novella fucking frequency- too little/too much?

[Voltemand]

Hello all,

I’m new to Lit, and new to writing to writing erotica. I recently submitted the first 10 chapters of a novella I’ve been chipping away at for a while. This is my first attempt -- I've not written any other prose since High School. I waited to post it as a single lump because the first graphically erotic scene doesn’t occur until the tenth chapter, and I didn’t want to put people off by allowing them to get to the end without any sense of ‘completion’. But now that it’s out there, I’ve stalled.

What I’m struggling with most is how to balance sex and narrative going forward – will readers expect sex in almost every chapter now? Or, for the average Lit reader, can character development and a halfway decent storyline sustain interest for a while between fucks? How much is too little? How much too much?

I’m disinclined to add purely ‘gratuitous’ erotic scenes – I suspect, in spite of adding a steamy intermission, they would wind up detracting from the narrative overall. How do you keep it organic? How can sex be written in such a way that it actually serves a function in a longer story (apart from giving pleasure)?

I’m very interested in people’s ideas on this matter, and having looked through several of the threads, I suspect this is the right place to find some interesting ones.

Also, I know that my story is much too long to ask for specific feedback, but if any generous and learned soul does wish to take a look-see and let me know what I’m doing right/wrong (in the context of erotica), you can find it here:

http://www.literotica.com/s/other-colors-ch-01-10

If you do read part of it, I apologize in advance for the weird formatting around the italics – I know its distracting, but apparently it happened while the story was being processed for posting.

-V

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Hello all,

I’m new to Lit, and new to writing to writing erotica. I recently submitted the first 10 chapters of a novella I’ve been chipping away at for a while. This is my first attempt -- I've not written any other prose since High School. I waited to post it as a single lump because the first graphically erotic scene doesn’t occur until the tenth chapter, and I didn’t want to put people off by allowing them to get to the end without any sense of ‘completion’. But now that it’s out there, I’ve stalled.

What I’m struggling with most is how to balance sex and narrative going forward – will readers expect sex in almost every chapter now? Or, for the average Lit reader, can character development and a halfway decent storyline sustain interest for a while between fucks? How much is too little? How much too much?

I’m disinclined to add purely ‘gratuitous’ erotic scenes – I suspect, in spite of adding a steamy intermission, they would wind up detracting from the narrative overall. How do you keep it organic? How can sex be written in such a way that it actually serves a function in a longer story (apart from giving pleasure)?

I’m very interested in people’s ideas on this matter, and having looked through several of the threads, I suspect this is the right place to find some interesting ones.

Also, I know that my story is much too long to ask for specific feedback, but if any generous and learned soul does wish to take a look-see and let me know what I’m doing right/wrong (in the context of erotica), you can find it here:

http://www.literotica.com/s/other-colors-ch-01-10

If you do read part of it, I apologize in advance for the weird formatting around the italics – I know its distracting, but apparently it happened while the story was being processed for posting.

-V

Work on your punctuation.

 

[Catchalot]

You went nine chapters without sex, so I wouldn't worry about it. Put sex in where the story demands it, and call it good.

 

[PennLady]

Some people say since it's an erotic story site, each chapter should contain some sex. I think it depends a lot on your story and the category it's in. I've written romances that go quite a while without sex; that might not go over so well in a different category.

So I agree with Catchalot. Put it in where it feels right (ahem).

 

[RejectReality]

You're posting to the Novels and Novellas category. The readers ( few though they may be ) in the category expect long, involved stories, and don't necessarily expect the characters to have sex every couple of pages.

For future reference, if your story has any encompassing theme ( Romance, perhaps a fantasy world, May-Dec. relationship, etc. ) and doesn't delve into a broad range of squicky subjects, you'll probably want to pick a targeted category for your story.

Long stories don't have to be confined to the Novels and Novellas category. About the only time I even recommend using it is when you have a long story that crosses so many genres that it's impossible to categorize. There simply aren't enough people who are specifically interested in long stories to gain much of a readership.

People who are interested in long stories in a specific genre are a whole different story. There are a lot more of those.

As PennLady said, different categories have different expectations for the amount of sex, and how quickly you get to it. So you have to do a bit more of a balancing act there.

Romance and Sci-Fi&Fantasy will let you go on for quite a while before you get to the sex, so long as the story is good. Romance in particular doesn't mind sex-lite, or even no sex at all.

Get into Group Sex, or Anal, or something of that nature, and they're expecting a lot more sex that you get to without dragging your feet.

And, as with pretty much every other question about the readers on Lit, no matter what you're writing, there's a readership for it here.

Write the story you want to write, and then worry about targeting the readership with category choice and such later.

 

[sr71plt]

If you are posting in chapters and posting all of those chapters to a "sex" category, the optimum would be to include sex in all chapters. There will be exceptions to this, of course, if the story is really strong, but, hard as it may seem to imagine, there are readers who read just one chapter of a series, plucking one out of the middle, and will complain that there was no sex in a chapter that was placed in a "sex" category. You could always just ignore these rare complaints, of course. You could mix the categories you post the chapters too also--but that comes with its own disadvantages.

A decade and more ago, erotica publishers were, indeed, saying there should be sex in every chapter of a book. It's a good question if that is still the case, in the e-revolution where chapters go up at separate times on Web sites, like this one. Maybe the readers expect that less now.

The bottom line, though, is that there is no universal "this is what I want" reader on Literotica. Write what you want and post it the way that seems most logical for what you wrote. You'll find both readers and detractors whatever you do. If you believe in what you wrote and how you posted it, you'll have the confidence that writers need to have to maintain their own voice.

 

[Voltemand]

Thanks, everyone. I appreciate your insights. I will definitely keep the category delineations (and their implications) in mind going forward, and try to figure out where my story might fit among them, rather than attempting to match expectations in advance.

 

[minnie_fae]

I just uploaded the first chapter of a story and it didn't have any sex in it, only a hint towards some, and it still seems to have been well-received. However, I was acutely aware of the lack-of, so I've made sure to include some in my next.

It's in the non-con category and I've noticed that there's often chapters without sex or even allusions to it there, mainly to build story and character. However, authors do sometimes put disclaimers at the start of the story to explain that it will be included soon, so maybe that's an idea if you're feeling nervous about it.