So far in these metawriting entries, I’ve discussed story structure and plot development in fair detail, however, one thing I haven’t addressed nearly as much is how we make a story erotic at all. Certainly having a story with strong MacGuffins and character motivations is going to go far to making a strong story, but if it doesn’t actually arouse anyone, then what’s the point? Arousal is more than just packing a story with fetishes–or rather, it’s how a fetish is integrated into the story that counts. The way I think about integrating a fetish is through specific triggers. A trigger is any part of a scene (it can be in many forms–description, dialogue or action) which cues into a particular fetish. A trigger does not necessarily include the arousal of a character–it is simply a scene which arouses the reader. So, a description of a person gaining weight is going to be a trigger for a weight gain fetish, a daddy character calling someone his “son” in dialogue is going to trigger an incest fetish, or someone pissing themselves is going to trigger a watersports fetish.

Some points to keep in mind. Triggers are always related to fetishes, and some triggers can be related to more than one. For example, someone being tied down and force fed is going to trigger both bondage and weight gain at the same time. If a reader is “into” both of those fetishes, this can be more powerful for them as they read it, but if any reader dislikes one or the other, the effect can be ruined altogether. Second, MacGuffins can, at times, be triggers–but not always. For example, a pair of filthy underwear that transforms someone into a slob is both a trigger for a slob fetish and a MacGuffin. The more general a MacGuffin, however, the less likely it is to make a good trigger.

Triggers are relatively easy to write, however, so a concern here isn’t that someone is going to leave triggers out of a story entirely (although I have read some “erotic” stories which somehow manage to do just that) rather, the concern is that the triggers that are included are not going to be as effective for a reader as the author expects them to be. The question that needs to be asked is what makes a particular trigger effective for readers. This question is deceptively difficult to answer for a couple of reasons.

First, triggers are susceptible to the law of diminishing returns, a psychological law which states that the more someone is subjected to something which elicits an emotional response, the intensity of that response is going to diminish the more they are subjected to it. So, which someone being force-fed might be very erotic  the first time I see it, but by the hundredth time, it’s bound to be a bit less arousing. So, part of making a trigger work is ensuring a certain amount of originality which can surprise readers in a genre which seeks to jade them all the time.

However, there’s a second force which works against this one, which is that the things which tend to arouse people the most are things which they are familiar and comfortable with. If something breaches that comfort zone, any arousal they might have felt is going to evaporate instantly. Even if the amount of arousal they feel towards a certain trigger diminishes over time, a reader is going to favor that old trope in the favor of something entirely new which they haven’t ever encountered before. So a writer is caught in a catch-22–in order to arouse anyone, the triggers an author employs need to be original and surprising, but anything too surprising will backfire and fail to trigger arousal at all. In a second entry I’ll address some techniques that I’ve found useful to circumvent this challenge, but I’m in the middle of trying to move out of an apartment, so it’s going to have to wait for another day.