Does an Erotic Novel have to be Romantic?

[AliveInside]

Romance is definitely not a necessity, but I think emotion is. Doesn't matter what emotion, but the reader definitely needs to know what your characters are thinking and feeling. We need to understand them, so we can understand their actions. We don't have to agree with what they're doing, we just need to understand why they're doing it. Why they enjoy it. If we have that little bit of identification with them, we can make the leap for the rest. Perhaps your reader doesn't want sex in their personal life that doesn't involve romance, but if they connect with the character and feel a kinship with them, they will be able to involve themselves emotionally in their sexual exploits.

 

[Mandala40]

Maybe I'm different, but I cannot be interested in a story unless the characters love and care about each other.

 

[al1ce5]

I prefer romance with my erotica, but it by no means must always be present.

What should be present, however, is a tangible connection between the protagonists - people just hooking up for no damn reason has never held my interest, IRL or onscreen/paper.

 

[Mystickingsman]

I don' t think they HAVE to be romantic. I guess its just one of those things that, like it was stated earlier in this thread, if it happens to go in that direction, great. If not, no worries, because you still have a great story.

 

[ShyChiWriter]

Romance - yes

Hey,

I'm late coming to this - but I just thought I'd bump it and chime in with a slightly dissenting opinion.

I think once you get to the novel length, relationships are really important to carry a longer story arc. Most often, 'relationship' means some sort of romance.

That isn't to say that the word 'romance' should be defined by what you see in the books with the barechested pirates and busty women on the covers.

In the world of BDSM, the slow submission to a master/mistress is its own kind of romance. There is still longing, still wishing to see them... just with a riding crop i their hand instead of flowers.

As much as we all rail against formula and predictability, I'm willing to bet that a large percentage of successful erotic novels, under the covers, can still be broken down into the old boy meets girl formula.

One of my favorite things I ever saw was a backstage interview with Sacha Baron Cohen about the movie Borat. The reporter asked him this very convoluted question about whether he felt the film had been genre-bending, redefining, etc - Cohen tried to decipher what the guy said, but he finally answerd 'no'. Paraphrasing, he said he and the director were just trying to follow the basic three-act structure.

If you think about it - take out the bear in the ice cream truck, the 18 inch rubber fist sex toy, all of the other crazy stuff - it was really:

1. Borat meets Pamela Anderson (on TV);
2. Borat loses Pamela Anderson (or, feels betrayed after seeing the sex tape);
3. Borat gets Pamela Anderson (kidnaps her), and then, following a predictable twist in the formula;
4. Borat realizes he's already met his true love, the black hooker he took to the dinner party with the cream of the South.

All I'm saying is - attraction/loss/triumph is the basic narrative structure that has carried countless tales - how you spin it (or whip it, or bite it) is the fun part.

 

[driphoney]

Hey,

I'm late coming to this - but I just thought I'd bump it and chime in with a slightly dissenting opinion.

I think once you get to the novel length, relationships are really important to carry a longer story arc. Most often, 'relationship' means some sort of romance.

I agree. You can have a one-night-stand in a short story. sr71plt does it all the time, for example, but if you're getting longer, relationships come into play, if not, something's missing.

 

[Munachi]

i think that depends... maybe if the novel still should stay pretty mainstream, you need relationships in it - but if you don't care what others think of it, and find it erotic yourself, you could write a thousand pages about someone wanking, for example...

and of course if you write non-consent or mind control or similar things, romance might just not really be part of eroticism, even though certain types of relationships between people develop...

 

[nerk]

My two cents:

Does an erotic novel have to be romantic?
no. It doesn't have to be anything the writer doesn't want it to be. That's the advantage of writing your own stuff. Off the top of my head, you could write a novel about someone struggling with a sex addiction, in which sex is the problem and not the solution.

Is that going to be a satisfying read? Probably not for me, but in the hands of the right writer, it could be brilliant.

In my little world, romance is an expression of passionate love. How it is expressed (and received) depends on the people involved. I'm told some girls prefer roses and walks on the beach to whips and cages, and while it seems a little deviant to me, I can recognize that it can be an expression of passion.

A romantic story is a story in which lovers are brought closer together and express their passion by overcoming obstacles. Is that a formula? Absolutely. So is beginning, middle and end. They both leave a lot of room for creativity and good writing, as well as garbage.

Someone offered Borat as an example of a film that follows the basic romantic formula in an unexpected way. There are plenty of other movies that follow the same formula in unusual and creative ways: Shaun of the Dead has been my favorite the past few years. You begin with the fight between lovers and end with the reconciliation. The zombie apocalypse is simply a plot device that forces the lovers to overcome their differences and rediscover the love they feel for one another.

 

[sr71plt]

For anything to be erotic, it has to evoke certain responses/emotions in the reader. Eroticism isn't in the delivery, it's in the reception. Since everyone has distinct (from one another) buttons that evoke those certain responses/emotions, a novel doesn't have to be written to "be" anything to be erotic. "Romantic" and "erotic" are two distinctively different concepts, so of course a novel doesn't have to be romantic to be erotic.