Why Write?

I'm not impressed with your methodology.

If you want honest answers to a survey, you should ask unbiased questions with no prejudical weighting. The final sentence of #1 is offensive. Non Consent can border on rape but it is fiction. We have discussed how far Non Consent can go without being rape. Some stories in that category aren't really Non Consent but role play. Incest is a very popular category on Literotica but as a fictional fantasy.

The reality of rape and incest is very unpleasant indeed, but in fiction anything goes - if the story works for the reader.

What you should be asking is for information without preconditions. There are many books and online resources giving instruction on the right way to conduct a survey, and you haven't used them.

You should remember that what is written and posted here is Fiction. My own object is to entertain. If some of my writing offends, then look away, choose another. What might be criminal in real life, impossible or just unpalatable, can be entertaining e.g. the whole genre of detective fiction which includes everything from the aesthetic murder in a small group such as Agatha Christie, to mass murder and mayhem. Everything is done in jest, no offence intended.

You have asked your questions on Literotica. By definition, we write erotica. Some of that can offend. No one expects every story to appeal to everyone.

50 Shades? Most of us have been writing long before those were published, so were not influenced by them. My view? Boring, badly written rubbish that has been overhyped. Edited to add: That doesn't mean that I think my writing is any better. That is my opinion as a dissatisfied reader.
 
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Hello all,

I am a graduate student and I have some general questions about being an author for those who do not mind answering. A team of researchers and myself at a small southeastern university conducted a content analysis of erotic literature for rape myths in nonconsensual sex stories in particular, and I would like to get your voice out as the authors and the audience during our symposium next week. During my part, I will be detailing the history of online erotica, the popularity of it, and I would like to mention some comments about authorship. Please keep things general for the sake of protecting your own privacy. I really appreciate your time and responses!


1) What is the motivation for your writing/reading? It is just the genre you prefer? Practice? Well you can practice without writing about incest or rape right?

2) What types of career/education/family life do you have? Many individuals probably have very stereotypical ideas about the individuals that write about particular themes.

3) How much do you value your anonymity and what do you think might be the consequences if it were broken?

4) How many stories have you written personally? How many in personal archive?

5) What did you think about 50 Shades of Grey and its influence on the erotica literature genre?

How are you going to present your findings? Anecdotally? Something like "So and so from a well-known online erotic literature site says this..."

If so, how will that move your presentation forward any more than the countless sources you can Google right now (both dubious and otherwise?).

If I were in your shoes because 'next week' isn't really a decent amount of time to put this together - I'd try googling something like "erotic literature, motivation for writing" and see what pops up.

I doubt you'll get much of a response here especially the way you;ve worded some of your questions.
 
My guess is that it's just an alt who hasn't had his opportunity to rant about "Shades of Grey" yet this week. :D
 
You are not the first researcher to pass through here by a long shot but from your questions, you are by far the worse one.

Like Ogg said, your questions are weighted for the answer you want and not the real answers. Come back when you learn a little more about surveys and how to ask questions in general.

I'll give you a little hint about NC. Research the threads started right here in the AH on the subject. Then you might get a better understanding of the subject. The search function works pretty good but not great.

Why do I write? To get the stories out of my head and it's is fun and entertaining.

What types of career/education/family life do you have? I work in the oil fields of Texas. I have three equivalence degrees. One in Electrical Engineering, one in Petroleum Geology, and one in Computer science. I'm happily single with 3 grown kids.

How much do you value your anonymity? At my age, I don't care who knows I write erotica.

How many stories have you written personally? How many in personal archive? I have about 150+ stories posted here and another 250 either started or finished on my hard drive. I have six mainstream novels out and two more coming out this year, if all goes well.

As for 50 Shades, search the AH and you will find more than enough threads to give you a complete overview of what people here think. Most think it is badly/poorly written and over hyped and that it is a ripoff of another set of books. The supposed BDSM in the story is badly written by someone who has no idea what BDSM even is.

Have fun because we surely will.
 
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Hello all,

I am a graduate student and I have some general questions about being an author for those who do not mind answering. A team of researchers and myself at a small southeastern university conducted a content analysis of erotic literature for rape myths in nonconsensual sex stories in particular, and I would like to get your voice out as the authors and the audience during our symposium next week. During my part, I will be detailing the history of online erotica, the popularity of it, and I would like to mention some comments about authorship. Please keep things general for the sake of protecting your own privacy. I really appreciate your time and responses!


1) What is the motivation for your writing/reading? It is just the genre you prefer? Practice? Well you can practice without writing about incest or rape right?

2) What types of career/education/family life do you have? Many individuals probably have very stereotypical ideas about the individuals that write about particular themes.

3) How much do you value your anonymity and what do you think might be the consequences if it were broken?

4) How many stories have you written personally? How many in personal archive?

5) What did you think about 50 Shades of Grey and its influence on the erotica literature genre?

And your committee approved these questions?

Sorry. Having completed my own thesis a few years ago, I'm also with Ogg. You know what you're looking for and the first question is biased.

If you come back with balanced questions, I'll consider answering them.
 
I apologize for offending you. My intention was to offer some criticisms I might be questioned about - sort of playing the devil's advocate - however i edited that out and missed a line. Again, the idea was to get a richer understanding of your pov as an author that chose this particular genre. I've read my share of our sample of 800 stories from 4 of the top visited website and believe me, I do not take offense to the minds of others. Hence my choosing psychology as a major.

To address the 1st and 2nd replies. I'm not entirely fond of qualitative methods as well, but if you are familiar with sociological methodology, the interview is a critical - especially when responses can be themed across responses to a particular question. This information is purely information to engage our audience with discussion. And to lobby for you all as writers. If you want more info about our actual study which followed a scientific approach to content analysis, I'd be glad to offer more information later. I have googled "why write erotic literature" and my question is who's opinion is that really? I'm posting in this particular forum since this is where I'd most likely find an author. Savvy-vous?

To the 3rd replier. I have not had a chance to read 50 Shades of Grey. I am too busy with reading neuroscience and cognition books. I am just interested in you all's opinions as authors in the same genre. Given the somewhat taboo outlook erotica had preceding its popularity en masse, I figured you might have some interesting views. Have you been getting more traffic to your stories? Or noticed a great deal of new authors/stories being posted or posting? You all are the experts. Let me in!

Again, I understand that this is not "scientific" or "experimental" methodology. However, providing converging sources of evidence is good methodology and what I am after. Again, I would rather say "an author from this forum with 30K posts and 1000 original stories write stories because....," rather than "Freud says that authors of erotic literature are fulfilling their repressed childhood urges". I hope you all understand the purpose of my inquiry and I apologize for the editing mistake.

First of all, you couldn't offend this group with anything short of a baseball bat and a set of Mickey Mouse ears. Kinky maybe but not offensive. If you want offensive, go check out the general board. Now there are are people who need some help in the head. :D

You'll also find that most of the writers that hang out here in the AH are pretty sharp cookies and understand people and motivation pretty well.

My question to you is why NC and Incest? There are nearly two dozen categories on Lit, why those two? And as a point of information, a lot of a stories are written and then the category is decided by a weighted system where certain categories trump others. So categories are not predetermined from scratch.

I have a couple of NC stories out and a few Incest stories. Both categories are not really to my taste but sometimes you have to stretch your wings, as the saying goes. Anyway, the readers liked the stories so I wrote a few more.

Check the story lists of authors who post here. A few post in certain categories and other post in a lot of them. Some even post in all of them if they are in the Survivor Contest.

And if you really want to meet the nuttiest readers on Lit. check out the Loving Wives category. That place could be a thesis or two all by itself.
 
OK! the first question was MEANT TO BE BIASED!

Then, as Ogg noted, you aren't really a scientific researcher. You're more like a partisan political pollster.

I'd still maybe respond to the questions, but I don't really write erotica as a cover to be writing rape.
 
I don't write rape or incest. Never did. Well, maybe a little... but I never swallowed ;)



Fifty Shades is really interesting. it's pretty much the first widely known porn novel that women picked up on their own and read in the public eye. I watch a lot of men be baffled by its popularity-- the writing stinks, the sex scenes kinda do too, the relationship is not so much BDSM as mutual abuse-- but those same people don't speak up about the shitty porn movies that make so much money. Everyone knows they're shitty.

Women maybe don't have much vocabulary to speak about desire. A lot of women said "It's such a good book!" Which of course, it wasn't. But for them, it was hot. They don't always know how to separate "Got me off" from "shitty writing."

This Halloween, I saw a lot of men being "fifty Shades Of Grey" by which they meant stapling paint chips onto a sweatshirt. I was like, Really? That's the way you reference your girlfriend's sexual desires? That explains a lot right there.
 
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1. I became a big fan of erotic stories maybe around 10 years ago. I had a few ideas of my own which I thought would make for great stories, so I gave it a shot. It's a great feeling knowing that people enjoy reading my stories the same way that I enjoyed reading other people's stories. Plus it's fun and it keeps my mind sharp.

Plus erotic stories can push sexual buttons and create/satisfy sexual fantasies in a way that visual porn can't.

2. Law student.

3. I don't want anyone to know, ever. It's not like I would get in trouble or anything. This is just something that's for fun that a lot of people enjoy reading.

4. I have 34 posted on here, and I'm working on several more.

5. Never read it, and I don't think it has any influence on the erotica genre. But I read a while back that a publisher was re-releasing Anne Rice's old erotic stories based on the new popularity of Shades. So I guess it makes erotic more mainstream if nothing else.
 
Researcher,

Can you tell us more about you and your study? Just out of curiousity...
 
I'm sorry, but I don't see these questions as being relevant for any kind of a psychological thesis. Even with the first question edited, and especially considering you admitted to bias, I think I have to agree this sounds a lot more like partisan political polling than academic research.
 
Although it's fine to respond to the questions from general erotica writing (and might be what makes the thread worthwhile), note that the claimed study is on a specific type of erotica story, not erotica in general: "rape myths in nonconsensual sex stories in particular."
 
Researcher,

Can you tell us more about you and your study? Just out of curiosity...

I agree.

To what end is your "research" ?;
to give real hard info into something academic, or
to give you a source of amusement, or
to give you some information so "you can be the envy of your friends".


I write because:-
it is not easy to do it well (and I'd like to learn),
and
because it is fun.

Your questions sounded too biassed. To my mind, Rape is a matter for shrinks and the legal system, and 50 shades is not a book I have read.
 
Although it's fine to respond to the questions from general erotica writing (and might be what makes the thread worthwhile), note that the claimed study is on a specific type of erotica story, not erotica in general: "rape myths in nonconsensual sex stories in particular."

That's a good point. I noticed that the OP edited the original post and saw the "rape myths in nonconsensual sex stories." Since I write EC, E/V and Romance, I won't be participating in the survey.
 
You all are the experts. Let me in!

Do you have cookies? And what's the password?

I'll answer the original question as posted. If I thought I was going to be offended by anything online I wouldn't turn the computer on.

My motivation for writing is two fold.A desire to get the many things that gather in the dark places in my head out and shake the dust off them. Its almost a kind of therapy, you should be able to understand that. I also hope that maybe at some point and time someone will read something of mine and gain the love of reading that I did so many years ago.

Why this genre? Look at TV, magazines, movies,any source of commercial advertisement. Sex sells. For now I'm writing for free. For practice as you said. I do hope that when my skills as a writer begin to improve a bit I can maybe sells a few stories.

Why incest or NC? I don't just write in those but...this site goes world wide as far a readers is concerned. The most popular category is incest, the most controversial is non con. The things that the human society most don't like to talk about when sex is mentioned. That should tell us a lot about the human race if we weren't as a society afraid to look.

Your second question? I'm you normal everyday type of person. You wouldn't give me a second look if i passed you on the street. Just your average joe blow heading off to work. I'm married for a decade plus. I dropped out of school to support my family when times got tough. Shrug.

Question three...I tell people all the time what I do. I love the reactions I get.

Question four. Well I have about thirty five short stories here on site, another twenty half finished on my hard drive, a dozen more sitting in notebooks at the idea stage more than anything and I have a eight hundred page fantasy novel typed out that needs a rewrite. Jumping up and screaming at the back of my brain is about four hundred more that wake me in the middle of the night going "WRITE ME!"

50 Shades of Gray? I have never read it so I can not give it a clean review. What influence does it have on me? Absolutely none. I hope it may help to take erotica to a more main stream acceptance but I will still write even if it doesn't.

Hope that helps you in some way.
M.S.Tarot
 
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I still don't like your methodology but here are my answers.

1) What is the motivation for your writing/reading?

I write because I have to. I have hundreds of stories in my head. Only by writing them can I get one or two to go away. Once I have published here I can forget it.

2) What types of career/education/family life do you have? Many individuals probably have very stereotypical ideas about the individuals that write about particular themes.

Career? Civil Servant/IT Manager/Personnel Manager for 1,000/Senior Manager in a Technology Industry/Retired/New career in local government as Business Analyst/Retired again/Secondhand Bookdealer running own business and retired finally to become a local community activist.

Education? Schools in three countries. Post graduate qualifications in Geography, Management and IT.

Family life? Married for 40 years with children and grandchildren.

3) How much do you value your anonymity and what do you think might be the consequences if it were broken?

No big deal now as I have been retired so long. It might impact on my community activities but perhaps not. A local City Councillor was outed as a student porn star - to help finance his studies 20 years earlier. When he stood for re-election after the 'scandal' he had a larger majority.

4) How many stories have you written personally? How many in personal archive?

Over 200 posted here as oggbashan and jeanne_d_artois. Several hundred works-in-progress on my hard drive and backed up.

5) What did you think about 50 Shades of Grey and its influence on the erotica literature genre?

See answer in post #2. Its influence? Possibly making erotica more acceptable to mainstream readers.
 
You have stated that rape and nonconsent is your main study interest. How are you going to extract that from the responses you are given here?

Again, this has no grounding as a scientific study. Just so folks realize that when/as they decide to carrying on a "why I write erotica" discussion. The OP's study doesn't have the methodology built into the questionnaire to do what he's asking (and don't be surprised if he eventually gets around to the real reason he posted the questions).
 
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