I was recently asked on another platform for tips about getting started with writing weight gain fiction. The person who asked me already had experience writing for fun, so a lot of this advice is written under the assumption that you have some experience with writing. If you’ve never written for fun before and you want to write gainer fiction, you have all of my encouragement, but I’m probably not the best person to give you general advice. With all that said, here’s the message I wrote:
Gainer fiction tips, let’s see…
The thing that comes to mind immediately, since you have experience with writing already, is don’t abandon what you already know. The rules that make a good story generally also apply to making a good gaining story. There’s nothing wrong with some good no-frills smut every once in a while–goodness knows I’ve dabbled in it myself, and tend to prefer reading it over more plot-heavy stories–but for something you’re writing yourself and want to be satisfied with, everything you know and have learned about good storytelling up until now applies.
The one possible exception to that rule is description. If you’re a description-lite writer, like I am, you’re going to have to learn to slow down and spend some time ruminating on the parts where it matters: describing a guy’s body as he grows, perhaps describing the meal and his experience eating it if you want that to be a part of the story (sometimes I dwell on the meal, sometimes I skip it; depends on what I’m focusing on in the story), his experiences in his newly grown body, etc. Don’t gloss over what your readers will be coming for. 🙂
On the note of not abandoning what you know, don’t think you have to try something completely foreign to you to dive into gaining fiction. You like writing short stories of fictional words? Write a story about a world where weight gain is common, or where the world is otherwise set up to allow your protagonist to get bigger. After all, there are only so many ways to write “man gets bigger”; I find it’s the who, where and when, why, and how that makes the story worth telling over and over again. (Sixty-something times for me now. ) Even if you want to eventually branch into a different kind of gaining fiction, starting by writing gaining fiction in a style you’re comfortable with is a good first step.
Another piece of advice I strongly believe in: write what turns YOU on. There’s this quote I read once that claims comedy and erotica are the easiest genres to create, because we have a built-in biological reaction that lets us know when we’ve down them right. I’m not sure I agree with the statement itself, but the point about that built-in reaction still stands. Write what turns you on, and it’ll find an audience that is also turned on by it. I’ve talked to some authors who felt pressured to put more intense feeding scenes in their stories than they were comfortable with, or incorporate vanilla sex as well when they just wanted to write about gaining. If you write to what you think people want, rather than what you want to write, that will come across in your writing, and your writing will suffer for it.
They say the best way to become a good writer is to read a lot, and that applies to gainer fiction too. If you’ve read gainer fiction, then you know what works for you and what doesn’t as a reader. (For me, that later category is marking a character’s growth by the number of pounds they weigh, unless there’s an in-universe reason for them to be weighing themselves, and growth that happens too fast and doesn’t feel earned.) Take what you’ve learned by reading other people’s stories, especially what you learned from stories you DIDN’T like, and apply that to your own.
Finally, proofread and edit. I probably don’t have to tell you this as a fellow writer, but proofreading and editing your story will make a world of difference in the final quality. There are a lot of weight gain authors who clearly throw their works up online without even giving them a single additional read-through. And even as someone who’s not a stickler for grammar and spelling like I use to be, the fact is there’s a threshold where the writing gets so hard to read because of all the mistakes that you have to slow down to figure out what was trying to be said. That’s going to take the reader out of the experience. I’ve been complimented by readers before simply for the fact that my stories are generally free of typos and egregious errors. The bar is that low, my friend. Just proofread your stories and that alone will give you an edge over an embarrassingly large number of weight gain writers.
That’s all I have for now, but feel free to ask my any more questions you might have. I love helping other writers, especially if doing so means there’s more weight gain fiction, particularly GOOD weight gain fiction, in the world. [Note that this last paragraph isn’t a simple carry-over from the copy-paste; it’s an invitation for all of you reading this to ask me questions as well, for exactly the same reasons.]
The Plot Thickens 