"depth of storytelling"

[AwkwardMD]

For what it's worth, not one person I can recall has been anything less than very grateful for other people contributing to our review thread. We've always encouraged wider participation, and anyone who wants to is welcome to chime in on the stories in our queue. Omen and I will continue to work through the requests whether anyone else contributes or not (in other words, every request gets a response from us even if others contribute), but well-intentioned participation is always open.

That being said, enough people have chimed in asking for one that another thread with more of an open-participation approach might get some interest. It would just take one of you starting it and committing to some sort of organizational role. Keeping track of requests and knowing when it's time to say "Okay, we've talked about this one enough, let's all move on to the next one." Maybe have a period of two weeks per story. If someone was on top of it, not necessarily participating in every review but staying current with it, and that person maybe sent a few PMs to @Sammael Bard to get a feel for how to guide conversations, when to report distracting and unhelpful responses, etc, that might not be a huge time sink.

 

[ElectricBlue]

If someone wants to start threads with that premise, they are welcome to do so, although I think they'd have a hard time enforcing it. Personally, I don't see the point of discussing writing in a format where we are not allowed to mention our own work.

Agree. Any discussion, with examples, I'd use what I know (my own writing), because a) I know it best; and b) I know why I wrote it (or at least have half a clue).

 

[M_K_Babalon]

As for linking your own work for examples, there's nothing 'wrong' with it, but certain folks make it sooooo obvious that it's just an ad in disguise of the discussion, an egotistical cry for attention, and 98% of the time no one says anything, we all bite our tongues, but that 2% of the time that someone gets called on it, the caller is labelled an asshat.

That's one reason I try not link my stuff. I don't even like bringing it up most of the time. I feel like I annoy people, on top of not being a very useful poster.

 

[Omenainen]

Haha, I’ve been just going around the forum promoting our latest collaboration, Epilogue (see? I did it again!). I’m super proud of it and can’t help but gush. Even with all the typos and errors we of course spotted only after publishing.

That being said, this seems like a futile environment for self promotion, even without taking into account that there isn’t very many people here to promote to. From my experience, most people are on AH to promote their own stories, not read others’, and now you’re telling me that I can’t even trust your opinions if anyone happened to read it, because you wouldn’t tell me if it sucks?

 

[MelissaBaby]

This kind of thread (minus its derailing) is exactly the kind of thread that I want to participate in. It's about the craft of writing. Which in turn is you know ... what writers who get together to discuss writing would discuss? ... like the entire purpose of an AH forum? You'd think? Like Hello?

I'm here for the good stuff, not the spam "what did you have for lunch today" or "let's all pat each other on the back" threads. I just skip over all of that. If anyone feels like the victim of pedantry in literary discussions, they can skip these threads just the same and stick to the kindergarten spam.

As for linking your own work for examples, there's nothing 'wrong' with it, but certain folks make it sooooo obvious that it's just an ad in disguise of the discussion, an egotistical cry for attention, and 98% of the time no one says anything, we all bite our tongues, but that 2% of the time that someone gets called on it, the caller is labelled an asshat.

If I need to give an example, I find it easier and more effective to cite a popular movie, something that almost everyone knows, that we can visualize or otherwise recall without having to open a link in a new tab and get acquainted with anything.

An example of character development: Wizard of Oz (we've all seen it) When Dorothy lands in Oz, her only motive is to get home. Everything that she does is predicated on getting home. But then she meets the Scarecrow, the Lion and the Tin Man, and they help her find her way, and in that process through the bonding of friendship, her motives change. She no longer just wants to get home, she also feels a duty to help her friends find a heart, a brain and some courage. As her motives change, she develops.

No links and everybody gets it. On the other hand if I link you to one of my stories for an example, I would tell you that my character Lainey is just a small town girl looking for mischief and fun but once the car ride with a stranger starts getting out of hand, her motives change to just trying to stay unscathed and out of trouble. On the surface you might understand that, but to really get it you'll need to go read 11k words of mine and I know that no one's gonna do that. Dorothy in Oz is just a quicker and more effective example.

Except, people usually ask, "Has anyone here ever...?" or "How did you...?" They clearly ask other Lit author for advice based on our experience. When novice writers ask for advise, they are much more likely to benefit from the experiences of those they see as peers than they are from examples of work from famous authors.

 

[Sammael Bard]

That being said, enough people have chimed in asking for one that another thread with more of an open-participation approach might get some interest. It would just take one of you starting it and committing to some sort of organizational role. Keeping track of requests and knowing when it's time to say "Okay, we've talked about this one enough, let's all move on to the next one." Maybe have a period of two weeks per story. If someone was on top of it, not necessarily participating in every review but staying current with it, and that person maybe sent a few PMs to @Sammael Bard to get a feel for how to guide conversations, when to report distracting and unhelpful responses, etc, that might not be a huge time sink.

It's an idea with good intentions but it's not going to last.

Criticism may be fair to some and unfair to others. People will debate, argue, throw playground insults, personal insults and then turn it into a dumpster fire. That's what usually happens on 'open discussions' that get heated. Too many cooks spoil the broth is an apt way to describe that. I doubt it'll go beyond 5 pages before it gets closed.

There have been a few threads before like 'ask women for feedback' (or something like that). They also called for open discussions, free participations and even general enquiries. They were great when they started but they died slow deaths due to non-participation over time because:

1. It's a time consuming process. When people started those feedback threads, they had time. Days, weeks, months later, they just didn't have the time to dedicate their personal time to the thread. Life and other priorities took over. They moved on.

2. Reviewing free smut online doesn't pay. Simply put, it's not worth the time for many users. No one wants to spend their time managing a thread that goes beyond hobby and into professional leagues for nothing.

For more open-ended discussion, it's better to just start a new thread. The topic of discussion remains focused and the story won't get buried by newer ones. It's less chaotic and the discussion is streamlined. Even if there's a dumpster fire, it's easily contained compared to a thread that has insults and personal beefs spread over 6 pages and I have to read every single one of these godawful posts and remove them.

 

[CassandraMcQuarry]

I recently received this comment here on Lit, on my novella Young Cunts: "This... has a lot more depth of storytelling than most of what you read on this site." A lovely comment to receive, of course - but it set me thinking: What is "depth of storytelling"? Is it something smut writers can and/or should aim for?

One superb writer of erotica once joked to me about writing “porn that makes you think” – in relation, naturally, to a particularly thought-provoking story they had written – but even they seemed a bit embarrassed to pursue the possibility, retreating into: “It’s really gratifying to hear that my story made you think and ponder the possibilities beyond the story. Ooh, that was a bit deep. Think I’d better wash my mind out with porn ”

I suggest that smut (or literary porn, or erotica, or whatever you may like to call it) is, at least potentially, an art form, and so we should be confident of being able to discuss it in those terms. I would like to suggest an axiom to start us off: Art is about something. It has to be, or else it could not “make us think”. Specifically, I suggest, art is about us, and it is about our relationships, to ourselves, to each other, and to the world around us and beyond us. It expresses what it is trying to say not through analytical text – for that would make it merely an academic essay – but through metaphor and gesture: physical, visual, auditory and verbal.

In smut and porn, those metaphors and gestures are sexual ones. But the stories can be about more profound things. In the same way that paintings are not about paint, and operas and musical theatre are not about singing and dancing, and ballet is not about entrechats, arabesques penchés, and petits battements serrés, smut is not always about sex. “Bukkake”, “tentacles”, “BDSM” or “cumfarting” may be the building blocks of a smut story, and in that way they may define the style of the story. But a sex story need not be, in the final analysis, about the sexual acts. Rather, it can use those building blocks as vehicles, as tools with which to carry out a higher purpose: to make us think (even as we flush our soiled tissue down the U-bend).

Some of my personal favorite examples of this, in the worlds of smut and porn, include:
- Radley Metzger's movie masterpiece The Opening of Misty Beethoven - all about class, identity, transformation and the possibility/impossibility thereof: Pygmalion with fucking.
- Paul Thomas's porn flick Throat: A Cautionary Tale - which explores issues of compulsion, addiction, exploitation.
- Jaymal’s story Lusts of the Flesh – a story of a young man caught between his sincere desire to live up to the moral demands of his religion and the irresistible demands of the flesh.
- CurvyGalore’s The Tribulations of Tobias - deceptively polite, yet the conclusion is quite startling and shocking. (Lest you think that only very rude stories make it onto my list...)

A couple of my modest offerings:
- The Cursed Cunt - a story about redemption: the world thrown off kilter by one man’s tragic flaw, and the struggle of that same world to right itself, even through death (and fucking).
- Alison Goes to London - a futuristic satire, but like all satires it is about us. Imagine a world where, thanks to the “New Enlightenment”, pleasure is everything, filthy sex is the pinnacle of social respectability, and therefore love is held to be worthless. Is this utopian or dystopian? What would happen to young people growing up in a world like this? Alison is an enthusiastic disciple of the cult of Pleasure – until she encounters love for the first time and her world is turned upside-down. NaughtyAnnie says of it: “Your mix of uninhibited filth and thought-provoking social comment is unique!” - which kind of echoes the comment with which I began this post.

So, back to my opening questions: Is "depth of storytelling" something you aim for? How do you incorporate it into your smut? Or, perhaps more appropriately, how do you incorporate smut into a profoundly felt, thought provoking story? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

happy to find your post. you are describing the kind of erotica i enjoy the most. hopefully i will get to write some of this too.

 

[lustychimera]

The idea was to take one Lit story at a time, a story of an author long gone from Lit so no toes would be stepped on. Then, as in a book club, we would analyze and discuss the craft of writing in relation to that one story. I think it would be amazing to hear all the different points people would bring up, all the different points of view and writing philosophies.

Did you guys ever do the book club thread? That sounds like a lot of fun, and the long gone author thing is a great idea. Seems like it'd unravel pretty quickly without that-- or at the very least, always picking an author who isn't part of the little club.

My opinion has always been that critiquing other people's stuff (when it's good) is the single most important thing someone can do to become a better author.

I could practice for a hundred years, but what good is practice if i don't know how to analyze the words I'm putting down? I'd definitely love to join that.

 

[CassandraMcQuarry]

Did you guys ever do the book club thread? That sounds like a lot of fun, and the long gone author thing is a great idea. Seems like it'd unravel pretty quickly without that-- or at the very least, always picking an author who isn't part of the little club.

My opinion has always been that critiquing other people's stuff (when it's good) is the single most important thing someone can do to become a better author.

I could practice for a hundred years, but what good is practice if i don't know how to analyze the words I'm putting down? I'd definitely love to join that.

just tell me when and where.

 

[KeithD]

What is "depth of storytelling"?

To me, it means more, richer scene, plot, and later-revealed connections between story threads, all done while directly serving the needs of the story. And I see no reason not to strive for it in erotica as well/much as in the mainstream.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Did you guys ever do the book club thread? That sounds like a lot of fun, and the long gone author thing is a great idea. Seems like it'd unravel pretty quickly without that-- or at the very least, always picking an author who isn't part of the little club.

My opinion has always been that critiquing other people's stuff (when it's good) is the single most important thing someone can do to become a better author.

I could practice for a hundred years, but what good is practice if i don't know how to analyze the words I'm putting down? I'd definitely love to join that.

Yeah, let's just say that it seems that the person who initiated the idea doesn't want to go through with it. I am somewhat reluctant to start the process all on my own mostly because my Literotica presence isn't what it used to be to put it mildly

 

[CassandraMcQuarry]

Yeah, let's just say that it seems that the person who initiated the idea doesn't want to go through with it. I am somewhat reluctant to start the process all on my own mostly because my Literotica presence isn't what it used to be to put it mildly

care to elaborate, dear?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

care to elaborate, dear?

Not really, dearest.

 

[desecration]

God, the crowd on this website.

To my mind, depth of storytelling involves how many real-life concerns it touches, like literature itself. Deep means penetrating beneath the surface of stimulus-response in which the average consumerist lives. It means "finely observed life," as someone once said about some famous American author or another. But it's also stuff like this:

There are not words to describe the bitter well of emotions and feelings that rose within me. There's this hot, sick feeling that starts right on top of the stomach and climbs upward. My breathing grew ragged, and the world seemed to stop sending light or sound waves. An hour ago, the concept of trust was different, the city we drove though felt different and the word love had a whole different context. Now, all that and everything else I was too stunned to remember all flowed through the unalterable filter of calculated, cold-blooded, marital betrayal by the person I most loved in the entire universe. Part of me died for all time. What was left was slowly being encapsulated in a hard shell by the shred of me bent on self-preservation.

From "The High Price of Kim's New Me." This is some penetrating insight into the human condition, which is inextricably bound up with "how many real-life concerns it touches," and also with sex: reproduction is the core of biological, and therefore sexual appeal is near the center of our self-image.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

To my mind, depth of storytelling involves how many real-life concerns it touches, like literature itself. Deep means penetrating beneath the surface of stimulus-response in which the average consumerist lives. It means "finely observed life," as someone once said about some famous American author or another. But it's also stuff like this:

From "The High Price of Kim's New Me." This is some penetrating insight into the human condition, which is inextricably bound up with "how many real-life concerns it touches," and also with sex: reproduction is the core of biological, and therefore sexual appeal is near the center of our self-image.

Not sure why you quoted that exact post of mine. I do agree with what you said, and the post you quoted wasn't a scorn of the depth of storytelling. I actually prefer such stories myself, as a reader and as a writer.

 

[desecration]

Not sure why you quoted that exact post of mine. I do agree with what you said, and the post you quoted wasn't a scorn of the depth of storytelling. I actually prefer such stories myself, as a reader and as a writer.

I did not intend my post to seem contrary. I use the old school method of quoting, apparently. The basic idea was sympathy for the statement and to elaborate. To your last sentence, I can only agree fully, and say that I have found a number of stories here that are amazing, but even more, amazing insights in some that may be more down the middle of the road. Then again, I knew some brilliant B students and even a "B" shop has some great engineers, machinists, coders, or what have you.