Well, maybe not completely obvious. I need help, foks!

[KeithD]

Did you "confirm" this by actually checking out AG31's portfolio here? If not, why make that assumption here? What you "confirm" isn't really supported in the cited quote.

 

[AG31]

Yes, this confirms to me that you seem to be writing stroke smut but just hate the stigma of stroke smut. Personally I wouldn't worry about it. The masses out there looking to read stroke smut do not give a shit that it is called stroke smut, so if I wrote it I wouldn't care neither. Your readers won't be looking down on you for it so why would you look down on your own genre yourself?

Why should I think you're not writing it, but I am???

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Did you "confirm" this by actually checking out AG31's portfolio here? If not, why make that assumption here? What you "confirm" isn't really supported in the cited quote.

This.

It's not a new genre. It's just a new, not loaded name for an existing genre. Erotica that pays little attention (I'm working on refining that) to plot and character, but aspires to meritorious writing. If you call it "smut" you're pre-judging it as not artistically worthy.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Why should I think you're not writing it, but I am???

I'm asking you.

 

[countdowntolov3]

If you call it "smut" you're pre-judging it as not artistically worthy.

I don't think this is true. "Smut" may have that meaning in your head. But I do not think it has a negative connotation for many. Anecdotally, I see the Gen Z folks almost always call their stuff "smut" and not "erotica". And linguistic trends usually flow generationally "upwards".

Head over to AO3, look at all the 100+ chapter labors of love the author has tagged "smut". I just don't think "smut" is a tainted word.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I don't like to use smut to describe my writing. Smut it may be, as smut is in the mind of the reader. But I try to have characters and situations that are prominent in the story. I think my Just a Friendly series isn't high art, but it isn't trash either.

 

[mildlyaroused]

Yes, this confirms to me that you seem to be writing stroke smut but just hate the stigma of stroke smut. Personally I wouldn't worry about it. The masses out there looking to read stroke smut do not give a shit that it is called stroke smut, so if I wrote it I wouldn't care neither. Your readers won't be looking down on you for it so why would you look down on your own genre yourself?

That's the thing, though - "smut" as a word contains cheap, pornographic, unartistic connotations with it. It contains connotations of teenagers writing shitty fanfics about their favourite TV characters.

I don't think it's a bad thing to classify your own work as something other than smut. It's not a matter of readers looking down on it, it's a matter of correctness. You can write what AG calls simple erotica while still maintaining a sense of literary quality and depth. I would argue this isn't the same as straight up smut.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think at some point the desire to create a precise taxonomy of erotic literature is just not worthwhile. The issues raised are interesting, but IMO the interesting way to discuss the issues is to ask other authors, "What kinds of elements do you like to include in your stories and why?" rather than to try (fruitlessly, IMO) to find just the right labels for different approaches. I don't bother dividing things into smut or art or erotica or porn. They're stories. There are good stories and bad stories of every type.

 

[gunhilltrain]

It's not a new genre. It's just a new, not loaded name for an existing genre. Erotica that pays little attention (I'm working on refining that) to plot and character, but aspires to meritorious writing. If you call it "smut" you're pre-judging it as not artistically worthy.

It seems that there are as many types of fiction as there are people writing it. Thus I'm a little unsure of what we've been getting at in these two threads. I know I've apologized a couple of times because I haven't read anybody else's work here in months. Yet I will once it a while do some self-promotion by adding a link to my own. I can't really explain why that's happened. Only so many hours in a day, maybe?

Anyway, after six years here (fifteen years back to my failed attempts to write screenplays) I don't worry much about how to categorize what I'm doing. Ir just is what it is, and sometimes it works very well and sometimes I can look back and see stuff that wasn't very good. That seems to be all that matters.

P.S. I see I said basically the same thing that Simon said just above.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

That's the thing, though - "smut" as a word contains cheap, pornographic, unartistic connotations with it. It contains connotations of teenagers writing shitty fanfics about their favourite TV characters.

I don't think it's a bad thing to classify your own work as something other than smut. It's not a matter of readers looking down on it, it's a matter of correctness. You can write what AG calls simple erotica while still maintaining a sense of literary quality and depth. I would argue this isn't the same as straight up smut.

I write stuff that I consider a certain higher level of literature and even many of my detractors have conceded this despite not liking my work. I still write smut. Yes I have elements of story, plot, motive, immersion, dialogue and other things, but my sex scenes are still rutty sweaty lascivious glorious smut, even when they're sweet and emotional.

"How dare you call my smut, smut!" Yea, I'm just not that pretentious. It's just a label. No big deal to me. I may have a certain disdain for weak lazy or uninspired writing, but I'm not about to look down my nose at my own genre.

"Your story bored me but the smut parts were decent," or "Good weaving of story and smut," are all fine with me.

 

[mildlyaroused]

Yea, I'm just not that pretentious. It's just a label.

It's not a matter of insensitive labelling; it's a difference in what people consider 'smut.' This is a spectrum, and a subjective one at that.

 

[ronde]

This definitely has possibilities. Thanks!

Edit: Although, do intimacy (ElectricBlue) and self-acceptance/dignity (my MCs) qualify as sexual character traits? I feel like they do, but I'm not sure I can sell it.

Unless you omit any description of your characters' personalities, you have created characters with traits. Those traits will inevitably lead you to writing a plot even though you might not think that's what you're writing. That's because you'll have to write things like why your MC does what he or she does and how the other characters react. That's the very definition of a plot.

 

[AG31]

I don't think this is true. "Smut" may have that meaning in your head. But I do not think it has a negative connotation for many. Anecdotally, I see the Gen Z folks almost always call their stuff "smut" and not "erotica". And linguistic trends usually flow generationally "upwards".

Head over to AO3, look at all the 100+ chapter labors of love the author has tagged "smut". I just don't think "smut" is a tainted word.

Could be true. Heaven knows the world is a-changin'.
So lets stick with "stroker," which has a more limited meaning even for Gen Z. I think it was Pink-Silk-Gloves that equated the two, not me in the beginning. But maybe I did.

 

[AG31]

I think at some point the desire to create a precise taxonomy of erotic literature is just not worthwhile. The issues raised are interesting, but IMO the interesting way to discuss the issues is to ask other authors, "What kinds of elements do you like to include in your stories and why?" rather than to try (fruitlessly, IMO) to find just the right labels for different approaches. I don't bother dividing things into smut or art or erotica or porn. They're stories. There are good stories and bad stories of every type.

Launching a discussion of the need for a new term has uncovered a lot of opinions about stories without emphasis on plot or character. Some people think it can be artistically worthy. Others don't. So think of the term conversation as short hand for the style conversation.

 

[AG31]

but my sex scenes are still rutty sweaty lascivious glorious smut, even when they're sweet and emotional.

Would it be smut if they weren't sweaty? or lascivious? Just curious. Not that it speaks directly to the thread.

 

[AG31]

Unless you omit any description of your characters' personalities, you have created characters with traits. Those traits will inevitably lead you to writing a plot even though you might not think that's what you're writing. That's because you'll have to write things like why your MC does what he or she does and how the other characters react. That's the very definition of a plot.

Could be. But tell that to the people that claim that plotless stories are just "strokers." They've got a diferent definition of "plot." You've introduced the subtlety quandary I'm facing with "character" into the world of "plot."

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Having thought about it, my two cents.

Let's go to two extremes.

The first is easy to do - think of a three-second gif consisting of nothing but a closeup of a penis moving in and out of a vagina, repeat endlessly. That is one extreme - full-throttle sexuality with zero character or plot. I'm not sure what the prose version would be, but it will do.

Going to the other extreme, can one write a story which is exceedingly erotic without explicit sex? I think so. It would be far more difficult to write, but could definitely leave readers red-faced and aroused. The thing is, I cannot conceive of it being done without plot and characterization both.

Dorothy Parker used to sign her reviews in The New Yorker as 'Constant Reader'. Given that one can write across the whole spectrum, the question to me is what does Mr/Mr CR want of us? Let's not worry about labeling things just yet; what's important is that tastes differ. Some just want to get it up/slippery as fast as possible, with an ASAP orgasm to follow. That's fine and I have written such. Others however prefer a longer, fuller experience, one in which sex is but one aspect. That's cool, too (and I will admit that that's where my own tastes lie).

Bottom line is that it's all 'valid'. I fully agree (as usual) with Simon when he said we have better things to do than trying to pigeonhole stories. It's an interesting philosophical question, perhaps, one worth asking, but not one which should influence writing or reading.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The first is easy to do - think of a three-second gif consisting of nothing but a closeup of a penis moving in and out of a vagina, repeat endlessly. That is one extreme - full-throttle sexuality with zero character or plot. I'm not sure what the prose version would be, but it will do.

I think I can imagine what it might be like in prose, but for me it would be soulless, mechanistic. The worst kind of tab A into slot B porn, ultimately boring. Ikea assembly line sex. Anti-erotic, even. And if I attempted to write it, such a scene would inevitably grow a soul, become human.

Have you ever seen and heard a steam engine huffing quietly to itself at the head of a train, before it pulls away from the station? In theory, that's merely a construct of pipes and pistons and steam, a machine. But tell that to dragon who lives inside the metal cauldron, with its firebox, hot flame, burning embers. That thing is alive, it's a creature. That's what my stroker porn would turn into.

The only story I've written where I said, "Let's see what happens when EB tries to write a stroker," gave me one of my most fabulous characters and a slice of her sexual life. That's intrinsic to my erotica.

Going to the other extreme, can one write a story which is exceedingly erotic without explicit sex? I think so. It would be far more difficult to write, but could definitely leave readers red-faced and aroused. The thing is, I cannot conceive of it being done without plot and characterization both.

I agree with you. The little 750 word vignettes demonstrate that all the time, those intimate moments that can burn you with heat, smouldering with lust, and all she's done is brush lint from your suit before an interview. But to describe that, you must have life in your characters, not cardboard.

I don't think you always need the five acts, though - if that's what people mean by "plot".

 

[KeithD]

Having thought about it, my two cents.

Let's go to two extremes.

The first is easy to do - think of a three-second gif consisting of nothing but a closeup of a penis moving in and out of a vagina, repeat endlessly. That is one extreme - full-throttle sexuality with zero character or plot. I'm not sure what the prose version would be, but it will do.

Not three seconds. But I've used that as a base a few times, relating the submissive's emotions in high heat while the penis was moving in and out in the background. You can even work some plot in there, I think.

Never say never.

 

[AG31]

Bottom line is that it's all 'valid'. I fully agree (as usual) with Simon when he said we have better things to do than trying to pigeonhole stories. It's an interesting philosophical question, perhaps, one worth asking, but not one which should influence writing or reading.

I'm not trying to pigeonhole stories. I don't care if we never label a single erotica story. I'm just trying to substitute "simple erotica" for "stroker" as a knee jerk label when people do feel the need. This thread is asking for help in the expanded definition of "stroker/simple erotica."

 

[AG31]

The only story I've written where I said, "Let's see what happens when EB tries to write a stroker," gave me one of my most fabulous characters and a slice of her sexual life.

Can you give us the link?

 

[AG31]

How about this:

"Erotica that doesn't pay significant attention to plot or non-sexual character traits."

I think I'm going to declare this the winner.

 

[AG31]

and I surprised to find out that you are close to ten years older than I am. Does that make us of the same "generation?" I suppose that means that we remember certain things that the majority of people on here have no living memory of, or may not know about at all. It certainly varies a lot, and I'm not trying to knock anybody, but I've sometimes found that people I know have no idea of what I'm talking about.

This comment by Omenainen keeps coming back to me as an example of how much times have changed.

As a disclaimer, neither of us have read Story of O, and based on the Wikipedia article we’re not inspired to. You refer to it as an “important classic of erotica”, but from the description that seems based more on “nothing better was available at the time” than “this is the pinnacle of all things sexy in a written word.” A lot of classics that were interesting or scandalous or ahead of their time, at their time, would not be considered very highly today. I can’t fathom what would be erotic in that, but then it’s not my kink.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Can you give us the link?

I think you've read it, and the sequel:

Garter Belts and Cigarettes

Garter Belts and Whiskey

And this is the 750 worder I mention in my reply to @TarnishedPenny above:

Valentines for Suzie

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Going to the other extreme, can one write a story which is exceedingly erotic without explicit sex? I think so.

Absolutely. I wrote a 750-worder chock full of sexual imagery and innuendo, but no actual sex whatsoever. It couldn't go in EC because there was no coupling, but it also couldn't go in non-E because of all the imagery. The readers hated it. I figured that they would.