"I know no one is looking for realism in porn (I'm definitely not)"

[ElectricBlue]

This is the second time I've gotten up from the couch where I'm trying to launch my Sunday nap.

Back to somaticism. In the example about the homework, the reason the trifling inaccuracy stops me, is that I'm mentally handing the paper to the teacher and experiencing the disconnect when they say something about it, having not yet seen it. So it's not intellectualism. It's somaticism.

Thanks, that's a fascinating clarification - that you reenact the movement or the action in your mind. Knowing that, it's a subtlety that will no doubt park itself in my memory, and become useful.

Several readers have said that my writing makes scenes tangible, vivid in their minds. I've asked, can you explain how the words are working? but they can't. Perhaps it's this, the way I focus on something that might seem inconsequential or not seen by others, and catch it.

I shall make you up a collection of freckles! This is the scene you were looking for:

I saw how the back of her hand was lightly freckled, the veins like a river on a map, and ever so slightly blue. Her skin was quite pale. A long scar ran along the side of her little finger, and I imagined some childhood accident, a young girl running inside to find mother, when only a father would do. I saw a tiny pulse on a vein near her wrist, and counted her heartbeats. Her pulse was quite quick, and I lost count at twenty-two.

 

[AG31]

There's always a conversation to be had about "how much detail is enough".
I recently received a rather critical comment that took the view that I was providing too much detail and thus it was boring.

The challenge is for every reader like you there is probably another one who takes the view, "he's bleeding, you bandaged it, MOVE ON!!!!"
and doesn't want to hear about the details of first aid that don't advance the plot.

As in most things writerly, the trick is to do whatever you're doing well. Some authors take delight in detailed description, for its own sake, and it works. I would distinguish between detail done for its own sake and detail that removes ambiguity from the narration. I think adding the "over the sleeves" falls into the latter category.

@lovecraft68, I tried to find the how to make tea thing, but couldn't. Let me know if you stumble over it.

 

[AG31]

As in most things writerly, the trick is to do whatever you're doing well. Some authors take delight in detailed description, for its own sake, and it works. I would distinguish between detail done for its own sake and detail that removes ambiguity from the narration. I think adding the "over the sleeves" falls into the latter category.

@lovecraft68, I tried to find the how to make tea thing, but couldn't. Let me know if you stumble over it.

Yes, yes! I almost said "the back" of her hand. You're definitely on to something in the analysis of your work. "Tangible" is the key. It's the kind of vividness.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

As in most things writerly, the trick is to do whatever you're doing well. Some authors take delight in detailed description, for its own sake, and it works. I would distinguish between detail done for its own sake and detail that removes ambiguity from the narration. I think adding the "over the sleeves" falls into the latter category.

@lovecraft68, I tried to find the how to make tea thing, but couldn't. Let me know if you stumble over it.

I'd say that most readers would see it as an irrelevant detail. Unless of course it ties into something later.
The character is now shirtless for an extended period and that has some bearing on the story or some such.
I think this is one of those cases where you aren't a typical reader.

 

[SimonDoom]

"No one" and "porn" probably do not ever belong together in a sentence, because if one can conceive of a porn taste there's probably a person out there who has it. Porn tastes vary almost infinitely.

On the "need for realism," I'm probably somewhere in the middle. I don't care that much, but I appreciate a sporting effort at verisimilitude--a few details that make a story "seem real" even if it isn't really.

I agree with what AG31 said about "do what you do well." I see this is a variation of "write what you know." Focus on your strengths. If you insert a few things you know well or do well into your story you're likely to pull it off more effectively.

 

[lovecraft68]

As in most things writerly, the trick is to do whatever you're doing well. Some authors take delight in detailed description, for its own sake, and it works. I would distinguish between detail done for its own sake and detail that removes ambiguity from the narration. I think adding the "over the sleeves" falls into the latter category.

@lovecraft68, I tried to find the how to make tea thing, but couldn't. Let me know if you stumble over it.

I can't seem to find it either. Maybe it was pulled or I saw it somewhere else. I'll poke around for it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

"No one" and "porn" probably do not ever belong together in a sentence, because if one can conceive of a porn taste there's probably a person out there who has it. Porn tastes vary almost infinitely.

Couldn't agree more! What did stand out for me, from the comment @AG31 cited, was that the fellow assumed everyone else regarded porn the way he does. Which would be a fatal mistake as a writer, I'd have thought.

On the "need for realism," I'm probably somewhere in the middle. I don't care that much, but I appreciate a sporting effort at verisimilitude--a few details that make a story "seem real" even if it isn't really.

It's certainly the trick when you have penis fish aliens on your beach, or alien flying angels on mine. Or a spider in a top hat in The Fantastic Hotel.

I agree with what AG31 said about "do what you do well." I see this is a variation of "write what you know." Focus on your strengths. If you insert a few things you know well or do well into your story you're likely to pull it off more effectively.

I've cited my writer's belief several times, that if you have some tiny but absolute truth in even the most fantastic story, readers will spot it, consciously or subconsciously, and be prepared to suspend a million miles of disbelief, and follow you into the story. As soon as you break the spell though, "No, that's too absurd," the story will plummet to the ground like the Hindenburg.

 

[ChuckWolf]

I'm not black myself, but having black characters named Jamal or Tyrone or Marcus takes me out of a story. I'm sure there are black people with those names - I even know a Marcus - but they show up so often it makes me think the author has no experience with black people outside porn.

Y'know, I'm pretty sure I've done stuff like that.

I DO have a character named Jamal in an upcoming story, but he's vaguely described as middle-eastern.

 

[vanmyers86]

1. I worry less about realism than I do about emotional truth, but that's my thing.
2. "Edward" is an outdated name?!?!? Nobody tells me a damn thing!

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I'm not black myself, but having black characters named Jamal or Tyrone or Marcus takes me out of a story. I'm sure there are black people with those names - I even know a Marcus - but they show up so often it makes me think the author has no experience with black people outside porn.

Names are incredibly regional as well as changing by age. I was just thinking 'what's wrong with Edward, still a classic, and Agnes is one of those granny names now popular in the under-fives' and now this.

I've clearly not read/watched enough relevant porn, because to me Marcus is a posh middle aged bloke (so almost certainly white), and Tyrone is a right chav (violent trailer trash?) and again white, though in recent years more likely to be the name of their dog. Jamal is probably Asian (ie south Asian).

It's one reason I tend to stick to common names that are less likely to evoke unintended connotations, but to an extent it's unavoidable. I get put off by names I associate with current children - Micah and Noah clearly got popular in America about 10 years before they did in the UK, judging by how many of them appear on Lit. I actually have one of my characters muttering "Jayden? I can't believe anyone called Jayden is old enough to fuck!" - because most of them arent., or weren't when I started writing.

I generally like details - eg Neal Stephenson and Ben Aaronovitch. Action, dialogue or thoughts can also be interesting, but I get put off by prose that takes lots of words to say very little - a fault of many Lit stories.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Channeling @AwkwardMD: Okay.

 

[TadOverdon]

I'm looking for realism of the kind I'd find in a Spider-Man comic.

 

[Bramblethorn]

This statement by @jlightfoot75 a few weeks ago caught me up short. Not only does it not apply to me, but I simply don't understand it.

My main question here is to @jlightfoot75 and others who share their perspective. What do you want in porn or erotica? Why would realism be a problem?

My subsidiary question is this: To what degree is realism in erotica important to your enjoyment?

Generalisations like the one in the thread title are nearly always wrong. People come to this site for a wide range of reasons and even when they're not looking for "realism" (or whatever other thing), its glaring absence can still be a deal-breaker.

Often readers invoking "realism" actually mean "I want to have some sense of what's possible and impossible in this universe". Lord of the Rings is full of "unrealistic" elements, but it sets some rules - the Ring has to be dropped into Mount Doom, no man can defeat the Witch-King, the power of the One Ring is inherently corrupt etc. - and then it sticks to those rules. If the story was open to "and then Galadriel put on the One Ring, punched Sauron in the face so hard he died, and only used the Ring for good", it would be unsatisfying to read; a lot of the tension there comes from the reader knowing that victory can only be achieved in certain ways.

For many readers, a kind of psychological realism is important - the scenarios presented can be fantastical, but the way people react to them has to be consistent with the reader's notions of how humans work. "Woman who has everything going for her goes to bed with unremarkable schlub" is a polarising scenario here - it's very attractive as a stroke fantasy from the schlub's perspective but fails the "why would she do that?" test for readers who want to get inside the woman's head.

Beyond that, for stories which are strongly relationship focussed, realism may be a big part of the point. Some of my favourite stories here are all about "what makes people tick and how do they relate to one another?" I don't think I'm the only person here who is interested in stories that seek to explore those questions.

And here's an innocuous example that's not even from erotica:

The last time he heard the words, "You're an absolute gem," was when he'd handed in his arithmetic homework with no mistakes."*
The problem here is that the teacher couldn't have said those words when he handed in the paper, because she hadn't had a chance to grade it. I wanted Beaton to replace "when he'd handed in" to "when she returned".

That one's fine for me, because "the time when X happened..." needn't refer just to the instant in time when X happened; it's commonly used to refer to an episode in time. If I say "remember when our team won the grand final?" that isn't limited to the moment when the full-time whistle blew; it can encompass things like the runs scored along the way and the victory parade after.

 

[ChuckWolf]

As in most things writerly, the trick is to do whatever you're doing well. Some authors take delight in detailed description, for its own sake, and it works. I would distinguish between detail done for its own sake and detail that removes ambiguity from the narration. I think adding the "over the sleeves" falls into the latter category.

@lovecraft68, I tried to find the how to make tea thing, but couldn't. Let me know if you stumble over it.

In a story I'm currently working on, I find I'm spending a lot of time world-building with descriptions of the people and the locale.

3K+ words in and I'm just now getting into the sex scene.

I think it works so far, but I guess I'll see.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I went to see Lilo and Stitch with my kids yesterday.

For those unacquanted, it's the story of a Lilo, 6 yo girl whose parents have died and who is being cared for by her 18 yo sister. The sister is struggling with parenting and things are made worse with Lilo displaying increasingly serious behavoural problems. Social services give the sister one week to turn things around or else they will need to step in.

Oh, and also an alien 'dog' turns up.

The point that's relevant here is that while all the alien stuff can be as goofy, slapstick and over-the-top as you like, the core of the story, the relationships and the central issue, needs to have a certain believability. Which is not to say it needs to match 1-1 the Hawaiian Regulations on Social Work, but it does need to pass a sniff test.

If while watching the movie someone says 'In real life, the three of them would totally have fallen off that surfboard while being chased by the aliens' you can roll your eyes and go 'Well duh.' On the other hand, if someone says 'If the sister couldn't look after her yesterday at the start, why is she magically able to now at the end? Was she just not trying yesterday?' then the story has much bigger problems.

Somethings need to be realistic, somethings don't. To a certain extent authors can key the reader into what the levels of realism to expect are (2001 A Space Odyssey is more realistic than Star Trek which is more realistic than Star Wars) Promising a level of realism and then not delivering on it when the plot makes it inconvenient can aslo be a problem.

 

[RetroFan]

I've mentioned it before, but in something of a paradox I've found the Incest/Taboo readers to be the least accepting of fantasy themes in the stories in this category - magic, time travel, aliens, ghosts, monsters, other worlds, alternate dimensions, body swaps and the like.

I'm working on a series at the moment in which a young man somehow switches into a strange alternate dimension, where some things are exactly the same, some things slightly altered, some things significantly different, things that happened at different times and with different outcomes and there are things that either exist in this reality which shouldn't or which should exist and don't. As one of the main examples, there never was 911 and the World Trade Center's Twin Towers still stand. And closer to home, his cousin Jamie who is a boy in 'reality' is a girl in the alternate dimension.

However, readers haven't really gone for the early chapters, with poor viewing numbers, low scores and mostly negative feedback. It was a similar story last year with an IT story I wrote involving Bigfoot, which sank without trace.

 

[XerXesXu]

Back to somaticism. In the example about the homework, the reason the trifling inaccuracy stops me, is that I'm mentally handing the paper to the teacher and experiencing the disconnect when they say something about it, having not yet seen it. So it's not intellectualism. It's somaticism.

I'm also aphantasic, but I don't experience it as you do. I asked DeepSeek for further information. You may be interested in the response:


'Yes, this is a recognized and fascinating variation within the spectrum of aphantasia and internal experience! What your friend describes aligns closely with concepts in cognitive science, particularly:

1. Motor Imagery / Kinaesthetic Imagery: This is the ability to mentally simulate bodily movements, sensations of force, effort, position, and balance without necessarily generating a visual picture. It's the "feeling" of performing an action in your mind's body.
2. Embodied Cognition / Embodied Simulation: This broader theory suggests that understanding concepts (especially action-related ones) involves partially reactivating the same sensory, motor, and emotional systems used during actual experience. When reading about kicking a ball, your brain subtly activates the motor programs and proprioceptive sensations associated with kicking.

Here's the breakdown of how this relates to your friend's experience and aphantasia:

1. Dissociation of Imagery Modalities: Aphantasia primarily refers to the lack of voluntary visualimagery. However, mental imagery isn't monolithic. People can have strengths or weaknesses in different sensory modalities:
   • Visual: Seeing pictures (absent in visual aphantasia).
   • Auditory: Hearing sounds/music internally.
   • Olfactory/Gustatory: Smelling/tasting internally.
   • Motor/Kinaesthetic: Feeling movements, touches, weight, balance, proprioception (body position).
   • Emotional: Feeling emotions associated with memories or imaginings.
     Your friend seems to have strong, involuntary motor/kinaesthetic imagery/simulation, compensating for or existing alongside her lack of visual imagery. Her brain is simulating the actions sensorimotorically rather than visually.
2. Research on Aphantasia and Motor Imagery:
   • Studies (e.g., Dance, et al., 2021; Zeman, et al., ongoing) show that while people with aphantasia generally report reduced vividness across all sensory modalities of imagery compared to the general population, motor imagery is often relatively preserved, and sometimes even reported as the strongest modality.
   • Some individuals with aphantasia report relying heavily on "spatial" imagery (feeling layouts, distances, relationships) or "motor" imagery to navigate the world and understand concepts, especially physical actions.
   • The experience of involuntary motor/kinaesthetic sensations triggered by reading (like your friend's) is a specific manifestation of this preserved motor simulation system.
3. The "Muscle Memory" / Proprioceptive Feeling:
   • What she describes as "feeling responses in her muscle memory" is highly consistent with kinaesthetic imagery. This involves simulating:
     • Proprioception: The sense of where your limbs are in space and how they are moving.
     • Effort/Force: The feeling of exerting muscles.
     • Movement Trajectory: The sense of the path a movement takes.
   • This simulation can feel like an internal "echo" or "preview" of the physical action, engaging the motor cortex and sensory areas related to touch and body position, even if the muscles themselves aren't actually moving (though subtle muscle twitches, or ideomotor phenomena, can sometimes occur).
4. Why Reading Triggers It (Embodied Simulation):
   • When we read action words (verbs like "run," "grab," "throw") or descriptions of physical interactions, our brains automatically activate relevant sensorimotor areas (a key tenet of embodied cognition).
   • This is thought to be facilitated by mirror neuron systems – neurons that fire both when we perform an action and when we observe (or read about) someone else performing it.
   • For your friend, this automatic sensorimotor simulation is her primary way of experiencing the narrative internally. It's not a conscious "choice" to imagine it kinesthetically; it's how her brain naturally processes the action-based semantic information.

Is it a Specific Named Phenomenon?

• There isn't a single, universally agreed-upon specific name just for this combination (aphantasia + strong involuntary motor simulation from reading), as research into the variations within aphantasia is still relatively young.
• However, it's accurately described as:
  • Aphantasia (specifically visual aphantasia).
  • With preserved/strong motor/kinaesthetic imagery/simulation.
  • Exhibiting embodied simulation in response to language, particularly action language.
• It falls under the broader umbrella of studying individual differences in mental imagery modalities and how semantic knowledge (understanding meaning) connects to sensorimotor systems.

In Summary:

Your friend's experience is absolutely recognized by researchers studying aphantasia and mental imagery. While she lacks the visual component of imagination, her brain has a strong propensity for simulating actions and physical sensations through the motor/kinaesthetic modality. This "muscle memory" feeling when reading about actions is her brain's way of embodying and understanding the narrative – a fascinating example of how diverse our internal experiences can be, even among individuals who share the label of "aphantasia." It highlights that aphantasia is not necessarily a lack of imagination altogether, but often a difference in the format of that imagination.'


It may be related to 'the immersive experience' which many people report when they read fiction. I don't.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The point that's relevant here is that while all the alien stuff can be as goofy, slapstick and over-the-top as you like, the core of the story, the relationships and the central issue, needs to have a certain believability. Which is not to say it needs to match 1-1 the Hawaiian Regulations on Social Work, but it does need to pass a sniff test.

Reminds me of The Babadook, which is two-thirds "I read an evil book and now a supernatural horror is terrorising my household" and one-third "Social Services are here for a visit and I am SO TIRED and failing as a parent and now there's a roach in my kitchen". The threat from Social Services is objectively slight - they're actually nice enough people who don't do anything bad, within the story - but that real-world grounding makes it a lot easier to relate to the protagonist, which then makes it harder to check out emotionally when the supernatural horror resumes.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is another film that finds a similar balance between the fantastic and the relatable mundane.

 

[TiberiusPrime]

I've mentioned it before, but in something of a paradox I've found the Incest/Taboo readers to be the least accepting of fantasy themes in the stories in this category - magic, time travel, aliens, ghosts, monsters, other worlds, alternate dimensions, body swaps and the like.

I'm working on a series at the moment in which a young man somehow switches into a strange alternate dimension, where some things are exactly the same, some things slightly altered, some things significantly different, things that happened at different times and with different outcomes and there are things that either exist in this reality which shouldn't or which should exist and don't. As one of the main examples, there never was 911 and the World Trade Center's Twin Towers still stand. And closer to home, his cousin Jamie who is a boy in 'reality' is a girl in the alternate dimension.

However, readers haven't really gone for the early chapters, with poor viewing numbers, low scores and mostly negative feedback. It was a similar story last year with an IT story I wrote involving Bigfoot, which sank without trace.

Well, I'm highly interested in your alternate universe story!

 

[TheRedChamber]

Reminds me of The Babadook, which is two-thirds "I read an evil book and now a supernatural horror is terrorising my household" and one-third "Social Services are here for a visit and I am SO TIRED and failing as a parent and now there's a roach in my kitchen". The threat from Social Services is objectively slight - they're actually nice enough people who don't do anything bad, within the story - but that real-world grounding makes it a lot easier to relate to the protagonist, which then makes it harder to check out emotionally when the supernatural horror resumes.

Everything Everywhere All At Once is another film that finds a similar balance between the fantastic and the relatable mundane.

I haven't seen either of those although I definitely want to get around to EEAAO one of these days. I will say that mixing the fantastic or the mundane works sometimes, as with any writing method, there are plenty of examples when it feels forced or doesn't quite pay off - although I'm struggling to actually think of a good example at the moment.

 

[Craighalbert]

I haven't seen either of those although I definitely want to get around to EEAAO one of these days. I will say that mixing the fantastic or the mundane works sometimes, as with any writing method, there are plenty of examples when it feels forced or doesn't quite pay off - although I'm struggling to actually think of a good example at the moment.

The Star Wars prequels and their infamous opening on trade blockades and taxes feels like a good example. It's easy to imagine George Lucas thinking he was really adding a lot of verisimilitude and depth to his world when it just turned people off

 

[ChuckWolf]

I haven't seen either of those although I definitely want to get around to EEAAO one of these days. I will say that mixing the fantastic or the mundane works sometimes, as with any writing method, there are plenty of examples when it feels forced or doesn't quite pay off - although I'm struggling to actually think of a good example at the moment.

Unbreakable did a good job of this.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Realism? No. These are fantasies after all. Plausibility? Yes.

 

[Nynah]

As a few others here have already said, I think plausibility is a more realistic (ha) goal to strive for than realism when writing contemporary smut. If we go by the dictionary definitions:

Realistic:

• pertaining to, characterized by, or given to the representation in literature or art of things as they really are:
  a realistic novel.

Plausible:

• having an appearance of truth or reason; seemingly worthy of approval or acceptance; credible; believable:
  a plausible excuse; a plausible plot.

I would posit that a decent number of us are here because we want to write about situations that might be based in reality but didn't quite turn out as sexily as we would have liked them to, so instead we rework them into fictional narratives that are plausible enough to be believed.

 

[MrHereWriting]

This a broad picture vs nuanced details argument. I'm not going to question flying tanks unless the writer tries to get into the technical details and they make no sense.

You have to be able to distinguish between the two.

I never read Death of a Smuggler, but "The last time he heard the words, 'You're an absolute gem,' was when he'd handed in his arithmetic homework with no mistakes," is a broad picture statement encompassing the entire event that led to the compliment. To take yourself out of a story because of that statement is nothing more than self-torture.

Now, if I'm reading story about a man with two dicks who's DP'ing a woman on her knees, and he's on his knees, his dicks better be lined up vertically and not side to side, otherwise that angle of penetration is going to seem quite uncomfortable and I'm not going to believe he's enjoying himself.