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erotic writing

Positioning the Reader: Who Do Erotic Writers Address?

by | July 13, 2013 | | 7 Comments

photo by sp333d1

You will often hear writers say that they write for themselves, and surely this is true for most writers. We are our first readers and often our harshest critics. Nonetheless, I think there is a definite progression to the development of ‘a model reader’ amongst writers in general and quite a specific progression among writers of erotica.

This post is by necessity going to be personal and anecdotal.  A model reader is the person you imagine reading the work while you’re conceiving of the story, writing it, polishing it or getting it out there.  Getting a firm sense of who that is will give you a better, more realistic sense of how many readers you can attract and some guidance as to how to classify yourself within a genre.

However, there is one very interesting difference between other genres and erotica.  A great many erotica writers write their first stories, not as forays into the art/skill of writing, but as masturbatory entertainment. They write something that they cannot find written elsewhere (in the tone or to the standard they require for their arousal) that turns them on. Many others write their first stories as a tool of seduction – to arouse a specific lover – an intimate, handcrafted, experientially endowed gift. I am sure there are probably writers in other genres who make forays into erotica just to test their skill at writing explicit sex, but I’d guess this is probably not where the majority of erotica writers start.

My first piece of erotica (a happily doomed novel) embodied some of my most deeply held erotic fantasies.  It wasn’t very well written, and the plot was a complete mess, but if I have to be entirely honest, I was writing for my own arousal. I had no reader in mind. I wasn’t seeking an erotic conversation with anyone.

As I developed as a writer, and especially after I joined ERWA’s ‘storytime’ list, the understanding that this act of writing was a form of communication – an attempt to transfer information from me to a reader through the text – became more apparent.  There is nothing like having a story critiqued to give you a solid understanding that your writing is ‘received’ and, sometimes, not in the way you intended.

But the experience also taught me that, on a list as diverse as ERWA’s, there are times when it is not a case of having written a bad story, but that it has ended up in the wrong person’s lap. I am speaking here of stories that contain good grammar, fleshed out characters and a reasonably adequate narrative structure.  One of these areas of disjunction was immediately apparent even at an organizational level.  Non-consent lies at the heart of some of the most erotic themes for me as a writer. ERWA forbids the posting of non-consensual material. [“Storytime Guidelines” Erotica Readers & Writers Association Website.  (Accessed June 21, 2013) ] So, at a most simple level, there were lots of stories I simply couldn’t post.  But, at a broader level, when I posted stories on my blog, there were readers who for reasons of ethics or life-experience found my work did not speak to them at all.

Eroticism is one of those areas where lust and disgust nestle in very close proximity. [Stoller, Robert J. Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred. New York: Pantheon Books, 1975]   For some readers, the mention of a golden shower will ruin their experience of the whole story – so strong is their gut-level disgust of the act. For others, it’s not something that arouses them, but they can feel neutral about it and still enjoy the other parts of the story.  For some, you’re ringing their dinner bell at such a basic level, that you don’t even have to describe its eroticism to have them in your pocket.

When I got these radically positive or negative reactions to the things I wrote, I did start slowly to form a picture of my model reader. They were someone who thought critically enough to defer immediate disgust reactions if the eroticism of an act could be made apparent to them in the story.

Time to fess up. I am never going to go out and buy an anthology on watersports.  It doesn’t, as a rule, ring my bell. However, the two instances in which I read erotica that contained it and was aroused, were so different and yet, in some ways, so similar, they deserve examination.  The two works in question were “My Wet Pet” by Julius (sadly nowhere to be found on the net now) [ Julius. “My Wet Pet” Erwa Storytime Listserve. Date Unknown] and the novel “Darker Than Love” by Kristina Lloyd. [ Lloyd, Kristina. Darker Than Love. London: Black Lace Books (1998)]  Neither of these writers assumed a reader with a kink for watersports.  They both eloquently focused on the sensory experience rather than just shoving the kink at the reader and both leave the semiotic implications of urine as part of a sex act open for the reader to interpret in their own way.  Admittedly, in both these instances, it is the female doing the peeing and the power dynamics in both texts are strangely reversed. That might be why it works for me, but I doubt it.  I simply have never read a heterosexual BDSM description of a golden shower where the male was the urinator that didn’t textually assume it would automatically arouse me as a reader. None of them came close to describing the sensation, the power dynamic, the emotional paradox of the experience. I’m sure there must be some out there, but I’ve never encountered one. When I do, I’ll let you know.

In the last decade of writing, I’ve also come to understand that many readers are looking for very sex-positive, very uninhibited erotica where the characters suffer not a moment of ambivalence in regard to the sex.  On a personal basis, I find it very boring to write sex without paradox.  I like my fictional sex with drama and I like the drama to be in the sex itself or at least its consequences or emotional ramifications.  I write for readers who feel similarly.  And that cuts down the number readers I can expect to ever have significantly.

When I conceive of the story, at stages during the writing and, most especially, during the polishing, there are about five people I have in mind as model readers.  I don’t write for them, but I realize that I do write to them, in the intentional manner of a correspondent, if not in that precise form.

These are the readers I want to arouse.  In that sense, these readers are lovers. It is not my aim to bring them to orgasm through the act of storytelling, but I absolutely want them hard or wet and mentally aroused as hell at times, during the reading of a story. I want the paradoxes I pose in my stories to be intellectually erotic teases for them.  I want them to yearn for it all to come out right even if, knowing me as a writer, they know it probably won’t end in a happily ever after.  I want the story to leave them feeling a bitter-sweet yearning in the same way a real lover kisses you at a corner to take their leave.  It’s a good kiss, a kiss that speaks of possibilities, but it’s a complicated pleasure mixed with the pain of parting.

Most of all, if I had to describe my model reader in a single paragraph, I’d say that she or he is someone who can truly enjoy a story without having to absolutely identify with the characters. They are people who are excited by otherness.  They enjoy a level of realism that many erotica readers aren’t looking for.

Of course, I get many more readers than this. And I can see by their comments often that I have not satisfied them. For instance, many women who read romance love my male characters but despise my female characters. They cannot identify with her adequately enough to step into her place in the story and instead feel a subtext of sexual competitiveness.  Similarly, they get very upset when, at the end, the story doesn’t end happily.  This doesn’t bother me. They made read some of what I write – they may even enjoy some of it a great deal, but they aren’t my model reader.

The truth is I’m never going to sell a lot of books. And for many erotica writers, especially with the success of books like ‘Fifty Shades’ and ‘Bared to You’, there is a pressure to sell books and make money. We live in a period where this is the predominant measure of success.

But, for those of you who are struggling to accommodate the marketplace, I’d like to offer this thought. A very few of us are ever going to make a living doing this.  There is a valid and, to my mind, essential success in identifying who your model reader is and making them a happy and satisfied reader. No matter how small that readership may be, once they’ve found you and you have found them, there are life-long conversations had and an untold number of delicious seductions in  your future.

While pondering this topic, I realized that other writers would have completely differing opinions in who they felt they were addressing when they wrote. I asked two colleagues, Kathleen Bradean and Raziel Moore for their takes on the issue:

Kathleen Bradean says:

When I’m imagining a story, there’s a group of people I envision reading and enjoying it. Most of them are erotica writers who think erotica can be literary and that erotica can be used to explore uncomfortable truths about humans. That may sound highbrow but it’s more like the flesh under a scab you’ve picked off—sometimes nearly whole, sometimes tender and sickly, and sometimes weeping blood. That rawness makes many readers uncomfortable. I envision the reader who won’t look away.  I want the ones who lean in.

But that’s when I’m thinking about the story. When I write, the reader fades away. In a short story, there isn’t a lot of room to maneuver around, so each sentence has to be technically sound as well as develop character, evoke setting, move the plot forward, stimulate the senses, and arouse or disturb, worry…  My focus is on the craft of writing so I get that right. What good is an idea if you don’t communicate it the best way you can?  As if that isn’t enough to demand, hopefully my work has some aesthetic appeal. I am not a baroque wordsmith, nor a spell caster of ethereal mental imagery. My style is more like a Shaker chair. And while not fancy or embellished, it still requires craftsmanship.  I can’t possibly focus on all that if I’m distracted by mental images of the reader enjoying each passage. I can see why a writer would though. I can see other writers using their words to seduce, or like love letters. That’s a rather charming idea. But it isn’t me.

Raziel Moore says:

Back when I started writing smut in earnest – I really can’t call it erotica at this point – I had one main motivation and one main audience. The motivation was to write stuff I found personally gratifying, mostly as wank fodder, partly to see if I could write anything at all. The target audience was me alone. Mostly. I wrote as self exploration. To name, and understand, and own the angels and monsters in my head.

If it had been _only_ me, though,  I’d never have posted it to usenet forums, or eventually to free erotica sites like ASSTR. I wrote for myself, but also to show “them” what I could do. And I got feedback, in dribs and drabs, and eventually, fans.

Knowing that there were readers out there who react to my stories changed how I wrote. I didn’t think about it consciously for a long time, but it was there – this extra pause sometimes considering the possible reaction of someone besides myself. it grew on me slowly, unawares. Until I actually became correspondence-friendly with a couple readers.

When I know how someone _specifically_ reacts to my words, and I have a relationship with that person – even casually, or subject-specifically, my consideration of them as my reader is pretty unavoidable. I can anticipate, when I think about it, their eyes on the story. It doesn’t necessarily shift things hugely or overtly, but it is a partially known shape or shapes that I am pouring my words into, and there’s a desire to fill that shape the best I can.

Nowadays, I have several good writer/reader friends, and things have shifted again. These presences take a much more active role in my writing. They are almost internal checks and balances for certain aspects of style, or characterization, or craft. These people I write to, in addition to myself, are people I want to _get_ my stuff (As well as get wet or hard at the right spots). For the most part, it drives me to write _better_, but I’d be untruthful if I said my knowledge of what they liked – the buttons I’ve learned or gleaned – didn’t influence some of the details of what I wrote. I write for these readers as well as myself now, and I think I’m better for it. And, as I move forward and write more, perhaps there will be more eyes over my shoulder, more shapes to fill with words.

______

Although not specifically referenced here, these works informed this essay in essential ways:

Umberto Eco  (1996) “The Author and His Interpreters,” The Modern World: Porto Ludovica Website. http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_author.html (accessed 21 June, 2013)

Lucie Guillemette and Josiane Cossette (2006),  “Textual Cooperation”, in Louis Hébert (dir.), Signo [online], Rimouski (Quebec), http://www.signosemio.com/eco/textual-cooperation.asp (accessed 21 June, 2013)

Roland Barthes. The Pleasure of the Text. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1975)

Kill Your Darlings

by | May 13, 2013 | | 14 Comments

“I’m beautiful, I’m literary, please don’t hurt me.”

It was William Faulkner who said it. The venerable Samuel Johnson said something very similar. It really refers to lines or phrases, but can sometimes involve whole scenes.  Received wisdom is that, if you come across a line or a phrase that makes you puff up your chest at your own literary or poetic brilliance, many accomplished writers and editors believe it probably needs to die.

First, I want to own up to the fact that I have not always followed this piece of writerly advice and I still don’t. But I think I’ve come to understand the rationale behind it a little better, and I have killed my fair share of darlings more recently, and shifted others.

I’m concerned with the ‘literariness’ of my writing.  I care a great deal about the poetics of my work. I spend time frantically trying to avoid the many cliches to which it is so easy to resort when writing erotica. When I write sex scenes, I obsess about approaching them from at least a slightly fresher angle than most of the erotica I’ve read. I don’t believe my reader needs to be given a blow-by-blow description of intercourse, and I have a deep faith that language itself can evoke eroticism, and that you can brew metaphors that become new sites of eroticism for your reader.

But pride comes before the fall. I’m going to sound utterly arrogant when I say that I have forged erotic imagery that felt like it shone on the page, that made me think, ‘wow, you’re a fucking good writer’. The problem is that a lot of readers thought so too.

How can that be bad?

Well, it can. Because the moment you’ve forced a reader to look away from the story and think, ‘fuck, what a brilliant writer I’m reading, how poetic, how eloquent!’ is the moment you just kicked them out of the story. You’ve just interfered with your reader’s engagement with the fictional world in order to show off.   It’s literary narcissism and it means you’re more concerned with literary bukkake than telling a good story.

Let me give you a brilliant example of a darling that sorely required execution. It’s from Rowan Sommerville’s “The Shape of Her.”

“He grasped the side of her hips, pushed her away and pulled her to him with a slap. Again and again with more force and velocity. Tine pressed her face deeper into the cushion grunting into the foam at each thrust.

The wet friction of her, tight around him, the sight of her open, stretched around him, the cleft of her body, it tore a climax out of him with a final lunge. Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.”

After being awarded the Bad Sex Award for this passage, Sommerville defended himself by saying it was a literary allusion, an homage to Vladimir Nabokov, who had been an avid amateur butterfly collector.

At this point, I hope you’re saying ‘who gives a fuck about your literary allusions?’ because you have every right to. Readers deserve better than literary in-jokes and canonical masturbation. The last line is both literary and fucking awful.  If you were anywhere near being aroused by the passage, that line killed your mind erection stone dead, unless you happen to be one of the very few entomology fetishists out there.

Admittedly, I’ve never written anything quite so eloquent or out of place as that. But I once described an orgasm thusly:

“I can feel my orgasm long before it arrives, a plane in the distance and my body the control tower. The landing lights in my belly light up to guide it in. Gary’s cock has grown huge inside me and there’s a pleasant dull pain each time he thrusts upwards.”

Oh, good god, what possessed me? Landing lights? Control tower? What was I thinking? And yet, at the time, I thought it was a wonderful metaphor. It just felt so ‘right’.

Another problematic darling is the encapsulating and eminently quotable line. Rather than kill it, consider shifting it to either the beginning of the story, chapter or scene, or the end of one of those. It probably is a great line but if you impress your reader so deeply with your pithy, perfectly worded brilliance, same deal. You impress the reader with your linguistic abilities, but you interrupt their relationship with the story.

And this is not about you or how brilliant you are; it’s about the story. So, when it comes to your edits, read through your piece and find those lines, phrases or passages which make you want to give yourself a manly, Hemmingway-style pat on the back. Ask yourself who is truly served by that line or phrase. Is it serving the story or  your own writerly ego?

The Crossroads Coming into View

by | December 15, 2012 | | 4 Comments

By: Craig J. Sorensen

In 1990, I started to write a book based on a fantasy world
that had rattled around in my head since I was a kid.  I finished over 100 pages, then the story
became disjointed.  I moved on to writing
other things.

I finished my first book in 1994.  It was
a modern fantasy, based on an uptight businesswoman who enters into a series of dreams,
each of which features a door where she can wish for something and will receive
it.  A sort of homage to the saying, “be
careful what you wish for, or you will surely get it.”  Actually, it was more about “be careful how
you wish for it.”  The dreams summarily
invaded further and further into her real life, and vice versa.

I tried to find an agent or publisher.  I had no writing credits whatsoever.  I only
tried a couple then slipped the book into a three ring binder and stashed it in
a box.  Truth was, the writing quality wasn’t
where it should be, and deep down, I knew that. 
I went back into poetry and short stories, which I had played with since
I had joined the Army in 1980.

Fast forward to 2004, and I returned to that story I’d start
in 1990.  Over the years since then, I’d come back
to the idea time and time again, written bits of it, built back stories and
character sketches, drew pictures and maps. 
I committed, January 1, 2004, to finish the first installment of the
trilogy I envisioned by the end of the year.

And I achieved that goal. 

I planned to find a publisher or an agent.  I didn’t actually submit to anyone, I just looked
hard enough to know that selling a novel about an imagined ancient world, a
story with no magical element to it, would probably be a hard sell, especially
for an entirely unpublished author.

And so I tried my hand at literary short stories.  I found some encouraging words, but to the
point, from one prospective editor, “you write really well, but your story
lacked vibrancy.”  It was a fair cop.  The stories I had been writing just didn’t
sparkle.

One nasty little story I had written among my literary
efforts sat off to the side, certainly no lit mag would want it.  Then my wife sent me a call she had seen.  Seemed that nasty story was a possible fit.  I sent out the story and had an acceptance
within 24 hours.  Never mind that the
magazine folded before the story was published. 
I was paid.  I was an author.

Seems I had a home in erotica.  I found my energy there.  Something in my writing filled in. The characters were more
lively, the settings and situations more vibrant.  A mountain I had seemed unable to climb
suddenly seemed more ascendable.  A
timely slowing of my duties at my day job left me my early waking hours to
devote to my writing, and the success I was experiencing in erotica spurred me on.

Fast forward to late 2011. 
I have around forty published short stories to my name and a couple of
completed books in the hopper, even more in the works.  I’ve hit almost every goal I set for myself
when I decided that I needed to get my “street cred” as a writer.  In truth, I’ve achieved some things I did not
anticipate.

Suddenly, a crossroads appeared in the windshield.

To be continued…

What’s A Nice Girl Like You Doing Writing Trash Like That?

by | November 28, 2012 | | 12 Comments

Erotica writers get no
respect. (Apologies to Rodney Dangerfield.)

I’m sure every
erotica and erotic romance writer has been mocked for what she writes. (I’m
using the feminine pronoun only because most erotic writers I know are female.)
We are told a squirrel could write what we write since it doesn’t take much
talent, and that women of little intelligence read it. That sort of thing
normally doesn’t bother me since I have a cast iron resolve, but I posted in a
forum recently where I felt like “one of the guys”, letting everyone
know about one of my erotic books making it to #18 in Amazon’s free erotic
Kindle books. That’s the highest I’ve ever ranked, and I was proud of it. I wanted
to let everyone know so they could pick up a copy of the book and drive me to
#1.

Didn’t happen.

Instead they
ridiculed me, which took me completely by surprise. They made comments like,
“An erotic romance novel? I’m so scared I think I just peed myself.” I
was quite miffed, although I shouldn’t let that kind of thing get to me.
Ridicule may be one of the professional hazards we take as erotic writers, and
we deserve combat pay for it. I’ve heard of other women tsk-tsked by family
members, laughed at by friends, and given the hairy eyeball by work colleagues
when these people find out we write stories with hot, steaming sex in them. Too
many people who have never picked up an erotic book in their lives think the
prose reads something like D. M. Dunn’s Dishonorable Mention Romance winner in
the 2012 Bulwer-Lytton Awards contest: “Their love began as a tailor,
quickly measuring the nooks and crannies of their personalities, but it soon
became the seamstress of subterfuge, each of them aware of the others lingual
haberdashery: Mindy trying to create a perfect suited garment to display in
public and Sean only concerned with the inseam.” Too many people who have
never touched an erotic book or a romance novel think all of them contain words
like “turgid”, “throbbing man meat”, and “burning
slit”.

What About Other Erotic Fiction Writers?

I interviewed erotic
romance writers about whether or not those closest to them take their chosen
profession seriously, and most had some horror stories to tell. I noticed
common elements, such as ridiculing the writers by reading steamy passages
aloud at family gatherings in order to get a few laughs at the writer’s
expense. Calling what they write “trash” or “smut” or
“porn”. Wondering why they “waste their time” if they
aren’t making much money at it, if any at all. After all, why aren’t they
making as much money as that woman who wrote “50 Shades of Grey”? Those
from conservative or religious backgrounds bore a great deal of ridicule and
tut-tutting.

Gina’s ex-significant
other did everything in his power to prevent her from working and he still does,
although he’s the biggest purveyor of porn she’s ever met. Gina owns a small,
independent erotic romance publishing company. She had no issue with his porn
until he found it more preferable to masturbate than to have sex with her. Ann
heard that one of her sisters had shown her erotic romance web site to older
family members at a family gathering in the hope of shocking them and shaming
her. She also read aloud snippets from one of Ann’s steamy ménage romances, at
the top of her voice, after dinner. This was not done in a supportive manner to
promote her sister’s books.

Similar stories
abound, especially accusations that what we write is porn as if that’s a bad
thing. Sex columnist and author Violet Blue describes the difference between
porn and erotica for Psychology Today: “Porn is something that is a
graphic sexual image that conjures up an animalistic reaction in you. You like
it or you don’t,” she says. “Erotica also is graphic sexual imagery,
but it has an extra component or several extra components that resonate with
the viewer—be it artistic, be it passionate, be it something that emotionally
engages you, be it something that parlays into a fantasy that you have about
sexuality or the way that you relate to the people on screen.” When the
general public sees “porn”, it views it as gratuitous sexual imagery without
emotional connection that serves no useful purpose, and this view is a negative
one when it doesn’t have to be. As Violet Blue said, you like it or you don’t.
It’a a matter of taste.

A woman told Jerry,
a male erotica writer, that she refused to read or write porno. He elaborated
on his chosen form of writing, saying he writes stories with sex scenes but she
probably refused to listen. Shawn, another man who writes erotica, was also told
what he wrote was porn and he was wasting his time since he’d never make any
money at it. He was also told it was illegal. His family told him he was an
embarrassment to them. He wasn’t fazed, and continued to write erotica. His
girlfriend’s family even went to court to get a judge to keep him away from
her. That didn’t work. His girlfriend’s family has a very large trust fund she’ll
get when she turns 35. They think he’s after her money, which isn’t true.

Jean
made a very good point when she told me: “It’s the romance part that is
the stickler, Lizzie. People don’t take romance stories seriously. Somehow,
they think romance is easier to write or less important or emotional or
meaningful. And they are so wrong. But I don’t bother trying to explain. I
simply chalk them off my list.” Drew told Jean she could always remind
those people that “everything from Gone
With The Wind to Romeo and Juliet
to When Harry Met Sally are romances,
and then tell them to shove it.”

Religion plays a
huge factor in disapproval, especially from family members. Shawn’s
girlfriend’s family is extremely religious. They tell him what he writes is
against God’s will and he’s tainting their daughter with his porn. (There’s
that word “porn” again.) Karenna told me: “At the church I used to attend, a woman I didn’t know
well asked me about my writing. She smiled and nodded when I said I wrote
novels for teens. When I said I also wrote adult romance, her expression
changed and she looked at me like she’d scraped me off the bottom of her shoe. My
husband’s grandmother and one of his aunts had similar reactions. The
grandmother actually put her hands over her ears and said, “I prefer not
to discuss that kind of thing. Times have certainly changed; that used to be
private.”

Creative Solutions

Not
all is gloomy. I’ve heard from erotic writers who have very creative ways of
handling the negative feedback they get. I proudly blurt, “I write
smut!” when asked and I enjoy the shocked and stupefied expressions on
people’s faces. Then, once I have them off guard, I explain in plain, gentle
English what I actually write. Interest in my writing is piqued enough for me
to sell some books. Kendall’s girlfriend constantly interrupts him when he’s
writing erotica. She looks over his shoulder, lets out heavy sighs, turns on
the TV very loudly or has loud telephone conversations. It’s very irritating
and distracting, which is her intension. However, if he’s writing something non-erotic
like an essay or play, she leaves him alone. Gina had an amusing suggestion –
the next time she sighs loudly, “grab her and toss her on the bed and do
super naughty things to her. Betcha she won’t bother you when you’re writing
erotica again for a while. When she does she’ll do the exact same thing as she
did last time, hoping for the same results – keep your ears open. Eventually
it’ll work out for you both. Trust me.”

I am
like many erotic writers in that I am very selective about which people I allow
into my literary world. My parents and sister aren’t supportive. They don’t
ridicule or give me the hairy eyeball. They simply have no interest in what I
write, and they don’t give me any support. I have a feeling if I discussed my
writing at length they’d disapprove., but I don’t want to test that theory. My
writing never comes up in conversation, and I don’t volunteer information. I
also write horror, and even that is greeted with a blank stare. I’ve developed
a close relationship with an older couple. They give me lots of support about
my writing. My husband and son are also very supportive. I have writer friends
online and in meat space I look to for conversation and advice I know I won’t
get from my family. One of my closest friends is a science fiction writer who
is very supportive of my work. Laurie also is very selective about who she
tells, as is Regina. Regina told me: “If someone brings it up I’m okay
with it. But I never say anything on my own.” Laurie replied that her
husband will tell some of his friends that he wants to be married to a smut
author. I imagine him saying that with a twinkle in his eye and a proud smile.

I work
at home and I’m my own boss so I don’t have a supervisor to worry about. Not
all writers are that fortunate. Tessa cheekily asked how she should handle the
fact that her day job boss knows about her extra-curricular writing job. Julez
suggested she smile sweetly and give him a copy of her books. She would but she
writes personal assistant/boss stories and she doesn’t want to give him the wrong
idea, something that could be very amusing.

It
must be a work hazard all of us erotic writers must deal with at one time or
another – negative feedback about our chosen profession from friends, family,
and work colleagues. I also would bet my burning slit many of those who mock
what we write have their own dog-eared copies of “50 Shades of Grey”
shoved beneath their mattresses, hidden away as if they are teenagers keeping
copies of Playboy away from mom and dad. Considering that erotica and
especially romance novels sell like hotcakes – outselling books in all other
genres – we may laugh at the ridicule and snippy looks as we deposit our
royalty checks into our growing bank accounts. In the end, as always, success
is its own reward.

Too Sexy or not to Sexy

by | October 15, 2012 | | 10 Comments

By: Craig J. Sorensen

I got the edits for a story soon to be published from one of
my favorite editors.  As expected, her
tweaks and tunes made sense, and readied this story for prime time.  She made some warm comments about specific
things, which I always appreciate.  A
busy editor does not have lots of time on her hands, and when she takes time to
make such a comment, that is a great compliment indeed.

But down deeper in the story, one comment:  “Nooooo! Not sexy!”

The line in question? 
“… fingers scattered like deformed spiders.”

Which begs the question, is there an idealized role of
sexuality in an erotic story?  I know,
this is a slippery slope, and there are as many opinions as there are readers
and writers of erotica.

I often toy with strange images.  To some extent, I do this to create tension,
and to some extent, I do this to provide depth to the sexual imagery.  But, in doing this, I risk taking the reader
out of the erotic mindset that stories in the genre are usually expected to do.

Yes, some of the things I write come from strange places.  I’ve had a few similar edits at other times,
and I understand where the editors are coming from.  When a story goes into a collection, it needs
to fit the theme and the vision of the editor. 
 I’m not bothered by spiders, but
I do know that this is a serious squick for some.  With that in mind, I see her point.  The descriptive was not absolutely essential
to the story, but I liked it because it gave a sense of contrast, and
illustrated the protag’s perspective on the character he was thinking about.  In the end, I had no problem with the removal
of this “not sexy” descriptive.

I love writing erotica because it challenges social taboos,
just by being explicit, but within the genre, I like to challenge as well.  Taking chances is what I do.  Editors will probably continue to trap and
consume my odd images that go too far in their web.

I guess it’s all in the game.  Works for me.

Writing Erotic: lived vs mediated experience

by | January 13, 2012 | | 17 Comments

Ashley Lister is not an easy act to follow, but I thought perhaps I’d offer a post on theory to compliment his wonderful post on practice.

It may have caught your notice, for those who venture over into literary fiction, that writers these days produce some very unerotic, hollow and depressing sex scenes. It would be easy to assume that they can’t write sex, but I suspect their representations are purposely unarousing. So, are they all sex-negative prudes? I don’t think so – I just think they’re scared. But scared of what?

When we read, we are re-writers. We take the words of the text and bring them to life in our minds using our own experiences to flesh out the inner story. When we read about something we’ve never experienced, we hybridize the portions of the events we have experienced and enhance it with whatever information we have that might be close. For instance, we’ve never been in a spaceship, but most of us have been in an elevator, have sat in front of a computer, have looked out a viewing window of some kind. We many never have had an adult erotic spanking experience, but we’ve probably been spanked as children and seen a couple of those vintage postcards. We use whatever frame of reference we have – and then we improvise the rest. Our brain performs a brilliant remix of experience triggered and guided by the words we’re reading on the page. At its simplest level, this is why people are often so angry about film versions of books. They’ve already made the film of the book in their mind as they read it. If the one on the screen doesn’t come close, it’s disappointing.

There are two types of experiences stored in our brains. Lived-experience and mediated. They are all memories – everything is a memory once it’s occurred – but there are memories of the things we have lived through and experienced in our bodies and minds ourselves and memories of information given to us through different forms of media – writing, art, music, photographs, TV, Film, etc. We may know about, say, the Holocaust, from books we’re read, films we’ve seen, documentaries featuring survivors. But these are all mediated experiences of the Holocaust. You can only have a lived-experience of it if you’re a Holocaust survivor. And, as you can imagine, those narratives are fundamentally different. The lived, day-to-day experience is much more intense, but also contains experience of grinding hunger, chronic fear, long stretches of boredom between moments or hours of terror that might not make for an engrossing piece of narrative.

Are you still with me?

Looking back on the canon of erotic literature in the 20th century, many of the writers we think of as the fathers and mothers of our genre are also considered significant literary figures. But Lawrence, Miller, Nin, Nabokov, Duras, Bataille, etc. were all writing in times when the world was not filled with images of sex. You had to make significant efforts to find dirty postcards, bits of illicit film.

In the past, when people read “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, or “The Delta of Venus”, the images those erotic passages brought up in their minds were memories of the sex they had experienced or witnessed others having. That’s not a large imaginary encyclopedia to work from, but most of the reference materials were of actual, real sex.

Today, of course, we still have our own experiences from which to draw, but we are also inundated with mediated images of sex. Victoria Secret Catalogues, previous erotic writing we’ve read, sex scenes in movies, amateur porn clips on YouPorn.com, stories our friends or lovers told us.

And of course, we have our own sexual fantasies, which we’ve written, directed and produced using lived experience and all the mediated images of sex we’ve consumed.

So, a great deal of our inner encyclopedia of sex is filled with versions that are mediated. Yes, in porn, the actors are actually penetrating, ejaculating, etc. But they are actors. They are having sex in order to produce a piece of entertainment for others. They fuck in positions that allow camera access. They withdraw and ejaculate where the camera can capture it. This is not how people actually have sex. This is how porn actors producing porn have sex.

Wait, you say, what about amateur porn? That’s real. Well, yes and no. Because the very act of deciding to film yourself having sex changes the intention of the sex. Even amateur porn is obsessed with creampies, gaping pulsing orifices. It is having sex for the purposes of capturing a record of it and showing it. Most amateur porn attempts to reproduce some of the common memes of commercial porn.

The truth is, most people don’t see a lot of real human sexual experience, other than our own. And in that way, we are still a very puritan society indeed.

Why does all this matter to you as a writer of erotic literature? Well, if your goal is to produce erotica primarily as an aid to sexual arousal for masturbation, it really doesn’t.

But why I think a lot of literary writers have shied away from erotic sex scenes is because they believe their job is to write about real and profound human experience, whether dramatic or quotidian, and to trigger reverberations of that profundity in their readers. They resort to writing sex scenes that are hollow, joyless, and dissociative, I suspect, because, as yet, no one has bothered to make a lot of mediated versions of awful sex since it doesn’t have a lot of commercial potential. But we’ve all had the occasional bout of rotten sex. So writing it guarantees that what will be triggered in the reader’s mind is memories of the real.

You may feel, as a writer of erotica, that it’s not important whether the images you trigger are real or mediated, but it is to me. I don’t want to connect with my readers over a landscape of commercialized sex. When they read a piece of my erotic work, I attempt, as far as possible, to ensure that what they’re imagining calls to their real memories and lived abstractions, not a porn flick. Because I feel that the story will resonate at a deeper level if my words are associated with their real, felt, lived erotic experiences.

So, how might one go about trying to write work that triggers lived-experience memories? I think it’s damn hard. I think it’s the biggest single challenge erotica writers have. But I do have some ideas.

First, watch a lot of porn. Then watch it until you’re thoroughly bored. Once it stops arousing you, you can start to see, analytically, where porn sex really differs from lived sexual experiences. Have you ever made those sounds during sex? Given a choice, would you actually choose to have sex in that position? Notice how little full body contact occurs in porn. That’s because it’s no good for the camera. Same with settings. I’ve had sex up against the wall in a dark, cramped cupboard. But there’s no way to show that in porn: there’s not enough lighting and there’s no room for the crew. In a thousand ways, porn sex bears little resemblance to the sex we actually have. But because of its ubiquity, it’s definitely starting to shape the sex we’re told we want.

Since the majority of mediated sexual information we get is visual, make this the least important part of your writing. Visual imagery in text tends to trigger visual memory in readers. I have a suspicion that the absence of visual description in the text may force the reader to rely on other senses for which they only have lived-experience. When you do use visual imagery in your writing, spend time on the visuals that are there in the real world but that are seldom focused on in mediated sex scenes. Our inner minds don’t need filmic lighting, or space for the camera crew.

To a certain extent, sound is featured in mediated versions of sex, but it’s often done with little finesse. You don’t hear much heartbeat or breath in porn, the sheets don’t rustle, the headboard doesn’t bang, joints don’t creak. Avoid the sort of dialogue that you hear in porn between porn actors. I understand that sometimes people really do say ‘Oooh, yeah, baby. Fuck me harder.” But writing it in your fiction dialogue is much more likely to trigger mental auditory memories of people saying it on screen than real utterances during sex.

Taste, smell and touch are all senses that, as yet, we have not been able to remediate. These are wonderful things to focus on in your erotic writing because all your reader has to call on to reproduce these in their interior version of your story is their own real experiences.

It’s helpful to avoid sexual terminology that has been used for ‘classification’ purposes in adult entertainment. If we’ve had lovers from other cultures or with different coloured skin to our own, we don’t think ‘bi-racial’. That person is a person to us. We don’t classify our experience with them into a marketable slot. Similarly, most people who have sexual experiences with members of the same sex don’t think ‘Hey, I’m bi now!’ They just enjoy the person their with. They indulge in the new experiences that this may offer, but they don’t classify it.

The chances are, you know what your readers look like and most of them don’t look like ramp models or porn stars. Spend time really looking at people, their faces, the way they move. Chances are, the people we’ve loved and fucked weren’t celebrity look-alikes, but we found what was beautiful in them in our proximity. A really good photographer once told me: “everyone is beautiful in extreme close-up”. Wrinkles become the landscape of experience; pores become the texture of the living, breathing tactile skin. The fine hairs at the base of the spine become the sensory cilia of anemones. Ripples of flesh become the sea of indulgences.

I honestly think it’s fucking rude to make your female readers wish they were thinner, or your male readers wish they were two inches longer. If you really want your readers to immerse fully in your fiction, don’t present them with characters that they could never imagine themselves being. It sets up subliminal feelings of inadequacy. Which is fine, if that’s what you meant to do. But don’t do it by mistake.

Finally, and if you really feel you’ve got a handle on this, you can play with language – interrupting your readers assumptions when you know they’re likely to mentally reference mediated sexual imagery. BDSM is a really good example. It’s fair to say that most people are not living a BDSM lifestyle. So their understanding of it comes from mass media: Rhianna’s video, Cat Woman, that darkly referenced CSI episode with the Domme, BDSM porn, etc. These are mostly visual. So concentrating on describing what it actually feels like to have a crop hit skin or how the muscles ache when limbs are in bondage, goes much further to bringing your reader into the scene than a visual description or a he did this/she did that. To paraphrase Mitzi Szereto, don’t tell us what happened. Tell us how it felt.

I don’t want to pretend for a moment that writing like this is easy or that I’m all that good at it. I’m not. Because, and this is the real head fuck, I am just as much influenced and affected by the mediated experiences I’ve absorbed in my lifetime as my readers are. Not everything I write about in erotic fiction are things I’ve lived either. But please don’t despair; once you’ve started to interrogate your own creative imagination, you can often identify the sources of your internal data quite easily. Just being aware of this empowers your choices as a writer. Also – and this is vital – don’t try to use this critical approach on a first draft. Write your story draft first and then play ‘spot the mediated porn memes’ in the editing stages. Otherwise, you can easily begin to suffer from total creative paralysis.

I think the prospect of arousing your reader not simply at a genital level, but at an existential level, makes the challenge worth the effort. And we, as erotic writers are a brave and intrepid bunch. Literary writers who won’t write erotic sex scenes are, in my view, cowards for not, at least, attempting to integrate the erotic into their work and giving its proper and important place in writing the human experience.

Hot Chilli Erotica

Hot Chilli Erotica

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