Coding by Candlelight: Analysis (Part 1)
Coding by Candlelight: Analysis (Part 1)
My first time. Problems and solutions. A teaching moment.
Scene: a young man and an older lover, preparing for intimacy.
“Where do you want me to come?” he asks, looking at her directly.
“Inside me, of course,” she says. “Where else?”
“I thought you might like it in your face.”
I read a story - written by a woman, of course - about how pornography was teaching bad sex habits to young men. For a first-time lover to imagine that his partner might like him to ejaculate into her face - ewww, where’s the romance in that? - we can lay the blame squarely at the feet - or other body parts - of online pornography in its defacto role of sex educator.
That’s half of the genesis of my first venture into self-published erotica.
The other was some research into the field. I found some free-to-download site* and hit it up for a selection of what I imagined would be some languid and enjoyable study.
Um, no.
As literature, self-published erotica can be risible rather than arousing. I certainly giggled a lot - not in a good way - when I read Arthur Goes to Camp by James Dee.
“Oh, whoa, geez, I, oh,” he mumbled as he breathed heavier.
It was so bad!
But it got me thinking. This author - who has since swapped their names around and is now apparently writing as a woman - had a string of titles on Amazon and seemed to be making some money. KDSPY tells me that the current incarnation is racking up a few hundred dollars in sales each month.
If readers were paying good money for tripe, perhaps I could really clean up with a quality product?
Coding by Candlelight was my first attempt at erotica for sale, published on Kindle Direct in July 2019. It’s now up on Unclad Author here:
24 300 words long, it was a fairly meaty story, in the novella class. I had a bucketload of fun writing it and I still love reading it.
Problems
It’s long and there are only three sexual encounters described. For erotica, it’s very “plotty”.
There’s a lot of detail about the mechanics of the camp and what the students and staff are doing. We get treated to, for example, a swimming pool dive bomb competition where performances are being scored for style and splash in an app developed by the students.
Do we really need to know details of food and accommodation and car parking?
There is a very long massage scene, described in close detail.
Why is everybody smoking? Is this the 1960s?
Apart from the student/teacher dynamic, the sex itself is fairly vanilla. Nothing kinky going on.
One character is given quite a bit of space but takes no part in the sex action besides an occasional leer.
So, if the reader wants non-stop teenage sex kink, they have come to the wrong shop.
It was my first time! A learning experience but a fun one and now it’s a teaching experience.
Hey, this belongs to someone else!
The setting - and two of the characters - are pretty much the same as Arthur Goes to Camp. Nerdy white guy drives to coding camp, encounters an Indian lady instructor who is well built, they get it on.
I added two more characters and a heap more plausibility and plot.
Now, before you go off at me for lifting someone else’s ideas, may I point you at Shakespeare, who did little but rework old tales. In his own genius way.
And, for a genre such as romance or erotica, just how many ways are there for two or more people to hook up? Let’s face it, the beats and the motivations will be much the same from story to story; your job as a writer is to tell the tale in your own voice and language, using whatever storyteller tactics you can find to improve the story and make it more memorable.
It’s not about the dot points but how the characters move between them.
Besides, I doubt that the author of Arthur Goes to Camp dreamt up their story entirely in their own hands.
Setting
The more populated coastal regions of Australia have any number of rural retreat centres. Places designed for religious or sporting or youth gatherings. Low on luxury, high on bunk beds. I’ve spent time in some of these places, meditating, writing, participating in trade conferences.
I simply imagined up an annual youth coding camp over the four-day Easter break at one of these places, a couple of hours drive out of Melbourne, and relocated the town sports centre conveniently nearby.
All I really needed to do was describe the environment in enough detail to give it some realism. Cute Aussie animals etc.
Told in past tense but not in first person. Instead, I used third person, usually from the point of view of Clooney, my version of the white male nerdy character.
This choice came from my source material, told from the point of view of the “nerdy white guy”. It couldn’t be told in first person; there was no way for the “I” of Britni Pepper to tell a story that mostly didn’t involve her, at least not without some awkward narrative mechanics.
So, mostly we’re riding along with Clooney on his journey of exploration. Occasionally we dip into Erin’s mind for aspects that sound better coming from a female point of view.
I toyed with the idea of telling the tale from Chandra’s point of view as the cougar teacher lusting after skinny young teenaged boys. Maybe I’ll do that one day - or invite my readers to take that role - and I am sure it can be a lot of fun in a reverse Lolita kind of way.
Characters
The original story had two characters, and my versions of them became:
Clooney - barely eighteen, geeky, not real bright on the emotional IQ but possessed of a good heart and a charming smile. He is the Innocent, needing to be shown the way.
Chandra Parvati - an older Indian lady, somewhere in her mid-thirties (my age at the time). I found a way to give her a backstory explaining her interest in skinny young men. And a fabulous set of knockers. In Archetype terms, she is the Sage, guiding the steps of the novice.
I added in a couple of other characters:
Erin - now things have become really interesting. Clooney and Erin have a history. At the previous year’s camp, the two found some time for intimate contact. Clooney isn’t sure whether he’s technically a virgin or not but he’s keen to make sure. We’re now in a love triangle. She is the Lover, with her aim firmly on her target. She is interested in more than the physical side of things.
Frank - and make that a four-sided triangle. Frank is a schoolmate of Clooney and he’s there to stir the pot a little. I see him as a combination Jester and Rebel. He’s there to add a bit of edge and keep the reader guessing.
I honestly couldn’t bear to have just the two characters from the original story. If I was writing an erotica tale, they would have to get together sooner or later and I’d have the reader one step ahead of me all the way. After all, my source material had pretty much told the story right there on the cover: Indian Aunty and Nerdy White Teen.
With four characters, the reader would be wondering at the possibilities.
Um, not that I wasn’t. Erin and Frank arrived on the scene before Ms Parvati made her impressive entrance into the classroom, I was imagining the ways I could spin this thing right from the start.
A good drama revolves around conflict and while I was pretty sure as I wrote my story that nobody was going to punch anyone else in the teeth, I wanted to keep the possibility open. For the reader, if not myself.
Incidentally, the card images above are from the Storyteller Tactics Archetypes expansion deck. I didn’t use these cards - they hadn’t been released yet - when I wrote the story but I can highly recommend them as handy resources to have when working up characters to populate the plot. The cards give not just a description of the basic roles but how they can have Light and Dark sides and what combinations could produce. Artist and Sage together make the Storyteller character, someone who can entertain, using their wisdom and experience to do a good job.
Read my review on Medium - link above - to see how the system works.
Sex as a character
My theory as to the difference between pornography and erotica is that if the sex in the story is a character, in erotica that character is well-rounded and complex.
In Coding by Candlelight, there is no doubt about that character’s role.
In this story, sex is a teacher.
For one thing, the thrust of the story is a relationship between a teacher and student. She will be showing her student a thing or two. In fact, one of my favourite scenes is one where her pupil’s eyes widen as she delivers a practical lesson in anatomy.
Clooney learns a lot about sex from the point of view of a female partner. Chandra guides his learning, warns him of traps for inexperienced players, rewards success, confirms that instruction has been assimilated, and sets him loose to put his new talents to good use.
He turns into a teacher, making sure to correct the problems of the past - for example, providing illumination when he finds some alone time with Erin so that everyone can see what’s going on - and ensuring that his partner knows the basics of male anatomy.
Along the way, the reader learns these details. From my point of view, I’m educating young players about anatomy, birth control, manners, consent, and satisfaction.
As a bonus, we also learn a bit about massage, an activity that can be a great preliminary to sex.
The Elephant in the Room
While we are here, let’s talk about the theme of the story. The only real kink is teacher/student sex. A fairly popular erotic trope, with obvious resonances to young people on the verge of sexual maturity seeing role models in their teachers, some of whom may be theoretically available.
Likewise adults might see the situation as another bite of the cherry when they were awash with hormones and in the middle of a crowd of similar teenagers. Who wouldn’t want to return to such times with the knowledge and experience of an adult? You could certainly make that cute boy in the science class take more interest, and perhaps more importantly, know what to do with him once you had him hooked.
The dark side of the kink is the power imbalance. Teachers are authority figures standing in loco parentis, have the power to award marks for academic performance, can uplift or demean a student in class, and as adults with academic qualifications and steady employment are in a more secure position than teenagers whose finances may be shaky and are still striving for diplomas and degrees, not to mention independence.
This is a subject that needs to be handled with care. Normalise it - as the author of my saucy source did - and it comes out as tacky.
In my defence:
This isn’t school and Chandra isn’t a professional teacher. She works for a software company - an Indian lady in software, how strange! - and instructs for coding camp. Presumably she also presents at user groups. She’s still in a teaching role here but she’s not going to be dismissed or prosecuted for having a relationship with an adult attendee. She may not be asked to return to coding camp but she hasn’t done anything wrong or illegal. Just a bit tacky.
She and Clooney are consenting adults. The issue of consent is revisited frequently. Neither of them are going into this with incomplete information or expectations.
She has her own reasons for desiring slender young men in student roles. She tells Clooney the story of young love thwarted and an unsatisfactory marriage. She, like many of my readers, is looking for another bite of the cherry and is very careful and discreet in her moves.
There’s no lasting relationship formed. She pushes Clooney onto Erin, and although we aren’t told what their future holds, we can imagine that there will be a future for Clooney with his new mobility, and Erin, under the watchful eye of her cop father. Clooney fantasises about Chandra after camp, but she firmly puts the lid on that. It’s a bit of fun over the Easter break. An extra period of instruction, if you will.
Having said all that, I enjoyed writing Chandra. On the surface, a strong, capable woman. Underneath, someone a little more fragile and wounded. Is she a predator or a caregiver to herself and Clooney? I prefer to think it’s more the latter than the former.
Maybe one day I’ll rewrite Oedipus Rex as a comedy. In your face, Sophocles!
Showing, not telling
One advantage of introducing additional characters is that plot elements may be introduced through dialogue in a more natural fashion than simply telling the reader. Clooney describes Chandra to Frank before she makes her appearance and we know that she was presenting at the coding camp the previous year, making quite an impact on Clooney.
Likewise we learn of Clooney’s relationship with Erin through dialogue and action.
By way of contrast, here’s Arthur from the story I used as a source:
Arthur instantly recognized her and remembered that her name was Mrs. Agarwal and for whatever reason, he always had had a crush on her in years past. Truth be told, he couldn’t explain the reasoning for the crush, besides perhaps he just had a thing for middle-aged Indian women. Well, more honestly, husky and curvy Indian women like her, with her jet black hair, tanned skin, round breasts, and round ass.
There’s a lot more like this - the writer just throwing backstory at the reader like the voice of god - and I found it pretty bloody lame.
My extra characters serve a dual purpose in a third-person narrative style where it becomes jarring to either be the omniscient narrator or have the protagonist muse about their appearance, their past, their plans for the future …
Here’s the end of my first chapter - Clooney’s arrival at coding camp after a stressful drive on narrow bush roads - and the beginning of the second, where we are inside Cerin’s head.
There were two ahead of him in the line for registration, but Clooney only had eyes for one. A slender teenager, a brunette ponytail, pale blue top and a tan skirt. She turned as he approached, her glasses flashing in the flourescent light.
Chapter 2: Welcome
Erin looked around excitedly as her father led her into reception. There was a table set up, one of the tutors sitting behind it, rearranging an assortment of name tags and envelopes. Not many left; everyone else must be here already. Teenagers were standing in clumps, chatting. Erin waved to a few she remembered from last year. So good to be back!
She broke into a smile when she saw Clooney entering. Look at him. Beanpole in jeans and a t-shirt. Thick glasses, unruly blond hair, blue eyes twinkling with joy. She held out her arms for a hug. And gave him a smooch on the cheek.
Right here we switch from Clooney’s point of view to Erin’s and in a couple of paragraphs we’re given descriptions of two main characters, hints of their past relationship, and their feelings for each other. It flows and the reader is not distracted by mental soliloquies; it’s playing out like a movie.
Action - show not tell - gives us a lot of information about what’s going on. Dialogue goes deeper, revealing character and thought. Here’s a crucial moment as Clooney joins Chandra for a skinny dip he wasn’t expecting.
He almost forgot his watch, and turned back at the last moment to place it beside the jumble of his clothing. And his glasses.
Oh great. Now he’d be as blind as a bat. If he wanted to see Ms Parvati’s curves up close, he’d have to get really close.
He turned to face her and there was another gasp from the pool. He looked down. His skinny body was all edges and angles, but there was one part of him that needed no bulking up.
“Hey, Clooney?”
Ms Parvati was now just a delicious blur in an out-of-focus world.
“Just wanted to make one thing clear. No sex on a first date. Okay?”
“Uh, um, of course,” he stammered. “I wasn’t planning anything like that.”
“That’s not what I see,” chuckled that tantalising shape in the water. “But a kiss would be fine. If you can catch me.”
He could see movement and hear splashes. She was getting away!
It’s one thing to be given a flat statement of what a character is thinking, quite another to have the reader intuit it - as we do in real life - from looking and listening. Words and gestures carry meaning; a good line of dialogue brings the reader right into the story.
Besides, as a writer, I enjoy the play of back-and-forth interaction between characters. If I can get into the groove in a writing session, the work flows.
Structure
Arrival - 846 words - Clooney point of view
Welcome - 1223 - Erin
Class - 1847 - Clooney
Team - 856 - Erin (tangentially, for about one sentence, otherwise it could be Erin or Clooney)
Path - 450 words - Clooney POV
Getting Wet - 1636 - Clooney
Raw Hide - 2815 - Clooney
Safety Briefing - 1235 - Clooney
Rub Chandra up the right way - 1656 - Clooney
Joint pleasure - 1753 - Clooney
14,350 words right there and from chapter five on Chandra and Clooney are naked together. Four orgasms later I could end the story and have done a grand job.
But there are still three days left in coding camp and a stack of loose ends. Erin, mostly.
Come Saturday - 1205 - Erin and Clooney
Date night - 3106 - Clooney
Who’s been sleeping? - 389 - Clooney
Midnight Express - 376 - Erin
The smile on the face of the cougar - 2081 - Erin
Four candles - 2674 - Erin
Cleaning up - 116 words, Erin’s point of view.
Ten thousand words to finish up, another four climaxes, Clooney has comprehensively made love to the women of his pre-camp dreams and Frank has been left alone each night hacking computer code.
Time and setting-wise the story divides into three days and nights.
Friday: We meet the characters in the camp setting. Chandra is quick to suggest an evening meeting to chat and unwind with Clooney, and when that happens she keeps him delightfully off-balance.
Saturday: The young coding team work up an app, Chandra again initiates an evening encounter, this time at a more comfortable and discreet location. Erin makes a move and finds Clooney unavailable.
Sunday: The two women share thoughts on Clooney, Chandra gives Erin a clear run, the two teens get together. End of story with a happy-ever-after glow.
My story is four times as long as the source - maybe with smidge more sex - has an additional significant character, and is far more generous in terms of character, setting, and plot.
The sex is also longer and more detailed, with desire and anticipation almost always on stage when the sex isn’t.
Storytelling structure
In direct opposition to the story of Arthur Goes to Camp, best described as “Boy Meets Girl: Woohoo!”, Coding by Candlelight is a variation of No Easy Way.
But wait! I hear you cry, Clooney gets Chandra - and how! - and loses her. How is that a Better Place?
My story isn’t the same as the source. Chandra isn’t Clooney’s aim, Erin is.
Clooney has spent the year since the last coding camp dreaming of two women, yeah, but he can’t have both, now can he?
Unless we give in to the teacher-seduces-student trope entirely - and in erotica, you can do that - Clooney isn’t going to wind up with Chandra. Erin is the Better Place and Chandra is the Setback.
Crisis comes in the Date Night chapter. Yeah, it’s been great but Chandra puts the hard word on Clooney. That’s it. Clooney has to find someone else.
Recovery begins as soon as Clooney gets back to camp and understands that there’s only one woman in his life from now on.
Realistically, it’s a simple story, easily told. It could have been a lot harder - the difficulties and challenges, I mean - because apart from a few puzzled looks at breakfast the only real danger of things going off the rails is the lightning visit of the security guard.
In an erotic tale, sex is the focus. It’s not an adventure story or a murder mystery. James Bond always winds up with the girl but that’s not the point of the movie, now is it?
This is erotica. It’s about sex. Obstacles on the path should be directly related to sex and in this case, the sudden escalation of the Clooney/Chandra relationship is something to be overcome as well as being an exciting diversion.
There’s a lot going on in the story - as the Deep Dive podcast team analyse at some length (link later on) - but at almost every point there is either sex or sexual tension building.
From Erin’s point of view - and we get a few chapters through her eyes - it is a straightforward story:
Meet Clooney
Reconnect, but there’s a problem
Develop relationship
Spend more time with Frank than Clooney; how frustrating, or maybe an alternate scenario playing out?
Make a move, foiled!
Clooney and Erin make their feelings clear to each other
Chandra gives Erin a little push …
… and happy place!
In Erin’s story, Chandra is no more than their class instructor, cheerful and friendly to all, but nothing special, except maybe as someone pushing weed and alcohol on Clooney.
In Clooney’s story, there is way more going on and the reader gets to share the excitement but it’s a parallel tale of No Easy Way.
Either way, the Erin/Clooney relationship introduced in the first few pages is finally and satisfactorily brought home and we can imagine the two driving off in Clooney’s baby-poo brown Volvo into a happy future together. Awww!
Britni
Britni
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