Centering women in erotica and subjectivity (Pink Orchid adjacent topic)

[yowser]

In the entirety of my two Ranger Ramona stories (Hopefully a third coming this year), I never described Ramona's appearance. In the first paragraph, I wrote, "Most little girls grew up dreaming about wearing their wedding gowns. All she had ever wanted was to one day don the gray and green uniform of a Maine Forest Ranger."

Everything the reader needs to know about her is in those two sentences. The 100k words that follow are all extrapolations from them. To be a ranger, she needs to be physically fit, that is a given, but beyond that, what she looks like is irrelevant.

I think this is a fabulous example of two things:

Not the quantity of the detail, but the distinctiveness. That wish for the ranger uniform illuminates, reveals, outlines a character's motivation and desires. The description contains a whole world. And enchants the reader - tell me more about this person, what she will do, how it will all go.

An outstanding beginning, the enchanter's spell....

 

[MelissaBaby]

I really enjoyed the story. There was a lot of truthiness to it that came through.

It's the kind of story I'd like to be able to write for myself.

Thank you very much.

I think the important thing, for your stories to have that "truthiness", is to strictly maintain the integrity of the characters. Once they have been well established, they need to remain consistent. That doesn't mean they can't change, but that when they do, the change is natural, organic, motivated. People will accept the wildest plot shifts, but they won't tolerate inconsistent behavior from the characters.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I think this is a fabulous example of two things:

Not the quantity of the detail, but the distinctiveness. That wish for the ranger uniform illuminates, reveals, outlines a character's motivation and desires. The description contains a whole world. And enchants the reader - tell me more about this person, what she will do, how it will all go.

An outstanding beginning, the enchanter's spell....

Thank you. I think both sentences carry a lot of weight, separately and together. Ramona's lack of interest in a future wedding dress tips the reader off that she is unconventional in her attitudes toward relationships. Side by side, they tell us that she prioritizes her career, as she is on her way to her first station as a ranger, and that she is someone who generally gets what she wants.

 

[Britva415]

I get the impression that, in many cases, 'attention being appropriate' greatly depends on the guy that is giving it.

Oh who he is? Or on what he does?

 

[Bramblethorn]

In the entirety of my two Ranger Ramona stories (Hopefully a third coming this year), I never described Ramona's appearance. In the first paragraph, I wrote, "Most little girls grew up dreaming about wearing their wedding gowns. All she had ever wanted was to one day don the gray and green uniform of a Maine Forest Ranger."

...and I never noticed that lack of description.

Some readers require those height-weight-eye-colour-cup-size blanks to be filled in for them, some are happy to fill them in themselves, and some are happy to leave them blank; I'm in the latter camp.

 

[rosebudliquor]

I could have described her height, her measurement, her hair color and style, her full lips and deep blue eyes, yada yada yada. And you know what would have happened? The reader would most likely still have imagined a character who doesn't look anything like the one I did. So what's the point?

This is very wise, as craft. I just came here from a thread about first vs. third person where several commenters talked about first allowing readers to project themselves, but this observation is more relevant to that. I give a few key details that hopefully individualize characters and let reader imagination fill in the rest.
More to the point of this thread, I failed at the last Pink Orchid challenge. The female character had agency, but in the terms of this discussion, the camera was male POV in a way that made her, if not an object, then an automaton serving a particular male fantasy (cuckold humiliation stuff) I'm striving for some redemption on this one. I thank all who contributed to this discussion for potentially helping me do a more realistic job.

 

[stickygirl]

Selfishly, I've found everyone's replies to this thread to be very encouraging in my endeavors, and have returned to my Pink Orchid draft. Thank you for jumping in, all.



This has been my struggle too. As much as I can ramble here about my intentions and preferences and hopes, I feel a certain amount of self-imposed pressure to conform to the conventions of the website. In my current story, there's a lot of time dedicated to conversation and set pieces and feelings and not a lot to graphic sex, and even though I know there will be plenty of that too, I'm going to be self-conscious the whole time at how much page real estate I've spent on 'extra' stuff.

But, well, an event like this is a good excuse to try something new and push myself. Just need to exorcise the demons, first.

I'm glad to see today that you've carried on with your draft.

Just going back to the porn-demon, I was looking at the story I completed for last year's PO. I checked to see if it would hold up without any sex or if it would be full of holes. I'm pleased to say that the plot could work well without any sexual description. In fact, I was asked to read it aloud for someone and was able to edit out the strongest sex on the fly ( because she's a real life friend I didn't want to offend ).

There are plenty of stories I've skimmed at Lit where that wouldn't be true. Sure, we're writing erotica for a sex site, but for me the sex should only be an accessory to a good plot. Isn't that the craft of story telling and writing?

 

[MelissaBaby]

This is very wise, as craft. I just came here from a thread about first vs. third person where several commenters talked about first allowing readers to project themselves, but this observation is more relevant to that. I give a few key details that hopefully individualize characters and let reader imagination fill in the rest.
More to the point of this thread, I failed at the last Pink Orchid challenge. The female character had agency, but in the terms of this discussion, the camera was male POV in a way that made her, if not an object, then an automaton serving a particular male fantasy (cuckold humiliation stuff) I'm striving for some redemption on this one. I thank all who contributed to this discussion for potentially helping me do a more realistic job.

Ironically, some of the same authors who will insist on using first person because it allows the reader to see themselves in the character, also write absurdly over sexualized characters with 54DDD boobs or 18 inch dicks.

Hard to imagine many readers thinking, "Yep, just like me."

 

[MelissaBaby]

I'm glad to see today that you've carried on with your draft.

Just going back to the porn-demon, I was looking at the story I completed for last year's PO. I checked to see if it would hold up without any sex or if it would be full of holes. I'm pleased to say that the plot could work well without any sexual description. In fact, I was asked to read it aloud for someone and was able to edit out the strongest sex on the fly ( because she's a real life friend I didn't want to offend ).

There are plenty of stories I've skimmed at Lit where that wouldn't be true. Sure, we're writing erotica for a sex site, but for me the sex should only be an accessory to a good plot. Isn't that the craft of story telling and writing?

I always say that the story is the meal, the sex is the spice.

 

[Euphony]

Ironically, some of the same authors who will insist on using first person because it allows the reader to see themselves in the character, also write absurdly over sexualized characters with 54DDD boobs or 18 inch dicks.

Hard to imagine many readers thinking, "Yep, just like me."

Occasionally I'll voyeur into a role I can never physically play to see what it may be like but those measurements throw me out unless the title is also "Living at the Chiropractors."

 

[rosebudliquor]

This post is in the spirit of the Pink Orchid Story Event, which is currently taking submissions. Instead of working on my own story for it, I found myself reading some of the entries from last year. Omenainen left a lot of constructive feedback, as did several others, and I found myself marking one of the trends that separated out some of the stories from those that met the brief and those that did not, or those where the story was fine but the sex strayed into being disinterested in the women's perspective.

There are a lot of things one could talk about in terms of how to write women-centric erotica, but I thought I might share my thoughts on subjectivity, or, my metaphor of choice: the camera of the story.

(This is only kind of related to 'male gaze' stuff, and I'm only mentioning it to get ahead of it. It's a can of worms, that phrase, more applicable to cinema history than literature, and I'd rather just talk about subjectivity than get into the weeds of a complex theory. But, you know, I'm not your dad.)

Essentially, what I mean by 'the camera' is a consistent sense of how we are viewing a story. When it comes to writing a good close third person story, there's a level of subjectivity that needs to be maintained. For instance, if your hero Darren is feeling cynical, it might be better to describe his feelings of cynicism, and avoid something more external like 'he raised an eyebrow'. If the person he is talking to is communicating cynicism, but we are following the story from Darren's perspective, then that other person we are not following can certainly raise an eyebrow, and we should not get a sense of their internal feelings of cynicism. This all goes double for a first person story. Subjectivity is a valuable tool, and if you are interested in writing something character-driven, you want to limit how much you zoom out as much as possible.

So, how does this relate to writing women in porn?

Based off my observation of reading a very wide spectrum of quality from Literotica in the past year and a half, along with some of the not-so-great Pink Orchid attempts, a problem I see is a camera problem, especially with regards to women. For the first half a story, the heroine may be followed closely -- we get a sense of her nervousness, her excitement, her insecurities. But then we get to fucking, and there is the sudden sense of the camera lifted away. She becomes an object. Her tits are jiggling like jello! The creampie is leaking down her thighs! She's screaming like a monkey in a zoo as his 9" cock slams into her!

Obviously, this is an exaggeration, but not much of one. The descriptive energy of the story has become disinterested in her internal world, and is now treating her as a subject to be watched. I imagine that this is because erotica writers (of any gender, really) might go into pornographer mode at this point, and feel that the way to write this kind of content is through this new objective gaze, in order to best stimulate the reader.

But all of those things can still be described. I'm not talking about graphic content or behaviour. She becomes self-conscious of her tits moving from the vigorousness of their shared motions. She can feel the leaking coolness on her skin at the backs of her thighs. Her throat felt raw from the sounds she was making as he fucked her.

Is this better? Yes, no, maybe. It's different.

You write the story you want to write, the way you want to write it, and there is a majority audience here that love the zoomed out, pornier perspective -- including me, sometimes, depending on my mood and if it's what I expect. However, if your goal is to write a more full feeling female character, or something that a female audience might enjoy, my thought is that you want to make sure your heroine is still in control of the camera in your story the whole time, and doesn't find herself its subject. When that shift happens, and I can see it clearly, I know it ejects me right out of the story.

Final note: I don't intend this to be a lecture, and is absolutely not prescriptive in any general way. I don't think people should change their styles for moral reasons or artistic reasons or any reason. This is a contemplation on one way to centre a female character in erotica, for anyone interested in doing so.

I also promise this is a dialogue. If you've got to the end and have thoughts, feelings, rebuttals, please share them! I am desperately trying to procrastinate and would appreciate the help.

Thanks again for this. It was totally front-of-mind for me as I wrote my Pink Orchid 2023 effort "They Seduce the Neighbor," which has gotten good comments and ratings.

 

[Lovecraft_Lore]

Based off my observation of reading a very wide spectrum of quality from Literotica in the past year and a half, along with some of the not-so-great Pink Orchid attempts, a problem I see is a camera problem, especially with regards to women. For the first half a story, the heroine may be followed closely -- we get a sense of her nervousness, her excitement, her insecurities. But then we get to fucking, and there is the sudden sense of the camera lifted away. She becomes an object. Her tits are jiggling like jello! The creampie is leaking down her thighs! She's screaming like a monkey in a zoo as his 9" cock slams into he

I think of it like the Dune movie. 70% of the plot was uttered in whispered voice-overs, the beginning in omnipresent voice of the princess. Other parts it just would not work. Like the big battle scene at the end.

"I'm riding across the desert on 1000 ft long snake to attack some spaceships, people are exploding others by screaming my name, everyone's dressed in black leather gimps suits. Is this really happening right now or am I having a really bad trip on that magical space cocaine." You just have to move the camera out and don't even try to explain why Sting is there in a metal gee-string, fighting people with knifes or what is going on with the telepathic MILF Illuminati.

During those parts just keep the camera rolling. There is too much unspoken plot to info dump. The best I have been able to do is cut the sex scene short and fast forward to the next morning were the women are discussing their feelings and the sex thy had past tense over coffee. If the reader is inside her head during sex, how much of it is her insecurities, how much is it her getting annoyed at his inadequate love making, how much is it her hoping she doesn't fart while orgasming? On one hand all the women readers will relate to it, on the other it does not get the readers off reading about how worried she is about farting in his face as he goes down on her.

 

[stickygirl]

I think of it like the Dune movie. 70% of the plot was uttered in whispered voice-overs, the beginning in omnipresent voice of the princess. Other parts it just would not work. Like the big battle scene at the end.

"I'm riding across the desert on 1000 ft long snake to attack some spaceships, people are exploding others by screaming my name, everyone's dressed in black leather gimps suits. Is this really happening right now or am I having a really bad trip on that magical space cocaine." You just have to move the camera out and don't even try to explain why Sting is there in a metal gee-string, fighting people with knifes or what is going on with the telepathic MILF Illuminati.

During those parts just keep the camera rolling. There is too much unspoken plot to info dump. The best I have been able to do is cut the sex scene short and fast forward to the next morning were the women are discussing their feelings and the sex thy had past tense over coffee. If the reader is inside her head during sex, how much of it is her insecurities, how much is it her getting annoyed at his inadequate love making, how much is it her hoping she doesn't fart while orgasming? On one hand all the women readers will relate to it, on the other it does not get the readers off reading about how worried she is about farting in his face as he goes down on her.

Thanks for pulling this back to Ofbuttons initial question of where the camera goes during sex. I sometimes refer to Alina Reyes' novel, The Butcher in which her sex scenes blend seamlessly with other action - very French of course! She writes in first person, making her observations powerful by describing the physical detail of people she encounters and then the emotional impact the moment has on her.

Picking a page at random from a sex-scene chapter, she spends a long paragraph describing picking grapes. Then in the next paragraph
'I got up, knelt with my legs apart above his head....short snip.... Then I stroked it slowly, with a rotating movement, from my anus to my clitoris.'
In the next sentence, she disappears off into her head again 'I would have wanted grey skies where hope is focused, where quivering trees spread their fairy arms....'

I guess the lesson I've drawn from her is to regard thoughts and emotions as the goal. She doesn't skimp on detail 'he dug into my anus like a navvy' but then switches to describing the rain outside falling on the window. Don't we all experience those instantaneous flashes of recollection or fantasy while actually engaged in a job interview, or shopping or having sex? We're encouraged through education to shut our minds to those distractions, to remain focused, but Ryes does the opposite.

It may not suit everyone's style, but I think Reyes wrote a perfect erotic novel. Her translator David Watson also deserves credit, because it feels nothing has been lost.

So my suggestion is not for the camera to pull back, but for it to disappear into her/his head imagination and consciousness. What a rare privilege it is for us to share such intimacies. Fucking is just fucking.

 

[rosebudliquor]

So my suggestion is not for the camera to pull back, but for it to disappear into her/his head imagination and consciousness. What a rare privilege it is for us to share such intimacies. Fucking is just fucking.

I support this 100%. One of my last year's efforts was critiqued as "pornoish". I started by coming at things from a kind of "stroker" mentality with a lot of sensory detail and an intention for most of the work to be sex scenes. Now I'm a little bored with writing all that over and over.
This year's effort is one of two stories I've written that got criticized for too much going into the imagination and consciousness, at the expense of fuck details. You can't please all the people all the time.

 

[stickygirl]

Slight digression, but still in the room and sorry if this has turned into a blog. It was a while ago I posted a thread in AH about The Female Gaze and because I've never yet got a firm grip on the topic, I'm still looking & learning. It isn't something one can bring directly to writing, but I want it as a backdrop to my understanding of feminist theory.

Maybe other writers sense the same self-imposed constraints as to what and how we write; what topics we can include? Like a painter I'm now less frightened of a blank canvas, that used to feel like a trial and I've freed up - it's not a prison, it's a playground, dummy. I can paint over the frame and I can even paint round the back if I want.

For examples of painting round-the-back, I've looked at various other writers - anyone from Dylan Thomas to Jeanette Winterson and discover I can write 'apple dappled' or 'a fluster of fur' and no one will make me stand outside class shouting at the falling snow ( true story from school ).

Anyhow, what now Sticky? I'm autistic so you're obliged to cut me slack over special interests.

I went back to Celinne Sciamma who wrote and directed Portrait of a Young Woman on Fire and listened to her take on the female gaze. Then I found an excellent keynote from Joey Soloway who rips into film making and story telling from a feminist perspective in a very entertaining and provocative presentation "Cis men, please stop making films... for 100 years please".

Next was a film critique video, the Feminine Gaze - are we getting closer to the right word? This emphasised the point that Female Gaze isn't Male Gaze with swapped genders (women ogling men).

Where we end up in film making is that there are three elements to the gaze
1. The object of our gaze
2. The camera
3. The audience
Further is that we witness 'how it feels to be seen' through female gaze.

"Fine, Sticky - how does this translate to writing?" In every way - it is the colours on our palate, the paper we write on, the space where we write. Understanding who we are and how society pivots around the whole gender topic can ( and should? ) influence what we write.

TLDR? Just me working shit out in public. Either comment or move on. I'm not looking for compliments, just ideas.

Okay, I've now got to spend a day online at a conference *joy. Have a good one yourselves

 

[yowser]

Where we end up in film making is that there are three elements to the gaze
1. The object of our gaze
2. The camera
3. The audience
Further is that we witness 'how it feels to be seen' through female gaze.

"Fine, Sticky - how does this translate to writing?" In every way - it is the colours on our palate, the paper we write on, the space where we write. Understanding who we are and how society pivots around the whole gender topic can ( and should? ) influence what we write.

Interesting thoughts, and I don't mind returning to this area.

I think in film-making, the camera often is a major player, and for purposes of this discussion the camera can be 'leering' or it can be 'loving' (I suppose a whole continuum, but the two ends are distinctly noticeable.) And that makes a huge difference. In a lot of mainstream cinema, it seems the 'leering' is quite present (and unfortunate, usually.)

As for the audience, that is always going to be a major part of an author's work. As much as we talk about 'writing for ourselves' most of the time it is that we have something to say and we want people (someone out there!) to hear it. It's a dance, and the author is the lead, has to be the lead, but nothing happens without involving the other person in the dance.

Nabokov always talked about how the major role of an author was to be the 'enchanter.' If you are going to succeed in the writerly arts, you have to be able to lure others into your world, your character(s), your scenarios. Paint them a verbal picture, beguile them with the sounds of your words. And, of course, it is magic when done well.

 

[stickygirl]

Interesting thoughts, and I don't mind returning to this area.

I think in film-making, the camera often is a major player, and for purposes of this discussion the camera can be 'leering' or it can be 'loving' (I suppose a whole continuum, but the two ends are distinctly noticeable.) And that makes a huge difference. In a lot of mainstream cinema, it seems the 'leering' is quite present (and unfortunate, usually.)

As for the audience, that is always going to be a major part of an author's work. As much as we talk about 'writing for ourselves' most of the time it is that we have something to say and we want people (someone out there!) to hear it. It's a dance, and the author is the lead, has to be the lead, but nothing happens without involving the other person in the dance.

Nabokov always talked about how the major role of an author was to be the 'enchanter.' If you are going to succeed in the writerly arts, you have to be able to lure others into your world, your character(s), your scenarios. Paint them a verbal picture, beguile them with the sounds of your words. And, of course, it is magic when done well.

It's tricky to translate film to writing in terms of the camera, but the writer can explore a character's thoughts, which in film can only be guessed or narrated. In writing we can direct 'the gaze' describing a person's appearance in terms of simply their physical appearance or emotions 'she turned away folding her arms protectively about her'. Or we can be viewed 'He looked up at her, uncertain if she was lying.' You could go through checklist of what is possible in each medium.

I could never direct film because I don't have the skills to keep so many plates spinning at once, but I can when I write, because I can jump boundaries and magically see into thoughts. That gives a writer much more power and 'responsibility'.

I agree that we write because we want to communicate, be heard, we have a point to make. I think too that writing lays bare an author's integrity and character. The reader is often quick to pick holes in a story if we inadvertently stray how an established character behaves, or at least I hear this reported in reader's comments 'She would never have said that...'

I've deleted more than I've written here. Too easy to tie oneself in knots in finding parallels! I see the art of film making as simply background reading to provoke ones imagination and ideas.