Age and Experience

[3113]

she is a good example that neither age or real life experience are necessary to write well.

I'm in agreement. My thought is simply that if we did sift through the sex scenes and did find that those with more age tended, on average, to write superior sex scenes, I would guess the quality more a matter--as I believe you said—of having patience. Maturity often makes one a little more willing to take time and get things right rather than rushing to immediate gratification

And, yes, of course this is all supposition as we haven't a graft with a "Y" line measuring all Literotica author ages, an "X" line measuring all Literotica authors' experiences (from virginal to OMG! ) and no agreed upon gauge of what makes for a quality sex scene to help us plot point on that graph and see if age/experience matters. Be interesting if we did.

 

[HeyAll]

An 18 year old virgin can write a sex scene 10X better than an adult who has banged hundreds of beautiful women.

Good writing is good writing.

I was watching Charlie Rose one night, and there was an actor who talked about how a good writer needs to go out and explore life before he can write. (something along those lines). He can an example about how it would be ridiculous for him to write about marriage if he's never been married himself.

I thought that was a crazy comment. A good writer can write about aliens, vampires, action, crime, ect... without having experienced any of it.

 

[StrangeLife]

A good writer can write about aliens, vampires, action, crime, ect... without having experienced any of it.

You might have told me that sooner y'know. I could have saved all those trips to Transylvania, Roswell and Sicily...

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Real Life offers Stranger Than Fiction incidents and experiences you just cant make up.

 

[sr71plt]

An 18 year old virgin can write a sex scene 10X better than an adult who has banged hundreds of beautiful women.

Yes, some eighteen-year-old virgins could write a sex scene better than some older folks who banged men as well as women, beautiful or otherwise. And some can't.

 

[R. Richard]

I would like to point out that, back in my computer programmer days, there was a saying about one year's experience ten times. If you don't learn from it, experience doesn't mean much.

 

[SecondCircle]

I could see that it could be generally accepted that older more mature writers write better. And that a more "experienced" writer could pen many scenarios better.

And usually, that may be the case. But age isn't always synonymous with maturity. And regardless of accurate writing from experience, that doesn't always equate to good writing.

Sometimes though, I think older writers are more abundant than younger writers. But I still think good writing can come from anyone, any individual regardless of age or experience.

And not having experienced a certain sexual encounter doesn't have to mean it can't be written well. No more than someone who's never owned a dog can't write a good "Marley and me" type tale. I'm not sure if Tolkien had ever really been in a sword fight or a massive battle, but he still captivated readers with such scenes.

 

[Hypoxia]

A good writer can write about aliens, vampires, action, crime, ect... without having experienced any of it.

Hopefully, most writers who craft tales about murder and mayhem haven't participated in such.

Writers can set the standards in sub-genres merely by inventing paradigms. No, Isaac Asimov didn't write the *first* robot story, but he invented the concept of robots operating under moral constraints, not just invincible magic machines. Similarly with George Romero; he didn't invent zombies, but he *did* invent the concepts that 1) they wanted to eat brains, and 2) zombi-ism is contagious. Neither Asimov nor Romero had experienced robots nor zombies before they wrote about them. They did OK, right?

As for experience -- no, ten year's experience isn't the same as experiencing the same stuff ten time. Some of us may learn over time how to better piece-together ideas and words; some of us start real good and never improve; and some just never learn shit about anything. Live and learn, or don't. Reminds me of the truism: WE GAIN GOOD JUDGMENT FROM EXPERIENCE; WE GAIN EXPERIENCE BY MAKING BAD JUDGMENTS. If we can't tell the difference, we haven't learned.

I once had a middle-aged friend who relayed his father's summation of my friend's life: THE OLDER HE GETS, THE DUMBER HE GETS. I'm feeling like that now. Have you left your childhood brilliance behind?

 

[SamScribble]

If you subscribe to the idea that it takes 10,000 hours - give or take - to master something, then, yes, experienced writers should be better writers than inexperienced writers. But if you start writing - or at least start working on your craft - when you are 14 or 15, it is not impossible that you could be pretty good by the time you reach your mid 20s.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I was watching Charlie Rose one night, and there was an actor who talked about how a good writer needs to go out and explore life before he can write. (something along those lines). He can an example about how it would be ridiculous for him to write about marriage if he's never been married himself.

I thought that was a crazy comment. A good writer can write about aliens, vampires, action, crime, ect... without having experienced any of it.

Audience knowledge is a factor there. If your readers don't know much about the subject you can get away with more; if I describe a Mafia hitman screwing a silencer onto his .38 revolver, maybe 5% of readers will react with "no, that doesn't work" and the other 95% will overlook the error.

But with subjects like sex and marriage, a LOT of readers will have some experience in what you're writing about. Doesn't mean it's impossible for the writer to make it convincing without that same RL experience, but it certainly ups the difficulty level.

 

[StrangeLife]

The alien vampire from Venus had just robbed a bank and was fleeing the police in an intense car chase through Boulder...

 

[sexnovella]

writing

You need imaginaton, research and experiance to write a good story.