave up on after half an hour. But then, I've walked out of Tarantino movies after paying good money at the cinema, so I'm glad Once Upon a Time was on Netflix, and I could find something else.

I'm also the vintage where the movie version of Hot Lips is the memorable one, not the tv series. MASH would come around as a double bill with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, every year for half a decade, and fill the old cinema, every time.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Part of why I wouldn't do a celebrity comparison as my sole description. There's not enough of a cultural monoculture.

Ha!!! Today's release has an offhand reference to Bailey Quarters and I'm wondering if anybody will pick up on it.

 

[jomar]

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