In your opinion, can a story be arousing without being explicit?

[PublicDominion]

Both Val Lewton and Alfred Hitchcock believed that the unseen can be far more frightening than anything that exists in the real world. Applying this principle to erotic fiction, can suggestion be more exciting than description?

 

[VerbalRK]

Absolutely!!! Subtle seduction is much hotter than private parts in your face!!!

 

[bejjinks]

Absolutely. In fact, repetition can be a turn off and for a lot of writers, explicit means saying, "He fucked her" repeatedly in a hundred different wordings.

 

[ronde]

I've always believed that the best fiction is written with hints rather than infinitesimal details of the people and situations. That way, the reader can paint their own pictures and the characters and situations are those with which they can identify. It's kind of like the older movies depicted sex. The female character falls into the arms of the male character, they kiss, and then the scene changes to waves crashing on the beach. Nobody wonders what they're doing, but each viewer gets to imagine what happens next.

 

[stonedinstilletos]

Yes. Absolutely.

 

[madelinemasoch]

I would recommend studying Leopold von Sacher Masoch on this score. He achieves eroticism without much obscenity, or even nudity. Venus in Furs is his most popular/translated work, and shouldn't be hard to find.

 

[TheRedChamber]

You are going to have, indeed already have, a lot of people saying 'yes'.

And those people are absolutely right.

Still, there's a lot of times when I've been staring at a half-completed draft and thinking to myself - do I have to actually write the sex scene?

And nine out of ten times, yes, on Lit, I had to write the damn sex scene.

Just putting it out there...

 

[mildlyaroused]

do I have to actually write the sex scene?

I see you chose to keep the 'actually' this time

 

[AchtungNight]

If the imagination can fill in and the characters & plot are interesting enough, absolutely.

 

[HeyAll]

Yes if you imply something is happening and you give the right context where something taboo is happening. Example, a woman's head going down beneath the table at a restaurant, even without the descriptions, you can imagine what's going on.

 

[Newreality]

Definitely. Anticipation can be everything.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Damn straight. Describe a beautiful elegant woman, how she moves, how she's dressed. She walks over confidently to an awestruck man. She touches him lightly on the face.

"I've noticed how you look at me, handsome. Like I'm something you want to take. But you're always so proper and professional. I feel safe with you," she says softly. "Should I feel safe? Tell me the truth."

The man swallows. "No. If you knew what I've imagined, you wouldn't feel safe."

She leans in and whispers in his ear. "Show me."

 

[SimonDoom]

Yes. One of my favorites of all the comments I have received was when a reader wrote, "I came when his finger touched her panties." Everyone was still clothed at that point. It got explicit later.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Absolutely, but on lit in it will probably score shit.

 

[HordHolm]

You are going to have, indeed already have, a lot of people saying 'yes'.

And those people are absolutely right.

Still, there's a lot of times when I've been staring at a half-completed draft and thinking to myself - do I have to actually write the sex scene?

And nine out of ten times, yes, on Lit, I had to write the damn sex scene.

Just putting it out there...

Absolutely! And I'm there right at this moment. I dragged myself away for a well-earned five-minute breather, and came to the forum, and upon seeing the title of the thread I gave a hollow laugh. Ah, well, back to the grindstone...

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Damn straight. Describe a beautiful elegant woman, how she moves, how she's dressed. She walks over confidently to an awestruck man. She touches him lightly on the face.

"I've noticed how you look at me, handsome. Like I'm something you want to take. But you're always so proper and professional. I feel safe with you," she says softly. "Should I feel safe? Tell me the truth."

The man swallows. "No. If you knew what I've imagined, you wouldn't feel safe."

She leans in and whispers in his ear. "Show me."

Game, set and match!

I WANT to see that story when you write it!

 

[PenumbralVision]

Yes, but I might not have the talent to write something like that.

 

[KeithD]

I'm not sure the "explicit" is the word the OP was searching for. I can't quite separate out arousal scenes I think can fit this from them being "explicit" or not. I think there can be scenes that are sensually erotic that don't lead to copulation with someone else, but I'd hard pressed not to think of them as being sensually explicit.

 

[oxbowma]

A good story sets a scene, builds tension and excitement. The act itself can be explicit or muted, as long as you feel for the characters and can insert yourself in the scene. The hottest stories I've gotten off to were those that took you with the protagonist and made me want to be them, letting my imagination take over.

 

[Bazzle]

Yes, the art of writing a good smoking fetish story...is normally not have any sex in it at all.

The reader is meant to get turned on by the act of the girl smoking. The way they fall into addiction. Is meant to be more arousing than the protagonist dropping their underwear for sex.

 

[LadyLibido]

Oh 100%, absolutely. The right inference/implication can be much more alluring and provocative than the explicit sex. The act of filling in the blanks, the anticipation of, can make it more intense than the payoff. It's not to dissimilar to the effect of suggestive clothing being more erotic than being fully nude.

 

[Britva415]

Both Val Lewton and Alfred Hitchcock believed that the unseen can be far more frightening than anything that exists in the real world. Applying this principle to erotic fiction, can suggestion be more exciting than description?

Of course.

In my ideal, an explicit story should have already created arousal before the explicit bits even happen.

 

[MyBareTorso]

While others might have to attest to how arousing they are (they certainly are to me...but self-praise is no recommendation), many of my stories do not feature explicit sexual intercourse. I'm usually more interested in the setup and the scenario.

 

[UnquietDreams]

Absolutely. But that isn't why I am here.

This isn't my only writing outlet. I also do mainstream work, and in that I am a "fade to black," less is more writer because that is what works for the story. With both sex and gore, the unseen is incredibly powerful.

Here, I indulge. I write very explicit, long, detailed sex scenes - thus my description of "detail focused." (Or nearly sexless romance pieces. I am experimenting there as well). They are honestly the first sex scenes I have ever written, and I am having some fun with it. I am currently working on a piece with about 8000 words in the one sex scene (it is a multi-person scene, because that might be excessive, even for me). That isn't to say the scenes exist in a vacuum. They have a purpose in the wider story and are engines of character development and change (or at least, so I tell myself). The highest praise I have received in the feedback was on a very explicit story where I was told I got the emotions correct.

 

[EmilyMiller]

In your opinion, can a story be arousing without being explicit?​

At the risk of stating the fucking obvious, yes of course. And utterly explicit sex can be super arousing as well. It’s all down to the writing. It’s often also down to whether we are cheering the characters on. Which tends to relate to the skill with which they are drawn.

I don’t subscribe to the only way to be erotic is a less is more approach. That can be amazingly good in the right hands. But so can lots of detailed sex, so long as it is written with the right sensibility.

Obviously neither of these is very arousing:

1. Her pussy was pink and wet and she came immediately as I slid my super hard ten inches all the way in
2. She had nice lips and they felt good as I touched them with my own ones for a short period of time

Emily