Erotica vs. Non-erotica

[sophism]

I've always loved writing fiction, but I didn't start writing for an audience until I started writing and publishing here (sometime in the past year). Recently my partner has been pushing me more to write non-erotica as I used to in the past and has been really encouraging to pursue my passions

As I've been drafting, I feel like I've become too reliant on using sex as a tool to advance the plot which is something I'd like to get away from. For one, it's not something that's the most friendly to all audiences - I'd love to be able to share my work with people in my life. But also, I feel like it takes skill that I don't have to create conflict and tension than just erotic elements.

My question is, in your experience, what do you think are the most challenging things or biggest differences between any erotica and non-erotica that you write?

 

[SimonDoom]

This resonates with my experience. I don't write or publish non-erotic stories for Literotica. I've been working on a few long-term non-erotic projects that I have yet to publish in any form, but it's challenging because I feel like I've grown too accustomed to writings about orgasms, and for orgasms. I have to shift focus. It's easy to get almost addicted to working on erotic stories.

 

[SamScribble]

Personally, I’m not sure that there is too much difference between erotic and non-erotic writing. In both cases, you’re probably going to be wanting a bit of a story and some characters to whom your readers can relate.

I started writing the occasional piece of erotica at the suggestion of a mainstream publisher. She personally enjoyed (in her own words) ‘something well written that makes me tingle and smile at the same time’.

But much of what is published here on Lit is not (in my opinion) very well written. And it’s not really erotica. It’s porn. Sonny Jim goes for a bumpy car ride with his mother sitting on his lap. His mother can’t resist Sonny Jim’s growing erection. They fuck at the first opportunity, and the readers give the story five stars.

Maybe try writing a story for the non-erotic category here at Lit, where the qualification is ‘fiction without a sexual focus’. And then show it to your favourite aunt.

Good luck.

 

[Endrura]

In erotica, it's all W2W fantasy. There is no expectation of reality.
In dark romance, basic reality has a place, readers will comment and boycott books that go
too far outside of reality, whether it's sex scenes, violence, how humans react or timelines.
Research, beta and sensitivity readers are a lot more important.
The other issue in dark romance is balance. Many want quick burns, others want all sex
scenes to be story driven. You can't please everyone, so cultivate a loyal fan base
based on your own style. They'll be the ones driving your sales.

 

[yowser]

Good comments from others. I think Sam is right that the difference isn't all that great between the two categories, with the recognition that erotic writing has a built-in, automatic tension (or should have, anyway) that is understandable to most adult readers, who can relate to the significance and pull of erotic desire.

Any good piece of fiction, erotic or not, requires people of interest (don't have to like them, but a reader needs to be able to relate to them in some fashion) and some movement from Beginning A to Ending B, however subtle or understated the movement.

With erotica your job is to set up the physics lab with highly charged particles - how they will interact and what sort of forces result become the end-goal. Many go for the Big Bang, which most readers typically want and expect.

Most pieces found here are written out fantasies or scenarios, not real short stories, so when you can find (or create) one with interesting people who undergo connections or make intriguing movements in their lives, then you have something special. It is not easy to do a good one, although plenty of folks here have succeeded.

 

[oggbashan]

Many readers think some of my stories are not erotic. They can't see beyond the words to the implied sex ( or Romance).

But stories I have put here with no obvious sex at all have done well. (and some not!)

 

[NC_Coastal]

Don't dare take the sex out, just bury it in a shallow grave. Tension is the best test of good writing. You have to feel it when you're writing or the reader won't feel it. Tease the reader, but then give him a plausible reason for it. Don't leave anything hanging. And maybe, at just the right moment, kick some dirt off that grave. Just a little.

 

[windar]

Thanks for starting this thread. This is something I've been wrestling with.

What makes a story erotica? It isn't steamy sex scenes, because there are plenty of those in mainstream non-erotic literature, some of which are more arousing than many stories here. You could say it's a matter of intent-did the author intend to arouse? But a non-erotica author might intend a particular scene to be arousing. Anyway, just as with white collar crime, intent can be difficult to discern or prove. To some extent, it's simply a label applied by the author and/or the publisher.

Sure, there are stories, such as Sam describes, where if you took the sex out, there would be blank pages. But I've written murder mysteries and espionage tales and social satires with plenty of sex and labelled as erotica, but if you cut the sex scenes out, there would still be a good story and interesting characters and I'm sure there are plenty here that you could say that about.

I've considered taking a few of my erotica novellas that are heavy on plot and character, cutting a sex scene or two and adding some other stuff and re-publishing them as crime or espionage stories. The problem is that I have built up a base of readers in erotica and that would mean starting over to some extent. I guess I may bite the bullet some day soon.

 

[Rustyoznail]

I've never written any fiction before I started here - apart from some Uni assignments...

It's an interesting thought. Some of my stories would be nothing without the erotic, but with a small tweak, others could be a mainstream romance or SciFi story. I doubt that will happen though.


Edit - For my Leinyere story, I was having a lot of fun just writing about the world. Getting a sex scene in was challenging and I actually farmed that out to a friend to write.

 

[oggbashan]

If my story would work just as well without the sex? It isn't really an erotic story. It is a story with detachable sex to make it suitable for Literotica.

If there is sex it should be an integral part of the plot and play some part in moving the action on,

 

[yukonnights]

I tend to write longer stories. I like to think many, maybe not all, have non-erotic content that tells a believable story. In general, I like to describe my stories as; A story where the real world of human sexuality is included.

In the real world, most people's lives involve sex — does that mean a story without sex is unbelievable? Sometimes, but obviously not always depending on the story. But most of such stories wouldn't reflect the larger reality of humanity. Even older folks have memories of the good old days. Even a soldier in some hell hole jerks off once in awhile. So rather than think erotic content is somehow not realistic — it's actually just the opposite.

I agree that there are many stories on LitE that are just "a short scene" out of a life. Those don't rise to the "complete story" requirements IMO. Nor do they hold my interest.

We live in a society that for decades has labeled sex as a taboo. IMO, that's absurd backward thinking. A life w/o sex is unnatural in real life, and in stories.

 

[windar]

I tend to write longer stories. I like to think many, maybe not all, have non-erotic content that tells a believable story. In general, I like to describe my stories as; A story where the real world of human sexuality is included.

In the real world, most people's lives involve sex — does that mean a story without sex is unbelievable? Sometimes, but obviously not always depending on the story. But most of such stories wouldn't reflect the larger reality of humanity. Even older folks have memories of the good old days. Even a soldier in some hell hole jerks off once in awhile. So rather than think erotic content is somehow not realistic — it's actually just the opposite.

I agree that there are many stories on LitE that are just "a short scene" out of a life. Those don't rise to the "complete story" requirements IMO. Nor do they hold my interest.

We live in a society that for decades has labeled sex as a taboo. IMO, that's absurd backward thinking. A life w/o sex is unnatural in real life, and in stories.

A non-erotic story doesn't have to be free of sex. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find very many novels these days where there was zero sex at all. Where erotica differs is that it tends to make sex almost the sole focus; like the people barely bother to have jobs, watch sports, clean the bathroom, all the things that real people do.

So including the real world of sexuality doesn't make it erotica per se.

 

[KeithD]

Where erotica differs is that it tends to make sex almost the sole focus;

I don't agree with that. I think that's closer to what makes a work pornography. Eroticism is providing sexual arousal. You can include detailed sexual arousal in a work (as opposed to just putting sex acts in the work or, at the other end, making the focus of the work the sex, as you have specified) and still have something else--a storyline or character development--as the main focus of the work. That's often what I try to do.

I wrote to the mainstream long before turning any of it into eroticism. It became erotica not because the focus of the work became the sex but because the elements of sex in the works didn't do most of their business behind closed doors, as in the mainstream version, but right there in the work. Doing that didn't make sex the sole focus of the work, it made the work erotica.

 

[windar]

I wrote to the mainstream long before turning any of it into eroticism. It became erotica not because the focus of the work became the sex but because the elements of sex in the works didn't do most of their business behind closed doors, as in the mainstream version, but right there in the work. Doing that didn't make sex the sole focus of the work, it made the work erotica.

But many mainstream works have the elements of sex right there in the work. These are just examples; there are many more. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a52988/sexiest-erotic-novels-of-all-time/
None of these are sold as erotica. They are listed under fiction on Amazon and elsewhere, not in the erotica subcatergory.

My contention is that there are no hard and fast criteria to distinguish erotica from general fiction. There are shades of grey (No, not 50) rather than black and white.

 

[KeithD]

There's no authority that definitively categorizes what a fictional work is, so while agreeing with your subsequent contention, I see no relevance to your prior post contention that what marked erotica is making "sex almost the sole focus."

 

[Kumquatqueen]

A piece of erotica may be a scene, or a story.

A story is likely to have more non-erotic aspects as well as the sex. A scene may be anything from pure porn to literature. The plot development needed to turn a scene into a story may or may not be erotic or sexual itself.

 

[SimonDoom]

Erotica, non-erotica, porn -- to me, it's in the eye of the beholder.

You could record a video or write a story about a foot, and to some it would non-erotic, to some it would be erotic, and to some it would be the greatest wank porn imaginable. It's true of just about anything.

I tend to write stories about sex, rather than stories with sex. The sex is central to the story, and the story leads to a sexual experience of some kind, usually with someone having an orgasm. Others write different kinds of stories that do or don't have sex. I wouldn't bother trying to put labels on them, because labels don't make the story something different from what it already is. If you experience a story as being erotic, then it's erotic.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I have written a bunch of non-erotic pieces and published them here. Most are in the Sci-Fi category a couple in the non-erotic category. I always tell the reader up front if there is no sex in the story. I have also written some LW stories without sex, it's implied, but not described. But those are usually BTB stories.

In my non-erotic stories, when two people might find themselves in an intimate moment, the camera just doesn't follow them into the bedroom or wherever they are going. Just like on broadcast TV in the states.

 

[8letters]

I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned this yet - but the biggest difference to me between erotica and non-erotica is that I don't know where to publish non-erotica where it'll actually get read. Publish it on Amazon, and it's a drop in the ocean. Same for other sites I can think of like Wattpad and Archive of our own. I have an non-erotica story in my head that I think is quite good, but I don't see it ever having an audience beyond the friends and family I can talk into reading it.

 

[windar]

Erotica, non-erotica, porn -- to me, it's in the eye of the beholder.

You could record a video or write a story about a foot, and to some it would non-erotic, to some it would be erotic, and to some it would be the greatest wank porn imaginable. It's true of just about anything.

True, but most places want labels. Including here, which wants you to label it one of a dozen or so types of specific erotica. And if it's not erotica, it goes in a different space. And some people get very offended if it's in what they see as the "wrong" place. So what you say is completely true in the abstract, but problematic in reality.

 

[windar]

I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned this yet - but the biggest difference to me between erotica and non-erotica is that I don't know where to publish non-erotica where it'll actually get read. Publish it on Amazon, and it's a drop in the ocean. Same for other sites I can think of like Wattpad and Archive of our own. I have an non-erotica story in my head that I think is quite good, but I don't see it ever having an audience beyond the friends and family I can talk into reading it.

I sort of alluded to that. It may be easier to break into publishing erotica, which is why I haven't tried publishing non-erotica yet (other than academic articles). Is it a short story of long enough to be a novella/novel?

There's no authority that definitively categorizes what a fictional work is, so while agreeing with your subsequent contention, I see no relevance to your prior post contention that what marked erotica is making "sex almost the sole focus."

Yeak, OK I retract that part. I was responding to a post that implied non-erotic works can't have any sex in them, which isn't true.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Many readers think some of my stories are not erotic. They can't see beyond the words to the implied sex ( or Romance).

But stories I have put here with no obvious sex at all have done well. (and some not!)

I was going to suggest that using implied sexual activities instead of anything more graphic could be a way for the OP to try making the transition from erotic to non-erotic.