How to Write a Monster Girl Story

//Tags: arrogance, pride, hubris, elitism, machine's got a big fucking ego, flaming hot opinions


How to Write a Monster Girl Story


I don’t know everything and I am still learning, but this is what I’ve figured out so far. Take all of this with a grain of salt. Feel free to go your own way if you want to.

Basically you can split monster girl stories into two main categories: generic story, and a second category I call “daydream fuel.”

Generic stories generally depict a set of events that is interesting, like an adventure or something. These events are not always pleasant or happy. The main characters tend to be well defined and have a lot of personality. The 3rd person perspective is generally used. Almost all normal, everyday, non-monstergirl writing is generic. A lot of monstergirl stories are too, and that’s perfectly fine. There is demand for this and a lot of people like it. If you want to write these go right ahead. Im not really the best at the generic stories so I can't really help you here. That being said this is close enough to mainstream that there is a lot of guides out there that can.

Daydream fuel on the other hand is less about telling a story and more about projecting a scenario. The main character is written as intentionally vague so that the reader can insert themselves into the story. Generally they are thrust into a fate or set of events that are desirable in some way. Its the kind of story that’s fun to imagine yourselves in. These are generally told from second person perspective: “you did this, then you did that” instead of “he did this, then he did that.” Daydream fuel is most of what I write, and is what this guide will cover. MonsterGirlCrossing also has a lot of stories like this.

http://pastebin.com/8sRpnirM
http://pastebin.com/u/MachineAnon

I consider daydream fuel to have 3 main parts: Intro, Action, and Fate.

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INTRO: This is what introduces the story. It tells where the main character is and what he is doing. It sets the story up. This part generally ends when the main character meets a monstergirl. Typically it depicts how the main character (MC) gets captured or trapped or otherwise drawn into her web. I would consider this the most difficult and demanding part of the story.

Its important to have the intro be as grabbing as possible. You cannot set things up with a long list of “you live in a magical kingdom and you cut lumber for a living blah blah blah.” That shit is boring and nobody wants to read it. I learned this lesson the hard way from my very first story, I had like 3 pages of boring intro and hardly anybody got through it. Oops. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes.

Remember, nobody has any investment in your story yet. Its very easy to just close that tab and move on to the next story. You need to grab them from the very first sentence. In my undead story the very first sentence is how a giant fireball hurtles over the MC's house and explodes into the house next door. That’s fucking intense for the first sentence of a story. It makes you want to keep reading, and before you know it the intro is already over. At that point the reader is invested in the story and will power through a few boring paragraphs if needed.

Its best to explain to the reader things about the main character through showing it happen, rather than just telling the reader. Like say “Life in Monstergirl City can be exhausting for a man, and even more exhausting for a bank teller. All those girls hitting on you gets old after a while.” Not “You are a bank teller who works in Monstergirl City and gets hit on.” Even through the second sentence is shorter, it lacks any kind of flavor. You want to avoid sterile sentences like that.

I have learned the hard way from my alraune story that it is very important that getting captured must not be the main character's fault. Most anons seem to think they are ninjas with icewater in their veins who never make mistakes under pressure ever. If you start telling them “then you fucked up and made a poor decision” they start to say “like hell I did!” It doesn't matter what reality is, it matters what the reader BELIEVES reality is. So just make sure getting captured is not the fault of the main character. He can't get tricked into it, he must have bad luck or be overpowered or surprised or something. It must be a trap that nobody could fight against or escape. Most monstergirls are retardedly strong and fast, so this is actually not that hard to do. Even the ones that aren’t strong have some sort of charm magic or webs or something.

From my Oomakude story I learned its also important the guy not give up too easily. (assuming the romance is not consensual) I wrote about this further down. An easy way to solve this is just don't have the main character give up, but also make sure he can't get free. I think whats going on here is that the reader is looking for an excuse to have a good time. Like bailing out on your responsibilities and abandoning your life is sort of a fucked up irresponsible thing to do, even though most people don't seem to like their lives to begin with. But if you don't have a choice in the matter, then its not your fault any more. No one can blame you for enjoying your new life with your captor. The audience needs that excuse in order to be set free from their own sense of responsibility.

If you are looking for a good intro I think my Kraken story nailed it. It has everything: excitement, description of who he is (a sailor) where he is (stranded at sea) what he is up against (drowning, aquatic monstergirls) as well as rendering him helpless against them through no fault of his own (a storm sunk his boat). And all of this in one concise package: the entire intro is only like 8 short paragraphs.
http://pastebin.com/AW9w3rz5

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ACTION: this is where the main character interacts with the monstergirl in question. This is where all the interesting stuff happens. Typically sex happens here, or cute stuff, or romantic stuff or whatever. This is the main body of your story. This section is very flexible and more forgiving than the intro.

You are going to have some dialogue in this section, almost guaranteed. Im not really the best at dialogue, so I tend to use a lot of narration to get around that. I also tend to use very “themed” characters that tend to be easier to write. Like I dont just have a nondescript person, I have a down south good-ole-boy in a cowboy hat that says “yall” a lot. Its easier for me to imagine what a person might do if they are more polarized and extreme like that. Its probably more fun for the reader too, especially in a short story. You are going to have to figure out your own quirks as a writer and try to find workarounds.

In really dialogue heavy spots ive found it easier to read and understand what is going on if you break each line of dialogue into its own line, like the following:

You need to get a sense of “verbal economics.” Like you have to ask yourself:

“Is this paragraph important to the story?”

And if the answer is no,

“Is this paragraph fun to read?”

If the answer to both of those questions is no, delete the paragraph. You aren't supposed to be writing filler. This isn't 11th grade english class, nobody cares about your page length here. In fact you want it to be as short as possible while still retaining the emotional impact you need. This is probably the single most important part of writing a good story: knowing when to delete stuff. For every 2 pages I write, there is roughly another one that gets erased. Thats like 33% gone, but thats perfectly normal and acceptable.

There are going to be some paragraphs that actually are important to the story but are not fun to read. These are almost unavoidable. The mark of a good story is having as few of these as possible. Try to keep things grounded, down to earth. The more basic and simple something is the less you have to explain it. You don't have to explain what a car is. Everybody already knows that a car is a transportation machine. You DO have to explain what a motorized rollingham is. Nobody knows what the fuck that is, and now you have to waste time explaining it to them. Now you have yet another useless paragraph taking up space. KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. I fucked this up on my first story as well. I had a complex magic system all worked out and I thought it was cool. Oops. If they wanted complex magic they would be reading Wheel of Time instead of monstergirl stories on the internet.

Lewd scenes are not as required as you might think. Some of my most popular stories have no lewd at all. A lot of people just want a romantic or cute story. I get the feeling a lot of anons just want to be loved. You can do lewd if you want to, just don't feel like you have to force it into a story if it doesn't really fit.

It turns out anons will accept pretty much any amount of bullshit from a monstergirl as long as they wind up with a girlfriend at the end of the story. Torture, imprisonment, financial ruin, all manner of grim shit as long as they get someone to hold at night. Even if a character is a massive bitch she will generally be accepted by the community if she has an affectionate side. Snuggles are anon's Kryptonite. It feels almost like cheating its so easy; its like a get-out-of-criticism-free card.

Try to take your story at least a little seriously. Im not saying you cant have fun with it, just try not be a memespammer. The internet has a lot of inside jokes that most of your readers wont get.

UPDATE world exposition is not as important as I thought. You should include it if you can make it work, but dont try to force your cool ideas into a spot where they otherwise dont fit. Just tell your story and let your super neato world elements go.

There is an alarming number of you guys who are not even following basic dramatic structure. This isn't even my advice at this point: there is a set way to tell a story, and its been the same for LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF YEARS. God damn guys, this shit is not complicated. Its got 5 parts:
1 Exposition
2 Rising action
3 Conflict
4 Falling action
5 Dénouement, resolution, revelation or catastrophe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure

Basically what im telling you is that your story has to have a purpose. It has to go somewhere, involve characters, introduce some kind of conflict, resolve that conflict, and then wrap things up at the end. You can't just have a bunch of dudes sitting around watching TV with nothing happening. Just because it involves monstergirls doesn't somehow make this OK now. Why would you even do this?! You guys are making me lose faith in humanity. You might notice my entire outline is basically just a version of dramatic structure specialized for the monstergirl universe.


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FATE: this is where you conclude the story. Typically you want to illustrate what the main character can look forward to.  It can be the next few minutes or the rest of his life. If he is imprisoned or trapped or something you will want to outline how exactly his prison works here. Maybe show an escape attempt that fails or something. Maybe he has kids or realizes his life is not so bad here. I sometimes do a sort of “time acceleration” in this part, listing a handful of important events in the main character's life over the course of many years. A time jump is also ok to a single important event in the future.

The final sentence should have a note of finality to it, so the reader knows good and well the story is over.

If possible, try to tie the conclusion back into the intro somehow. Like in my alraune story I mentioned the main character wanting to get out of the rain in the intro, and then in the conclusion he realized he needs to be careful what he wishes for.

Personally if the story allows it I like to have my main characters become rich at the end. Like a huge windfall of money, enough that they never have to worry about anything again. Its usually not that hard to do, just have them luck out on some random thing. Remember, you control the universe in your own story. The laws of probability need not apply. Call me a huge jew if you want, but most people seem to like this.

Before you even begin writing you should try to come up with an "exit strategy." You should know in advance exactly where the story is going to end. Usually it should end at some important tipping point or specific event. I fucked this up in my tentacle girl story. It just sort of trailed off into the rest of the guys entire life, with nothing specific to end on. If you don't have any major events in mind, just end the story at the end of the guys first day with his new girl.

For the love of god you have to conclude your stories guys. I have no idea why so many people just trail off in the middle of a story and never finish it. Laziness? What the fuck guys, if its not finished don’t even post it, you are just wasting everyone’s time who reads it. You are literally punishing your readers. Why would you do this?


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So you finished your story, now what? Now you need to throw that sucker on line. I usually wait a day and then proofread it. Waiting is important: you can't proof read it right away because your brain will automatically fill in gaps in the writing from memory and you literally won't even notice.

I always write my stories offline in a text document, then post it on pastebin later. That way I can make changes to the beginning as needed to fit the end later. If someone reads the beginning before the end is finished, you cant expect them to go back and read everything over again if you need to make changes. I often times don’t realize an opportunity in a story until I am pretty far into it. Then I go back and make improvements and the story is better for it. This is something you cant really do with a choose-your-own-adventure (CYOA) because it all gets read as soon as its created.

Don't get too cocky. Remember, even though you want to talk about your new story with someone, nobody has read it yet but you. Nobody is going to care about your flaming hot opinions just yet. Just post the story and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE. You can shitpost your comments in 20 minutes when the reviews start coming in. Greentext is the way to go here, use those memearrows boys.

Don't forget the link to your pastebin. You probably shouldnt try to post the entire thing into the 4chan thread, there is a 1500 character limit and it would be hard to read anyway. Not to mention the transient nature of threads, your story will be gone when the thread dies. With pastebin you form something more permanent.

An image is almost mandatory. You are going to want to attract as many eyes as you can get, and an image helps pull people in. It also helps set the tone of the story. Its going to be what gives your greentext “flavor” so make sure you pick something fitting. I usually just post the stock image straight out of the monster girl encyclopedia wiki. Sometimes I do a tiny bit of photoshop to make it more fitting somehow, like in my ushi oni story I gave it a christmas tree background. UPDATE: ok it turns out the image MUST be of a girl or people will ignore your shit. Dont try to post a funny image, or an image that is only tangentially related. Post a picture of a monstergirl from your story, preferably as catchy and alluring and attention grabbing as possible.

I see a lot of guys just say "Whelp I wrote a story here you go PASTEBINLINK." They have no image or greentext or description or anything. You are never going to get readers that way. Everyone will ignore your shit. So just follow this basic format: Greentext of your story (and nothing else), pastebin link at the bottom, image of the girl in question. Just those 3 things and people will read your shit. Its not that hard people.

Make sure you post your stories at the beginning of a new thread. Threads generally last about 4,000 posts before they die. If you post your shit in a dying thread nobody will get a chance to read it. Then your going to have to post again, and look like a total spamming faggot.

Pastebin does not allow text formatting. No bold or italics. Its kind of lame. If I want to put emphasis on some part of a sentence the only way to do it is CAPITALIZATION. There are alternatives to pastebin, maybe you could try those? I dunno. Tinypaste allows bold and italics. http://tny.cz/

I've started adding tags to the start of my stories. That way the reader can know what to look forward to in advance. Like if they want a happy story you don't want them bummed out after 20 minutes of reading only to get a sad ending. I'm not too sure about this practice though, it tends to reveal important plot points in advance. It has the potential to spoil the story, so don't put any surprises in the tag listing. I also seem to be the only one doing tags, which makes me nervous. UPDATE I asked about tags in the thread, and came back with universal support for them. People like tags, its official.

I have now also started adding a "rate this story" section at the bottom with a strawpoll attached. I tried the 1-10 scale, but the amazon style 1-5 stars is better. Make sure you put in exactly what each rating means. Like currently I am doing:

http://strawpoll.me/3088282
How would you rate Story Name?
1 star - I hate it.
2 stars - I don't like it.
3 stars - It's okay.
4 stars - I like it.
5 stars - I love it.

The voting results surprise me sometimes. Occasionally stories I thought were great are only somewhat warmly received, and vice versa. I have found this tremendously useful and I suggest you start doing it immediately. The key here is consistency; you need to be able to compare the effect of one story to the next.

People complain if you post under a name. They just do, theres nothing you can do about it. From a strategic standpoint posting under anonymous makes more sense. You cant be filtered or ignored, and the only way someone can figure out its you is if they actually read enough of your story to recognize your writing style. Or click your pastebin, which is pretty much the same thing. This advice might not apply if you are trying to get added to the master list, since you sort of need a reputation or body of work in order to be added.

Speaking of which, emailing LDR or ELH (the proprietors of the blog and pastebin lists) does absolutely no good. The most surefire way is to just post a story, and then under it in that same post ask them by name to add you. Keep at it, youll get on there eventually.

If you somehow stumbled across this without passing through 4chan, the place to post a monstergirl story is the Monster Girl General thread on the /jp/ board of 4chan. You will fit right in.

When you post a public story on pastebin, your going to get about 200 hits for "free." This process takes about 3 minutes, its very fast. After that it drops to nothing. Im pretty sure this is various webcrawlers indexing your story. I just let them do it, maybe it will make my story easier to find via search engine. So to get someones real hits, as in actual pairs of human eyes, just subtract 200 from the total.

MAMONOMANA: monstergirls don’t have to follow the laws of physics. You have to sort of decide for yourself when to break with the official canon description and when not to. KC, the creator of the monstergirl universe, has gone full blown hugbox mode and handwaves every problem away with magic. You can do this too if you want, but I think a little conflict makes for a more interesting story. In general people seem to be MUCH more lenient when you give the girls extra powers as opposed to when you take them away.

Femdom is a huge part of this genre for better or worse, so giving the girls more power is generally accepted. Taking it away can be a bit of a no-no. In my alraune story one guy got upset because I said she couldn't move from the spot she was growing. Are you kidding me bro? Plants don’t get up and walk around where I come from. It also fostered a since of loneliness and isolation I was going for, so I put it in the story anyway. This is your story and you can do whatever you want, don’t let anyone (even me) tell you different.

To complicate matters there is a minority of guys into maledom, and you cant please both sides simultaneously. So no matter what you do someone is going to get upset. 4chan is a pretty rough place sometimes, but I suspect you already know that.

UPDATE 12/12/14 If you are having trouble writing a lewd scene, try not jerking off for a few days. Really brings all the imagery right to the surface. Springs to mind completely unbidden if you wait long enough, actually. Nofap in general is tremendously helpful in my opinion, and not just for writing. You should give it a shot.

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This next section is more theoretical, and guesswork. Not all of this has been confirmed yet.

UPDATE 12/3/14 I briefly mentioned Barack Obama in a story. One guy freaked the fuck out, and said he reads these stories to forget about people like obama. Im beginning to think that any contact with the real world damages the story, at least to some people. This is probably why the high fantasy setting is so popular; there is nothing you can relate to.

UPDATE 12/27/14 Male perspective is critical. I tried writing another female perspective one and it just wasn't working. I got about 5 pages deep before I gave up on it. By all rights its a good story, very good even, but as I mentioned earlier this isnt so much about telling a story. The audience has to FEEL it. The entire monstergirl artform depends on vicarious experience in order to work. You have to be able to feel things through the main character. Otherwise its just another generic story as I outlined at the top. It also doesn't work even from the male perspective if there is too much plot going on. I am now strongly recommending that you avoid the female perspective entirely.

UPDATE 12/11/14 I realized that all the stories that have more than a thousand hits either:
1. Have been around since forever, like a year or more.
2. Have gotten updates.

Small, frequent updates appear to be the secret to lots and lots of hits. If you care about that sort of thing. I prefer to write it all in one go myself. Its not like im getting paid per view or anything.

Its come to my attention that the most memorable stories are almost entirely horrifying or sad. Bad end stories. Like where somebody dies or grieves for eternity or something. They had a post in a recent thread that asked what stories do you most remember, and the response was nothing but unhappy ending stories. I dunno, maybe if you want to get remembered you have to kill your characters.

UPDATE it has further dawned on me that everybody fucking LOVES my zombie story. It has no lewd at all, and was described as being "incredibly cute." It also had a very close brush with death, and massive tragedy and grieving as a result, only to veer away at the last second. I think I stumbled onto something powerful here.

My zombie story did a lot of things right. It had:

interesting setting with world exposition (undead army invading and how they changed things, his printing job, "punishment", the link, etc)
slightly edgy (rape as punishment, all women executed, constant eternal war, etc)
no contact with reality (high fantasy medieval age)
a cute waifu (adorable, loving, followed him around like a puppy, cool metamorphosis later)
lots of relationship building with waifu (folk dancing, camping trips, print sessions, how he shoved her in the closet, sex, etc)
drama (he thinks waifu is dead for a while)
self recursion (like where the story is itself in the story, his support group becoming his ball group, Esmeralda, his print job he uses to become his own publisher, etc)
happy ending (lots of money, live forever, wife who loves you)
male perspective (entire story is told through his eyes without exception)

I suspect a lot of people will bitch about the edginess being a core concept. Like "oooh its far to grimdark, those poor human girls, etc" Those guys actually do still like it. The edginess gives it some sour to counteract all the sweet waifu stuff. It makes it memorable. Even now people are still posting about that story, and a lot of it is because people focus in on different parts. Some focus on the negative, some on the positive. Its all about polarizing that sucker, getting it away from dull bland neutral. Its gotta have contrast.

Over time you naturally think of new things to add to a story. This probably happens throughout the day in the back of your mind. The longer you take to write a story, naturally the more thinking time it gets. This is why longer stories seem more clever than short stories. Its really hard to force this process, like you cant increase your output by thinking harder. So just take an appropriate amount of time to think things through.

Here is the new plan:

1. Introduce adorable waifu
2. Attach waifu to main character somehow
3. Put in a LOT of character and relationship development between them. This is to increase the strength of the coming loss.
4. Separate the waifu and MC somehow. Main character must think she is dead, or about to die, or that he will never see her again. Drama Drama Drama.
5. Main character cries bitch tears for at least 3 paragraphs.
6. Bring back the waifu somehow.
7. Tearful reunion between them. Everything is better now.
8. Wrap that shit up with the happiest ending possible. Deliriously happy, fame, fortune, children, whatever.
9. Post that shit on 4chan.

As long as all of this exists in an interesting, non-real (ie, fantasy) slightly edgy setting with a lot of self recursion told from a male perspective you are guaranteed a good story.

I realize that some of this guide is a bit controversial. You don’t have to use this guide if you don’t want to. This isn't the word of god or something, its just what has worked for me so far. You can consider this my current working theory on how best to write a story. I will probably update this as needed as I learn new things.