Here’s a section from my book Write ‘Till You’re Hard, about location. I love when a place is as much a character as the people, so maybe this will give you some ideas about how to dive into location as a means to finding your story:
We have a long list of classic erotic settings that often come from our own memories. I attended a lot of church conferences as a teenager, and much of my experimenting happened under pianos and on pews. I made out on the grass behind the administration building of my high school, and the bench seat of my Oldsmobile still turns me on just to think about. For you, it may be summer camp, college dorms, vacations in Paris, or parked up at the view. Who hasn’t had a blowjob get interrupted by the flash of a police lamp and a crackly voice telling us all to move along over the loudspeaker? These settings elicit memory, and memory is a pretty powerful aphrodisiac.
Stop for a moment and think about the places that turn you on the most. Let your mind drift to those hotel rooms, bars, and classrooms that make your pleasure bump tighten into a beautiful knob of excitement. If you can get that feeling down on paper, you probably have a good start. And if you can transport someone to the place you love and cherish (the magic park of pussy eating for example) you’ve got something.
There’s an especially nice view of New York on the opposite side of the river on the Palisades, and I used to park there and make out when I was younger and didn’t have any place else to go. An ex-girlfriend and I made our way up there one evening a few months after we broke up. We walked along the top of the cliff looking back at the city, but within minutes we were kissing and slipping hands under each other’s shirts. It didn’t help that we passed three or four foggy car windows through which we could barely see naked skin and moving bodies.
We didn’t make it back to the car before we fell to the ground, our hands having moved lower to jean zippers and belt buckles. Another couple was making out nearby when I pulled her pants down to her knees and tasted her pussy for the first time in months. We had struggled so hard to keep off each other, but I couldn’t stop once I was there. She pulled my hair and pushed against me, begging me to fuck her with each breath.
A while ago I stopped by the view on my way out of the city for a weekend getaway. I sat in the car and looked out over the Hudson River, and I was hard before I even knew I was thinking about her. I closed my eyes and it all came flooding back. I could smell her hair, and I remembered wondering if the couple next to us might want to do more than watch. I remembered her smile and her taunting me to fuck her even though we had promised we wouldn’t. I remembered more than had actually happened, and it was as vivid as it had been yesterday. That spot will always turn me on.
You can also use setting as a natural means for creating tension. And expanding your horizon can lead to some interesting results. Try thinking about settings that you would never think of as sexy. Here are ten of the least sexy places I can think of.
- A bathroom at Burger King
- The ICU at Mt. Sinai
- My grandmother’s nursing home
- The surface of mars
- The Republican National Convention
- The men’s room at the Port Authority
- Webster Hall on a Saturday night
- A Mets game
- The Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC
- Any building in the world with the name Trump on it
Some of these might sound hot to you. And the truth is if I put my mind to it, I hope I could find something sexy about each one of them too. There was that cute nurse at the home, and I do like girls in baseball caps. The point isn’t to find places that disgust you though. It’s to push yourself to find settings you might have otherwise ignored, in the hopes that a new story will come to mind. If I sunk my teeth into Lincoln Memorial porn or the RNC I’d have to think of new reasons for people to fuck. I’d have to develop a plot to satisfy the location, and each one brings its own tension.
How would you write a sex scene that takes place during a hurricane? How about final exams? And what could you do with Maggie Thatcher’s funeral? If you can use your setting as a new tool to expand your style, your writing will improve. It’s simple, but also easy to avoid. Especially for us smut peddlers. All we care about are the naughty bits, right? Who cares if it’s Miami or Venice? Well, your readers do. At least they will if you do it right.
You can find the entire book, with lots of great exercises, over at Amazon.