Erotica Writer's Guides And The Act

[elfs]

The most common refrain we hear from erotica writer's guides (and romance writer's guides, at least the ones that deal honestly with the current trend of sexual explicitness found in lots of erotica) is that we must write from the reader's emotions. We must tell a story about what at least one character is feeling, reveal something important about the character or the plot or perhaps even the setting.

But what they do emphasize over and over is that if you're concentrating on the physical things the characters do, you're just writing porn. You're not really writing anything of value.

You and I both know what they're really trying to say: don't neglect the story. Sure. The problem with this approach is that one can go too far with it and completely neglect the other important role of the story: involve the reader. And the one thing I enjoy in an erotica scene, aside from its purpose, is a sense of physical veracity. This over-emphasis on "concentrate on the story" has been over-interpreted to mean "neglect the act."

Human bodies are messy. They're flawed. They're often broken. People have moles and scars and hair in funny places. Among all of the lovers I've had in the past, a sense of chemistry is absolutely essential; some people just smell better than others-- and it's not a quality that person has universally, but a combination, somehow, of my senses and his or her own biochemistry. Different parts smell differently; the armpits, the crotch, the nape of the neck. Some people make a lot of juices, some just a little.

And people weigh something. Either that, or I'm writing a zero-gravity scene again, and that had better have its own awkwardness and messiness. Elbows, knees, what does the character do with that arm he's lying on while in the spoon position?

A writer can get a lot of mileage out of reality. Tell me about the texture of the bed, about the quality of his and her skin, about hair patterns. Fine, long hair gets between the lips during serious kissing. One of my weaknesses I've noticed while writing the Darzi, Peren & Jouet stories is that I have a harder time quantifying Peren because she's a furry, and my willingness to do research doesn't extend to zoophilia. I just have to guess. Maybe this is why I never got all the hoopla over Andrew Greeley's sex scenes in Thy Brother's Wife; they lacked cinema verite. Too many characters in erotica are flawless mannequins, rather than wonderful human beings.

Comments

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

In one of my other lives I write erotica and am part of the Erotica Readers & Writers Association, and after reading way too many stories involving characters with throbbing 9-inch cocks or smooth bubblegum-pink pussies, bouncing firm breasts, red hair, flawless alabaster skin, etc. etc., I went on a huge rant about creating characters that readers could see themselves in. The counter-argument I got back was: people want a fantasy, not someone like themselves; old/fat/flawed people are gross in sex scenes, and so on. (Not everyone felt this way, and plenty of people write real characters, that was just the pushback I got from some writers.)

In retaliation I wrote a fable about a man with a cock so crooked that it hurt most of his lovers to have sex with them, and he was very lonely, and on the day he went to go have it surgically corrected he met a girl in the waiting room with a similar interior problem; they go home and see if they fit together, and they do. It was fun to write, even though the rest of my erotica is filled with reasonably human-looking people with scars and flaws and whatever else.

Another approach is to under-describe the characters and sex activity, and just be specific on the other details of scene and story.

My tendency is to write a pretty solid story that HAPPENS to have a major sexual element. Unfortunately, I wind up writing stories that don't have QUITE enough sex in them for some of the erotica publications, and too much explicit sex for the non-erotica world. Sigh.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

*grin* right there with you.

I try to write a solid story, with sex as an element of the plot. My editor is forever after me to make it hotter.

As for imperfect people, I've done everything from an architect with swivel-chair spread to a double amputee, a heart-patient who needs to take things easy to conjoined twins. I like my people as people, not dolls.

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

Some woman-oriented erotica neglects the act from a different direction. I've read stuff that gets so caught up in the flaws and messiness of bodies and brains during sex scenes that it gives human frailty more page-time than getting it on. I wouldn't be surprised to see that in a mainstream romance novel, but in lesbian BDSM smut it just didn't work.