One of the questions I get asked a lot, by readers, is “Hey Alex, where do your ideas come from?” I figured that would be a fun thing to explore in a blog post…
Short answer: A filthy imagination, some longstanding kinks, and knowing what my regular readers enjoy!
The longer answer is… longer, ha.
I’ve always had an overactive imagination, and it has always been filthy, too. As a kid I looked very sweet and innocent: it was great fun to then open my mouth and shock people with something outrageous. I know erotica isn’t as well-respected as other genres of writing, and that a lot of people think “sex is easy to write and doesn’t take any talent,” but I think there’s a huge difference between bluntly describing a sex act versus crafting characters, making them feel real, and taking a reader on an intimate journey with them. I’m not Dickens, no, but it’s not just dicks either!
Occasionally, I’ll sit down and brainstorm what I want to work on next. After writing for so long, and being lucky enough to hear regularly from readers, I have a pretty good understanding of what topics go down well. “I thought I was straight?!” or “oh crap, I just got caught” or “I want this person so intensely… what happens if they want me, too?” are all fun themes, with near-infinite room for variation.
Sometimes, though, a single line of dialog will burst into my head and refuse to leave, or a fragment of a scene I can imagine with crystal clarity. Or, I’ll see someone, or watch something, which leaves my brain thinking “oh, but what if…” And then, before you know it, a whole story is bubbling up.
“I know it’s risky, but I’m horny so I’ll do it anyway…”
“He’s infuriating and annoying, but I can’t stop thinking about him…”
“Wait, my body can feel like THIS?!”
“I’ve been hurt before, I’m not going to fall for another guy… [promptly falls for another guy]”
“I can’t help myself when he tells me to do something…”
I try not to plan too much of what I’m going to write, though I usually know the overall arc of the story that I’m going to stick to. Then it’s “just” a case of coming up with imaginative sex scenes, and putting the characters through the emotional wringer!
Once in a while, I set out to write a short story, and then find that I don’t want to give the characters up. One yet-to-be-released book, for instance, originally began life as part of my ‘Caught’ series of shorts. Problem was, writing one scene between the two guys was enough for me to fall for them both, and so suddenly it turned into a novel-length bi-awakening romance. (You can hopefully expect to see this one come out as an ebook in the next few months – sign up to my free mailing list if you want to hear about it when it happens!)
Despite what some readers assume, my stories aren’t autobiographical: I’m not basing the characters on myself, nor their antics on my own life (though sometimes I wish that were the case!)
That’s not to say there aren’t elements of me sprinkled throughout, though. A lot of the guys I write about have a fascination with underwear/swimwear (guilty!); find the idea of playing with power dynamics incredibly interesting (guilty!); and grew up using sarcasm as a defense mechanism (guilty!). I don’t just grab elements from real life and drop them into stories, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t using my own experiences and feelings to shape what my characters do, and feel.
(The moment in “A Neighborly Seduction” where Ezra thinks back to the inception of his red swimsuit kink, when he was still a kid? Yep, the core of that was lifted from my own experience, when I was younger, though sadly it wasn’t in Hawaii)
I don’t think you need to have lived every single experience in order to write about it convincingly (I wasn’t a college wrestler, for instance, and I’ve never been caught jerking off). But, being able to squeeze yourself into the brain of a character and use your own feelings can help make them more realistic. And that’s what erotica and erotic romance readers are looking for, I think: sexy escapism, sure, but escapism they can believe in, too.
Got a question about being a m/m erotica and romance writer? Curious about something which might make a good future blog post? Get in touch!