What Is Erotica?

[NikkiBastion]

This is one I would absolutely love to hear all of your thoughts on...you write erotic fiction/erotica...you tell your mother, spouse, coworkers and old school friends what you do (or do you? You're not chicken, are you?) and after this part happens:



You end up having to define and clarify. What do you say?

Bonus question: How do you find yourself defining the difference between Romance, Erotica, and Porn?

Off the cuff, I'd probably go about it this way:

Lifetime Movies for Women or the Hallmark channel is Romance.
Pay Per View is Porn.
And Cinemax After Dark is Erotica.

Yes, no, maybe?

 

[Dual_Triode]

Romance = erotica - porn
Erotica = romance + porn
Porn = erotica - romance



In all seriousness, your analogy works very well. I think of erotica as a good story with a sexual theme.

 

[amofiga]

Romance = erotica - porn
Erotica = romance + porn
Porn = erotica - romance



In all seriousness, your analogy works very well. I think of erotica as a good story with a sexual theme.

Dual.....good way to express the difference.

In my way of thinking:

1) Romance is heavy on emotion with very little graphic explicit sex. Sex is mostly "alluded to" and "hinted at" rather than laid out in detail.

2) Porn is all blatant "dirty" sex with little or no feelings. It tends to be mostly mechanical.

3) Erotica is graphic blatant sex coupled with emotional feelings. It does not however have to be highly romantic and weighed down with deep, never ending love.

I've sometimes tried to explain to people (using a venn diagrams if you know that they are) that there are three primary aspects to an intimate relationship: friendship, love, sex. It's possible to have each singly without any other. It's posible to have any two in combination wtihout the third. It's possible to have all three together.

And "no", I do not tell many of my friends, family, etc that I write or read erotica or porn. A few who are on the same "wavelength" with me do know and we've compared notes. Unfortunately, many of the others are rather straightlaced and conservative. Some have even expressed the "desirability" of censoring movies and TV broadcasts to "save our children". They even advocate banning such material from public sale. Go figure, and I share a genetic linkage with these people.

 

[oggbashan]

My view is that erotica and porn are defined by the reader/viewer.

What one person considers as erotica will be another person's porn.

For some, any portrayal of sex outside marriage, or sex within marriage which is not for the purpose of producing children, or any portrayal of sexual activity at all, is porn.

For others, even the most graphic, sick-making, abusive, description or video of bizarre sexual encounters is erotica and for them there is no such thing as porn.

Or there is the producer's viewpoint: Was the intention to show erotica to tittilate or amuse, or to appeal only to the base instincts and just arouse, in which case it is porn. However, whatever was the producer's intention, the result will be seen as erotica or porn according the the reader/viewer's choice.

As an aside: I have written erotic stories with no overt sex yet some consider them erotic because the sex is implied. Others think they are romance because the sex is not obvious. Again it is the reader's opinion that decides which category the story fits.

 

[mynameisben]

Romance is leaving unexpected notes that say I love you, wine sipped by candlelight in a shared bath, cuddling long into the night before a roaring hearth fire in a rented cabin in the woods.

Erotica is a trail of kisses that starts at the ear, tickles the neck, lingers at the breasts and tantalizes the nipples, then slowly -- oh, so slowly -- nibbles and licks its way across back-arching, goose pimpled flesh and into the dampened heat of trembling womanly desire.

Porn is calisthenics with lube.

 

[Spacefender]

you write erotic fiction/erotica...you tell your mother, spouse, coworkers and old school friends what you do

Hell no I don't tell people I know in meat-space about the crap I write on the internet. I can't think of a single possible benefit of doing so.

I don't really consider myself a writer of erotica. More like a writer of vulgar stories that happen to contain weird fetishy sex which only 3 people on the planet could possibly enjoy. So basically, I write stories and sometimes porn happens.

To me erotica is those crappy romance novels you see at places like Wal Mart where the cover is always some lady in a low cut dress that shows of her big bosoms swooning in the arms of a bare-chested beef cake-y dude.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

All the dictionaries I've seen define pornography and erotica as synonymous,and this is something we have to change.

Pornography is writing whose primary purpose is to sexually titillate and excite the reader. It does this by focusing on graphic descriptions of physical sex. It doesn't care about much else.

Erotica is the literature of sexuality. It can contain graphic descriptions of sex, but overall it's more concerned with the mental and emotional aspects and effects.

Romance (in the modern sense) refers to stories about dramatic and conflicted love. They might have erotic or pornographic parts, but the overall theme is romantic love.

These aren't hard, scientific definitions, and I don't want to get into any arguments over whether some book is porn or erotica or romance. But they're useful words and they draw distinctions that are helpful in discussing and analyzing these kinds of lit.

When people ask me what I write, I lie and tell them "romance." If they're really interested and can be trusted, then I'll go into the details. If not, then I'll just make up some bullshit about pirate stories.

 

[sr71plt]

I just think of erotica as literature focusing on the emotional aspect of sexual encounter.

 

[Cruel2BKind]

The funny thing, I think the only strait-up porn that I write is my straight stories. My gay characters have very little meaningless sex. Every sex act has a meaning and a purpose, wether romantic, or tragic.

I just don't give a shit about my female characters, so I let them get raped by demons and sold into slavery respectively.

My 'real' stories are all romances. I consider a romance to be something between two or more people that can last forever. Real love. And within that, I can put erotica.

Porn are the stories I read about encounters that have no lasting love or effect.

I love writing love stories, and here I can put hardcore sex into them. Everybody wins.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Romance = erotica - porn
Erotica = romance + porn
Porn = erotica - romance



In all seriousness, your analogy works very well. I think of erotica as a good story with a sexual theme.

I like this.

 

[sr71plt]

I'm plunking away at trying to establish a new category: literary porn. (because "literary" and "showing emotions in writing" aren't necessarily linked).

 

[Stella_Omega]

I'm plunking away at trying to establish a new category: literary porn. (because "literary" and "showing emotions in writing" aren't necessarily linked).

meaning you're going to invoke emotions during the sex scenes in a literary work?

You know, I'm trying to think of anything I've read that does that. But I gave up on capital-L Literature about ten years ago, only read it by accident nowadays...

 

[sr71plt]

meaning you're going to invoke emotions during the sex scenes in a literary work?

You know, I'm trying to think of anything I've read that does that. But I gave up on capital-L Literature about ten years ago, only read it by accident nowadays...

No, meaning that there are no convoluted emotions (or few. I do include them to a certain extent to help sustain tension), but the work attempts to be literary, not just "wham/bang/thanks." That is it gives space to setting place and mood and has a plot--usually a complex one--and believably motivated characters.

Quite a few of my works have male prostitute protagonists and other characters or satyriasis protagonists. I dispense with all (or most of) that guilt and anguish. They want it and enjoy getting it. And although the sex is graphic, it isn't essential to the story hooks.

The protagonist of my Clint Folsom detective series (taking notes, Lance? ) was raised in Hollywood in the hedonist world of convenient-marriage movie star parents. His mother turned from men to women when she went off her husband, and her husband likes men--lots of them. Those men also desire the son. So, the first book of the series--a flashback book--takes care of all of the angst the son feels (not much; he accepts his parents' values in that) in being initiated--and then in finding he can't get enough of it. The book is also a complex-plot murder mystery, though.

After that book--which also exhibts how the son turns to becoming a homicide detective, the rest of the books are about a homicide detective who is very good at his job--and is used in situations where his proclivities are useful--but who has that one serious character trait. He wants lots of it and he likes it rough. And he takes what he wants without guilt (well, there is a thread of tension-providing guilt running through the series--he's trying to commit to a partner, but it just isn't happening for various reasons with various partners) and certainly without "oh woe is me" prelude.

But the books are also detective mysteries that would fly in the mainstream (I know, because I write those too) if the frankly porn aspects were excised.

I got into writing sex to begin with because I was writing a mainstream detective novel and suddenly, whoa, I was into graphic male-male sex. And I didn't want to stop. So I didn't. I excised what I had written and made that into a short story. But then I thought, what the hell, I want to write the novels in a way that I don't have to stop or let up at the bedroom door. (I still write the mainstream works too, though. They just aren't as much fun.)

 

[estragon]

I answered the original question posed on this thread last April, when I started a thread entitled "It Isn't 'Porn'".

 

[mynameisben]

I like this.

I like it too. There's something quite elegant about reducing romance, erotica, and pornography to a system of linear algebraic equations. The next time I go to bed with a mathematician, I'm going to give her these very equations, in matrix form, while she's riding me like an unbroken bronc. I dig on chicks who can compute eigenvalues in their head, between shudders, as one orgasm spills into the next.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I like it too. There's something quite elegant about reducing romance, erotica, and pornography to a system of linear algebraic equations. The next time I go to bed with a mathematician, I'm going to give her these very equations, in matrix form, while she's riding me like an unbroken bronc. I dig on chicks who can compute eigenvalues in their head, between shudders, as one orgasm spills into the next.

OH yeah. *fans self* Any of them bi? Would you introduce me?

 

[mynameisben]

OH yeah. *fans self* Any of them bi? Would you introduce me?

They're all bi. I'll put in a word for you.

 

[lance gt]

Every story I write, involves the human elements of emotion. Nothing brings it to a reality more. It's not so much what's happening, but how it affects my character and their response to it. A reader will connect more with a character showing emotion, than one that has lots of wild sex.

Pilot, lay off the inferences to me. You're a cheap read and a shameless promoter of crap, so just comment on the issue or question and start your own thread to brag about your stories.

 

[PoppingTom]

To me, erotica is the depiction of sexual promise, while pornography, in ideal case, describes sexual fulfillment.

You may say that erotica describes sexual fulfillment, too. But its main part and its bias is in the promise. Too much of the fulfillment part can turn it into pornography. Erotica plays most with covering and discovering. It covers the promise, the desires and the emotions of its participants .

You may say that the most pornography crap doesn't show any fulfillment. That's true, but who says that every porn has to be crap? What's the difference between good and bad porn? Pornography not only works with naked bodies, it works with naked desires and emotions, too.

Just my 2 cents...

 

[sr71plt]

Pilot, lay off the inferences to me. You're a cheap read and a shameless promoter of crap, so just comment on the issue or question and start your own thread to brag about your stories.

That's just childish swiftboating innuendo, of course. You have no idea how well I write. You're just using that in a childish attack. I'll just look at my royalty receipts when you sink to that level.

(Notice I haven't attacked how you write. I don't have the insecurity that you do. Or the need to attack. And because I think that playing that false card on the forum is sleazy.)

 

[Stella_Omega]

To me, erotica is the depiction of sexual promise, while pornography, in ideal case, describes sexual fulfillment.

By this definition, I can't stand erotica, gimme the porn.

 

[sr71plt]

By this definition, I can't stand erotica, gimme the porn.

Yeah, me too. The unfulfilled tease would be more torture than fun reading.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Yeah, me too. The unfulfilled tease would be more torture than fun reading.

More boring than washing the dishes.

Tom, I think, has hit on a plot trick that can be used in erotica, but it's only one of the many.

I know of a writer who uses unfulfilled longing as a plot point in all of her smut. When it works, the payoff-- ONE! sex scene at the end of 50,000 words! is incredible. But she does offer the payoff, graphically and chockfull of fulfillment. And she keeps the fire stoked too, with graphic fantasies in the minds of the primaries.

On the other hand, when it doesn't work... oh so tedious. Just like any other plot point.

 

[PoppingTom]

By this definition, I can't stand erotica, gimme the porn.

Well, that's what I wanted to hear





(But that question is serious: is there only bad porn, by definition?)

 

[sr71plt]

I want my payoffs earlier and more frequent than at the end of 50,000 words. I wouldn't read that far on a tease.