Should porn stories discuss how sex changes things?

[8letters]

I've read enough of your stories that I can see this perspective in your stories. Your stories tend to be romantic. It's forbidden romance, because it's usually brother-sister, but it's romance. The trick in your stories is plausibly to explain how two people who shouldn't be romantically entangled get entangled anyway and to make it plausible and satisfying for the characters involved and for the reader.

But romance isn't necessary for erotica. Erotica can be tragic, or absurd, or horrific, or comic, or epic. It can just be an impulsive encounter. An indulgence of an erotic whim. An inhibited housewife one day breaks free and does something sexually crazy with a neighbor. A man who's always thought of himself as straight decides to have an encounter with another man. I don't think stories about those kinds of experiences are necessarily any less deep or significant than stories about romantic experiences. It's all a matter of how you pull it off.

The nice thing about it for an author is that the options are nearly infinite.

The thing I get from these threads and from the stories I've read is that what is "erotic" is deeply personal, and often weird, and peculiar to the reader and author, and the word "should" applies to a significant degree only to one's own tastes, and no more broadly than that. Which is fine.

I'm going to differ with you here. Mark Twain once said, "The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible". Yes, you can have characters do things for no apparent reason, but the fact that they are doing for no apparent reason is going to hurt the credibility of your story. And you can say, "Who cares about credibility? It's a porn story." To me, when you stop caring about credibility, then you're relying on your description of the physical sex to carry the story, which we agree is a tough job. To me, one way to give credibility to your story is by having a character think before they have sex about what impact the sex is going to have on their life and decide that's okay.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm going to differ with you here. Mark Twain once said, "The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible". Yes, you can have characters do things for no apparent reason, but the fact that they are doing for no apparent reason is going to hurt the credibility of your story. And you can say, "Who cares about credibility? It's a porn story." To me, when you stop caring about credibility, then you're relying on your description of the physical sex to carry the story, which we agree is a tough job. To me, one way to give credibility to your story is by having a character think before they have sex about what impact the sex is going to have on their life and decide that's okay.

The key term for me is "verisimilitude." A story doesn't have to be realistic. It should create an appearance of reality or credibility on its own terms. We accept superhero movies based on people who have magical and unrealistic powers. The crucial things are 1) limiting the magic so the audience can suspend disbelief, and 2) once the magic is introduced, having the story stick to it and be consistent with it.

The reality is that people do crazy things for sexual satisfaction. That IS real. People go to parks and they fuck people they don't know. There's no before and there's no after. It may not be your thing, and that's perfectly understandable. But it's erotic to many people. I'm a pretty "normal" person in my day-to-day life, but I like erotica that explores the edgy, nutty side of human behavior, behavior one can't necessarily make sense of. I like romance, too, but not exclusively. Sometimes I like stories where a person goes completely over the edge and then they go back home or go back to work and you have no idea what's going to happen next to them.

 

[DanCastle]

It comes down to the intent of the story, is that something you want it to address?

 

[Athalia]

in my humble opinion, Porn doesn't have to discuss that. But erotica does.

I can't think of any story of mine where somebody doesn't discover something about himself, or herself, that changes their perspective on life, even if the protagonist is just thinking about the change. It's the change that is a vital element of any good story.