Plot-to-porn ratio

[Roxanne Appleby]

I have a hard time with many of these erotica/porn distinctions. It seems obvious that really good porn must take the reader inside the character's head, meaning developed characters and some context for the action, which implies plot. So how is that different from "erotica?"

My own crude definition is that erotica doesn't contain explicit sex. If it does contain explicit sex, that makes it porn by definition. Hopefully, my porn is also erotic, as opposed to mechanical "tab A into slot B, rinse and repeat."

 

[ungenderless]

It sounds to me like you started out witht he intent to write Porn but are writing erotica.

To me the differnece betwen the two is Porn is about sex and erotica is about people in sexual situations.

That's it! That's exactly it. I went from wiriting about sex to writing about people in sexual situations. Thank you!

 

[tanyachrs]

I think you should write a story you'd enjoy reading and let your audience find you. Filing it in the right category will give readers a clue.

 

[Munachi]

Well I tend to come up with an idea for a sex scene, but then while I write the story around it I somehow end up losing interest in the sex, and the story just becomes more interesting to me. Thus, most of my stories have very little sex in them, but I like them the way they are. A story, to an extent, has to write itself, it gets a logic that is almost independent of the author, the author is just the one that gives the form to it (okay, and the one that provides the mind in which the ideas find a space to form)... Maybe...

Also I agree with what has been said above - that not the same is erotic to everyone. And that something without sex can still be very erotic. Also, am implication of sex can be understood and thus seen as erotic by some, and not by others...

Today I learned that in medieval minnesong, chess was an erotic metaphor... Thus, someone who knows this and has some imagination might be able to see a story about two people playing chess as erotic (though I would suppose that most people on lit would be a bit disappointed, as said above, it depends also which reader you aim for)...

(Actually, I can really see this: it reminded me when an ex-boyfriend of mine taught me to play chess, and of course he was very good at it, while I didn't know how to play it well yet, and he was almost mean to me how he was playing with me when I was about to lose, chasing me across the board and always letting me go for yet another draw, even though it was clear I had no chance... I can't really say why, but there really was something about that game of chess that excited me... but I guess that is a bit off-topic)...

 

[elsol]

What you talking 'bout, Willis?

Porn is plot.

 

[NoJo]

I think you should write a story you'd enjoy reading and let your audience find you. Filing it in the right category will give readers a clue.

Bingo.

 

[elsol]

By the way, it can depend on story-length.

I've written an incest saga that was about 400+ pages with 75-85% of it being explicit, rub-it-raw sex.

Writing a 20 page story where 15 pages are sex... *passshah*.

400 pages where 300 pages are balls-to-wall sex... keep what makes you horny close-by 'cause you're going to need inspiration.

 

[ungenderless]

400 pages where 300 pages are balls-to-wall sex... keep what makes you horny close-by 'cause you're going to need inspiration.

ROFL! ^_^

Wow, that's mighty impressive, 400 pages! Very inspiring!

 

[NoJo]

By the way, it can depend on story-length.

I've written an incest saga that was about 400+ pages with 75-85% of it being explicit, rub-it-raw sex.

Writing a 20 page story where 15 pages are sex... *passshah*.

400 pages where 300 pages are balls-to-wall sex... keep what makes you horny close-by 'cause you're going to need inspiration.

At 'prox 2 minutes per page, that's about 10 hours of full-on non-foreplay sex. I could do that easy with either Angelina Jolie or a blow-up doll who looked liked Angelina Jolie. Actually they're pretty much the same thing.

 

[ChilledVodkaIV]

Unfortunately, non-Literotica links are forbidden, sorry.

But only in stories. Not in sigs. Or Home pages. Or profiles. Or posts to the AH asking if you can include links to original songs.

 

[Darkniciad]

I have something going on behind the sex, even in the purest of stroke I write. I have near straight stroke and really slow-build stories that fare about the same.

The slow-build one has just a bit of suggestion through the first two thirds, and hit with the sex at the end. I did put a disclaimer in in to "skip to page x for sex" in the Author's notes at the beginning though. Lets those who want a story read, and those who want stroke skip past all that silly plot, character development, etc.

Some cats are more forgiving of less sex. Romance, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Non-Human... to name a few.

 

[elsol]

I have a hard time with many of these erotica/porn distinctions. It seems obvious that really good porn must take the reader inside the character's head, meaning developed characters and some context for the action, which implies plot. So how is that different from "erotica?"

My own crude definition is that erotica doesn't contain explicit sex. If it does contain explicit sex, that makes it porn by definition. Hopefully, my porn is also erotic, as opposed to mechanical "tab A into slot B, rinse and repeat."

Here's the difference.... from one of my favorite pc's for a story of mine.

Erotica isn't porn, and porn this is...

Cheap porn, the horror found in the grotesque and shove-it-up-max vulgarity.

Unredeemable.

Erotica is deliciously vivid, tantalizingly smooth, elegant, and enveloping in more ways than you even knew you had.

Go get a real phallus.

Got it?

Good...

Excuse me, I gotta go lube up my (*cough*cough) phallus and get all 'unredeemable' on my woman!

 

[Lee Chambers]

The best advice I can give you is just write for yourself, unless as others have said you're looking to write a story that a lot of people are going to write.

Unless I'm working on something that someone has requested that I write, my stories follow the path I've set for them. If people love them, that's great. If people don't like them, it's a little disappointing, but if I'm enjoying the story I'm writing then I just keep writing it.

So you've got to decide. Are you writing for them or for yourself?