1. If you'd like to write your own D/s porn, the first thing to decide is the period, culture, and setting in which the story takes place. Is it historical, contemporary, or an alternative-world? If an alternative-world, how similar is it to contemporary or past histories of Earth? Is it technologically more advanced or less than our contemporary world, and do lifeforms or sexual genders exist there which do not here? How similar is the culture's stance on D/s or actual slavery compared to various periods of Earth history? What sorts of resistance and acceptance to D/s or actual slavery occur in the culture among the various kinds of people that exist in that world? How does the dominant culture of that world view D/s? How prevalent is D/s within that world, and how easily can one be involved in it there?

2. The next thing to decide is the means by which the D/s relationships arise within the story. Are they consensual or not? Some of the possible variations are listed below. The submissive is assumed here to be female, but the gender, race, and age of the D/s participants within the story must also be decided.

Abduction. A woman is abducted and forced into submission or sexual slavery. The victim either comes to accept it or forever fights against it with either blatant or veiled resistance.

Purchase. The sale of the slave could be either legal within the culture or not, or the legality could depend upon conditions either met or not met in this particular sale. The slave may either like or dislike her status as slave. This attitude may depend upon who owns her, or the conditions under which she is kept, sold or bought, or it may be unconditional. The extent and intensity of the slavery has various possibilities and is related to the culture and period of the story.

Training Facility. The submissive spends time at a place dedicated to D/s training. She either lives there or attends repeatedly, either according to some imposed schedule or simply upon a pace of her own choosing. Her attendance is either fully her own choice or someone else's to some degree of influence, ranging from friendly persuasion to authoritative command to forced imprisonment.

Established at the Start. The D/s relationship is already underway as the story begins. Events proceed from there.

Evolution of a Relationship. A non-D/s relationship or friendship begins to take on qualities of D/s. It is either consensual for the submissive or not. The change arises either through conscious choice of one or both participants or something occurs to bring it about and either one or both of them want afterwards to keep the new activities and dynamics of the relationship. An example of this is where the woman is seduced into submission until she discovers she desires more than anything to submit even more.

Seeking a Dominant. A woman desires a D/s experience and actively looks for it. Either she is in a non-D/s relationship and wants to change her status but her partner will not participate or he has tried and cannot participate to the extent she desires, or she is in a D/s relationship but it is not enough for her or it is about to end for other reasons, or she is not involved in any ongoing relationship and she wants to begin something new that is explicitly D/s. If she is in a relationship already and it is not ending for other reasons, she either wants to keep it and add the new D/s relationship as a second one, admitting the dual relationships to one or both partners or keeping this hidden from one or both of them, or she wants to end the one relationship and have only the other. To find the Dominant she seeks, she may answer an advertisement of some sort, the kind of ad depending on the culture of the story. It could be a newspaper ad, an ad in a magazine, an ad on the Internet, or an ad placed somewhere which she discovers or is told about or has known about but usually avoided till now. She may visit places where she feels it is likely or knows she will have opportunities to meet a Dominant. Depending on the culture in which the story takes place, this could be a private location which she must gain permission to enter, or a specific public club, bar or area of town, or it could be an area of the country or a certain village or town where D/s activities are more prominent or easier to engage in, or where the intensity of the activities is more to her liking.

Contract. It could be that the culture has means by which someone can contract themselves into a D/s relationship for a period of time, from minutes to hours, days, months, years or even life. The contract could be non-breakable and permanent according to the laws of the culture or it could be conditional upon certain criteria laid down by one or both participants or by other legal stipulations informing the contract, and it may lose its force upon the failure of these criteria or stipulations. The submissive may be controlled within this relationship, however long it lasts, by one or more than one Dominant, some possibly female or of other non-male genders, depending on the world in which the story occurs and the details of the contract. She may regret her contract but be unable to free herself or she may be happy of her choice. The happiness may last throughout her involvement or the conditions of her involvement may change and she may later regret her choice. The culture may permit her contract to be transferred to another Dominant, with or possibly without the submissive's agreement, or the dynamics or conditions of the relationship or the standards or stability of the culture may change to where she is sold, bartered, stolen, or given away, and this change in her situation may upset her pleasure in being a submissive or slave. A simple version of the contract is playing a game in which it is agreed beforehand that the loser will submit to someone or more within or outside the group. This can trigger a desire for further submission or lead to developments in the relationship(s) arising from the temporary submission.

Cultural Norm. It may be that all people of her gender, age, race, or type have no choice but to live as submissives or slaves. This may be temporary, during a certain period of their life or under certain external conditions which the culture determines, or the servitude may be binding for their entire life with no possibility of change. Or the culture may allow slaves taken during war, and she may have been captured during battle or invasion.

3. Not only must the period and culture of the story's world and the means by which the submissive enters the D/s relationship be determined, but the nature of the Dominant(s) who will have her must be decided. Again, whether the D/s is consensual or not plays a part in the dynamics of the relationship. Depending upon the conditions of consent, the Dominant can range from the gentlest of negotiators to a ruthless beast on the farthest edge of violence. Within a crime oriented story, there would be no consent from the submissive, although the story could begin with her giving him consent, not knowing what she was getting into. A non-consensual story need not contain brutality. The world in which the story occurs may be such that submissives or slaves are treated with compassion, even though their servitude is non-consensual, or the particular Dominant who has taken her may be gentle-minded and relatively kind, even as he has his forceful way with her. Situations to consider within the relationship are as follows.

Social Status. It's typical for the Dominant in D/s porn to be of high social rank, powerful within his world, and wealthy. Is this the only kind of man able to own slaves or have submissives in the world of the story? What part will his rank, power or wealth play in the relationship? Does it make much difference to the experiences of the submissive, beyond the isolation and size of the "estate" where she is kept and the fact that her Dominant never seems to need to go to work? Is there some advantage the Dominant gains through his standing that makes any significant difference to the story or to his qualities as a Dominant or man? What about the qualities of his mind? What interests him beyond sex? Does he try to teach his submissive(s) anything besides obedience to his will? Is he himself formally educated or not? If he is of middle or lower class standing, how does that affect the relationship? What if the submissive is from a higher class than him? What if she's smarter than him, it's a consensual relationship and she loves him, despite knowing his intellectual limitations? Is he aware of her achievements and qualities or is he too self-centered or intellectually limited to notice? Does he try to suppress those qualities of his submissive where she excels beyond him or does he push her to make her even better? What is the self-confidence level of the Dominant and how, if at all, is it related to his social status or his intellectual qualities? What if he were to lose his wealth or social connections? Would he still be as confident? What role does his submissive play in his public life? Is he admired for possessing her, or is she something he keeps hidden from his public life?

The Harem. Does the Dominant have more than one submissive or slave? How do they get along? What difficulties does he have maintaining peace among them? Does he have a favorite? Has he placed any submissive in a position of dominance over some or all of the others? How is it working out?

Punishment. Is the punishment true punishment, something which the submissive actively dislikes and which she will work to avoid in the future, or is it something that arouses her? D/s porn often uses punishment within the story as a means to arouse the reader and mistakenly allows the submissive to be aroused as well to increase the arousal of the reader. If the submissive dislikes the punishment, it may still arouse the reader, but for the sake of realism (to whatever extent porn can be realistic) it is best to separate the submissive's pleasures and dislikes. Striving to do this as an author will enrich the psychology of the submissive and make for a better story. Explore the concept of punishment as realistically as possible, rather than simply having the submissive treated in ways that are usual methods of arousal for many submissives in real life.

Anger. What place does the Dominant's anger have in the story? In a consensual relationship anger must be monitored for moral integrity. This could be incorporated into the story and would enrich the character of the Dominant. In a non-consensual relationship the Dominant may still have moral scruples and may need to struggle with them in some way within the story.

Love. A man can love his slave. What if he must sell her or she is stolen? What would he do to get her back? How would she feel about his love? Would she hope he got her back or would she be happy to be away from him? What place does love play in a D/s relationship that is consensual? How does the Dominant balance his love and his intense desire to have his way with her? A story could be written about the complexity of love in a D/s relationship.

Realm of the Non-Consensual. D/s is based on the application of a fantasy that has its source in the notion of real slavery, a condition in which commands, often sexually motivated within the fantasy, must be obeyed immediately or punishment follows. It is based, in other words, on a fantasy of non-consensual discipline and use, even if that fantasy has become overlaid by a modified version in which a D/s relationship, based upon the the consensual application of the original enslavement fantasy, is made real. Pornography, being fantasy-based and being written to engage our fantasies and activate our imagination in the direction of our sexual arousal, is therefore, when it is D/s pornography, always near the boundary of consent and non-consent. Our fantasies themselves slip back and forth from one realm to the other, and as we read, our arousal can occur on either side of the boundary. Because the story is occurring within our imagination and not within our physical life, if it is not too extreme for us in its depictions of non-consent, we may lift the modified, consensual version of our typical D/s fantasies — fantasies which we hope to make real in our physical life — and engage, in concert with the story, our original unmodified version of real enslavement and sexual use which exists as the hidden core of those safer fantasies, a core of unconstrained desire in which non-consent is more likely the norm. The story has stripped away our secondary fantasy and revealed within us the fantasy that lies beneath. An author must decide how far into the realm of the non-consensual to go and to what extent the secondary fantasy, in which the original is always latent, must be recognized within the text. There is also the question of acts of non-consent committed by characters within the story. What is the relation of these acts to the culture in which they occur? How would they be viewed in our own culture? Is the story going to accommodate a contemporary reader and take account of the differences somehow or is the story going to disregard contemporary sympathies, even those founded on D/s fantasies of the secondary sort? How blatant is the non-consent going to be, and how far is it going to go?

4. It must be decided what kind of submissive the woman is going to be. She could be reluctant, cautious, shy, cheerful, eager, playful, feisty, stubborn, angry, antagonistic, hostile. Her limits may be broad or narrow. These limit points can be issues of contention within the story, whether the D/s is consensual or not. Even a slave would have more troubles with some activities than others. Exploring these areas of deeper conflict within the submissive would enhance the finer points of her character and thereby enrich the story.

5. Next are decisions on narrative organization. A useful distinction is that between storyline and plot. The storyline is the linear, strictly chronological arrangement of the events represented in the novel. The plot is the specific arrangement and sequence in which those events are actually configured and reported in the book. Telling a story out of chronological sequence makes this distinction evident. A simple example would be that during an early session between a Dom and his new submissive we are told how years in the future when he lost this submissive under tragic circumstances he wept for days. This would foretell not only that something tragic will happen in their future and of his grief during that time, but also that even though they have just begun to know one another they stay together a long time and he comes to love her deeply. Knowing this shapes our perception of these first moments they spend together and every moment after. It has irrevocably altered the way we experience the story. Further considerations on organization and presentation are as follows.

Point of View. Who is telling the story? The narrator can be outside the story or someone within the story, either one of the principal characters or a secondary or even minor character. There can be more than one narrator, and they can disagree on their interpretation of events. They can even disagree on what in fact occurred. There could be a diary, for example, in which details differ from those given by a narrator outside the diary. Or the novel could be a collection of manuscripts that sometimes contradict one another in significant ways. A D/s story told from the point of a submissive will be experienced differently from the same story narrated by a Dom, and it would differ again from that story narrated and arranged by a narrative voice external to the story. We can see here that point of view starts to mix in with the concept of plot. Different narrators would tell the same story in different ways.

Distance. How intimate are we allowed to be with the psychological experiences of the characters? Does the narrator let us know the feelings of those he or she may be privy to, or do we only get to know the characters from their actions and words? How often are we allowed in, and under what circumstances? How are these experiences represented in language? Does the language seem a close testimony to what would be occurring at that moment or is it more likely a report of secondary processes within the psyche of the character, such as the way he or she might describe the memory of the experience some time after the event?

Effect. What is the effect or impact you want the story to have on readers? Is there some overriding mood, sentiment, feeling, impression, thought, proposition, understanding or idea that you want the story to convey? Such an overriding hidden purpose can inform the story from beginning to end, giving it coherence and flow, and it can guide the author in deciding what to include in the story and what to leave out. Pornography, to be powerful fiction, must have a greater purpose than merely to arouse. With nothing more consciously intended for an overriding effect than sexual arousal, the author has no basis for establishing why these particular people are having sex or how it effects their lives. With no reason to create deeper associations among the characters than what their sexual gratification requires, the author tends to be satisfied with shallow characterization. After all, the only objective was to string together some hot sex scenes, wasn't it?

Thwarting Desire. The fundamental condition of fiction is desire and its opposition. This ongoing conflict between desire and whoever or whatever opposes it creates the dynamic tension that moves the story forward. What do the characters want and what is keeping them from getting it? For each character the answer will differ. (They may also want to avoid someone or something. This too is a desire.) Even if they all simply want sex, they each very likely want sex of some particular sort or under certain conditions or with specific individuals. If everyone gets what they want without effort there is no conflict and therefore no dynamic tension to move the story forward. What is their strategy for achieving what they desire, for reaching their goal? This strategy creates intermediate goals and may produce further difficulties. As the characters each work to reach their main goal through the strategies they've devised, new conflicts arise because of the opposing intermediate goals, and these conflicts suggest revised strategies, which again create further conflicts. The interweaving of desire and opposition creates among the characters a complex emotional web of associations and enriches the story.

Reader's Response. There is also the reader's expectations, concerns and desires. Suspense, for example, may exist in the reader even when it is absent from the characters. The reader may know something the characters do not, and this knowledge creates emotion and desire in the reader aside from what is vicariously shared with the characters. Withholding immediate satisfaction from the reader may increase the pleasure of reading, unless the reader's desire is thwarted beyond patience.

Pivot Points. A pivot point is a "defining moment" of the novel, a point in the story where the conflict of desire and its opposition is most evident. There are multiple pivot points in a novel. In abstract terms, the structure and flow of a novel arise from the interaction of characters and events. Without interaction there is no cohesion (hence no structure) and no change (hence no flow). Desire and its opposition convey meaning and value to these interactions, and through this meaning and value govern the flow of the novel. A pivot point is an episode or moment of high significance within the flow of the novel. Because significance is determined by desire and its opposition, a pivot point is an episode or moment when the force of opposition against desire is at either a relative maximum or minimum and then changes or pivots away from that maximum or minimum and moves in the contrary direction. Mathematically speaking, it is a critical point in the flow of the novel. In common terms, it is a point in the story where things take a turn for the better or worse. A pivot point also occurs where there is a significant modification or mutation of the principal desire and therefore a change in the "direction" of the story. It may be that the story begins with a quest of some sort and during this quest something is discovered that becomes the basis of a desire stronger than the one motivating the quest, even though the quest is not abandoned. (Someone is put in danger and it takes most of the story to rescue them, for example.) This new desire, now the principal desire of the story, has emerged out of the current created by the original desire, and is in that sense an alteration or mutation of the original desire. The moment where that transformation of desire occurred is a pivot point.

Culminating Event. The culminating event concerns the final triumph or defeat of the principal desire governing the flow of the novel. It is the resolution or stabilization of the conflict of desire and opposition that motivated the interactions and gave the story structure. In the example of the quest that became a mission of rescue, the full resolution of the story requires the fulfillment or final abandonment of the quest, even though the culminating event (from the point of view of the principal desire) was the moment of rescue. The story, in this sense, would have two endings. Like nested boxes, the story began with the outer and moved to the inner box. The inner box was the substance, the outer simply the shell. But in resolving the plot, one must exit from inner box first, which contains the culminating event, then be sure to exit the outer box, which resolves the entire novel. Exceptions occur, however, where love is concerned. The weight of this desire demands that final moments be devoted to it, as a coda if nothing else, after giving the secondary resolution required to exit the outer box.