Violence in our stories

'Kay, so I've just had a story sent back to me from the Pending line because it was violent. 'Course it was, I'm not going to deny it. But it wasn't about anything glorifying violence - the characters didn't feel good committing it, and none of it was sexual in nature. But people did die in the story in non-Disney ways - mostly by being stabbed or shot.

My story was about pirates, curses, other fantasy elements, etc. In short, a genre in which violence is normal. I put it in the Fantasy/Sci-Fi genre, because it wasn't a horror piece. I wasn't going to scare anybody with it.

So, with that in mind and as context, what are your thoughts on varying levels of violence in our stories? I don't want to complain about my rejection (it's actually pretty reasonable), and I'll probably resubmit the story under the Horror genre (they suggested it but I still feel that my story isn't horror). I just wanted thoughts on violence in long-form stories with decidedly erotic bents, or at least a lot of sex in them.

I think violence is like hot peppers. Overdone, it's not pleasant. In small doses however, it can be tasty.

I entered a story (https://www.literotica.com/s/aprils-fool-4) for the April Fool's contest earlier this year. It involved forcible confinement, torture and rape, with a twist at the end in which the bad guy has his world fall in on him.

I thought long and hard about it, trying to find a judicious balance between blandness and gratuitous violence and eventually submitted it under Erotic Horror. It was accepted, the story worked and actually did pretty well. So, I guess, violence has its place, but I don't use much of it.

It's hard to comment on your story without reading it.

My stories have involved some violence. "A Valentine's Day Mess" alone includes attempted murder and rape, death by animal attack, genocide, kidnapping, marital rape, implications of torture and murder, actual murder, and three life-or-death fights. There's more to come and I have no reason to think the site would object.

If your story was rejected for "violence" then you did something really, really wrong. The way you chose to describe things could be a problem.

PS: And 'A Valentine's Day Mess' is a romantic story.

@NotWise:.....How the bloody hell did I get rejected, then? I've got no animal attacks, no genocides, no rapes, though attempted rape happens and it's reverse-rape (woman-on-man), and no life-or-death fights for the main characters. What genres are you working in?

There is a major fight scene roughly in the middle of the story. However, nobody gets disemboweled or anything. The closest it comes is the main character has a dagger that steals the souls of whomever it stabs, with lethal effects and the body turning into an instant mummy. The main character also has regeneration powers; while she ends up with an ax in her head, she has no idea it's there until she removes it, and I don't even reveal that there's an ax in her head until she removes it. She's also got pink blood (she's not human). There's a few whippings, but I figured that whippings are actually pretty boring, so they're mostly glossed over.

Honestly sounds like a knee-jerk reaction from skimming too quickly. What you're describing sounds like your everyday Sci-Fi & Fantasy violence to me.

If it were me, I'd try resubmitting as is, with a note in the moderator section saying you don't believe the amount of violence is excessive or unusual for the category, and is non-sexual in nature.

Granted, it's been a while ago, but I described — in grisly detail — someone being slowly crushed alive by magic. The sounds of ever larger bones snapping and the like.

ReGats said:

@NotWise:.....How the bloody hell did I get rejected, then? I've got no animal attacks, no genocides, no rapes, though attempted rape happens and it's reverse-rape (woman-on-man), and no life-or-death fights for the main characters. What genres are you working in?

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"A Valentine's Day Mess" is in I/T.

Like I said, it's really hard to comment on your story without reading it.

In my stories, violence is never what the story is about. It's what happens on the way. So, when Maria watches her husband bent to his knees and executed just because he's Pipil, his execution is in simple narrative, not in detail, and it isn't what the story is about. The story is about what she did after that.

NotWise said:

...his execution is in simple narrative, not in detail, and it isn't what the story is about. The story is about what she did after that.

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Now that's a very good way to look at it!

As NotWise said, we can't offer much substantive advice, having not read the particular story. But as to the general topic, it's my basic understanding that, again, as NotWise noted, the key is whether the story is about the violence itself or the causes and/or reaction to it.

I have published a story that contains a graphic description of a violent murder. It is the climactic event in a thirteen chapter series, the event itself takes up 5 or 6 paragraphs. It was accepted without comment and I've received no negative feedback about the violence.

If you submit the story under “non human” or “non erotic” most of the “violence stuff” passes into getting posted. Now, if you try to put tags on it such as: violence, rape, etc., it will get shot down as well. Kant

Kantarii said:

Now, if you try to put tags on it such as: violence, rape, etc., it will get shot down as well.

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I hadn't thought of the tag connection. Putting in a tag of, oh, rape (as opposed to a trigger warning for it) might suggest that you've written the story to celebrate that, or something.

I've not put in any tags for violence. We're not here for that, it's just part of the story. But I'm not inclined to put it into Non-human simply because the sex doesn't involve any non-human traits. There's no tentacle nookie, interestingly-shaped penises, impossible positions, or even underwater sex.

The violence limits for Non Human and Sci-Fi & Fantasy are virtually interchangeable, so there's no need to switch it.

Again, I'd just resubmit with a moderator note. Seems like a case of Laurel skimming a little too fast and thinking she saw something that wasn't there.

Worst that can happen is it gets rejected again, and you need to pass it to someone familiar with the category who can read it and find whatever is triggering Laurel.

If you want me to give it a read for potential triggers before resubmitting, drop me a PM. I don't have time for an in-depth analysis of anything long, but I can certainly read the fight scenes and such to see if anything is over the top.

ReGats said:

I've not put in any tags for violence. We're not here for that, it's just part of the story. But I'm not inclined to put it into Non-human simply because the sex doesn't involve any non-human traits. There's no tentacle nookie, interestingly-shaped penises, impossible positions, or even underwater sex.

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I bought a porn tale that's violent from start to finish. Its rough stuff. The mob is killing problem hookers. And the girls have a white knight who kiils the thugs.

LIT languishes 50 years behind. If you write about Punic Wars OGG rejects it as Pubic Whores.

I got a second place win in the All Fools Day contest a couple of years ago with a GM murder mystery. Bodies left and right, including a Supreme Court justice.

OP... I found with my story containing violence in the lesbian category that opening with a note to readers that the story contains violence and might not be to everyone's taste seemed to be enough to keep Laurel happy.

Maybe that's all it needs?

She's pretty good about answering PMs about that type of thing too, though it sometimes takes her a day or so to reply.

Uggg

It's screwy to me that it got rejected

My historical fiction story 'The Great Khan' is in Novels/Novellas and it's incredibly violent- battles, blood, gore, the works. I have peoplee getting murdered, women getting raped, but I guess since it's all seen through a grim lens or historical context filter, it's allowable.

A pirate story doesn't strike me as a problem, especially if it has a High Seas/Swashbuckling feel to it. Fantasy strikes me as a perfect category for what you wrote.

Maybe you just triggered an individual proofreader. Try tweaking a word out two, resubmit, and hopefully it'll go through.

At least, I think that's how it works. Sorry if I'm wrong.

Please resubmit. I wanna see it go up.

BiscuitHammer said:

Maybe you just triggered an individual proofreader.

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There is only one submissions editor here--Laurel. Selection is subjective and on a sliding scale. When writing on the edge, yes it depends on the day and how her day is going. That's pretty much what you'd get when submitting to a publishing house, as well. My last story with a murder was rejected (for the first time. Similar stories in the past were accepted). The murder was part of the hook of the story, so I just posted it to other Web sites and moved on.

I confess to being thoroughly baffled by the submission rules for stories with violence. I can't figure out what's allowed and what's not.

There are published stories on this site -- I've read them -- that are pretty close to snuff material. They include killing that serves the killer's erotic needs. Some of them are pretty grim.

This hasn't been an issue for me now, but I'm working on an erotic horror story I want to publish and enter in the Halloween contest. It includes ritual killing in an eroticized setting. I don't think, from what I've read, that it runs afoul of the rules, but I really don't know, and it's hard to tell from the skimpiness of the guidelines on the subject.

With the help of a dart board? Or a pair of dice?

KeithD said:

With the help of a dart board? Or a pair of dice?

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Good one and possibly true. I don't think there is any way to know in advance. I have a story up with murder and revenge killings and another that includes a human sacrifice of a child so plenty of violent material makes it through. No rhyme or reason at times it appears to us on the other side of the curtain.

It could also just be how you describe it; my lesbian western The Brave involves people getting their faces blown off, their windpipes shredded from within, being blown into pieces, lynched & disemboweled, and of course scalped. Went through without a hitch, and it's currently my second-highest rated submission. But the only thing I really described in detail is the scalping—and that was to a clear villain.

I think the golden rule here is "imply violence, but don't luxuriate in it more than necessary." Even if it's violence done to villains by heroes and textually it's not something they feel good about, after a certain point, the suffering you're putting these characters through tends to be for its own sake—masturbatory, if you will.

Laurel allows no killing of gays. She rejected a tale I submitted in which a monster killed the lesbian judge who cut him loose from prison. No violence was depicted. Laurel called it SNUFF. I didn't argue. Gays are her heroes.

That's a crock of crap, James. But I know that you think your experience is the universal truth on every topic. I'm sure she rejected your story because your personal prejudices screamed through.

Put it in the box?

The first story that I wrot was rejected for two reasons. The first was that the punctuation etc was crap, although I’ve read published stories as bad or worse. The second reason was rape (it won’t accept rape as a tag). I cotreected the punchewation etc and resubmitted. 1 also changed the story to give the victim (him) sexual satisfaction and still keep the psychotic nature of the protagonist. It was accepted. That one wasn’t a big deal and it was only about 3000 words.

My fifth story (I’ve only got five so far) contained two murders. The first was the murder of a hooker so she couldn’t identify the protagonist. I changed it to her being chloroformed because it wasn’t important to the story. The second murder was of the despicable and murderous man who happened to be the father she had never met who had abused his wife to the extent that she ran away with her unborn child because she was afraid he would kill her. He deserved to die and his daughter received no sexual satisfaction from the act just the satisfaction of avenging her dead mother. I changed the ending so he didn’t die although, in my opinion, it ruined the story.

However, I’ve been thinking recently that perhaps it was just the murder of the hooker that got it refused because Laurel thought it was pointless. So I’m going to reinstate the original ending and submit as an edit. But this time I’ll put a detailed explanation in the box of why I wrote the ending as I did.

I think if, in the future, there’s anything debatable I’ll write an explanation in the box when I submit. I think it’s quite likely that Laurel will read the box even if she skims the story.

https://www.literotica.com/s/cherry-20

https://www.literotica.com/s/hela-ch-1-retribution

So, as I say, try writing an explanation when you first submit or write one if it’s rejected and you decide to resubmit.

x

I had worse approved

I had a story where the husband beat his wife three separate times, and each time she shot him, culminating in the line "Emptied the clip of a .45 automatic through the center of his chest."
Perhaps because I didn't provide details of the beatings and the shooting was justified, it got by.

This story was based on a woman I knew who did that exact thing, and was fairly important to the story, but not truly essential.