erotica

11 Ideas for D/s Writing Assignments

Kate Sloan

I’m a writer, an overachiever, and a submissive, so of course I love when my dominant gives me writing assignments. They feel like a task at which I can tangibly succeed – plus, unlike with many other types of scenes, I’ll have the evidence forever if I want to look back at it. Writing tasks have become a major (and majorly satisfying) part of my dynamic with my partner.

That said, we weren’t always as amazing as we are now at coming up with these assignments – so I’ve put together this list you can refer to if you’re similarly strapped for ideas. How many of these have you tried?

Describe a fantasy

This can be one of the most deeply embarrassing things to have to write as a submissive (depending on what type of person you are), so of course, it’s a favorite with dominants! It’s one of the sexiest and most tangible ways for a dominant to gather information about what a submissive wants, making it a highly useful tool in a D/s dynamic. The sub can make lists of their fantasies, write one out as a short erotica story, or use any other framing the dominant desires. This is a great way to unearth some unexplored desires or just expound on some desires you already know you have.

Recap a past encounter

IMO, it’s always fun to hear about sex you’ve had from the other person’s perspective. You get to find out which parts they particularly liked, what turned them on, what they want more of. The sub could write out the events of a past scene, erotica-style, or they could list some favorite past scenes and explain why they enjoyed them so much. You could even do this assignment as a collaborative task, with each of you filling in details of the session as you remember them.

Keep a journal

Some dominants require that their subs keep some kind of diary for them. This could be all-sexy-all-the-time, like a daily log of masturbation or fantasies, but it could also be geared toward making positive changes in the sub’s day-to-day life: they could be required to log their food or exercise if that’s an issue for them (tread carefully!!), keep tabs on the ups and downs of their moods and the factors that influenced them, or make a note every time they do something nice for themselves. Becoming more aware of your patterns is the first step in changing them, and a D/s writing assignment can be a lovely way to achieve that.

Summarize a book

I don’t know about you, but the books I was required to write about when I was in school are the ones that have stuck with me the most. It’s a good way to make information stick in your head. A dominant could assign their submissive a book about kink, sex, relationships, or anything else they want to learn more about, and the submissive could write up a classic essay-style book report, a bullet-point list of things they learned, or any other type of book review the two agree on. (Shout-out to Sinclair and rife for initially introducing me to this idea!)

Keep a to-do list

My partner and I have done this for nearly a year now (wow!) and it’s served us very well. My daily to-do list is kept in a note which I’ve shared with them via the Apple Notes app, which syncs across all our various devices. Particularly in a long-distance relationship, it’s a lovely way to maintain a feeling of connection to each other and involvement in each other’s everyday lives. My dominant can keep tabs on me, see how I’m doing with my tasks, and reward or motivate me accordingly.

Craft an instruction manual

Remember the time my partner made me write directions for giving me multiple orgasms as though I were a literal toy? That was one of the first tasks they assigned me, and it’s still one of my favorites. Especially early in a relationship, the sub might know their body and mind better than their dom does, and requiring them to write an instruction manual is one way to ascertain that information from them without breaking role. They could provide directions for physical skills, like how to give them a nipple orgasm or how to spank them properly, or for more mental/emotional skills, like how to comfort them when they’re depressed or how to best help them relax when life gets stressful.

Research a skill

There may be times in a D/s dynamic when either the submissive or the dominant wants to learn or improve upon a skill, in order to better serve/please their partner. These could be kinky skills, like flogging or bootblacking, or they could be “vanilla” skills, like cooking or cleaning. Either way, it’s fun to have the submissive research the skill and write up their key findings, perhaps including a list of links to more detailed information. (KinkAcademy remains the best place to learn a new BDSM skill, BTW!)

Write lines

While traditionally understood as a punishment, making a submissive write out the same sentence over and over can also be a process of edification and improvement if you approach it that way. For example, if your submissive is chronically self-critical, you could make her write “I am a good, kind, talented, and useful girl” 50 times. That said, it can also be a punishment, as I learned the time I forgot to wear my collar when specifically instructed to and had to write lines and mail the page to my partner as proof. Ooh, how mean!

Help the dominant

My dominant has sometimes required me to put together a report specifically designed to assist them with something – like the time I made some recommendations for androgynous clothing items when they were midway through coming out as non-binary, or the time they asked me to recommend some fragrances I thought they’d like. This is a fun way for a dominant to feel served and catered to, while making their submissive feel useful and needed.

Write a love letter

Love letters are romantic and bonding, and they also help create a tangible record of your romance. I think more people (including vanilla people!) should write love letters, because it’s good for your relationship – and in D/s, you can make this mandatory!

Collaborate creatively

Some of my most satisfying moments with my partner have happened while we’ve been collaborating on something: a song, a podcast, a book. You could do this in-person on paper, or online via the multitude of cloud-based writing tools available, like Google Docs or Evernote. Try retelling the story of your first date together or writing a collaborative poem about your relationship, for example.

 

What are your favorite writing-based tasks you’ve assigned or been assigned in a D/s dynamic?

4 Skills Erotica Writers Need (That I Totally Don’t Have)

Kate Sloan

Hey, remember when I told you I was writing sexy fanfiction? Well, I’ve been doing more of it. And it’s making me think a lot about the conventions of the erotica genre: which ones I hate, which ones I love, and which ones I envy and desperately wish I could incorporate better in my own writing.

Here are four erotica-writing skills I totally admire in other writers and want to get better at.

1. Writing erections in a way that isn’t clichéd or porny.

Writers throughout history have come up with zillions of flowery ways to write about female arousal. Glistening petals, hot honeyed centers, engorged pink nubs, blah blah blah. But it seems to me that penises are often described more crassly and minimally, especially hard penises.

The other night I eloquently tweeted “Booooooneeeeerrrrrrs” because I was slightly wine-drunk and didn’t have the brainpower to adequately describe how I felt about this story. CTRL+F your way down to “When the food arrived” and read until Jake gets “very, very hard.” That, to me, is an example of a sweet, almost romantic description of a boner.

Part of the problem is that I don’t know a whole lot about how it actually feels to get a hard-on, and there are very few dudes in my life who I would trust to answer that question for me without things getting awkward in some way. Hmm… (P.S. Dude readers of this blog, please don’t take this as an invitation to send me detailed messages about your wang. Thaaaanks.)

2. Showing, not telling, feelings.

I’ve been a writer since I was a kid. It’s my vocation, career, and favorite hobby. I’ve taken more writing classes in my 22 years of life than most people take in their entire lifetimes. And yet, somehow, I still periodically need to yell at myself: “SHOW, DON’T TELL!” This frustratingly ubiquitous writers’ mantra still hasn’t completely sunk in for me.

I find myself writing stuff like “She felt apprehensive” or “She thought she was going to swoon onto the floor” and then I have to go back and fix those phrases to make them more demonstrative. “She bit her lip and wrinkled her nose.” “Her cheeks warmed and reddened.” Whatever.

“Show, don’t tell” should be taped up over every writer’s workspace. Sometimes I think I should get it tattooed on the inside of my eyelids.

3. Creating tension.

I’m not good at building romantic/sexual tension in my stories, because I haven’t experienced a whole lot of it in my actual life.

Why? Because I’m a candid weirdo who doesn’t know how to flirt and usually ends up saying really on-the-nose things like “I think you’re cute” instead of beating around the bush in any way.

This approach has its advantages, obviously. But it also means that I have very little sense of what genuine flirtation actually looks like. So I find it hard to write that stuff.

It’s infuriating, because when I read great flirty dialogue in other people’s stories, it makes me squirm and giggle and clap and say “AWW!” and that feeling is basically the whole reason I read romantic fiction of any kind. Damn, I wish I could make my readers feel that way.

4. Demonstrating consent without being too heavy-handed.

It’s a sad reality that we live in a culture where demonstrated consent can sometimes be the antithesis of sexiness. At least, to some people.

A lot of the kinks I love to write about are power-based: bondage, spanking, “ravishment,” and so on. These are things that obviously require explicit consent and negotiation in real life, but in fiction, sometimes seem hotter and more visceral when there’s minimal discussion beforehand.

Though I understand that porn and erotica are meant to be about fantasy and escapism, ethically it doesn’t sit right with me to write this kind of scene without at least some acknowledgment of consent. But how do you do that without draining the hotness out of it? I struggle with this not only in fiction but also in life.

But I have high hopes that good sex writing can lead the charge in demonstrating how consent conversations can be sexy. I think the onus is on us erotic content creators to think up and disseminate blisteringly hot consent negotiations so that the general public learns how to have those chats without losing their boners in the process.

What skills, techniques, tropes and conventions do you admire in erotic writing?

How to Repopulate Your Sexual Fantasies

Kate Sloan

I bet you can tell, dear readers, that sometimes when I write posts that are ostensibly for you, they are actually for me. “Teach what you need to learn,” as the saying goes.

My sexual fantasy life has been seriously lacklustre as of late. I don’t think of myself as a frequent fantasizer, so I wouldn’t have guessed that this would have such an effect on me, but I’m finding that my orgasms are harder to achieve and that I’ll get 30 seconds into a masturbation session before thinking, “This isn’t that fun. Do I really want to do this?” This happens because my noggin’s devoid of sexy thoughts and images, so I don’t feel sexy.

Aside from general sexual ruts, another good time to repopulate your fantasy world is when you’ve recently gone through the break-up of a sexual relationship – whether that relationship was romantic in nature or just a fuck-buddy type of situation. When you’ve been fantasizing about the same person for ages and then suddenly find you can’t think about that person without wanting to burst into tears, you may find it difficult to get into a sexy headspace.

Well, here I come to save you from your orgasmless misery. Here are my best tips on how to revitalize your sexual fantasies when they’re lacking or in need of a serious overhaul.

1. Watch porn.

Well, duh.

If you’ve already been trying to do this and it hasn’t been working as well as you’d like, I suggest trying a type of porn you don’t usually go for. Maybe something plot-heavy and romantic, or something featuring a different configuration of bodies/genitals than you’ve liked in the past. You never know what could get your gears turning.

2. Look up explicit fanfiction of your favorite fandoms.

Surely there is a TV show, movie, book, or play that you love which features a couple who either a) are really fucking sexy or b) would be really fucking sexy if they actually got together. (Harry and Draco, anyone?)

Archive of Our Own and FanFiction.net are two major hotspots, and if your fandom is popular enough, there may also be fanfiction communities for it on Tumblr. Look for stories marked “explicit” or “smut” or use the aforementioned websites’ filtering functions to seek out those stories for you. Scroll until you spot a pairing that riles you up, and then read, read, read.

3. Ponder the fuckable strangers and acquaintances in your life.

There are sort of two schools of thought on this: some people think it’s creepy as hell to masturbate to folks you know in real life, while some people think it’s natural and there’s nothing wrong with it.

If you don’t find it creepy, or you think you can get past the weird feeling long enough to rub one out, I recommend it. Remember: your fantasy life is 100% private unless you decide to share it with someone. Masturbating to the thought of someone isn’t a violation of that person, unless you do something creepy like tell them you masturbate to the thought of them (which you probably shouldn’t ever do unless the two of you are already fucking each other).

4. Fuck hot celebrities in your mind.

Surely most of you have already done this, right?

5. Read good erotica.

Online, there’s Literotica, which is a bit of a disorganized mess and can be hit-or-miss in terms of writing quality, but also has tons of goldmines to discover.

If you are a bibliophile, here are some erotic anthologies I recommend: the Best Bisexual Women’s Erotica series, the Best Women’s Erotica series (or anything Violet Blue has ever edited, for that matter), Lust, and Sometimes She Lets Me.

6. Make a list of sexual acts you find interesting, and fantasize about those.

MojoUpgrade is a cool resource for ideas for your list. Here’s another one. Keep in mind that your fantasy life is different and separate from your real life, so you can (and maybe should!) fantasize about things that you’re unsure you’d actually want to do IRL.

If it helps, combine this tip with numbers 3 and 4: picture doing all this hot stuff with cute celebrities or people you know.

7. Imagine you’re someone else.

Your fantasies have no limitations – or, rather, the only limitation is your own capacity for creativity. You can be and do whatever and whoever you want, so why not try putting yourself in someone else’s shoes? Try gender-swapping, or insert yourself into a power-play scenario that you likely won’t get to try in real life (student/teacher? parent/babysitter? patient/doctor?).

8. Consume sexual resources to get more ideas.

Right now I’m really digging Tina Horn’s podcast, Why Are People Into That?, which is exactly what it sounds like. The discussions are analytical and intellectual and very inspiring.

Instructional sex books can also give you plenty of ideas. I like The Guide to Getting It On, Sex is Fun, The Whole Lesbian Sex Book, and The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus. (Pro tip: a lot of Violet Blue’s instructional books, including the cunnilingus guide just mentioned, have short erotica stories sprinkled throughout that are relevant to the topic at hand. They are always ridiculously hot. I recommend!)

What do you do when your well of sexual fantasies has run dry?

Book Review: Serving Him

Kate Sloan

I felt pretty starstruck when I saw Rachel Kramer Bussel at the Feminist Porn Conference, because I’ve been reading her erotica anthologies for years and I’ve determined that we are more-or-less sexually in sync – at least, if her story selections are anything to go by. We dig the same sexual acts, the same turns of phrase. So I always gravitate toward RKB over any other anthology editor, because I know I can count on her to deliver something that’ll turn me on. Serving Him is indeed edited by RKB, but I don’t feel quite the same about it as I feel about some of her other works.

I judge erotica anthologies by how many stories bore me versus how many make me put my hand in my panties, and this book has a medium score on that scale. As the title suggests, it’s full of juicy short stories about dominant men and submissive women (yes, this is a hetero-oriented tome).

Some favorite stories of mine include Lori Selke’s “What You Deserve,” which features fancy food and spanking; Maxine Marsh’s “Tackling Jessica,” in which a football move becomes a fantasy; and J. Sinclaire’s “Duo,” a delightfully smutty MMF three-way.

Some stories in this book contain elements that drain the arousal right out of me – breath-play, humiliation, and dubious consent, for example. While there are obviously folks for whom these things are the height of hotness, it actually made me somewhat anxious to read about them. The Tumblr social justice community has embraced “trigger warnings” wholeheartedly, and I’m wondering if it’s time for kinky/edgy erotica anthologies to do the same thing – sort of in the same vein as how Yes Means Yes uses themed keywords to help you decide which chapters you want to read and which you want to skip.

I also found there were some stories which focused overwhelmingly on the psychological aspects of Dom/sub dynamics, with very little actual smut. This, again, is something that doesn’t hit the spot for me, but may be perfect for folks who find the non-bedroom parts of D/s relationships just as exciting as the actual sexual encounters. To each their own, right?

I should note that I like Dom/sub scenarios, contrary to what this review might indicate. But I guess I only like ‘em when they’re focused on sex and maybe a little spanking – the other stuff is peripheral or antithetical to my personal sexuality, while it might be central to others’.

Thanks so much to Cleis Press for sending me Serving Him to review!

Sexamples #002: Adventures in Domination

Kate Sloan

“Leave the room, close the door, wait a minute, and then come back in.”

He scrunched up his eyebrows and looked at me funny. “What?” he said, laughing a little.

“You heard me, bitch,” I asserted. “Go out in the hall, shut the door, wait a bit, and then come back in.”

He wanted me to dominate him; I had been aware of this fact for several weeks but hadn’t yet acted on it, partially because I was afraid I wouldn’t know how to be a domme. But tonight was the night. Only, now, I had to get him to leave the room and come back in, to sort of “refresh” our dynamic – start over without the context of boyfriend/girlfriend looming over our heads.

Finally, he left. I rushed around the room fluffing pillows and taking off my top. I waited several seconds, then cleared my throat and awkwardly announced, “Come in now.” He opened the door and entered.

I made him go get a makeshift blindfold from my extensive scarf collection. I tied it firmly around his head so he couldn’t see a damn thing, and then I forced him into a kneeling position on the floor. Figuring I’d start by turning myself on so I could be a better dom, I offered him one of my nipples. He licked and sucked it eagerly, and I started to melt a little into this delicious role I’d put myself in.

He reached around to my back, trying to pull my breast further into his mouth, but I snapped, “Don’t touch me.” He dropped his hands obediently, and I felt a wicked surge of pride for my little slave-boy.

I told him to lie down on the bed on his back, and spent some time biting the various sensitive spots on his chest and abdomen, just hard enough to communicate my control over him. I noted his enormous hard-on just before climbing onto him and straddling his face.

Ever the tease, I held his hair down with one hand, stopping him from licking me, and used the other hand to dip into my pussy and give him a taste on my fingers. He moaned from just the flavor of me, clearly wanting more. I laughed at his desire, and then finally lowered myself down onto his tongue.

If there’s one thing my slave-boy is extremely skilled at, it’s cunnilingus. He can do it for hours and it’s always brilliant, because he’s learned all the tricks I like best. This time was no exception – he licked and sucked as though his life depended on it.

Looking behind me and again noticing his immense erection, I told him, “I’m not going to touch you at all until you make me come.” That certainly motivated him; he sped up his motions and went at my pussy with even more enthusiasm and fervor. I held onto the bed tight to keep from shaking uncontrollably as his tongue circled and flicked my clit over and over.

Finally, I arrived at a shuddering orgasm. He stayed with me the whole way through, sucking, pressing, gently stroking me with his cute little tongue.

I told him, “Good boy,” smiling, and fetched a condom from the bedside table. He put it on while still wearing the blindfold – impressive! Then I slinked down his quivering body and lowered myself onto his cock of granite. “I’m going to ride you until you come,” I whispered, and I did.