#EroticMusings 53: What fields of real-world study inspire you settings?
Folklore and mythology are big, and literature (I'm working on a spicy Midsummer Night's Dream story) but I think psychology affects my setting and my stories in general the most.
The psychological effect of putting the reader in a dentist's chair as opposed to a massage table can create a very, very different experience, even if the action itself isn't that different.
What fields of real-world study (e.g. history, geography, science, ecology, etc.) inspire your settings?
To an extent, I'd say astronomy, biology, history, sociology, technology, and physics (if only for the laughs). Those influences tend to pertain more toward the science fiction and fantasy settings than the contemporary ones. The inspiration tends to be more about informing possibilities rather than anything more concrete.
#eroticMusings Week 53 (May 31-June 6) Setting: What fields of real-world study (e.g. history, geography, science, ecology, etc.) inspire your settings?
Nothing inspires my settings. I make them up all by myself by deciding what I want and going from there.
However they are informed by all the real-world studies.
Including quantum mechanics for my Steampunk world. No matter how weird, things have to make sense.
I studied biology, ecology and history of science at university: it explains why I chose the Victorian era as setting — a time during which science was seen as positive and successful — well maybe not that much, cycling with the novels quoted above.
The next artbook will contain a section about the geography of leonines lands, as an exploration into wild and unknown places
Week 53 (May 31-June 6) Setting
What fields of real-world study (e.g. history, geography, science, ecology, etc.) inspire your settings?
My settings is based on other books (Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde, Dr Moreau) that referenced the state of science of their times.
Also it includes Dr Joyce who is the alter-ego of Freud in my universe, a pioneer in medicine.
#EroticMusings 53: What fields of real-world study (e.g. history, geography, science, ecology, etc.) inspire your settings?
All of them? I think particularly science and ecology, though. Even for a wild-west-in-space setting like Moral Void, I still always want the planets and stars to be situations that might happen, and the (spoiler) alien sex plague to make ecological sense. But I've gotten much better at allowing myself purely ridiculous stuff that just doesn't make any sense, too.
#EroticMusings 53: What fields of real-world study (e.g. history, geography, science, ecology, etc.) inspire your settings?
History, folklore, mythology, religion/mystism, parapsychology.
Let's sneak in one more #EroticMusingsQ before the end of May.
#EroticMusings 53: What fields of real-world study (e.g. history, geography, science, ecology, etc.) inspire your settings?
#EroticMusings 2026.05.25 — Week 51 (May 17-23) Craft What kind(s) of intimacy do you find hardest to show in your work? How are you trying to improve?
[Note: This is a discussion about how to include sex in a story. —RS]
Well, there was a time where a friend reading a draft of a novel said, I love the story but I don't believe these people ever have sex. They fade to black.
Well, I was still writing my stories as if they were YA, and I was the type of shy person that was quite okay with tell not show in certain areas of life, and could be quite "appropriate" about hinting at chemistry in bed with intimacy outside of bed.
These last few stories have been a culmination of wanting to write more spicy stories, of trying to show don't tell tastefully yet naturally for the character, to make sex integral to the plot of the story by proving it a raison d'être. It is hard†, no pun intended, for me to do as my censorious mind objects and balks and tries to stop me from writing.
My solutions have been to never use the common, crass, or anatomical words associated with sex in the English language, to always address the event from the racing heart and senses of the first person narrator, what she sees, feels, smells, tastes, hears, or worries about—her assessments, enjoyment and what captures her attention—not what someone standing in the room or looking at a movie expects to see to fulfill their interest. No demonstration sex—what the narrator reports was for her benefit not yours, though once you get into the flow… However, the phrase "being demonstrative" does have a special meaning in the right context. I'm not above using innuendo, double entendre, unusual phrasing, or misusing meanings of words to get the point across!
So far, it seems to be working.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=
† Okay, sorry, the pun was intentional.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
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#EroticMusings May 25
Actually, turns out towels add spice to the right kind of story.
In a society that is more permissive than ours with far more restrictive rules on consent, where what they wear has different standards and function than what we are used to, when they go bathing in public bathhouses—a cultural norm—towels have meaning. Look up onsen and konyoku. My "trope" has shown up in a few stories now (and I'm about to write a sensuous bathhouse scene), but it is etiquette to wear a towel around your hips if you want to say you don't want to be propositioned.
If you are a man.
Women wear a towel around their hips to signal they aren't hunting to lower the anxiety level of the men around them.
[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
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