Has erotic literature improved over the years? (Long thoughtful rant)

[ElectricBlue]

Not quite true, in my opinion. Literotica's 1-5 star rating mechanism is a good example of one, as is Google's ranking mechanism that favors popular web pages over less popular ones. Granted, it's far from perfect, but it does to some extent reward good writing with a larger reader audience.

Without being empirical or scientific about it, I'm inclined to agree. When I look at the Lit story lists of prolific authors and look at their scores overall, and then go sample a random story, I'd say (as a general rule) those with a majority of Red Hs are usually of a higher quality than those writers who average out below 4. Quality being measured by the basic ability to punctuate, use decent grammar, and being able to write a coherent sentence. Telling a decent story is often a bonus.

And there are usually quite obvious reasons why some authors barely reach a 3.

When 500,000 readers (what's our current "Active List"? does anyone know? - then add in all the silent anon readers) cast a vote, they collectively can't all be wrong.

And if the story count is relatively small, the number of Followers an author might have gives a clue.

 

[Dingo_Triplesix]

Well, we had a quite similar discussion at the German LIT last year. As long as everyone decides by him-/herself how to interpret "quality", this will just be the exchange of opinions. I´m out.

To get to solid conclusions we had to
1) define the term "quality" in operationalized attributes (like "number of spelling errors per 1000 words" or whatever),
2) take a representative sample from different years and check the sample for the set attributes.

Scientific work, basically, and quite time consuming. I´m not sure if anybody is willing to invest this time.

 

[TadOverdon]

Any place on the web where spelling is improving over time is a backflow against universal entropy.

 

[Chaste_Down]

Writing well takes practice. People are less likely to put in the 10,000 hours if they have no realistic prospect of being published. Now we have easy routes to self-publishing, and even failing that we have forums like this that offer feedback and camaraderie. It all encourages us to spend more time at it, put more effort in, and get better.

The early days of UseNet were probably the first opportunity the vast majority of contributors had had to share erotic writing (and probably writing of any kind), so we were seeing people learning their craft from scratch.

That's my 2 cents.

 

[SimonDoom]

Any place on the web where spelling is improving over time is a backflow against universal entropy.

Thankfully, Literotica is not a closed system.

 

[gordo12]

And what a shock that was.

There's no other way to put it: most this stuff, seen in today's light, is absolutely terrible.

I couldn't agree more. Even though I had my first computer in 87 I had no clue there was anything past the wall I was staring at while I wrote code for it. Come 97 when I bought my first clone I discovered the internet. And stories. Asstr was one I used to read daily (Kirsten particularly) and then I discovered Lit.

Most of the stories on Lit were a far higher quality than Asstr or any other site. It's why it's become my favourite site and it started me writing.

I believe the majority of the writers are here to improve themselves. I have no evidence of that assumption it just feels like that to me.

There are still shitty writers and those who should never write but those nasty trolls mentioned do tend to clean bad writers out quickly.

 

[TadOverdon]

What I've seen of usenet porn, and usenet in general, reads like the first flush of people discovering the anonymity of online life. I guess no one had seen anything like it before, and it's like they had no capacity for self-regulation at all. They're schoolboys getting sick-ass drunk on Captain Morgan filched from daddy's bar in the basement.

My spouse calls alt.sex.stories a "core dump of the collective Id," and he should know.

 

[gordo12]

What I've seen of usenet porn, and usenet in general, reads like the first flush of people discovering the anonymity of online life. I guess no one had seen anything like it before, and it's like they had no capacity for self-regulation at all. They're schoolboys & girls getting sick-ass drunk on Captain Morgan Deluxe (dark rum) filched from daddy's bar in the basement.

My spouse calls alt.sex.stories a "core dump of the collective Id," and he should know.

I corrected your post!

 

[TadOverdon]

I corrected your post!

Everyone knows that there were not really any women on the Internet in those days. Just computer nerd boys roleplaying.LOL

 

[TadOverdon]

Not quite true, in my opinion. Literotica's 1-5 star rating mechanism is a good example of one, as is Google's ranking mechanism that favors popular web pages over less popular ones. Granted, it's far from perfect, but it does to some extent reward good writing with a larger reader audience.

I doubt that it really does.

There is no competition for free hits, anywhere. Because they represent no investment but a little time on the part of an audience that has more than enough time to expend (or they wouldn't be looking for free entertainment on the Internet, duh). There are more than enough eyeballs to go around. Bad proliferates more quickly than good, because it requires less skill or effort to produce. And with porn in particular, consumers are more concerned with what pushes their buttons than they are with quality.

You know that there are huge amounts of "erotic writing" on websites that don't specialize in prose fiction, right? Every porn comic (well, most of them) represents the effort of writers as well as artists. Check out free collections of these things, like Hentai Foundry or 8Muses, and gauge the general level of writing competence.

Or, if you want to focus narrowly on purely prose fiction, go to a site that sells ebooks that include erotica categories. Because there is selection pressure - competition for people's money, same as in most of the world (including the professional fiction markets). Look at what's selling best at those sites.

I doubt that you'll be overwhelmed by the overall level of craft among the bestsellers, and if the subject matter of asstr is appalling...well, you'll find just about all of that (except underage) at those places. Stories of dudes getting their dogs to impregnate their daughters seem to be right up there with far more respectable (ahem) Mafia romances.

I just think that people underestimate how much of everything there is on the Internet and how endless the demand is for every kind of thing, good or bad.

The web is full of businesses filling niches that may appear inevitable in retrospect - "that's so obvious, why didn't I think of that?" - but which grew upon launch to at such rates and extent that many quickly outgrew all the plans and projections of their creators. Patreon, Kickstarter, OnlyFans, even AirBNB...and one characteristic that they share is that people who want to get their shit sold online quickly find ways to use and exploit each new venue in unexpected ways that give their owners headaches.

 

[gordo12]

Everyone knows that there were not really any women on the Internet in those days. Just computer nerd boys roleplaying.LOL

You're probably right. Women were too busy designing those pretty little unicorn sites with the jingly bell music, rainbows and fairies fluttering around. And who could forget the plethora of stars?

Blech! I hated those rings.

And yet I do recall female names authoring some of those stories. Maybe just an old man misremembering the past.

 

[TadOverdon]

You're probably right. Women were too busy designing those pretty little unicorn sites with the jingly bell music, rainbows and fairies fluttering around. And who could forget the plethora of stars?

Blech! I hated those rings.

And yet I do recall female names authoring some of those stories. Maybe just an old man misremembering the past.

My tongue was further into my cheek there than Dredd's dick down Avluv's throat.

 

[KinoKe]

Not quite true, in my opinion. Literotica's 1-5 star rating mechanism is a good example of one, as is Google's ranking mechanism that favors popular web pages over less popular ones. Granted, it's far from perfect, but it does to some extent reward good writing with a larger reader audience.

Except ... one-to-five stars (and similar reader-driven rating systems), are measures of popularity. They say little about the quality of the writing.

 

[SimonDoom]

Except ... one-to-five stars (and similar reader-driven rating systems), are measures of popularity. They say little about the quality of the writing.

I don't think this is quite true. Rating systems are imperfect, for all sorts of reasons. But if you were to randomly sample 100 stories with a score of 4.7 and 100 stories with a score of 4.2 I'll bet every single person in this forum would agree that on average the 4.7 stories were better than the 4.2 stories. All measurement systems are flawed; that doesn't make them useless in evaluating quality.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Except ... one-to-five stars (and similar reader-driven rating systems), are measures of popularity. They say little about the quality of the writing.

Here on Lit, I think popularity is measured by the number of Views.

Once you get those eyes onto a story and they're giving you a rank between 1 and 5, readers are measuring something else. When there are many, many people each applying whatever ranking criteria they apply, and there's a visible difference in score bands from one writer to the next, that's a measure of quality in some way.

In any system with a high number of users, each applying some criteria to their scoring method, and there still remain banding differences, there is something to be gleaned from that - there is information riding on the data, we just don't know what it means. But any scaling system used en masse usually ends up with a measure of goodness. That's why scales are used as often as they are.

Edit: this was written at the same time as Simon's post. We've both said the same thing .

 

[KeithD]

I don't think this is quite true. Rating systems are imperfect, for all sorts of reasons. But if you were to randomly sample 100 stories with a score of 4.7 and 100 stories with a score of 4.2 I'll bet every single person in this forum would agree that on average the 4.7 stories were better than the 4.2 stories. All measurement systems are flawed; that doesn't make them useless in evaluating quality.

Nope. I can't be the only person on Literotica whose new stories in one account are all being trolled down to the 2 level regardless of story content. This is the Internet. You want stories reliably vetted for high content quality, you need a set judged by folks with expertise to judge that on standards not set by the Literotica model. Literotica is an entertainment site, not someplace where the rating system gives a good gauge to story quality. Both content and reader expectations here are so broadbased and divergent that you couldn't even get agreement from the readership on what constitutes a good story.

 

[windar]

I don't think this is quite true. Rating systems are imperfect, for all sorts of reasons. But if you were to randomly sample 100 stories with a score of 4.7 and 100 stories with a score of 4.2 I'll bet every single person in this forum would agree that on average the 4.7 stories were better than the 4.2 stories. All measurement systems are flawed; that doesn't make them useless in evaluating quality.

Being a known contrarian, I would almost certainly prefer the 4.2 story.

My 16 chapter story has chapters ranging from 4.16-4.6, with most in the 4.4-4.5 range. Are some chapters better written than others? I doubt that. Some are more plot than action and tend to score a bit lower, but they are needed to mke the whole hang together.

I don't think I would write any worse if there were no votes (how could anyone write any worse, some have asked). In fact, the site where my stories are posted first has only "likes" and no votes. I have many stories on a pay site where almost no one bothers to rate them at all. Most are in the top 20% of sales and several are in the top 5%. But I don't think the top 5% sellers are better written, just somehow the blurb or the cover appealed to a few more people.

 

[KeithD]

Here on Lit, I think popularity is measured by the number of Views.

Mostly popularity within categories. The readership is wildly divergent in numbers, and thereby views, by reading preference.

 

[SamScribble]

To Simon and EB:

Since 1964 (or was it 1965?) I have paid the grocer and the wine merchant (when I was permitted to drink wine) with the product of my pen. (Well, the product of my typewriter and then the product of my keyboard, but you know what I mean.)

If I had had to rely on a bunch of sometimes mean-spirited readers to decide which books and articles would be published, and which plays would be produced, I don’t think that I would have eaten anywhere near as well as I have. Fortunately, those decisions were made by educated and experienced publishers and editors.

Just sayin' (as they say).

 

[windar]

Nope. I can't be the only person on Literotica whose new stories in one account are all being trolled down to the 2 level regardless of story content. This is the Internet. You want stories reliably vetted for high content quality, you need a set judged by folks with expertise to judge that on standards not set by the Literotica model. Literotica is an entertainment site, not someplace where the rating system gives a good gauge to story quality. Both content and reader expectations here are so broadbased and divergent that you couldn't even get agreement from the readership on what constitutes a good story.

Absolutely. I would take the opinion of one knowledgeable person over 600 people who've never written so much as a book report themselves. I am in the extremely fortunate position of writing frequently with an extremely talented co-author (not any of the stories I've posted here). If she said it was good and Literotica readers rated it straight 1's then it's good and if she said it sucked and Literotica readers rated it straight 5's then it sucks. Obviously those are extreme and unlikely scenarios but the point is made.

 

[SimonDoom]

Nope. I can't be the only person on Literotica whose new stories in one account are all being trolled down to the 2 level regardless of story content. This is the Internet. You want stories reliably vetted for high content quality, you need a set judged by folks with expertise to judge that on standards not set by the Literotica model. Literotica is an entertainment site, not someplace where the rating system gives a good gauge to story quality. Both content and reader expectations here are so broadbased and divergent that you couldn't even get agreement from the readership on what constitutes a good story.

Your specific example doesn't prove or disprove what I said. I've read enough of your stories and seen their scores to believe that you are systematically downvoted, by somebody, and I think that's too bad. To me, that's despicable. I don't understand people who do that.

But my hypothetical relied on random selection of stories. And I would bet dollars to donuts that if you, or Windar, or anyone else, were actually to review 100 randomly selected stories with ratings of 4.7 and 100 randomly selected stories with ratings of 4.2 you would agree with me. Scores correlate imperfectly but with statistical significance with quality.

Of course, I can't prove it, because we're not actually going to undertake the test.

 

[KeithD]

Your specific example doesn't prove or disprove what I said.

We just disagree. I constantly see regulars on the discussion board put forward theories of what the readership here wants and does that I see as just wrong wishful thinking. I think most of the readers come here for their own flavor of sexual arousal and they don't give two figs about character--or author--development and that they read and vote and comment on a widely divergent sliding scale of at-the-moment impulse. And that's fine with me. And I think that the voting and rating system is so loose and subject to Internet gaming that you--and others--aren't justified in putting the faith into stats that you obviously want to and work so hard to do.

This is not a critique site. This is a widely varied entertainment site and makes absolutely no demands on the readers to respond with any critical thinking or expertise on any standard of "quality."

I know how to judge the quality of writing. I'm trained in doing so and I do so for mainstream contests and for a regional anthology for nearly two decades. You and others are, I think, buried in Alice of Wonderland, to think that's what's going on with voting at Literotica.

And it's OK with me to take Literotica in terms of the reality of what it is.

 

[windar]

Your specific example doesn't prove or disprove what I said. I've read enough of your stories and seen their scores to believe that you are systematically downvoted, by somebody, and I think that's too bad. To me, that's despicable. I don't understand people who do that.

But my hypothetical relied on random selection of stories. And I would bet dollars to donuts that if you, or Windar, or anyone else, were actually to review 100 randomly selected stories with ratings of 4.7 and 100 randomly selected stories with ratings of 4.2 you would agree with me. Scores correlate imperfectly but with statistical significance with quality.

Of course, I can't prove it, because we're not actually going to undertake the test.

100 randomly selected stories here would have 30 about guys fucking their moms and 30 about cheating wives, so you would have to be very rich to be able to pay me enough to read even one tenth of that number.

 

[SimonDoom]

100 randomly selected stories here would have 30 about guys fucking their moms and 30 about cheating wives, so you would have to be very rich to be able to pay me enough to read even one tenth of that number.

Touche.

 

[LexxRuthless]

This thread would make for a fabulous “bargument.” Thanks, Xloph, for taking the time to share your initial rant. I know it takes a while to put such a lengthy (and thoughtful) diatribe onto the written page, and I appreciate you taking the time to share it with us. Let’s see; we’ve got the history of online erotic literature being discussed, then there’s that elusive definition of “erotic literature,” another discussion to be had about the role of feedback and peer pressure in improving writing in general and erotic writing in particular, and yet another dip into Lit’s rating system – does it actually do what it’s supposed to do?

Some marvelous minds gathered for this discussion, and I love to picture the lot of us gathered at a bar somewhere, with just enough of everyone’s favorite beverage to lubricate the thought process and make it fun.

To start, I’m just going to throw this one out there to make me sound older than I am: Prior to Usenet, how about the impact of the mimeograph machine? Back in the 1950s and 1960s, those machines on college campuses made it possible for wide distribution of “underground literature.” My dad fondly recalled getting his hands on the (at the time) elusive Tolkein books. They were unavailable in the States. He also mentioned some really raunchy stuff by pulp authors like Philip José Farmer. I have to wonder how much of that era’s filth was a match for what would later appear on Usenet and the internet.

I recall getting that first “fix” of BBS-era porn, but my experience was pretty skewed. My girlfriend at the time was much more involved with that stuff than I was. I never really got into navigating my way through most of it, and thus I was not contributing to our massive phone bill. (Anyone else recall the shock of having a $900 phone bill?) Instead of spending hours downloading those GIFs and text files, I just called a couple of our local BBS hosts and met up with them to get those files on CD-ROM. We had regular weekly meetings at a local Denny’s, where we would swap porn and video games. I’d accumulated a rather substantial collection of adult films on VHS tapes, and we would loan those out in exchange for other goodies.

One thing that stood out to me then, as well as in the early days of dial-up internet, was the shocking amount of bestiality pics and videos that was out there. I recall turning to my girlfriend and asking, “Wait, isn’t this stuff illegal?” That stuff seemed like it was everywhere on the internet in the late 1990s, and then it suddenly vanished. The same was true of stories with appalling underage content, and lots of other truly vile material that was pointed out earlier in this thread. Nasty stuff, and I’m glad it’s (mostly) gone now.

As I recall, there was a period of a few years in which law enforcement had to play catch-up, and that was the reason so much illegal content was widely available. Once they started arresting people and putting them into prison for merely having that content on their computers, more and more of those sites disappeared or started cleaning up their act.

About the time I first stumbled onto Literotica, there were a dozen or so porn sites I frequented. Most of them had some stories, but very few had more than a hundred. Quite often, I would find the same stories re-posted on multiple sites. Literotica stood out because there were already thousands of stories here. In those early days, there were about a dozen new stories posted here every day, and I read most of them regardless of category. There were several regular authors, most of whom are long gone now, and I believe their contributions skewed the overall quality of stories on this site upward.

At that time, I understand there was a lot of chicanery with the scores – particularly where story contests were involved. As a result, most of the stories I really liked weren’t among the highest-rated. I’ve been told there were authors who engaged in trash talk on the boards, and I never frequented the boards (and still don’t outside of this one). I didn’t make an account until I finally decided to try my hand at contributing to the site in 2018, and I really had no idea until then how the site really “worked.” I think I voted on two really exceptional stories and I never left a comment. I barely paid attention to anyone’s comments.

Then, for about a decade, I was completely immersed in online games like World of Warcraft. During that time, I rarely visited Literotica. When I finally shed my video game addiction long enough to spend some time here, things had changed. I had always intended to do something to “give something back” to this site, since I had enjoyed reading stories here for such a long time. I used to teach English classes, among other things, and knew I was a competent technical writer. I figured I could best contribute to the site as a volunteer editor.

With that in mind, I finally made an account. Then I perused the new stories that had gone online that day. To be frank, they were all shit. After slogging through 24 of them, I was left shaking my head at just how bad every one of them had been. There were dozens of glaring errors just on the first page of almost every one. Even if I spent the hours necessary to fix all the obvious spelling and grammar errors, the stories themselves were simply awful. It was a direct result of that experience that led me to write and post my own stories instead of trying to be an editor. I don’t pretend I’m trying to write “erotic literature.” I merely wanted to write something that was fun to read, and I started off with a “big dick story.”

It was rejected.

I quickly learned that I had a LOT to learn. It was in those first couple weeks that I first stumbled in here to the AH. Fortunately for me, KeithD was online and promptly helped me with my issue at that time. I fixed my story and submitted it, and then spent hours reading posts here. It wasn’t what I had intended to do, but it was remarkably educational. Over the following months, I spent hours and hours going further and further back in this forum.

My point in all this is that my writing has “improved” as far as fitting this site’s guidelines, criteria, and formatting. I’m still not writing anything that I think would qualify as “erotic literature,” and yet I’m among the 40 most-followed authors on the site. (I still have no idea how that happened.) There are far more authors on the site now than there were fifteen years ago. The site has gone from a dozen or so new stories a day to over a hundred.

I don’t want to disparage anyone’s writing, nor do I want to discourage new authors from trying their hand at this. However, if you read a representative sample of the new stories on any given day you are likely to be disappointed with most of them. There are some real gems being published here, but they are often hard to find. Scores and the red “H” can help, but they are not without their flaws. I would argue that KeithD is one of the best writers on this site, and yet his stories have zero chance of topping a “Hall of Fame” due to the number of trolls he has accumulated.

I shudder to see the number of down-votes Jasmine gets every time she posts something new, and she’s the most popular author on the site. She writes a lot of stuff that doesn’t appeal to me personally these days, but her writing is consistently good storytelling.

I could easily point to a dozen more authors who are regulars here who write better stories than I do. That’s not really the point of my rant here, though. Xloph asked if erotic writing as a whole has improved, not “erotic literature,” and my answer to that has to be: Not really. The best of the best now is on a par with the best of the past, and there is just as much awful stuff now as there ever was. Literotica and most of the paid platforms do a better job of screening out most of the horrific stuff, but you’ve got folks without an inkling of basic grammar or storytelling banging out crap on their smartphones and submitting it.