The suspension of disbelief paradox in erotic fiction

[EarlyMorningLight]

So I'm just using normal phrasing like "his dick seemed about average, not that I'd ever chased a guy down with a tape measure or anything..."

“Average” could be a mood-killer. If a character is in the heat of the moment with someone they find attractive, and is ready to have sex, it might be worth thinking up something a bit more flattering, unless you’re going for a more detached or comedic tone.

 

[lovecraft68]

I think this is very true. I was married for a long time to a woman with an A-cup. It didn't matter to me and I didn't care. Boobs are great, whatever size. Got divorced. Started dating someone. Somehow the subject of her cup size came up, and I guessed "B." I mean, I didn't know, but her expression told me, Oh fuck did I say the wrong thing. She was a C cup.

Unless navigated adroitly, this subject falls into the category of "Never ask a woman if she's pregnant unless you can see the baby coming out."

Yup ad cup size to pregnant, age and weight....then again if you don't know enough not to talk about weight you might deserve what you get.

My wife-thanks in part to treatments when she had cancer-started getting some grays and began coloring her hair, well of course with lockdowns she couldn't run out and get it done and hated doing it herself because she has very long hair. Anyway at one point her mom who was a hairdresser for years came down from Boston to do it for her, my wife told me her mom says "You should have had me come down sooner, your grays are really showing, doesn't your husband say anything?"

My wife's response was "No, my husband wants to live"

 

[jsmiam]

Language is a tough thing. Disclaiming every single statement adds an overly formal and academic tone that I agree, is tedious and boring. Too serious. This isn’t a dissertation committee.

When I said roughly speaking that most attempts at sex (here in the mostly erotica stories here) end up with a suspension of disbelief deservingly high success rate, I suppose I should have disclaimed it more, and used less dramatic numbers than I did. My goal for the day wasn’t to feel like I needed to prove that most stories at an erotica site contained erotica.

Then there are my jokes. I definitely know more of them fall flat than draw a chuckle. I’m a cornball and I’m darned good at it. So nope, never been maced, ever.

Taking it too seriously is as much pointing out relatively low numbers of exceptions as it is filling a post with all the requisite disclaimers.

So, not 100 percent of stories contain erotica and not every attempt in these stories at sex is successful. I’ll stand by saying the vast majority are yes to both though. Aka suspension of disbelief is needed at least in that respect.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Going by this forum those who can bitch a lot too.

Hey, I resemble that remark.

 

[EarlyMorningLight]

Language is a tough thing. Disclaiming every single statement adds an overly formal and academic tone that I agree, is tedious and boring. Too serious. This isn’t a dissertation committee.

When I said roughly speaking that most attempts at sex (here in the mostly erotica stories here) end up with a suspension of disbelief deservingly high success rate, I suppose I should have disclaimed it more, and used less dramatic numbers than I did. My goal for the day wasn’t to feel like I needed to prove that most stories at an erotica site contained erotica.

Then there are my jokes. I definitely know more of them fall flat than draw a chuckle. I’m a cornball and I’m darned good at it. So nope, never been maced, ever.

Taking it too seriously is as much pointing out relatively low numbers of exceptions as it is filling a post with all the requisite disclaimers.

So, not 100 percent of stories contain erotica and not every attempt in these stories at sex is successful. I’ll stand by saying the vast majority are yes to both though. Aka suspension of disbelief is needed at least in that respect.

I think that what jumps out at me the most is the vast spectrum in both writers and readers on what constitutes an acceptable effort to get from point A to point B. Some are fine with porn-level flimsy setups to give the barest context to the action, some are happy to go along with a fair amount of implausibility because they’re actively engaging with the notion of writing and reading erotic fantasies, and so on until you get to the pointy end where people can’t get into it without a significant degree of verisimilitude. When the conversation here has been on track it’s been interesting to see perspectives from different points on the spectrum.

 

[Bramblethorn]

You are correct of course, but I will still play my “roughly speaking” card.

I’m willing to say 95 percent of all stories, 90 percent minimum have erotic content. The majority involving the main character or someone successfully getting what they hoped for. Those are good odds!

I did this. N=20, I searched using google for: “the” site:Literotica.com/s

I clicked on exactly the first 20 stories (thereby n=20), and read until a sex scene happened. 20 out of 20 had sex scenes. I’ll defer to the large PhD community here for the perfect sample size, but 20 isn’t bad.

PhD contingent chiming in: worry less about your sample size and more about your selection method.

I think your 90-95% estimate is probably plausible, but this experiment is unsound. It's not going to give you a representative sample, and if the sampling method's not representative, you could sample a thousand stories and still come to completely wrong conclusions.

When you do a search like this on Google, they don't just return a random ordering of all the pages that fit the search criteria. They try to estimate which results will be most relevant to you, taking hundreds of factors into account, and put those first.

The exact methods aren't published, but they're likely to include metrics like "how many other pages link to this?" and "how often do people who use Google search decide to click on this particular page?"

The "how many other pages link to this?" favours popular stories, because they get linked via places like the Hall of Fame and the Similar Stories recommendations. It also favours long stories, because every single page of that story links back to Page 1. (When I tried that search, the first story it hit was a 47-page epic!) Long stories are more likely to contain sex scenes because there's more happening in them.

The "how often do people click on this particular page?" is also going to be influenced by reader content preferences.

If Google's engineers are any good at their job, you would expect the top 20 search results to skew towards popular stories. From eyeballing the ratings of the top 10 results, that seems to be true - several were rated over 4.8, with seven in the "H" zone. Assuming some correlation between popularity and sex content, the top 20 are likely to skew towards those with sex scenes in them.

Even if this site was 90% no-sex stories, if people who use Google like the ones with sexual content, you would likely find that all of the top 20 search results from this method have sex scenes. It's not a viable way to estimate.

 

[MsNatalie99]

I have to ask at this point, what exactly are you hoping to get out of this forum?

A boner from thinking he posseses the wit to ruin our day. A teeny tiny hate-boner. Uh oh, have I become one of the Smut-Gestapo.

 

[Bramblethorn]

TBH for me both your examples suck. Let me tell you this, few men know a woman's cup size. They tell you they do, but they don't because there's a lot of variables, same for the number measurement 32 C looks different than 36 C because body type can alter size perception....but having said that, I can-unlike most guys-admit I'd be wrong more than right.

No one thinks "Look at those. bet they're C's! I know your second examplbe was meant to be inferior but in case someone thinks you mean it as an actual option, no one talks like that.

I agree with this, but I also think cup size in porn has turned into something that's almost independent of RL bra fitting. Dudes who have no ability to estimate a real woman's cup size have evolved a shared understanding of what these letters mean in Porn Fiction Land.

It's kinda like this time I was at a party with two beginner Chinese students and one native speaker, all trying to talk together. The beginners were pretty crap, so the native speaker couldn't understand what they were saying. But the beginners were both talking the same kind of bad Chinese so they could understand one another.

So you end up with one guy writing and another guy reading, and neither of them have the faintest idea what a double-D looks like in real life. But when the writer describes somebody as having "double-D breasts" the reader understands he means something like "generously endowed, but not extreme porn-star levels".

It's still not my taste, I much prefer the kind of approach you suggested. But for people who like the alphabet descriptions, it doesn't matter that they don't know what those things mean IRL.

Yesterday though I read one that had a character who was "A-cup, flat as a board" but also "buxom". Still trying to figure that one out.

 

[LdyHoneybee]

There is no such rule. Everybody here is completely at liberty to choose who they do and don't take seriously.

In all humility, i put on my profile that “my first question will be ‘do you write?’” In hopes it might protect me from “chat” encounters like the first one I had: some person asking if I wanted to watch them get off on video. Then a few days later the person sent me a video (which i did not open because it was an unknown link) and told me that is what it was. I will talk to anybody, and I have had a couple of interesting conversations. I do not think I am better than anyone else. And i guess considering the site it might be expected. But um…..it was easier than being literally bombarded with all kinds of stuff on chat…

 

[RetroFan]

I’ll try to catch up on the overal thread, somehow.

As far as the original question, given that this is an erotica site with mostly erotic stories: the (roughly speaking) 100 percent ultimate success rate of seeking out: (sex; intimacy; romance; tentacles; fur; handcuffs; spankings; spanked; whatever), isn’t even close to realistic to begin with, so there’s always some suspension.

And there’s nothing wrong with that! This is fiction. An escape. A daydream. If we think too much, we spoil some of the fun

I agree with some of this, there is a danger of authors over-thinking things and taking a bit of fun out of their stories in the process.

However, I maintain that there must be a realism in human action and reaction in the way characters behave towards each other and in certain situations to engage readers. This applies in stories that could happen in the real world, and those that could not and which involve concepts like life after death, aliens, ghosts, monsters, time travel, body swaps and magic.

For example, one of my Halloween stories published a few years ago is called 'The Pervert Ghost'. Its central character and narrator is an 18-year-old male student who after returning from a shift from his job one stormy night is struck by lightning and killed instantly, becoming a ghost for the rest of the story. The main plot is that the ghost uses his invisibility to go undetected into private places and spy on women and girls in their most private and intimate moments.

So does the boy after being fatally struck by lightning immediately think, "Oh good, now I'm dead and because I'm invisible and can walk through walls I can spy on pretty girls without the danger of being caught?" Of course not, even though the story is Grade A wish fulfilment for voyeurs, I make his initial reactions in the early part of the story realistic. At first he is horrified by the fact that he is dead at such a young age, distressed to see how upset his family and friends are and in denial about his own passing, believing it to be dream until it becomes obvious it is not. Then he roams around the streets of Adelaide, South Australia where the story is set, going to shopping centres, movies, plays, nightclubs and tourist attractions, running long distances now that he has no limits on endurance, becoming bored and watching soap operas with old people at a nursing home, and pondering how long he will stay a ghost before crossing over, whether he will meet loved ones who already passed on and attempting without success to meet other ghosts. It's only after several months of being a ghost that he sees two attractive women going into a female change-room to try on clothes that he realizes what he can do, and follows them in there. He then up-skirts a girl who is celebrating her 18th birthday, the next day he goes to a university and spies on a girls' field hockey team in their change rooms, and from there the voyeurism really steps up.

Had I had the young man immediately begin engaging in voyeurism, it would have lost most readers, even voyeurs whose ultimate wish would be to be an invisible ghost that cannot be seen, heard or sensed, and who can go wherever and do whatever they want with no threat of detection or consequences for their actions.

 

[ElectricBlue]

A boner from thinking he posseses the wit to ruin our day. A teeny tiny hate-boner. Uh oh, have I become one of the Smut-Gestapo.

Long black leather boots, though.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Dudes who have no ability to estimate a real woman's cup size have evolved a shared understanding of what these letters mean in Porn Fiction Land.


... when the writer describes somebody as having "double-D breasts" the reader understands he means something like "generously endowed, but not extreme porn-star levels".

I read one that had a character who was "A-cup, flat as a board" but also "buxom". Still trying to figure that one out.

Agree - Brits have an ingrained cultural memory that Page Three Girls (late teens with perky big tits topless in The Sun 'newspaper') were always described as DD even when they werent.

I've got a draft where a guy muses that "until my wife got pregnant, I'd had no idea bras even could come in JJ cup sizes."

A lady of my acquaintance had L-cups, which were each about the size of her head and I needed two hands to move them. You really can have too much of a good thing. I could write such breasts erotically but cup size wouldn't get a look-in!

I suspect the 'buxom flat-chest' is simply the author forgetting how he described a character and not checking.

 

[gunhilltrain]

A boner from thinking he posseses the wit to ruin our day. A teeny tiny hate-boner. Uh oh, have I become one of the Smut-Gestapo.

The Smut-Gestapo confront some wayward Lit writers.

https://ipn.gov.pl/dokumenty/zalaczniki/2/2-21312_g.jpg

But yes, as someone said, whoever mentions Nazis first in an argument, loses. He (TheRedChamber?) was the first one to do that, if I remember correctly, or was it someone else?

 

[EarlyMorningLight]

The Smut-Gestapo confront some wayward Lit writers.

https://ipn.gov.pl/dokumenty/zalaczniki/2/2-21312_g.jpg

But yes, as someone said, whoever mentions Nazis first in an argument, loses. He (TheRedChamber?) was the first one to do that, if I remember correctly, or was it someone else?

Godwin’s Law

 

[Bramblethorn]

Godwin’s Law

FWIW, Godwin's Law is just an observation that in a sufficiently long Internet discussion, somebody will inevitably make a comparison to Nazis or Hitler. The "and that person automatically loses the debate" version isn't something promoted by the original (Mike) Godwin; he was trying to discourage glib/hyperbolic Nazi comparisons, but he's made it clear on several occasions that he has no issue with making those comparisons when they're actually reasonable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

 

[MelissaBaby]

he was trying to discourage glib/hyperbolic Nazi comparisons, but he's made it clear on several occasions that he has no issue with making those comparisons when they're actually reasonable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

"Somebody disagreed with me on a message board" probably wouldn't have made the cut.

 

[MsNatalie99]

The Smut-Gestapo confront some wayward Lit writers.

https://ipn.gov.pl/dokumenty/zalaczniki/2/2-21312_g.jpg

But yes, as someone said, whoever mentions Nazis first in an argument, loses. He (TheRedChamber?) was the first one to do that, if I remember correctly, or was it someone else?

I will say, I hate when people make such comparisons. I hate to find out I'm wrong on a subject. It's embarassing, but countering my arguements with facts and logic hardly compares to the attrocities of the holocaust. Shame on anyone who'd place a bruise to their selfish ego at the same cost of 6-11 million lives.

 

[lovecraft68]

The Smut-Gestapo confront some wayward Lit writers.

https://ipn.gov.pl/dokumenty/zalaczniki/2/2-21312_g.jpg

But yes, as someone said, whoever mentions Nazis first in an argument, loses. He (TheRedChamber?) was the first one to do that, if I remember correctly, or was it someone else?

I don't know about mentioning them first, but took I took Biscuit to task for throwing the word around constantly and accusing everyone of being one, when most uneducated idiots in today's society don't even know what they really were and what they did because if they did, they would know that short of a extremely low percentage of ignorant morons there are no real Nazis.

Using that word is a dangerous diminishing of what those things really were. Like the word racism, a political faction of self righteous hypocritical morons have turned a serious thing into a joke that people are so tired of hearing they're turning a deaf ear to it and that is what opens the door for those things to rise again. Political chicken little.

Don't let Biscuit see you posted that and are joking because he'll write you into his next story cuz he 'smashes' Nazi's and incels in all his stories because he's such a difference making hero.

Know what is real in this society? Women's rights under attack and rape and domestic abuse still treated like a fucking joke. Where's everyone's fake fucking outrage over that? Oh, wait, women aren't a trendy enough cause for the woke...oh, what they say they care about women and gay rights? They do, then suck the ass of Islam where rape isn't a crime and they kill gays...gotta watch for those Nazi's though.

Either actually support a cause in a way other than fake hysteria or get the hell out of the fight because those who will fight don't need to keep tripping over the woke's spineless asses.

 

[MsNatalie99]

Using that word is a dangerous diminishing of what those things really were. Like the word racism, a political faction of self righteous hypocritical morons have turned a series thing into a joke that people are so tired of hearing they're turning a deaf ear it and that is what opens the door for those things to rise again. Political chicken little.

I 100% agree with this

 

[lovecraft68]

I 100% agree with this

Shit, that makes you one of them! I mean, isn't that how it works? You should really worry about what those hyenas think.
Or not, you give me hope for the next generation of people who aren't afraid to think for yourself rather than suck down narrative.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

Sounds like a good story challenge for you!

Cougar hunting kittens, sounds like...

 

[firmbutgentle]

So, I’ve got my first story pending (although I’ve written a lot of smut in the past, just not here). Thankfully, two of my beta readers called me out on a section where I glossed over the moment where my characters went from potential lovers to actually starting to go through with it.

This has always been the hardest moment for me in writing smut. The writer and the reader both know that sex is a forgone conclusion. But I want to get there in a way that’s believable, that doesn’t pull the reader out of the moment and make them question the characters coming together.

How do you make a certain outcome feel natural? How do you judge veracity at key moments where people could make a whole range of decisions other than the one that leads them to the outcome that both the writer and the reader desire? What’s the margin of error for suspension of disbelief?

These questions fascinate and frustrate me. More than the buildup, more than the sex itself, I think that moment between the two is the defining factor for a good erotic story.

I write BDSM and this to me is indeed the complicated part. Stories where people are scared of doing something in the first paragraph, and doing it with abandon in the fourth, are not erotic. For me the most exciting part is how that person gets there, what is happening as they submit, why they surrender in a way they didn't think they would or could.

 

[CurvySassyAJ]

I write BDSM and this to me is indeed the complicated part. Stories where people are scared of doing something in the first paragraph, and doing it with abandon in the fourth, are not erotic. For me the most exciting part is how that person gets there, what is happening as they submit, why they surrender in a way they didn't think they would or could.

There is where I feel I struggle. I am working on a story now that I hope I am doing a better job on getting from the relutanct part to the part where my main character let's herself give in to her desires. All while trying to keep it somewhat believable and enjoyable.

 

[bestkeptsecret678]

I'd submit that the "point in time" between the build up and the sex isn't a point in time at all. Its not like there's a flash of light then suddently everyone wants to fornicate. If we think of real life hookups, we were thinking about touching the other party before we did, or thinking about fucking someone before we did the act. The buildup, properly staged, allows the sex to happen whenever it happens. They were thinking it, or talking about it; and then they were doing it. Enough of the former, and you can initiate the latter whenever, and however you as the author decide. Readers understand this I feel.

Now, how much buildup is enough? that's a different question, perhaps a different one from what the original post was about.

 

[SimonDoom]

I don't know about mentioning them first, but took I took Biscuit to task for throwing the word around constantly and accusing everyone of being one, when most uneducated idiots in today's society don't even know what they really were and what they did because if they did, they would know that short of a extremely low percentage of ignorant morons there are no real Nazis.

Using that word is a dangerous diminishing of what those things really were. Like the word racism, a political faction of self righteous hypocritical morons have turned a serious thing into a joke that people are so tired of hearing they're turning a deaf ear to it and that is what opens the door for those things to rise again. Political chicken little.

Don't let Biscuit see you posted that and are joking because he'll write you into his next story cuz he 'smashes' Nazi's and incels in all his stories because he's such a difference making hero.

Know what is real in this society? Women's rights under attack and rape and domestic abuse still treated like a fucking joke. Where's everyone's fake fucking outrage over that? Oh, wait, women aren't a trendy enough cause for the woke...oh, what they say they care about women and gay rights? They do, then suck the ass of Islam where rape isn't a crime and they kill gays...gotta watch for those Nazi's though.

Either actually support a cause in a way other than fake hysteria or get the hell out of the fight because those who will fight don't need to keep tripping over the woke's spineless asses.

I agree to some extent but I think it depends on context. For instance, when some people use the term "Grammar Nazi," I think most people understand what that means and they don't think such persons are really Nazies. It's just a hyperbolic metaphor to get a certain point across. Where it becomes obnoxious is when it's used in a more obviously political context and its usage demonstrates a lack of perspective, such as when people on the left refer to everyone on the right as a "fascist" and people on the right refer to everyone on the left as a "communist." That sort of usage debases political discussion and shows a lack of awareness of just how bad extreme political ideologies have been.