How long between sex scenes before your story drifts out of the erotic lit category?

rjordan said:

... I have no objection to graphic sex scenes either. If they advance the story, I read them. If they don't I skip them. My only point was that a majority of LW stories have gratuitous sex scenes that have nothing whatever to do with the story.

Click to expand...

This is the crux of the issue. It's all about context.

Even badly written sex can become enjoyable if well-placed within a wider story. On the other hand, beautifully described love making can become monotonous if it appears to the reader to be purposeless.

Like for most questions it depends on the person answering it. All some readers want is the sex scene(s) and they'll skip or skim the setup/rest of story. Certainly there are those who have no problem with a very high ratio of non sex to sex if the story interests them or is building toward a climax they can get into. And there's nothing wrong with a story that has no sex and Lit does have a non erotic category but I also find it strange for writers to come to an erotic story site and act surprised that most readers want/expect a story to have high erotic/sex content. Write what you want but I assume there are plenty of places to publish non erotic stories.

Various approaches I see:

* Plan a story with whatever sex seems appropriate.
* Write a lot of sex and flimsily wrap a story around it.
* Set your characters loose, let them tell the fucking tale.

Or challenge yourself. Write hot-sex stories of 50 or 75 or 100 words and bundle them, Ogg-style, to meet LIT's 750-word minimum. See how much fornication you can squeeze in.