• The TMF is sponsored by Clips4sale - By supporting them, you're supporting us.
  • >>> If you cannot get into your account email me at [email protected] <<<
    Don't forget to include your username

The TMF is sponsored by:

Clips4Sale Banner

The Hardest Thing To Write Is _____________

T

TickleMantis

4th Level Red Feather
Joined
May 5, 2001
Messages
1,973
Points
48
Hi all!

Here's a question for all the scribes out there; What do you find is the hardest thing to write?

To kick it off, I'll give you an example of what I mean. Personally, I tend to find things like dialogue and (to a lesser extent) the 'action' in tickling stories comes relatively easy. I say "relatively" easy as opposed to just "easy" because it all takes effort. By comparison, in the bulk of my work there is usually a character or two who finds themselves having a rather explosive orgasm(s). When it comes to writing the orgasms, holy moly is it difficult! It would be easy to just type "And then they all came and went home" but I imagine anyone who's read that far into the tale is wanting (and deserving) of something a bit more descriptive.

I have asked myself if perhaps it's not so much the orgasms themselves that are hard to write, but keeping it fresh from story to story. How can I portray the "volcanically intense eruption of bliss" differently than I did in the last story? I don't believe for a moment that there's a limit to the amount of ways it can be done, I'm not and never have been a big believer in limits, particularly when it comes to crafting fiction. But I do struggle with this particular piece of descriptive writing.

So there you have it friends, my "The Hardest Thing To Write Is ___________". Any other takers? Don't worry, it's not easy to admit your short comings, (and I'm honestly now fearing readers and fellow writers alike scrutinizing every future orgasm scene I write!) but I promise not to laugh.

Have at it! :D


'Mantis
 
The hardest thing to write, is repetition. By that I mean things that you write a lot. I enjoy writing my tickling fiction, but truth be told, the hardest problem i have writing tends to be the actual tickling parts of the fiction. As a writer, you don't want to write the same thing you've wrote in twenty other stories, but there's only so many ways to write something, and it can be a bit of a staller when trying to write new ways of how the tickle torture is driving the Lee crazy.
 
Absolutely. Thinking about what you wrote, I honestly think that's why it's often so long between writing one story and the next. If I write story after story it feels, as you say, repetitive. If I leave it a few weeks, or often times months, and then start something new if doesn't feel like I'm just writing the same thing again.

It's for this very reason I think characters, plot, location, all the external factors outside of the 'action' are just as important as the action itself. Sure, we could write "The hot redhead got tied to the bed and then tickled for three hours", and I have seen stories like that, but no one is going to read it -or if they do, they're not going to take it seriously. Add some other factors, explain the relationship between characters, the reasons for them tickling each other, add layers upon layers and suddenly we've got ourselves a story and reason to be interested. This is where we can afford not be repetitive.
 
TickleMantis said:
It would be easy to just type "And then they all came and went home" but I imagine anyone who's read that far into the tale is wanting (and deserving) of something a bit more descriptive.
Click to expand...

This pretty much encompasses my biggest problem with writing. I find it very difficult to keep myself interested for the whole time I'm writing, especially if it's a long story. When I write lots of detail and character developments, I'm usually burnt out by the time I get to the actual tickling, so the ending will come off as rushed and lazy -- which is precisely why I don't post stories very often. It takes a lot of energy to see a story through to the end in one sitting (and if I write half and leave the rest for later, I'm likely to forget about it and never finish).

That's why I appreciate writers like you, Mantis. How you have the stamina to write such enormous volumes and never resort to rushing, I will never know.
 
The biggest challenge for me is foregrounding and backgrounding. By that I mean (a) orienting the characters to the scenario and (b) setting the stage for them. You don't want to go into too much detail, because that slows things down. But the reader needs to know how and why your characters got where they are at the beginning of the story (foregrounding). Setting the stage means describing the space your characters occupy, and describing the characters themselves. If, say, it's a basement, what physical features should you mention? The lighing? the walls and floor? The temperature? If one character is a hot babe, how fullyshould you describe her? Selecting just a few details that enables the reader to construct a mental image without a lot of blah-blah (backgrounding) can be tough.

This is why my revisions generally consist of cutting out unnecessary description.
 
Denmark said:
This pretty much encompasses my biggest problem with writing. I find it very difficult to keep myself interested for the whole time I'm writing, especially if it's a long story. When I write lots of detail and character developments, I'm usually burnt out by the time I get to the actual tickling, so the ending will come off as rushed and lazy -- which is precisely why I don't post stories very often. It takes a lot of energy to see a story through to the end in one sitting (and if I write half and leave the rest for later, I'm likely to forget about it and never finish).

That's why I appreciate writers like you, Mantis. How you have the stamina to write such enormous volumes and never resort to rushing, I will never know.
Click to expand...

I can appreciate that. Believe me, I definitely lose interest from time to time. Sometimes I'll start a story, stop and then it'll be literally months before I go back to it. That gap can be due to real life circumstances, but more often than not it's simply a lack of desire. If the interest doesn't seem to return, the only thing that works for me is to sit down and force myself to write. Within a couple of paragraphs I've usually found the desire to finish the piece has returned. Of course, that's what works for me, everyone is different.

ttgore said:
The biggest challenge for me is foregrounding and backgrounding. By that I mean (a) orienting the characters to the scenario and (b) setting the stage for them. You don't want to go into too much detail, because that slows things down. But the reader needs to know how and why your characters got where they are at the beginning of the story (foregrounding). Setting the stage means describing the space your characters occupy, and describing the characters themselves. If, say, it's a basement, what physical features should you mention? The lighing? the walls and floor? The temperature? If one character is a hot babe, how fullyshould you describe her? Selecting just a few details that enables the reader to construct a mental image without a lot of blah-blah (backgrounding) can be tough.

This is why my revisions generally consist of cutting out unnecessary description.
Click to expand...

Those are definitely all important aspects, and I agree completely -it's a balance. I also think it depends on what kind of story you're trying to produce. For example, some people like to write full blown novels -50,000 words or more- in a case like that it's definitely worth spending a few pages going into the finest of details because it's going to be focused as much on the story and characters as it is the tickling, if not more so. Most tickling stories however, are just trying to get to the action. If you're aiming for 6000-10,000 words chances are the writer wants to get the set up out of the way and jump into the action as soon as possible -in my opinion this can, in a way, be trickier than crafting the grand epic novel.

That said, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have a long set up. The prelude to the action can be used as a kind of 'literary foreplay'. Building suspense for the reader, teasing with suggestive words or dialogue that foreshadows what's about to happen. The reader basically knows where the story is going, why not build a little suspense? My favorite moment in a tickling story (or comic) is when the unsuspecting 'lee realizes they're going to be tickled. Anticipation can be just as exciting, perhaps sometimes even more so, than the action itself.
 
To be quite frank, the start of a story. That first paragraph. I have an idea, but no way on how to attack it without it feeling like an info dump, or to hit the right tenor to engage the audience.

First paragraphs are vital. The details and set up, I think it all will flow if I can just get things going off the ground.
 
The hardest thing about writing tickle stories is writing the erotica. I am still uncomfortable while writing it, especially when I think about who could be reading it. Oh well, my fault for publishing online anyway lol. My stories are usually soft erotica because I find there are not many stories that touch the subject, but keep itself tame enough. Furthermore, I'm extremely shy, so I find a relationship more satisfying than a strange encounter. Take a look at my three stories. So far I have two strictly about tickling, and another one where there is more plot than tickling.
 
Good thread. I'll chime in with "the actual tickling part" crowd. Crafting the scenarios leading up to the tickling, I have all sorts of resources at hand, but because I've gotten praise for a few stories' tickling sections, I'm perpetually second-guessing myself on two fronts:

1) Am I just repeating the scene that I wrote for another tale?
2) Am I really getting across a good picture of the tickle-torture?

I have more than one tickle-story draft saved on my Google drive right now that leads right up to the tickling part but hasn't been added to beyond that.
 
Just a bit of what I've had work effectively in order to get past repetition throughout multiple stories. Er, writing new tickling scenes I guess.

Shifting point of view helps but that's still fairly limited. First person and third person, and then tickler/ticklee/someone on the side lines. Only so many combos you can really do, but each situation would focus on different things and therefore provide for different avenues to write down.

But what I've found really helps is having a strong metaphor or simile and going from there. For example I tend to use water and fire similes and branching from there has led me to some interesting bits. Specifically in one of my stories I referred to the tickler as a villager drawing from a well, where the water was her laughter. In another story I compared the tickler's grip (to a lee's ankles) to rocks barring/daming a river, with her laughter seeping over top.

Similes can really, really make a huge difference and then you can just branch off from them. The well one went on for an extended period of time, which may or may not have been the best choice but in the context of creative/new content it worked.

--I suppose I should add a hardest bit for myself, then. What I fear about the stories I've written -- because I've written so many -- is that I over use or reuse the idea of a character, so that if you read one of my things and then another, it feels like the characters are the same. So I guess I feel like I'm not writing new characters at all but treating the characters as objects for the tickling. Though I guess I wouldn't necessarily describe that as a difficulty in writing so much as not taking the time to fully develop a character.
 
the hardest thing to write is to write without the stigma of recieving criticism. I write without that...take the criticism and work that into the next story....write without boundaries or fear!!
 
The thing I find hardest is to devise good plots, and in particular good climaxes and endings for plots. Creating initial setups is relatively easy for me.

There are a number of "story idea generators" out there that should help with this, but all of them I've seen are focused on giving ideas for the start of a story: "Here's an idea for how your story might begin. We'll leave it to you to figure out the rest of the plot, starting from this initial point." But what I would like to have is the opposite: Something that gives me a randomly-generated seed for a story climax or a story ending, and then leaves it to me to come up with how the story starts and then leads up to that point.

E.g. something that produces a whole bunch of random ideas along the lines of: "The hero succeeds in convincing the princess, despite the minstrel having poisoned him," or "The broken tickle-machine gets repaired when the three tickle-victims agree to help," or "The tears of the captive princess heal the wounded dragon, breaking the enchantment." Ideas for the climax of the plot, rather than the initial story setup.
 
Last edited:
The hardest thing to write is a piece that gets no response.

You can get feedback in one of two basic ways on this forum.

1.) Be Sablesword, ElFewja (for whose thoughtful comments in another thread, many thanks) Maxx Coxx or another big name on the Forum;

2.) Grow a pussy. If the audience thinks you're female (and a 'lee), they'll send everything but cash. Hell, for all I know, that audience is America's cash crisis in todo.
 
If you want more (or any) responses to your stories the best and only thing you can do is spend more time writing and honing your craft. People like Sablesword and ElFewja don't get responses because they're "big names", they get responses because they've spent years practicing and creating work that resonates with readers. If they put out a piece that doesn't hit the right notes, they will get no replies either -it's the stories that get the responses, not the name at the top of the page. All being a "big name" does is garner a few extra page views because people have come to rely on those writers for work they enjoy.

As to your second (and blatantly sexist) point, that is simply false.

What you really have to appreciate is that out of every 1000 'views' a story thread gets, maybe half of those will actually read the entire thing, and that's a pretty big maybe. Many people click a thread and leave again, or simply skim the story. Of the say, 500 people who actually do read the whole piece, you'll get some who like it, some who don't and some who love it. It's only from that group of people who really loved it are you going to feedback, with extremely rare exception. Now from that group there are lurkers (who by their very nature, never post anyway) and the bulk of the group who will carry on their merry way. Suddenly you're left with a tiny number out of that original 1000 people who are going to take time out of their day and make the effort to write up even a short reply.

My point is, don't be discouraged by a lack of responses. Work at it, keep at it. Maybe you've heard the expression "Writers write". That's what writers do, they write. They write and write and continue writing -and honestly, if you want a response some day, that's all you need to do.
 
Elfewja, Sablesword, et al, earned their reputations with their work. I never meant to say any different, and I apologize to anyone who read my comments in any such mean spirit.

Other than that, I stand by every word. This is a tickler's forum, the best. This is not a writer's forum.

Thinking back, though, to a writer's forum I once worked, that crowd was no bargain.

And, Mantis, "sexist" is not a magic word. Notice that I do not disappear in a puff of smoke. I was born a sexist, learned later to try to find and follow a decent middle course, and have become more and more confused with each passing year on the shifting ground. Sexism is not a stable politic, but it is our default starting point. My sexual (including gender) identity is the most salient element of my persona, an inescapable burden and an undeniable resource.

Embrace the complexity.
 
sophilos said:
Elfewja, Sablesword, et al, earned their reputations with their work. I never meant to say any different, and I apologize to anyone who read my comments in any such mean spirit.

Other than that, I stand by every word. This is a tickler's forum, the best. This is not a writer's forum.

Thinking back, though, to a writer's forum I once worked, that crowd was no bargain.

And, Mantis, "sexist" is not a magic word. Notice that I do not disappear in a puff of smoke. I was born a sexist, learned later to try to find and follow a decent middle course, and have become more and more confused with each passing year on the shifting ground. Sexism is not a stable politic, but it is our default starting point. My sexual (including gender) identity is the most salient element of my persona, an inescapable burden and an undeniable resource.

Embrace the complexity.
Click to expand...

And yet, you're still wrong.

In all honesty, I made a real effort to remain polite and be helpful in my initial response to you. I ignored the fact you took this thread off-topic and purposefully ignored it's intent. My overall point is this, if you want people to respond to your work spend more time writing and less time complaining -maybe try using this thread for it's actual purpose.
 
TickleMantis said:
And yet, you're still wrong.

In all honesty, I made a real effort to remain polite and be helpful in my initial response to you. I ignored the fact you took this thread off-topic and purposefully ignored it's intent. My overall point is this, if you want people to respond to your work spend more time writing and less time complaining -maybe try using this thread for it's actual purpose.
Click to expand...

There's nothing polite in flatly, inaccurately and uncivilly declaring a stranger to be a sexist. Your Big Lie doesn't work any better than your "magic word".

And I have only expanded the topic. The Blank White Page, with its implicit watermark of an empty chair, is still the hardest thing to write to.

Sexist? All right, let's do the arithmetic.

http://www.ticklingforum.com/forumdisplay.php?12-Post-Stories
"The time now is 07:55 PM."

On today's date, this was the content of Forum>STORIES>Post Stories, Page One, in the column marked Replies/Views, the first nine entries were all started by posters with apparently male signatures. None of them received more than single-digit quantity of replies.

chica224 received 45.

Three of the next four were apparently guys. The fourth was a Part III, not seeking new readership. All received single-digit quantity of replies.

Ticklishangel52, a writer so nice it takes a whole thread to express it, gets 39.

Of the remaining ten submissions on this page, nobody (including the guy with the new spelling dictionary under his meta arm) scores higher than 7 replies. Surprisingly, this includes Cocomomilt. To each rule, the occasional exception, I guess.

http://www.ticklingforum.com/forumdisplay.php?12-Post-Stories/page2
"The time now is 08:34 PM."

Chica224 has 76. Nobody else has 16

I can go on like this all night, TickleMantis. Instead --

https://www.google.com/search?q=aba...la:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

Finally, see your PMs. I'd speak as publicly as you have, but an Admin stepped in. I'll be civil in public.

And I don't swear for swearing's sake in print. It would lose me the better uses of profanity.
 
I called your point sexist, not you the person. I have no idea one way or the other about you as a person -what you said was, and is, sexist. I never once attacked your character, as you have now done numerous times toward me.

I spent time and effort attempting to give you actual, genuine advice. To put things in perspective and encourage you to continue writing, to address the concerns you bought up. But, you ignored all of that and instead have, for whatever reason, decided to make an attempt at some sort of baseless conflict because you took offense where none was given. If this is all you have to offer in the way of discussion, I want no part of it.

If I receive any PMs from you, I won't be reading them -I'll be deleting them. I have absolutely no interest in interacting any further with you, all I wanted to do was help.
 
...aside from a check to the IRS

I would say writing on technical subjects that are foreign to me to make a character sound believable, if not passable. An example would be a chemist speaking in specifics about his discipline. It takes research and sometimes passing the work under the nose of an actual person in that field so they can critique, "No... no... we would never say it it like that, we would say..."
 
Reception is rough for everyone, for sure, but I also think it's a lot harder to quantify than it's being given credit. Comments are rare all around -- I personally try to show appreciation when people take the time to comment, but I'm also not the best at getting back to people -- and views are just page clicks, which at best are deceptive. I try not to worry about a thing being well received but it can be super disheartening when you put up something you enjoyed a lot and then it just falls off the planet, lol. But, hey, that's life, you know?
 
Give and Take.

When I do comment on another's work, I like to start and end positive, putting the "bad news" in the middle. A wholly critical response is the purview of a publisher, someone who is paying for results.

My error is in that I have lost track. This is a personal forum. It is also a small market. It has its own standards. If I'm going to publish here, I need to get and keep those standards in mind.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
What's New

4/19/2024
Check out the huge number of thicklign clips that can be found at Clips4Sale. The webs biggest fetish clip store!
Tickle Experiment
Door 44
NEST 2024
Register here
The world's largest online clip store

Live Camgirls!
Live Camgirls
Streaming Videos
streaming tickling videos on demand at the TMF!
Tickling videos on demand!
Pic of the Week
Pic of the Week
Congratulations to
*** brad1701 ***
 The winner of our weekly Trivia, held every Sunday night at 11PM EST in our Chat Room
Back
Top