The Smut Marathon is an English writing contest for erotica, that has entered the fifth round already. I am very honored to be a jury member for the Smut Marathon. After each voting round, I would like to take you onto a journey in the world of a jury member.
Assignment 5: Write an erotic scene from the perspective of a sex toy
The assignment for round 5 was:
Choose one of the masturbation scenes from round 4 (not your own) and write an erotic scene from the perspective of the sex toy in the chosen scene.
Writers were not allowed to choose their own story from round 4 and the new story they crafted had to be 400 words maximum.
Writing from the perspective of an inanimate object
Every author needs to be able to place oneself in the shoes of someone else. It takes a lot of empathy to create a character and place them in some kind of plot. One of the most common exercises to practice this, is to write a story from the point of view of an inanimate object, like a shoe, a light post, a shirt on the washing line, or – like in this case – a sex toy.
The writer should be able to bring into wording what it must be like to be that object. What does a vibrator think? Does it like it’s job? Is it sad, scared in the dark when it lays in the nightstand? Does it feel lonely during the days, loved, ashamed, jealous at other toys? Would it cry if its owner goes off to work without getting kissed goodbye? The writer should crawl under the skin of the sex toy.
The difference between Point of View (PoV) and perspective
The point of view in a story, is the narrator’s position in the description of events. The narrator’s position can be described as:
- First person: the narrator is the person that tells the story from first hand (I, me, my). This could also be in plural (we).
- Second person: the narrator describes what is happening to you (you, your, yours). This is not a common standing point for a narrator in fiction.
- Third person: The narrator tells a story to the reader about someone else (he, she, hers, his). This is the most common position in fiction.
- Third omniscient person: The narrator still tells the story, but has more information than the main character and the reader. This point of view is sometimes used when making flash forwards (only the narrator knows what is going to happen).
It is important to choose one of these PoVs and stick to it throughout the entire story. For the assignment in this round of the Smut Marathon, obviously the story should have been written in a first person PoV.
If you write from the first person’s perspective, the narrator needs to be interesting. He (or in this case ‘it’) is in the heart of the story. All of what is said or shown, is filtered by the view of the narrator. Therefor, it is biased and colored. The narrator is telling his story, not necessarily the story. You may use this flaw as a strength in your story. The reader might find out later, that the narrator wasn’t telling the entire truth, for example.
Often, first person narrators are likeable anti-heroes, because the reader can relate to such a protagonist. The true difficulty with writing from a first person’s PoV, is that you might get tricked in writing on and on about the thoughts of your hero. It is still important to use the ‘show, don’t tell’ principle.
Perspective is related to PoV, but is about the character’s background and experiences. Everyone looks at things differently, based upon what kind of experience they have. A child may look at a lion and thinks it is cute, while a grown up knows it is a dangerous animal. In case of the sex toy, a new-from-the-box dildo, might have a different look on the world, then a much used whip in a BDSM dungeon. A dildo might know how it feels inside of a vagina, but a pencil or a spoon might not. A spoon however, might be able to compare the experience inside a vagina with that inside of a mouth, and might be able to compare the moans at a delicious soup to that of an orgasm.
Writing from the perspective of a sex toy, asks of the writer to really truly understand what the toy is thinking, feeling, experiencing, taking into account what it’s frame of references is. The object can be in real life drama, or conflict, in order to make the story more interesting. The reader doesn’t want to hear the object describing some experience, like in a report, but wants to see how that object overcomes its struggles.
The entries and my feedback
All stories for this round can be found here. My feedback is in the comments below the stories. The results of this round can be found here.
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