The boring bits of writing erotica

[AG31]

What defines strokers and non-strokers is how the story makes you feel when you read it

And how does each make you feel?

 

[AG31]

I consider strokers fluff pieces. Light superficial tension, very little psychological depth/ exploration. You can write a long one as long as it entertains, which is why mine include humor. . Sex jokes, innuendo, along those lines, funny predicaments, etc.

I consider sex a powerful enough, a mysterious enough aspect of our humanity that it can support the focus of a story all on its own. The story can range from fluffy to profound. Just like sex.

 

[Statius]

To echo @SimonDoom's question, why do you call Miss Vickie a stroker? Is it because it aims to evoke arousal?

Yes. The point is to arouse, but it's not just 'sex', it's about the surface level of everything. Little depth, fun, erotic moments, plenty of sex.

 

[StillStunned]

Here might be a way to identify strokers: if the sex is censored out, how much of a story remains?

 

[Statius]

Here might be a way to identify strokers: if the sex is censored out, how much of a story remains?

Not much really. The MC's inner turmoil comes from her attraction to a younger guy and her daughter setting up a group gangbang.

 

[Statius]

But I swear to god it's fun through and through. Sexual tension throughout

 

[ElectricBlue]

Early on in my visits to the forums, I observed that you made me stand on my head trying to define "simple erotica," because for you the person-hood of the other is part of what makes them erotically attractive.

That's why I put the term "stroker" in inverted commas. It's an irrelevant branding in my mind - as @SimonDoom notes, people rarely give examples of a stroker story.

In the example I gave, my own story, it ended up being a typical EB story, with intimacy and emotion, which are attributes "not meant to be in strokers" as I've always understood the term.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

You're absolutely right that it's just my perspective. Others may look at things totally differently.

The scores prove that it's merely your perspective.

But the inability of those expressing a different view to come up with concrete examples of stories that illustrate their theories makes me wonder.

No, the unwillingness of people to publicly shame the writers of poorly written stories which score highly makes you smug about the whole thing.

I personally don't believe that one has to make a choice, which is what your sliding scales suggest. A story can be focused on sex AND have a good plot. There's no tradeoff that must be made. In an ideal erotic story, the sex and the plot are integrated. They aren't different things.

That again depends 100% on the reader. No matter how well one integrates plot with sex, plot always adds non-smutty words to the length. Do too much of that and the stroke readers get bored, no matter how well integrated. The porn readers (who are the majority) by and large do not care about integrated plot and sex, even if they can identify it. If you are not serving their kink or fantasy on a platter they get bored.

Again, just my view. But it's interesting to me that people keep asserting this idea of a tradeoff without giving any examples.

I've stated many over the years without naming any names. You dismiss me with a wave of the hand. That's on you. Don't blame me.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Definitely a male gaze lesbian fantasy

Not really. I participated in a chain story last year seeded by a female writer who's docket was literally "Character B crushing on her her best friend Character A who is convinced that she's straight." That was literally the dynamic.

 

[SimonDoom]

Do too much of that and the stroke readers get bored, no matter how well integrated. The porn readers (who are the majority) by and large do not care about integrated plot and sex, even if they can identify it. If you are not serving their kink or fantasy on a platter they get bored.

You've said this sort of thing, over and over and over, with no evidence, and if there's no evidence, there's no reason to believe it. I don't believe it. It doesn't match my reading experience, and I've been more active here as a reader and as an author than you have, for a longer period. I've read hundreds of Literotica stories over the last 20 years. You have never substantiated your generalizations about what "porn readers" like. I'm not sure they even exist. The vast majority of readers who come here are looking for an erotic fix, including those who appreciate literary skill. We're almost all "porn readers." I'm a "porn reader," and I appreciate good prose and the elements of good fiction as well as anyone. These categories and generalizations, expressed with no reference to particulars, don't mean anything.

 

[SmilingLez]

"I think that this woman is more mandatory than the cleaning up. That's the lesbian fantasy, right? All the hot straight women are actually dykes but they just don't know it yet. Or at the very least she'll turn lesbian just for you and no one else."

Respectfully disagree, this is a straight male fantasy. They want their girlfriend to go lesbos, but only with one woman (with hopes of a future 3 sum) and never catch feelings and/or "change teams".

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Respectfully disagree, this is a straight male fantasy. They want their girlfriend to go lesbos, but only with one woman (with hopes of a future 3 sum) and never catch feelings and/or "change teams".

What's wrong with a fantasy, straight male, or any other? These kinds of statements are unnecessarily judgmental.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

You've said this sort of thing, over and over and over, with no evidence, and if there's no evidence, there's no reason to believe it. I don't believe it. It doesn't match my reading experience, and I've been more active here as a reader and as an author than you have, for a longer period. I've read hundreds of Literotica stories over the last 20 years. You have never substantiated your generalizations about what "porn readers" like. I'm not sure they even exist. The vast majority of readers who come here are looking for an erotic fix, including those who appreciate literary skill. We're almost all "porn readers." I'm a "porn reader," and I appreciate good prose and the elements of good fiction as well as anyone. These categories and generalizations, expressed with no reference to particulars, don't mean anything.

I've said this before too. My opinions are formed EXACTLY the same way that yours are, yet my opinion is completely dismissed on the grounbs that my opinions aren't formed on any basis. You don't give a shit about that either. You;re just smarter than me (and everyone else), so your opinion counts and mine doesn't. Case closed. You're such a snob. (eyeroll)

 

[ElectricBlue]

That's weird. The little bell up above rang to say PSG had replied to a post, but it was @SimonDoom's post.

Has that mis-reference happened to anyone else, or does Forum software know something we don't know?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

That's weird. The little bell up above rang to say PSG had replied to a post, but it was @SimonDoom's post.

Has that mis-reference happened to anyone else, or does Forum software know something we don't know?

I had started to reply to you an hour ago and changed my mind and blanked it out, but it had auto-saved, so when I replied to SImon, a little chunk of yours was in the box that I didn't see. I hit submit and your quote was there so I edited it out.

 

[NaughteeDragon]

In between 2 sex scenes I needed a travel filler.

Samantha watched the city go by in the fading sunlight and rising neon and LED lights. She saw
people going about their mundane lives and wondered if any of them carried a secret like hers. How many of those sexy witches and girls in devil costumes liked to be tied up and spanked? How many of those vampires had ever done blood play? How many of those zombies secretly, or not so secretly, wanted their girlfriends to bend them over and peg them?

Tells you a little about how she sees the world, covers an unspecified amount of time, and gives a break to get more lotion.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I had started to reply to you an hour ago and changed my mind and blanked it out, but it had auto-saved, so when I replied to SImon, a little chunk of yours was in the box that I didn't see. I hit submit and your quote was there so I edited it out.

Makes sense, thanks. That auto-save feature is a bit annoying, especially when you change your mind and decide not to hit the "send" button after all.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Makes sense, thanks. That auto-save feature is a bit annoying, especially when you change your mind and decide not to hit the "send" button after all.

Yea, I hate it too. It's stupid. But gotta have more features. More is always better, right? Xenforo in general is a clunky pain. Thank god lit doesn't implement all of its features.

 

[SkyBubble]

It’s not really true that strokers contain very little background information. I’ve read many fast-paced strokers that seamlessly weave the “boring” bits into the story. The trick isn’t to dump all the info at the start, but to reveal it naturally through dialogue or even during the spicier scenes.

For example, if one of the lesbians is a professor, a line like this can show what her job is like without writing much.

Character A: “Have you marked the essays yet? How many As did you give this time?”

Character B: “You know how college students are—most of them put in zero effort. But there’s one girl who wrote a really good essay. I’m thinking of giving her an A.”

This approach works much better than a long paragraph explaining how she became a professor, what she teaches, or her daily schedule.

Another example—Stephen King said this in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft:


Don’t feel like you need to spell everything out for readers to understand your characters.

I have done brief clothing descriptions. In my story Janet, when the narrator first spots her, she's wearing a blue dress. That's the total description.

 

[Bramblethorn]

broke: "which one of you is the man in the relationship?"
woke: "which of you is the washer and which is the dryer?"

 

[SkyBubble]

innuendo

If you don't hve a screen, teh flies come innuendo.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

Maybe this wasn't clear:

but what I meant it to mean was that "Red Hot" and "The Walled Garden" are the longest strokers I've written. I've also written shorter ones, like Tammy, Jessica, Yuliya, While She Watches Them, Full Moon on Old Jack's Hill, Angry Fuck - A Vignette, One Orgasm At A Time 01 and Pas de Trois.

Like I said, for me the distinction lies in whether the primary driver is sex or something else. Often it's a combination of sex, plot and character (Tammy, Jessica, Yuliya in particular straddles the line between sex-driven and character-driven), but if nothing else these were all stories that sprang from an image of a sex scene.

Either that or I just mis-interpreted. Thanks for the clarification. Now I have more examples to check out once I can. I have a pile of paperwork that has a tight deadline to do first, but these (and the ones from Statius) are ALL going to be part of my reward for getting it done. That and being allowed to write for fun instead of just to finish up the chores.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

I feel ya. People often talk in general about these things rather than giving concrete examples. And all of that would be fine, especially considering that some of the examples could be thousands of words long, if we had some consensus about the meaning of the concepts we use. But we don't.

30k words of a purely stroke story certainly sounds strange to me. You need some kind of plot to connect those scenes in a meaningful way.

I believe this is once again a problem of proper gradation. We treat stroker vs story-driven as binaries. They are either one or the other thing. But it's clearly a spectrum. A 30k-word story can be focused on sex, but it has to have some elements of character development and plot.

It's a sliding scale of a sort, and our story can be strongly focused on sex, which moves it towards the red end of the spectrum, or strongly focused on plot and characters, which would move it more towards the green end of the spectrum.


View attachment 2570027

This would be a cool visual scale to be able to give to readers

 

[SmilingLez]

What's wrong with a fantasy, straight male, or any other? These kinds of statements are unnecessarily judgmental.

Nothing is wrong with fantasies. My point, most of the lesbian erotica posted here are male gaze; same as porn.

As a lesbian, I (and my friends) would reject a "newbie" straight curious female wanting to."get it on". A monogamous experienced bi female, a definite go!

 

[FeldGasden]

Nothing is wrong with fantasies. My point, most of the lesbian erotica posted here are male gaze; same as porn.

As a lesbian, I (and my friends) would reject a "newbie" straight curious female wanting to."get it on". A monogamous experienced bi female, a definite go!

Then how do the straight curious females get a chance to experiment?