Cuck Storm Replacment : Attempt two

 A while ago I made an attempt to write the third book in David McManus's Reluctant Cuckold series.

I say attempt, because while I enjoyed writing it, and I got a lot of good feedback, I didn't think it was all that good and eventually it ran into the sand. I made a few attempts to 'fix' it, I never felt I was getting anywhere and I abandoned the effort.

Well, it ate away at me. I kept returning to re-read "Reluctant" and "Horizon" and appreciate them more and more. 

Here's the things I thought were wrong with my attempt, in no particular order.

• It moved way too fast. Ten chapters took place over a couple of days.
• I went straight from explicit sex scene to sex scene too rapidly.
• I didn't get enough of Dave's internal monologue and retrospection in, which is a hallmark of the originals.
• I didn't do enough fantasising. Some of the best passages in the originals take place in Dave's head.
• There's very little face-to-face time with Mike. Mike humiliating Dave directly are also really good scenes, but I shied away from these.
• Ashley and Dave get super explicit about femdom, cuckolding and FLR straight away. The glancing-off-it unstated nature of the originals is lost almost immediately.

For me, the key point in the originals come after Ashley invites Mike back and they close the door on Dave. 

When Mike says “I think we’re going to have a little private time now.” That's the point that a good book gets really very good. What makes it even better is that there's almost no explict sex that evening. They turn the music up too loud. It's all in Dave's head.

Amazingly, McManus pulls this off again in the second book. 

“Dave,” she said, “I think we’re going to retire now, okay?”

“You’re going to bed?” I said.

“Yeah, we’re going to the bedroom now, okay?” 

If anything, this is even better.  These exchanges work so well because McManus has done so much work leading up to these scenes and he's been so subtle in painting the relationship between Ashley and Dave.  

To try to get more familiar with the spirit of the originals, I did a couple of things. First, I made an index for the first two books. Here's an excerpt. I wanted to count and see where these topics came up. There's three pages of this.

I used Sarah Evaliina to illustrate.

Then I made a time-line. How much time passes between events. In the originals, future events - Ashley going out with Mike, them meeting up etc. are flagged in advance which makes the book flow better. 

And while I did those, I wrote short summaries of each chapter in the first two books.

In short, I took it all apart to see how it ticked.

During previous rewrite attempts, I'd written some passages which I liked, and now I'd written more, but they weren't linked together.  So, I tried to write some sort of structure for the book to hang them in and try to avoid the pitfalls that I'd repeatedly fallen into.

As a hobby, do-it-for-the-fun-of-it kind of writer, I never think about structure. I just sit down, start writing and see where it goes. Obviously, this is bad. All my bad habits and foibles have free reign and get amplified by this stream-of-bullshit way of writing. 

I think Hemmingway said that writing is easy. You just sit at your typewriter and bleed onto the page. In short, it's hard work, and it's painful. 

My hardest challenge in all this was keeping away from the incredible gravitational pull of Dave and Ashley talking explicitly about what's going on. Dom-female to Sub-male dialog is my catnip. But in the originals, this never happens. They glance off each other. Discussions are not explicit. Things are left unsaid. Nothing ever concludes. 

In my first attempted rewrite, I broke this rule straight away. Ashley makes Dave say that he is her cuck in chapter two. She then makes him jerk off onto her foot. And from there on, the relationship is irrevocably changed. Now, I liked writing that chapter. Readers said it was hot. But if Bruce Willis and Sybil Sheppard had got it on  in the first episode of Moonlighting, then nobody would have watched episode two.

I had to keep more of this unsaid. More meaningful silences. More talking at cross-purposes. More ambiguity.

But of course, it's hard to keep that believable, given all that's happened in the first two books.

There is an idea of fiction of rising and falling action, with each cycle getting faster and more heightened until a crisis, and then denouement. I wanted to follow this idea, which I think is present in the originals. In the originals they meet up with friends, or we hear a lot about Dave's work, or they spend time doing couple stuff together. In fact, that's two thirds of the books. It's not sex-scene to sex-scene to sex scene. I tried hard to make these parts interesting. 

I have to admit that on my first read-through of Reluctant and Horizon, I kinda fast-forwarded through all the scenes in Dave's work or the going-out-as-couples with their friends. But these scenes are essential to the tone and pacing of the book.

Also, there is an idea of a story's plot, the main storyline, and sub-plots which contrast with the main storyline and give more substance.

For me, the main storyline is Dave and Ashley's relationship. His reluctance to accept that he is a cuckold, and her grinding away at his resistance - the final crisis being his acceptance, maybe even embracing of the lifestyle.

The subplots are Mike and Dave sparring off each other, and (continuing from the original) Dave's failures and victories in his workplace.

That main storyline is hard to keep in check. When I re-read Reluctant and Horizon, it's surprising just how dominant Ashley is. Early in Horizon she makes him enter chastity, but it's all done so  carefully that it doesn't feel forced. When I wrote equivalent scenes, they felt like a slam in the face. I tried hard to work on the tone, less jump-scare, more rising dread for David.

Finally, I decided the answers to some key questions I felt I had to have clarity on. Here's a few examples.

• Does Ashley actually want him to watch?
• Why hasn't she invited him to?
• Can she be with someone else? Jim? Mike jealousy?
• The 'submissive' tee shirt party  - what happened?
• Did Ashley go to Mike’s after US Open?
• Was there someone before Murta?
• Has Tamara met Mike

I've written about as many words now as there is in either Horizon or Reluctant. But, I know I'm going to dump up to half of it, and I still have a lot of 'connective tissue' to write.

I'm still actively working on it and there's no part I'm 100% happy with.

In the meantime, here's an excerpt, a part I like and will keep in the final version to some degree.

The context for this is - it's later in the story - in the second half. Ashley has started to forbid Dave to masturbate for periods. Mike is about to go away on a business trip. Dave is determined to make the most of the Mike-free time. He's bought her a fancy lingerie set, intending to give it to her once Mike is gone but she sees the bag and he can't resist giving it to her early. Then he has to go to a bar to meet Mike and bring him back later. Ashley wants them to be friends.

PDF Sample

Some people have commented or emailed encouragement to work on this. Thank you all so much. It really does help to give me momentum. 

Some people suggested a tip jar or something like that. No need. To be clear, I'm never going to sell this. It's too close to the original author's work and it wouldn't be right to charge for it.

When I have a draft I feel is okay I'll make it available here for free.