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Personally, when I read, I pay less attention to flow and more to narrative perspective, the actual plot, and the logic. Those are therefore also the things I focus on most when I write myself.
I place far less value on a stylistically polished structure for my stories. I used to play pen-and-paper RPGs and, as a game master, came up with my own stories. The basic concept for every scene was always “description - mood/ambience - action”.
“You enter a dungeon. The room in front of you stretches five paces to either side and is a good ten paces long. The two torches by the entrance, mirrored by another two at the passage on the far side, cast a flickering light. The soot stings your eyes. Through a small hole in the upper right part of the ceiling, about the width of a forearm, the smoke slowly drifts away, but not enough to keep the air from making you cough. Apart from two wooden chests on the left and right, the room seems empty - if not for that strange scratching sound …”
With my regular players, alarm bells would have started ringing no later than those last three words, and they would have had their weapons ready. Greetings to all of you, by the way. I miss our sessions. Hopefully you do too?
The opening of the Na-Ri series was completely different, by contrast. Hardly any description, only perception and feelings. I tried to show a non-human being from the inside, one that does not use names for many things, but comparisons and images.
When it comes to my novels, I am a true pantser and start without a finished plot. Even though I have now actually (finally) finished the plots for my two main series.
Although, some parts will certainly change again, knowing myself. A human assistant would probably have strangled me by now because of how erratic I am and the sheer number of mistakes I keep producing.
But back to the topic: I do not write for effect, I write according to the question: What happens now? Sometimes I begin with a place, and then that stands at the beginning, or I begin with a person, and then that person is in focus. If the place is central, then that is what takes center stage.
Just like in the chapter I am finishing right now and that will appear here soon: the reader is thrown straight into the fleet. A short tour through the harbor, then off to your post with you! :D
JP
PS: And this text is probably the best possible example of my chaotic writing and working style!
When I started my series, I had an idea, a particular scene, or even just a single character in mind. Not necessarily as a clear image. I have always had problems with character descriptions, and that has not changed to this day. A photo from the internet helped to make the character more visual. But photos from the web have disadvantages: licenses! You cannot simply use those images for covers. If, as a hobby writer, you want to show your protagonists on a cover you created yourself, you either have to be very good at drawing, buy licenses, or rely on professional models and photographers. None of that is really an option for a pure hobby project.
This is where 1/6 scale action figures fill the gap. They can serve as models, take different poses, and wear different costumes. If photographed well, perhaps retouched and edited afterwards, you cannot tell that they are dolls. And these figures serve another purpose as well: in display cases, they visualize the invented protagonists, perhaps even recreate scenes. Na-Ri or Johanna suddenly have a face, a body; you see them every day. They become even more real to an author.
And then AI enters the picture.
Images can now be created even without any artistic skill of your own. Suitable covers, free of licensing issues or available under dirt-cheap licenses, are suddenly within reach. And the rigid dolls in the display cases suddenly become real, moving performers in films. One photo is enough, a description, and they start moving!
But this flood of stimuli has a downside: attention spans are shrinking. Not only among readers — those numbers have been falling for decades — but also among authors. It is becoming more difficult to develop long texts, complicated plots, and tangled interconnections. AI is certainly a useful tool, but it has begun to change the world. Mine too.
It’s frustrating. You try to describe a scene as precisely as possible, you put in the effort to make the sequence of events as realistic and logical as you can, and then censorship steps in.
Sure, erotica shouldn’t be about violence and coercion. But life isn’t a fairy tale. If I’m writing a thriller set in the porn milieu, with organized crime and serious offenses, then drastic scenes have to be allowed as part of the genre.
Yes, I can tone the chapter down and rewrite it. But a thriller, just like a crime novel, must be allowed to depict violence and coercion.
And if a scene really seems too risky, basic courtesy would be to contact the author. But deleting an entire chapter at publication without even informing the author, and without any replacement, is simply bad form.
I recommend that all readers wait to continue with the latest section of No-LIMIT-Rooms until the missing chapter has been restored. The title of the missing chapter is: Chapter 47: Club Hydra.
The protagonist Laura, alias Johanna, in No-LIMIT-Rooms has ADHD, as the AI analyzed when I created a profile retrospectively.
I have been writing the story since 2020, so it is guaranteed to be free of AI text. But I now use AI for translation and correction.
When I created the character, I naturally had a personality in mind, a person composed of people I know—and myself.
The ADHD diagnosis hit me like a blow, and in retrospect, it even makes sense. Laura/Johanna is impulsive, constantly jumps from one thought to another, takes risks, and has crashes. She constantly links events that have nothing to do with each other, overwhelming those around her. And, like the author himself, she is unaware of her disorder. She suffers from it, but has no diagnosis. This is something that weighs heavily on those affected.
I myself have had a medical confirmation for three months. If I had received the diagnosis as a teenager, my life would probably be different today. But these stories would never have been written. They could only have been written this way.
With this background knowledge, some readers may evaluate Johanna completely differently. Her sometimes strange behavior suddenly makes sense.
And I have included a lot of quotes in the story. References to advertising (German state of Baden-Württemberg: We can do everything – except speak standard German!), books, films, and shows. I hope some readers will enjoy that.
Maybe someone will take the trouble to collect them all? :D
Some readers asked me how I came up with the idea for the story about Na-Ri. And the answer may surprise you. A few years ago, I watched a Korean TV show called My Girlfriend is a Kumiho. I found it quite funny, and it provided my “knowledge” about Korean Kumihos.
When I was writing my BDSM thriller, I gave my protagonist the stage name ‘Kumiho’ on a whim. At some point, however, I asked myself how this name had plausibly found its way into the story. So I came up with a new Kumiho fairy tale in my mind, which was supposed to establish the name in this world. So I started writing the Kumiho series in parallel to my thriller series.
The different stories have nothing to do with each other, but they do have one thing in common: they are both about a lost sister. And at the end, I'll add a little Easter egg that will connect the stories.
Now that I've teased my thriller series here, I'd like to write something about it:
It's my most complicated and extensive project, which I've been working on for 5 years without the end in sight. Two-thirds of the story has been written, but the final twists and turns are still a work in progress.
What makes it special is that there are two main storylines, the Johanna and the Nadia line, each told from the perspective of one of the two sisters. You can start with one storyline, then switch to the other, and finally read the final volume, 'The Enemy Sisters'. It doesn't really matter which sister you start with. Both storylines are directly connected, but tell completely different stories.
I will publish them here next year, starting with the Johanna arc.
Coming soon: No-LIMIT-Rooms!
Happy New Year!
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