When I started to write erotic muscle fiction I thought about the story elements in other writers’ work that excited me and why. Not too surprisingly, as I parsed the stories I enjoyed the most, I discovered some common ingredients  This piece calls them out and attempts to explain what I find most exciting about them. Of course you may not find them exciting at all, or you might respond to some them for other reasons, but I would be interested to hear either affirmations or other opinions.

Muscle Growth
If you are reading this, you already think muscle growth fiction is hot, but did you ever wonder why you find it hot? I think there are several reasons:

• Muscle is a secondary male sexual characteristic. So is body hair, which is why the growth of body hair is part of so many of our stories.
• Muscle size means strength, strength means power, and most men get off on power. It’s why we love sports cars, and military weapons.
• Muscle growth is a metaphor for getting an erection. Just think, what swells up and gets hard when we are excited? And when it’s big and hard, think how manly and strong you feel, just like you feel when you’re pumped from the gym or you’ve outgrown a couple shirt sizes.

Unending Variety of Transformation
A few years ago on the Yahoo Muscle Growth forum I asked the question, “Is our muscle growth fiction too chemically dependent?” The reason I asked is that a huge percentage of the fiction in the genre depends on some sort of drug as the change agent to make guys big. I suppose it’s obvious why so many writers take that approach. We all know that steroids are a quicker way to put on muscle than pumping iron alone. But it bothered me that so many stories rely on this obvious contrivance, for two reasons.

The first reason is that I think it encourages the men who read the stories to think that steroids are magic pills that will fulfill their fantasies without negative consequences, because let’s face it; our stories have just about zero negative consequences. They are fantasies.

But the second and most important reason it bothers me is that I find it less erotic. To me the power of these muscle growth fantasies is infinite variety of ways we imagine men can put on size. The infinite variety of change agents in itself is hot because, if it can happen so many ways, it seems likelier to happen. And if it seems likelier to happen, maybe it could happen to me! This is why the germ of every story I have ever written in this genre begins with either an idea for a new change agent or at least a new situation in which the change occurs.

Viral growth
The change agent is either literally or figuratively like a virus, rampaging through the bodies of every man in sight, turning every one of them into huge muscle studs. I think I like this one for the same reason I’m turned on by the previous story element. Something that spreads like this only makes it seem more likely it will eventually reach me. And the other reason I like it is that it relates to the next story element I plan to discuss…

Loss of Control
Stories with this element create a feeling of lust so intense within one or more of the characters that they are completely unable to restrain themselves sexually. Maybe it’s a straight guy who is so overcome with lust for muscle that he can’t resist fucking with guys, no matter what his former inclinations were. Or maybe it’s a gay man in a committed relationship that really shouldn’t be fucking around, but something has made him so horny he’s lost the ability to reason. Or maybe whatever has made him big beyond belief has literally destroyed his ability to reason, making him completely instinctive. I’m getting stiff just thinking about these scenarios. What about them is so erotic? I think they play to our lingering sense of guilt about sex, at least in certain situations, by absolving us of responsibility for our actions. If we literally can’t control ourselves, we can’t feel guilty about what we do.

Unstoppable Growth
A guy wants to be big, but his fantasy is limited. He only wants to be so big, but no bigger. Unfortunately his mentor or the change agent itself has other plans. One of them takes him far beyond what he had in mind, making him bigger than anyone has ever dreamed of being, so ludicrously large that if the sight of him wasn’t so hot, or so frightening, he’d be the object of derision. I think this story element is related to the Loss of Control. It frees us to imagine something we might not feel comfortable imagining, an over abundance of riches that might even make us feel guilty.

The Mentor and the Ingénue
This theme is so common to muscle fiction that it’s almost a constant in every story. An enormous muscle hunk gives a smaller guy the secret of getting bigger. Sometimes stories will turn this into an almost endless loop. The small guy gets big and then he finds a smaller guy to mentor. Both viewpoints to the story are hot. The big guy revels in the exercise of power over the smaller less experienced one. The smaller guy feels enveloped in and protected by the bigger guy’s strength.