Storyline vs Sex: The Right Balance?
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ChuckWolf
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I think you are judging and not a 100% behind your premise, but as how you would define it, I would definitely see my stories in the porn category.
Hypoxia
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Pornography is literally drawing or writing about prostitutes. By strict definition, a tale of one or more whores NOT having sex is pornography, as are paintings of semi-naked lounging hookers. In modern usage, pr0n and eroticism are points on a sexual spectrum with no hard line of separation. I put it as: in eroticism, sex is central to the story; in pr0n, sex IS the story.
Some of my tales start, proceed, and finish with sex, but lots more may be going on than just rolling from fuck to fuck. Do I try to be arousing? Sure. Is arousal my only goal? Usually not.
CuteSlaveLisa
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Many years ago I had a fun time trying to explain to my child's teacher and a principal the difference between obscenity and profanity (school had rules against the latter but not the former).
Let's just say I should have listened to mom. (Never argue with a pig. It makes you look stupid and annoys the pig.)
Love and Kisses
Lisa Ann
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I think the answer really depends on the category you're discussing. I'm going to pull out a table from the statistical analysis I did:
Looking at this, I'd guess that there are some categories like Anal where the standard story is a short, high-sex one. Then there are categories like I/T, LW and Romance which have a fair number of longer stories.
The overall trend is that long stories to do better than short stories:
eroticstoryspinner
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I submit stores here because I personally believe that writing good erotica is challenging. If you spend too much time trying to fit this or that rule or to fit a particular classification you run a risk of killing the story in favor of a formula.
I write in the SF genre for non erotica. and I use Literotica to experiment with point of view, dialog and world building. Its fun for me and I seem to have some people who like what I write. Plus people here are not shy about self expression so the feedback happens.
The bottom line is to have fun with whatever you do.
I write in the SF genre for non erotica. and I use Literotica to experiment with point of view, dialog and world building. Its fun for me and I seem to have some people who like what I write. Plus people here are not shy about self expression so the feedback happens.
The bottom line is to have fun with whatever you do.
TryAnything
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Good point. Personally, I write to entertain myself. It's fun to explore things behind the safety of a keyboard. The fact that some people seem to enjoy what I'm posting is just fun on top of fun.
Athalia
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My advice is worth exactly what you pay for it, but here it is anyway.
For me, there has to be a component of discovery in the sex ... the protagonist has to find something that he or she hadn't explored, and it's the conflict that makes the story. Why hasn't it been explored? Was it ignorance, a bad previous experience, or simply the lack of opportunity? In the stories I like best, there's usually an element of conflict, and it's the resolution of that conflict in the MC's life that put the sex into context.
In any of these cases, the actual fucking is an intrinsic part of that process of discovery, as a means of resolving that conflict. The character comes out not only sexually satisfied, but changed in some fundamental way.
For me, there has to be a component of discovery in the sex ... the protagonist has to find something that he or she hadn't explored, and it's the conflict that makes the story. Why hasn't it been explored? Was it ignorance, a bad previous experience, or simply the lack of opportunity? In the stories I like best, there's usually an element of conflict, and it's the resolution of that conflict in the MC's life that put the sex into context.
In any of these cases, the actual fucking is an intrinsic part of that process of discovery, as a means of resolving that conflict. The character comes out not only sexually satisfied, but changed in some fundamental way.
TryAnything
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I agree, which is why I seem to like writing about the so-called 'forbidden' things like incest, cuckoldry, swinging, anything but conventional vanilla. The conflict between accepted convention and getting outside the box creates the excitement for me. The rest is just details.
eroticstoryspinner
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THIS. I agree with the idea that you write the story and don't worry about the percentages. That said, I had to applaud Cute Slave Lisa's observation. The writers back in the day had to convey a lot they could not show or describe explicitly due to the very real risk of censorship at best and criminal prosecution at worse. I have been writing erotica as a way to exercise my skills. Trying to write a story that happens to have sex is better in my mind at least then trying to wrap a plot around a bunch of sex scenes.
Pocketshaver
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Write what actually works for the story.
Meaning, if the sex is NOT needed or is not critical to the story section, LEAVE IT OUT>
Meaning, if you have a chapter, and it has one sex scene, if you take the sex scene out completely, you leave it out if it doesn't stop the chapter from proceeding.
In a way its one of the more overlooked jokes on Star Trek the Next Generation versus Star Trek.
In star trek, when they had to make spock look like a human, they just gave him a watch cap and all was good. They simply said "birth defect" or "war injury" or "tribal custom" if someone saw them.
On TNG they did complete 3 hour long plastic surgeries just to change the shape of someones ear when they could use the hat.
Meaning, if the sex is NOT needed or is not critical to the story section, LEAVE IT OUT>
Meaning, if you have a chapter, and it has one sex scene, if you take the sex scene out completely, you leave it out if it doesn't stop the chapter from proceeding.
In a way its one of the more overlooked jokes on Star Trek the Next Generation versus Star Trek.
In star trek, when they had to make spock look like a human, they just gave him a watch cap and all was good. They simply said "birth defect" or "war injury" or "tribal custom" if someone saw them.
On TNG they did complete 3 hour long plastic surgeries just to change the shape of someones ear when they could use the hat.
Hypoxia
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Literature and art have shown non-vanilla sexuality for millennia. Sacred bestiality; incestuous and queer kings; lesbian and nympho queens; peasant orgies. This ain't new stuff. Stories lacking sexual tension tend to be... bland. Or they sublimate sexuality, hide it behind politics, religion, technology, etc. IMHO those pushing sexless media are the worst pervs.
So, how much sex belongs in any story? That's for y'all to figure out.
So, how much sex belongs in any story? That's for y'all to figure out.
SimonDoom
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Often, I think you are right. This makes a lot of sense.
However --
If all gratuitous sex scenes had been removed from the books I've read and the TV shows and movies I've watched over the years, I'd be a much poorer reader and viewer for it. Writers -- even Shakespeare -- have sexed up their stories for centuries for no purpose other than to perk up the reader's interest. I don't think that's necessarily wrong. Thank god for gratuitous sex, I say. At least, much of the time.
This is never an issue for me, because all my stories here are principally about sex. When I sit down to write an erotic story, I want to write about sex, not my life story, or a space opera with occasional nighttime jousts with nubile aliens. Sex is the focus. So the OP's question is a good one. Assuming your story WILL have sex, how much of the other stuff should it have? There's no golden ratio, but for me there should be enough buildup to a) set up the character, the character's need, and the conflict the character faces, and b) get the character from point A (no sex but wanting sex) to point B (sex) in a plausible and entertaining way.
Hypoxia
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Yes. We're telling stories. People may or may not fuck during the narratives. We may or may not focus on the amount or quality of sexual activity. But asexual humans are likely not our focus here. And non-story writing gets tedious. So we write labored stories about real or fantasized sex. Why else should we bother posting on LIT?
rutger5
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The problem with that theory, especially at Lit or similar places, is that in 99.9% of stories you don't need to describe the nuts and bolts of sex to advance an actual plot. Sure it may be necessary for the reader to know that the characters got together in the biblical sense but to describe the act or even the buildup in a sensual manner won't advance most plots. Writing to arouse a reader or to give them sexual inspiration is a legitimate goal and one can do that with an actual story but once you start unhooking bras and the like you are appealing to the prurient. Now if you need to describe the climax because that is when the curse of lycanthropy is activated or something might be legit but in most cases the old movie fade to black conveys what happened with the characters.
tldr; Put in as much sex as you like and some readers will agree.
Handley_Page
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Agreed
Erotica is as much about the "feeling" and sensations as the act itself, IMO.
And a good story takes a little time to get going; it's as much as HOW the story is written as anything.
Oh is THAT what she was complaining about.
ChloeTzang
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Exactly! Literotica is ALL about sex or why would you write on a site where that’s what 99% of our readers are here for. They may appreciate a good story, and a lot them do, but it’s the sex that’s the driver.
Now me, I get really bugged by mainstream novels that gloss over the sex.
SimonDoom
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Glossing over sex is not something one ever has to worry about in a Chloe Tzang story.
8letters
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Most of my stories have a final sex scene which is essentially spiking the football in the Happy Ever After zone. And I think readers love that kind of sex scene. They've followed the two main characters for many pages now, and hopefully they want the lovebirds to celebrate their love for each other with lots of hot sex. That sex scene doesn't advance the plot any, but I think provides catharsis for the reader.
Some of my stories have sex scenes before the final sex scene, some of them don't. It depends on what makes sense given the story I'm telling. What I like to do is have a sex scene or scene with a lot of sexual tension, and then take a break for developing the characters and/or their relationship. The whole story to me is building up to that final sex scene.
GuessImJamie
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Aldous Huxley- "Chastity - the most unnatural of all of the sexual perversions."
KeithD
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My publisher, with both mainstream and erotica labels, has just made me cut some mild sex out of a mainstream book. I'd ask him just to transfer it over to the other label (and then beef up the sex
) if it weren't part of a series in the mainstream. Ah, well.But I'm surprised this thread is still going. The answer is obvious, never changes, and is a one-size-fits-all answer for a good many questions floated to the board. Each and every reader of the 100,000 plus readers who open stories on Literotica has his/her own sense of the right balance between storyline and sex (and even their own sense of balance probably is in continuous flux). There is no such universal ideal balance. Write to suit yourself or make your own, only partially applicable, guesses if your goal is to get meaningless votes and ratings here.
GuessImJamie
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You answered your own question, at least for me.
Using societal labels I am a pervert. I have sex with other women, and with multiple partners some of whom are siblings to one another. No 'mainstream' outlet would touch writings about my family.
But I reject the label 'pervert.' What I am is a non-hypocrite living in a very, very hypocritical society.
Evangelicals elect a serial polygamist, in a nation where the average marriage doesn't last long (7 to 9 years by various sources). But those in 40+ year stable polyamorous relationships are immoral. Defenders of marriage seek to prevent citizens from marrying. Conservatives don't believe in conservation. Liberals oppose free speech. Federal judges call out the Justice Department for "polluting the waters of justice."
I doubt I am the only one who writes here because it is a place where I don't have to gloss over sex. A place that I can say that God obviously wanted us to be able to reach our fun bits. God could have made our arms shorter. Or, eek, put stamens and pistils on our heads.
Sex is wonderful, its a reason to get out of bed and face a new day. A truly sacred way to communicate with your lover(s).
Perversion, well that is the person holding the book they never read, saying the book says marriage is one man one woman (well yes in Gen 2:28, uh but it then later enumerates seven other acceptable forms). Someone who claims to be a successor to the Covenant (that would be the Covenant between God and Abraham who married his sister Sarah and thereby produced Isaac whose son Jacob married... let's see his first cousin Leah, her little sis Rachel, and Zilpah and her sister Milpah while living in his father-in-law Laban's house, where they had at least 13 children together). That person saying I am immoral because I do the very things his venerated ancestor did.
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yukonnights
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My publisher, with both mainstream and erotica labels, has just made me cut some mild sex out of a mainstream book. I'd ask him just to transfer it over to the other label (and then beef up the sex
But I'm surprised this thread is still going. The answer is obvious, never changes, and is a one-size-fits-all answer for a good many questions floated to the board. Each and every reader of the 100,000 plus readers who open stories on Literotica has his/her own sense of the right balance between storyline and sex (and even their own sense of balance probably is in continuous flux). There is no such universal ideal balance. Write to suit yourself or make your own, only partially applicable, guesses if your goal is to get meaningless votes and ratings here.
This really is the proper guide, IMO. Most of my stories are explorations into the minds and emotions of the characters as they discover a new sexual/emotional relationship. The "story plot" is simply a place for them to do this in. I enjoy trying to write a 'real story' though. But without a large dose of sexual tension and pleasure, I wouldn't get much personal satisfaction from the work involved—the main purpose is exploring the sexual.
But, I do have the reader in mind. As Kieth said; I guess at what the category readers will expect from a story and try to create something enjoyable and worth the time they spend on it. But overall, it's a blend that brings me enjoyment since I do this only as a hobby.
Hypoxia
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I'm currently re-reading much classic Golden Age SciFi, all glossed-over. No FMF oral daisychains till the 80s. The genre pulp fiction I recall abused every metaphor to avoid actually describing sex. A little mainstream fiction had brief fuckshots, maybe. But Anglophone societies seem very sex-repressed schizo. Is that a survivable kink?
Bramblethorn
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FWIW, that part's a myth. The seven-year figure is a median for marriages which end in divorce, not for all marriages. Over 50% of marriages make it to at least 20 years.
