The boring bits of writing erotica

[Statius]

I've been meaning to ask as well, did you get your screenname from the Latin (I think?) poet?

Yup! . I find him to be a 2nd, 3rd rate writer in Greco/ Roman Lit terms, and so am I. You're the first to ask!

 

[pink_silk_glove]

and is often also a way for the formerly straight woman of the two

I think that this woman is more mandatory than the cleaning up. That's the lesbian fantasy, right? All the hot straight women are actually dykes but they just don't know it yet. Or at the very least she'll turn lesbian just for you and no one else.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

Yup! . I find him to be a 2nd, 3rd rate writer in Greco/ Roman Lit terms, and so am I. You're the first to ask!

Just like with many of the literary greats, history will be the judge. Many artists were never appreciated in their lifetime, or not until later in their lifetime. Statius's status was high enough that he came across my radar even though I don't study the classics, so he had to be doing *somethig* right!

I look forward to having some privacy from folks around the house to be able to read your examples. Thank you for sending them!

 

[pink_silk_glove]

To continue with the analogy above, slow burns are like being invited to dinner. The host brings you straight into the kitchen, but what awaits you are multiple courses—appetizers, drinks, fruits, and other rich-people stuff—before they finally bring out the steak and potatoes. So, in my opinion, we have strokers, slow burns and yappers, and if you write yappers, you are very self-indulgent.

Gee, you've got it all figured out and I don;t have a clue what you;re talking about. I have no idea if I write stroker, yapper or slow burn. Whatever will I do??

 

[EmilyMiller]

Good evening dear colleagues, I trust all are as well as can be?

In writing "a stroker" there is probably no room for the mundane, or "ordinary" parts of existence - that would be somewhat counterproductive. However if you are, like me, currently embroiled in something a little longer, or setting a situation that requires some of the "regularity" of every day life how do you approach that inclusion?

Ordinarily I would use a "Plot planner" such as below, (original model adapted from 'for-the-teacher') and build from the different sections after high-lighting the particular plot curve I plan to use. For some reason this one is getting away from me and I can already see the "Right lane ends 1 mile ahead" signs. Knowing this I have the prime chance to divert now. Would anyone like to offer a suggestion or two to "save" this Literotica story?
Deepest respects,
D.
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I tried to write a stroker - like I used to - recently. I really did try. And it ended up being about a woman trying to find herself and her self-confidence through sex. As I’ve said before, I have an illness and there is no known cure .

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I set out to write what I thought was a "stroker", with minimal story and plot, straight into the sex. Being me, it ended being a typical EB slow burn story, with a café scene, a bunch of intimacy and emotion, and a character who impressed even the infamous Stacnash.

... and no plot nor motive.

 

[Statius]

Just like with many of the literary greats, history will be the judge. Many artists were never appreciated in their lifetime, or not until later in their lifetime. Statius's status was high enough that he came across my radar even though I don't study the classics, so he had to be doing *somethig* right!

I look forward to having some privacy from folks around the house to be able to read your examples. Thank you for sending them!

No problem. Hope you like.
He's not terrible, but he isn't Vergil, Horace, Ovid, or Homer. His longevity is due mostly to the fact that his main work is an allegory to a Roman civil war between brothers. It's the 'Thebiad' about the myth of the seven against Thebes. Only surviving work that goes into the war in depth. Anyway, enough mansplaining. Work to do

Peace.

 

[StillStunned]

I have the same question but I'm still not really seeing an answer to it. Folks are linking to stories but then explicitly saying they aren't really strokers. Before I saw you already asked, I was considering starting a thread on it. Mind if I spin off a thread for our mutual question? It would help me answer a question I have for myself....do I write strokers?

Maybe this wasn't clear:

I don't think it's impossible to write a long story that's sex-driven, but you'd need to find ways to keep the sexy bits exciting. One sex scene after another will have the reader clicking away after the first few strokes (as it were). Red Hot (9.4k words) and The Walled Garden (10.3k words) are probably the longest ones I've written, and the sex requires considerable support from character and, to a lesser extent, plot.

but what I meant it to mean was that "Red Hot" and "The Walled Garden" are the longest strokers I've written. I've also written shorter ones, like Tammy, Jessica, Yuliya, While She Watches Them, Full Moon on Old Jack's Hill, Angry Fuck - A Vignette, One Orgasm At A Time 01 and Pas de Trois.

Like I said, for me the distinction lies in whether the primary driver is sex or something else. Often it's a combination of sex, plot and character (Tammy, Jessica, Yuliya in particular straddles the line between sex-driven and character-driven), but if nothing else these were all stories that sprang from an image of a sex scene.

 

[THBGato]

I think that this woman is more mandatory than the cleaning up. That's the lesbian fantasy, right? All the hot straight women are actually dykes but they just don't know it yet. Or at the very least she'll turn lesbian just for you and no one else.

Maybe. I couldn't tell you what other writers' motives were or how other readers interpret it.

In some stories though, this is the moment the straight woman suddenly realises how different it would be to be in a relationship with a woman than a man: no expectation on her to do all the housework!

 

[Erozetta]

Playing Rough

Strokes of Desire, Whispers of Harm

I don't know if they're good strokers, but they're strokers just the same.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Miss Vickie is over 30,000 words long. How is that a "stroker"? That's longer than any standalone story I've written. This illustrates the problem I'm having with the conversation. I have no idea what people are talking about, and people won't say. A dialogue about writing stories is totally meaningless if it's carried on in the abstract. It's all about the actual words and the details of the story, and it's impossible to have that conversation if we're not talking about real stories rather than abstract concepts.

I feel ya. People often talk in general about these things rather than giving concrete examples. And all of that would be fine, especially considering that some of the examples could be thousands of words long, if we had some consensus about the meaning of the concepts we use. But we don't.

30k words of a purely stroke story certainly sounds strange to me. You need some kind of plot to connect those scenes in a meaningful way.

I believe this is once again a problem of proper gradation. We treat stroker vs story-driven as binaries. They are either one or the other thing. But it's clearly a spectrum. A 30k-word story can be focused on sex, but it has to have some elements of character development and plot.

It's a sliding scale of a sort, and our story can be strongly focused on sex, which moves it towards the red end of the spectrum, or strongly focused on plot and characters, which would move it more towards the green end of the spectrum.

 

[GuiltyCowboy]

The way I see it, erotica can largely be broken down into three basic categories: plot-driven, character-driven and sex-driven stories. A sex-driven story would be a stroker.

I consider strokers fluff pieces. Light superficial tension, very little psychological depth/ exploration.

My take is that strokers explore a situation.

If you're so inclined you can make that situation both character- and sex-driven. And you can fill it with immense psychological depth.

Anything more than a situation and you're into a narrative. And so you're involving plot. (Of course, even a single scene or situation has its own internal plot, or arc, but that's another discussion).

Personally, I think of strokers as having the complexity of poetry. Just with more orgasms.

[edit: non-narrative poetry obvs...otherwise, the Iliad becomes a stroker...]

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Maybe. I couldn't tell you what other writers' motives were or how other readers interpret it.

In some stories though, this is the moment the straight woman suddenly realises how different it would be to be in a relationship with a woman than a man: no expectation on her to do all the housework!

Well, I've only ever been in relationships with men and I've never done all the housework. : P

 

[Statius]

I feel ya. People often talk in general about these things rather than giving concrete examples. And all of that would be fine, especially considering that some of the examples could be thousands of words long, if we had some consensus about the meaning of the concepts we use. But we don't.

30k words of a purely stroke story certainly sounds strange to me. You need some kind of plot to connect those scenes in a meaningful way.

I believe this is once again a problem of proper gradation. We treat stroker vs story-driven as binaries. They are either one or the other thing. But it's clearly a spectrum. A 30k-word story can be focused on sex, but it has to have some elements of character development and plot.

It's a sliding scale of a sort, and our story can be strongly focused on sex, which moves it towards the red end of the spectrum, or strongly focused on plot and characters, which would move it more towards the green end of the spectrum.


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There is story, character dev. The MC, Miss Vickie, goes thru some personal things when she realizes her daughter (again, college graduate, just to be clear) is organizing a group session in her house. Along with her attraction to a much younger man (one of the four or five friends of the daughter). There is story. Personal introspection. I just kept it light and didn't delve too deep. And most of the incidences revolve around sex. Also there is the relationship between mother and daughter. Not realistic, but there is one. Again, it's porn, a stroker, reality goes out the window. But it's fun.

 

[CalBishForNow]

I'd like somebody to give me an example of what they consider a very good "stroker." Sometimes I feel like we're having a conversation about the White Whale, or Bigfoot. Everybody's sure that it exists, and they talk about it as though they know exactly what its properties are, but nobody ever gives evidence of a single example.

"Good" and "stroker" are subjective, as we've already seen, and anything "very good" is by nature rare. But here are some examples from my Favorites list.

1. Three Days of Watching my Wife Fuck, one of the rare LW stories with a "Hot" label
2. Veronica's Valentine, in Erotic Couplings, is MFF from the point of view of the unicorn who has an until-now-unrequited crush on the other woman
3. Accidental Gangbang, Group Sex

They're all short and standalone, or close enough. (#1 is 17K words, but has action on the first page; the other two are under 6K. Accidental Gangbang had sequels but they aren't necessary to enjoy it. I could cite some works in series as strokers, but either each individual part is a stroker or the series as a whole is short and simple enough to qualify.) The plot is about the sex and some of them also have gratuitous sex not really needed for/relevant to the plot, like #3 above. The characters' emotional journey(s) is mostly if not entirely limited to "sex is fun and we/I should have more of it."

And for a story that mostly fits that description but I wouldn't call it a stroker, I'll mention Open Door Policy. It still definitely has multiple hot sex scenes, but it's in the Romance category and the main plot and emotional journey is focused on (spoiler, if anyone cares) how the happily ever after is unique and how they get there.

 

[SimonDoom]

I feel ya. People often talk in general about these things rather than giving concrete examples. And all of that would be fine, especially considering that some of the examples could be thousands of words long, if we had some consensus about the meaning of the concepts we use. But we don't.

30k words of a purely stroke story certainly sounds strange to me. You need some kind of plot to connect those scenes in a meaningful way.

I believe this is once again a problem of proper gradation. We treat stroker vs story-driven as binaries. They are either one or the other thing. But it's clearly a spectrum. A 30k-word story can be focused on sex, but it has to have some elements of character development and plot.

It's a sliding scale of a sort, and our story can be strongly focused on sex, which moves it towards the red end of the spectrum, or strongly focused on plot and characters, which would move it more towards the green end of the spectrum.


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We all have our different ways of thinking about this, and none of us are right or wrong. It's just a matter of opinion.

This is the way I think about it. I think an erotic story is a story ABOUT sex, broadly defined, rather than a story that has sex in it. It is a story that focuses on an erotic experience or encounter involving one or more people. An erotic experience is by nature something that turns people on. So ALL erotic stories, by my definition, are, or can be, strokers.

Even if a story is only 2000 words and is intended to get the reader off quickly and not do much else, it's probably going to do a better job of that if the prose is good, the characters have some interest, and there's a little plot. Those things, done well, make a story more erotic. I can say this for myself, at least, as a reader.

So, to me, the elements of good story writing are universal for all stories of all types and all lengths. Within whatever word constraints you have, draw your characters the best you can, give them a bit of life and dimension, have a little plot, gussy up your prose to the best of your ability, and make it a good story in addition to having a hot sex scene. These things make the hot sex hotter.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

We all have our different ways of thinking about this, and none of us are right or wrong. It's just a matter of opinion.

This is the way I think about it. I think an erotic story is a story ABOUT sex, broadly defined, rather than a story that has sex in it. It is a story that focuses on an erotic experience or encounter involving one or more people. An erotic experience is by nature something that turns people on. So ALL erotic stories, by my definition, are, or can be, strokers.

Even if a story is only 2000 words and is intended to get the reader off quickly and not do much else, it's probably going to do a better job of that if the prose is good, the characters have some interest, and there's a little plot. Those things, done well, make a story more erotic. I can say this for myself, at least, as a reader.

So, to me, the elements of good story writing are universal for all stories of all types and all lengths. Within whatever word constraints you have, draw your characters the best you can, give them a bit of life and dimension, have a little plot, gussy up your prose to the best of your ability, and make it a good story in addition to having a hot sex scene. These things make the hot sex hotter.

You're looking at this only from your personal perspective, IMO.

These things make the hot sex hotter.

Don't assume this is universal. It's certainly true for me, but I also know for a fact that there are readers for whom this isn't true. There are plenty of popular stories out there, usually shorter, where characters are just some Alice and some Bob, doing it in some juicy way. That's a very unfulfilling kind of story for me, but not for everyone.

That's why I wanted to define the stroker vs story concept as a sliding scale, where the amount of focus on one or the other thing determines where on the scale the story ends up being. It has nothing to do with how well one writes the sex, the characterization, or the plot. Badly written stories are also somewhere on the spectrum.

 

[SimonDoom]

You're looking at this only from your personal perspective, IMO.

These things make the hot sex hotter.

Don't assume this is universal. It's certainly true for me, but I also know for a fact that there are readers for whom this isn't true. There are plenty of popular stories out there, usually shorter, where characters are just some Alice and some Bob, doing it in some juicy way. That's a very unfulfilling kind of story for me, but not for everyone.

That's why I wanted to define the stroker vs story concept as a sliding scale, where the amount of focus on one or the other thing determines where on the scale the story ends up being. It has nothing to do with how well one writes the sex, the characterization, or the plot. Badly written stories are also somewhere on the spectrum.

You're absolutely right that it's just my perspective. Others may look at things totally differently.

But the inability of those expressing a different view to come up with concrete examples of stories that illustrate their theories makes me wonder.

I personally don't believe that one has to make a choice, which is what your sliding scales suggest. A story can be focused on sex AND have a good plot. There's no tradeoff that must be made. In an ideal erotic story, the sex and the plot are integrated. They aren't different things.

Again, just my view. But it's interesting to me that people keep asserting this idea of a tradeoff without giving any examples.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

You're absolutely right that it's just my perspective. Others may look at things totally differently.

But the inability of those expressing a different view to come up with concrete examples of stories that illustrate their theories makes me wonder.

I personally don't believe that one has to make a choice, which is what your sliding scales suggest. A story can be focused on sex AND have a good plot. There's no tradeoff that must be made. In an ideal erotic story, the sex and the plot are integrated. They aren't different things.

Again, just my view. But it's interesting to me that people keep asserting this idea of a tradeoff without giving any examples.

I understand your point, and I agree. My sliding scale wasn't supposed to suggest a trade-off. It was there just to determine the percentages of the focus.
Another way, something more to your liking, would be to use a graph such as this one.

 

[SimonDoom]

I understand your point, and I agree. My sliding scale wasn't supposed to suggest a trade-off. It was there just to determine the percentages of the focus.
Another way, something more to your liking, would be to use a graph such as this one.

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One of the enjoyable things about this forum is learning about all the different ways different authors approach the subject of writing erotica. I can't dispute your perspective. It's not mine, exactly, but it's not wrong.

 

[AG31]

I'd like somebody to give me an example of what they consider a very good "stroker." Sometimes I feel like we're having a conversation about the White Whale, or Bigfoot. Everybody's sure that it exists, and they talk about it as though they know exactly what its properties are, but nobody ever gives evidence of a single example.

Interesting challenge, although a little off topic here. I'd love to answer this, but I find that the candidates in my head are either all about sex, but not targeting masturbation as an end result, or specifically push my own erotic buttons and are not necessarily well written. Am I correct that masturbation (or RL sex) is the targeted end result of a "stroker?"

 

[AG31]

For example, if one of the lesbians is a professor, a line like this can show what her job is like without writing much.

Character A: “Have you marked the essays yet? How many As did you give this time?”

Character B: “You know how college students are—most of them put in zero effort. But there’s one girl who wrote a really good essay. I’m thinking of giving her an A.”

As a fan of what I like to call "simple erotica" ("stroker" sounds pretty male oriented), I find even this much background a distraction, to the point of being annoying. It's an excellent approach to a story where you really do want to find out all about the MCs, but not for a story where you want to exclusively find out about the sex.

 

[AG31]

I have several strokers. There is story in all of them and one is quite long, 'Miss Vickie'. I keep the mundane as you say, kinda humorous, although there is some internal conflict I did not dwell on it, just in passing, and usually the dialogue turns from mundane to innuendo if not just about sex. Keep the mood light and make sure the characters do and say things that lead to intense, long sex scenes.

To echo @SimonDoom's question, why do you call Miss Vickie a stroker? Is it because it aims to evoke arousal?

 

[AG31]

I set out to write what I thought was a "stroker", with minimal story and plot, straight into the sex. Being me, it ended being a typical EB slow burn story, with a café scene, a bunch of intimacy and emotion, and a character who impressed even the infamous Stacnash.

Having written it, I have no idea whether it's stroker or not. I don't care - it ended up with one of my favourite characters, ever.

Garter Belts and Cigarettes

Early on in my visits to the forums, I observed that you made me stand on my head trying to define "simple erotica," because for you the person-hood of the other is part of what makes them erotically attractive.

 

[SmilingLez]

I think that this woman is more mandatory than the cleaning up. That's the lesbian fantasy, right? All the hot straight women are actually dykes but they just don't know it yet. Or at the very least she'll turn lesbian just for you and no one else.

Definitely a male gaze lesbian fantasy