sr71plt
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You've read "most" of the material on Lit.?
You are showing by example in what you yourself post to Lit. in stories?
Dual Level Writing
- Thread starter Nathan_Brazil
- Start date
You've read "most" of the material on Lit.?
You are showing by example in what you yourself post to Lit. in stories?
SecondCircle
Sin Cara
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Deeper stories are fine. Stroker stories are fine. Any story is fine because there's probably gonna be an audience for it.
As far as strokers, some readers (and the writers that write the stories) just like a fun simple "I got a blowjob at work" story. Because it's hot. If that's all someone is looking for, that's fine.
As far as strokers, some readers (and the writers that write the stories) just like a fun simple "I got a blowjob at work" story. Because it's hot. If that's all someone is looking for, that's fine.
Gorza
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Definitely! It was electricblue66's Rope & Veil that showed me that erotica could make you think while turning you on at the same time. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to explore the intersection of disability and sexuality. It certainly encouraged me to think about how I could write more intentionally.
Bramblethorn
Sleep-deprived
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Often, yeah. Sometimes readers even notice it! But I try not to be too heavy-handed about it.
I have one story that involves a closeted woman falling in love with the daughter of her homophobic boss who migrated from Greece as a child. To fit in, he changed his name to conceal his Greek origins, so although he's an antagonist there's a parallel between them - "your enemy is driven by the same fears as you" sort of thing.
I had plans for a big moving scene where they're watching soccer together (in Australia seen very much as an "ethnic" sport in the years when he was growing up), and he talks about how he gave up soccer for Australian football and cricket to fit in, really draw out that parallel as part of the character growth where he comes to accept his daughter's girlfriend. I was working towards that for a long time. But when I finally got to that part it felt much too much, and I dropped that scene. There are still some clues in there but not spelled out.
My two Erotic Horror pieces each have a deliberate visual motif associated with the supernatural. One is based on RL research and reading (the colour yellow comes up repeatedly in connection with certain literary circles in the 1890s). The other was something that I'd had stuck in my head literally for decades; I included it partly as a useful device to recognise a creature that could change its appearance, I wasn't really sure what it signified, and then when I got to the resolution it turned out to be much more useful than I'd thought.
All that said: themes can be massively annoying if overdone (I remember one book where the author was so fond of bird images that we ended up mistaking actual birds for artistic metaphors) and they're not mandatory. Stroke isn't my cup of tea, but people have every right to like what they like, as authors and as readers.
SlightlyGone
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I don't know about specifically putting a theme in your writing, but I find stories open to individual interpretation with no right or wrong answer the most enjoyable.
I enjoy the show The Leftovers ... it's set in reality with amazing happenings ... sometimes you think something is real, sometimes it's contradictory and you wonder if a person truly is crazy ... but then you have a man come back from the dead, twice ... and all the time it never outright says, 'hey, this is what is happening' ... you're left to decide on your own.
Writing should be about (ha, I really shouldn't say it has to be one way) about thought expansion ... if someone makes me think, even if it's not about what they thought about, then they've done a job well done.
I enjoy the show The Leftovers ... it's set in reality with amazing happenings ... sometimes you think something is real, sometimes it's contradictory and you wonder if a person truly is crazy ... but then you have a man come back from the dead, twice ... and all the time it never outright says, 'hey, this is what is happening' ... you're left to decide on your own.
Writing should be about (ha, I really shouldn't say it has to be one way) about thought expansion ... if someone makes me think, even if it's not about what they thought about, then they've done a job well done.
JackLuis
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NB, a challenge, try writing "The Pizza Delivery Boy's Sausage" giving it a deeper meaning, one that uplifts the soul and makes manifest the joy of Italian spices.
Asking Lit authors to write hidden meanings is asking a lot of beginning Hacks, don't you think? If you can do it sometimes it works well, but other times it just sails over the readers heads.
Asking Lit authors to write hidden meanings is asking a lot of beginning Hacks, don't you think? If you can do it sometimes it works well, but other times it just sails over the readers heads.
NOIRTRASH
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Hemingway said a cigar is sometimes just a cigar.
That said, I devoutly believe most human social intercourse is scripted, and if youre not in the script you don't get to play. Scripts come out in the story.
Nathan_Brazil
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NB, a challenge, try writing "The Pizza Delivery Boy's Sausage" giving it a deeper meaning, one that uplifts the soul and makes manifest the joy of Italian spices.
Asking Lit authors to write hidden meanings is asking a lot of beginning Hacks, don't you think? If you can do it sometimes it works well, but other times it just sails over the readers heads.
Heh! Erotica and pizza save the world...somehow.
Asking? No, I don't think it is too much to ask. Now if I were to demand it...to swear there was only one right way, then it would be too much. As well as kind of rude.
I'm hoping that more authors will aim a little higher, but I would like a golden ticket too! So I'm really not expecting a whole lot I guess.
But that's why I've suggested dual level writing. If the piece is entertaining... Good. If its entertaining AND has other things to offer... Even better.
SlightlyGone
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Didn't Hemingway shoot himself in the head ... wasn't he also a liar? ... But that's what writers are, aren't they? Liars?
Writing is very solitary ... it's everything you aren't and want to be.
L
le_kitty
Guest
That is an interesting thought.
Nathan, I wonder if you realise how many writers you are potentially alienating by this 'challenge'. Lit is an amateur writing site, most writers are not here to attempt high brow stuff. Some stories on Lit require an open mind.
Aside from that, everyone has already said it.
Nathan_Brazil
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I know that it is certainty possible, though not my intent. I've said that I wouldn't expect much from a beginner, and ive also said that if a story was entertaining, that it was enough.
So... No insults intended or implied.
Just a challenge to take your creativity to the next level.
lovecraft68
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I've come to the conclusion, in real life long ago and it applies to here that the people who really push high brow and complicate things and discuss deeper meanings etc are masking their own insecurities. There are people here who are desperate for people to think they write more than smut or porn or anything else.
"Literary erotica" screams to me, "I really care what people think and don't want people to think I only write porn"
I don't give a rats ass if people here think my writing is hack shit or 'literary' it make me happy to write it and a lot of people seem to like it, what else does there need to be?
My idea of a challenge is x amount of words a day/week or x amount of e-books for a year, not "Look at me, I'm smarter than you"
NOIRTRASH
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I gotta newsflash for you, life aint a Rubix Cube. Its simple, really. Like Fritz Perls said, THERES ME AND THERES YOU AND THERES ALL THAT SHIT WE CALL IMAGINATION.
sr71plt
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More authors than what? Do you have a number in mind? Have you read everything and know the ratio of those who do against those who don't? Do you have any idea how muddy the ground is in your assertions of there not being "enough" authors doing that here already?
And again, are you leading by example? The two stories you have up are, well, you know . . .
sr71plt
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lovecraft68
Bad Doggie
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There's also talks cheap and I've found I am getting weary of people talking, talking talking and showing me shit.
Lead by example, show me your literary erotic masterpiece and 'teach me' otherwise, let people wallow in their cheap porn and enjoy themselves.
sr71plt
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I see red when someone complains about not seeing what they want on Literotica (especially "high-quality" work). This is a vast warehouse of everything and everything you want is there somewhere, in abundance. Just stop complaining and go look for it.
I remember a college creative writing class I took. We were required to turn in three packets over the semester of either one 10-page short story or ten poems each. The professor would then hand out anonymous copies to each of the other members of the class which we would critique and then come back together and discuss in open forum.
There was this one "story", and I use the term loosely, that was just awful. I mean, several of them needed some work. That was what we were there for, after all. To learn how to write. But, this one was terribad.
Now, I've always been more of a math/science guy myself and I had to work at grasping such subtle things as motif or onomatopoeia. Or anything else beyond the simple plot and character development and scenery. I could do it, but I had to really work at it.
As a result I had to make myself go over my classmates work a minimum of ten times. And I wasn't shy about marking the crap out of it with red pen. In this particular case, I had to force myself to read it at all.
I'm not too much of a grammar or spelling Nazi since I always figured that English "rules" were based on Latin anyway. And American English is not ashamed to beg, borrow, or outright steal from every other language it runs across. Languages that weren't based in Latin and so have no referent. So far as I was concerned, it was written symbols with the intent to get across a message.
This one didn't. I spent most of the first read through just trying to puzzle out what word they meant to go there.
I spent eight hours on that one ten page story looking for anything of merit at all. I had read War and Peace in a little over sixteen. (Granted, I skimmed the rolls of the dead.)
Finally, I went to class. And I felt bad because I had absolutely nothing good to say about this particular "work", if I may use that term, at all.
One of my classmates was.... well, let's see. He wore a black beret over hair that came down to his collar. And probably hadn't encountered shampoo in a couple of years. And he could always be counted on to start slinging around the Master and Doctorate level terms. I suspect that he was attempting to get into the graduate program, which our instructor was the head of.
At first, I was relieved. At least someone was going to say something good about it. But, the more I listened, the more my bullshit meter pegged. More and more, I flipped through the pages and glanced around at my other classmates.
Finally, he wound down. The professor had been watching me and called me out as soon as the pseudo-intellectual had shut the fuck up.
"Honestly, sir," I said. "I'm wondering if I got the same story. Because I didn't get any of that at all."
I then went on to knock down every compliment he had given by citing direct quotes from the work. Everything from characterization to scene structure to underlying motif to plot line went. When I wrapped it up, I said, "Frankly, I don't want to be mean but I think this is someone who is only taking this class for credit and realized they had forgotten to write anything and spent an hour before class slapping words on the page so they wouldn't get a zero."
Several of my other classmates were nodding. The professor called on the person that had written it.
He admitted that I was right and went further to lambast the suck up for everything he had said.
As luck would have it, the very next class we were supposed to dissect beret's stuff.
"Sterile" is, and was, the best I could come up with. It was almost as if he were trying to write the Great American Short Story by including everything every professor had ever pointed out in his literature classes encapsulated in ten pages. There was just one little problem. He forgot to put in the "give a shit".
The thing, I think, that most people tend to forget is that such as Shakespeare or Tolstoy or Chaucer wrote first and foremost to entertain. And to make money. They weren't necessarily TRYING to work in all of the high brow stuff we give them credit for. They were trying to write entertaining and well. All of that high falutin' stuff that gives pseudo-intellectuals hard-ons is, in a way, almost a secondary or tertiary condition to just plain telling a story well. If one does it right, it supports the story and is almost invisible until and unless one goes digging for it. If it's done wrong, it is obvious and detracts and distracts as the reader realizes that the writer was just stroking their pseudo-intellectual cock.
There was this one "story", and I use the term loosely, that was just awful. I mean, several of them needed some work. That was what we were there for, after all. To learn how to write. But, this one was terribad.
Now, I've always been more of a math/science guy myself and I had to work at grasping such subtle things as motif or onomatopoeia. Or anything else beyond the simple plot and character development and scenery. I could do it, but I had to really work at it.
As a result I had to make myself go over my classmates work a minimum of ten times. And I wasn't shy about marking the crap out of it with red pen. In this particular case, I had to force myself to read it at all.
I'm not too much of a grammar or spelling Nazi since I always figured that English "rules" were based on Latin anyway. And American English is not ashamed to beg, borrow, or outright steal from every other language it runs across. Languages that weren't based in Latin and so have no referent. So far as I was concerned, it was written symbols with the intent to get across a message.
This one didn't. I spent most of the first read through just trying to puzzle out what word they meant to go there.
I spent eight hours on that one ten page story looking for anything of merit at all. I had read War and Peace in a little over sixteen. (Granted, I skimmed the rolls of the dead.)
Finally, I went to class. And I felt bad because I had absolutely nothing good to say about this particular "work", if I may use that term, at all.
One of my classmates was.... well, let's see. He wore a black beret over hair that came down to his collar. And probably hadn't encountered shampoo in a couple of years. And he could always be counted on to start slinging around the Master and Doctorate level terms. I suspect that he was attempting to get into the graduate program, which our instructor was the head of.
At first, I was relieved. At least someone was going to say something good about it. But, the more I listened, the more my bullshit meter pegged. More and more, I flipped through the pages and glanced around at my other classmates.
Finally, he wound down. The professor had been watching me and called me out as soon as the pseudo-intellectual had shut the fuck up.
"Honestly, sir," I said. "I'm wondering if I got the same story. Because I didn't get any of that at all."
I then went on to knock down every compliment he had given by citing direct quotes from the work. Everything from characterization to scene structure to underlying motif to plot line went. When I wrapped it up, I said, "Frankly, I don't want to be mean but I think this is someone who is only taking this class for credit and realized they had forgotten to write anything and spent an hour before class slapping words on the page so they wouldn't get a zero."
Several of my other classmates were nodding. The professor called on the person that had written it.
He admitted that I was right and went further to lambast the suck up for everything he had said.
As luck would have it, the very next class we were supposed to dissect beret's stuff.
"Sterile" is, and was, the best I could come up with. It was almost as if he were trying to write the Great American Short Story by including everything every professor had ever pointed out in his literature classes encapsulated in ten pages. There was just one little problem. He forgot to put in the "give a shit".
The thing, I think, that most people tend to forget is that such as Shakespeare or Tolstoy or Chaucer wrote first and foremost to entertain. And to make money. They weren't necessarily TRYING to work in all of the high brow stuff we give them credit for. They were trying to write entertaining and well. All of that high falutin' stuff that gives pseudo-intellectuals hard-ons is, in a way, almost a secondary or tertiary condition to just plain telling a story well. If one does it right, it supports the story and is almost invisible until and unless one goes digging for it. If it's done wrong, it is obvious and detracts and distracts as the reader realizes that the writer was just stroking their pseudo-intellectual cock.
L
le_kitty
Guest
lol.
But yes, exactly! And it's the same for any other art form. Students can analyse and dissect work and marvel at how smart they were for bringing this idea back, and doing that there and this here. But the truth is they probably were not applying that framework at the time.
NotWise
Desert Rat
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Instructors can do the same. The first erotic story I ever wrote was something I didn't think of as erotic. I was trying to capture a prose-poem style that I heard in a public speaking class and I worked on it to the point of exhaustion. At that point it started flowing. I actually didn't have a topic, I was just too tired to block shit. It was a one draft and done sort of thing.
The instructor asked me if she could read it to the class and I agreed. I was getting some pretty significant looks from girls in the class while she read it. After she was done she opened discussion with a starter something like "It's okay to advocate anonymous sex. What do you think?"
Anonymous sex had actually not crossed my mind when I wrote it.
Student reviews can be tough. In another class we went through a similar anonymous authorship thing. One of the rather epic poems we had to review was a "butterflies and kittens" poem. I thought I recognized the voice in the poem but wasn't sure. Despite that, I gave it a scathing review that broke one of the other students down to tears -- making it pretty plain who wrote it.
The woman who wrote it was sweet and kind and didn't deserve the treatment she got from me. Reviewing is really an art as much as the original writing, and I had (still have) a long way to go.
H
HandsInTheDark
Guest
All my stories are either social commentary or character evolution. I just happen to like a lot of sex scenes along the way. Even _Toymaker_, hands down the most brutally evil thing I ever wrote, was basically a Don Juan story, complete with morality tale ending.
Dunno if I could write a straight stoiker or fetish story. If my characters aren't saying interesting things between the sex scenes, I get bored with them. If all you want is mindless moaning from characters, find a porn video.
My audience, not surprisingly, is small, mostly female, and rates me high because they can't get their fix for plot, setting and character devel from all that many authors here.
L
le_kitty
Guest
Yep. Regarding reviews and hidden themes, this video comes to mind:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...perts-value-saying-worth-nearly-2million.html
It was utterly brilliant.
SamScribble
Yeah, still just a guru
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Having thought about it a bit more, it seems to me that the reason some of the stories here (I have no idea if some equates to most; I have read only a small selection) are lousy is because many of them are 'poorly written'. Or else they are enthusiastically written but poorly edited, perhaps not edited at all. With such an 'open' site, I think this may be inevitable. Enjoy the stories that you like; ignore the stories that you don't. (And don't mess with Mr In-between. )
)Nathan_Brazil
Literotica Guru
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Having thought about it a bit more, it seems to me that the reason some of the stories here (I have no idea if some equates to most; I have read only a small selection) are lousy is because many of them are 'poorly written'. Or else they are enthusiastically written but poorly edited, perhaps not edited at all. With such an 'open' site, I think this may be inevitable. Enjoy the stories that you like; ignore the stories that you don't. (And don't mess with Mr In-between.
I don't really expect any less. Most of us here are rank amateurs, just trying to have some fun.
But it doesn't mean that we shouldn't dream large dreams. I hate to see folks settle.
JKendallDane
Plot Bunny Herder
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NB, a challenge, try writing "The Pizza Delivery Boy's Sausage" giving it a deeper meaning, one that uplifts the soul and makes manifest the joy of Italian spices.
Um...would 175,000+ words spread over 22 chapters (and still more to come) using that very plot theme be a sufficient answer to the challenge?
My Pizza Boy at the Door and Pizza Boy Back at the Door gay male series not only takes in almost every trope, cliche, and one-liner ever uttered about pizza boys; but also delves much deeper into loss of virginity and coming out issues, the excitement and angst of college life, discovering romance and true love, coping with death, examining personal morals, the politics and recent history of the gay rights movement, and daring to mix erotica with religion and spirituality. Giant Winnie the Pooh and Tigger stuffed animals are even used as supporting characters that help drag the readers deeper into the secondary messages and think beyond just the story. As one fan commented, "I'll never be able to read Winnie the Pooh the same way now."
What began as a simple collection of one-off pizza boy stroker stories managed to morph into what will eventually be a trilogy covering just about everything possible involved in a long-term relationship and marriage and the interactions with all the people around the two protagonists.
Stretching yourself to come up with something familiar yet completely different and have it be well-received is an incomparable high. Dual level writing gives you that opportunity.
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