What's the minimum amount of sex you expect from a story?

[andromon]

How about you back this up, or move on already? You can't actually think this nonsense is taken seriously, can you? Back it up with some facts, or get over it already.

You act like you're debating your point, but all you keep doing is saying the exact same dribble over and over. I think your turn is over, can we move on now?

Let me reiterate the thread for you:

OP: "What are your opinions?"
Someone: "Here's my opinion."
I: "Here's mine."
These two gentlemen: "You're a no-name hack and a non/con-mongering faggot who is so wrong."
I: "This is an insult, not an argument."
Gentlemen: "In this case, it is an argument. Also, f* you."
I: "This is no good."
They: "Sure is, because your views are shit."
etc.

I have no room to explain my views further, because the thread is being flamed by bad posters. (I sure hope they don't immediately jump in now and play the "we can't be bad, we've been flaming here for years" card.)

 

[oggbashan]

No. You didn't say 'This is my opinion'.

You repeatedly said 'must' and implied everything/everyone else is wrong.

You are not being flamed. You are being called for expressing your opinion as infallible.

 

[andromon]

expressing your opinion as infallible

Conjecture.

Now then, not to get tiresome, but arguing against the tone instead of the argument itself is also a well-defined logical fallacy.

Eg.:
"Racism is not a good thing" and "Racism is freaking bad, period" have the same status as opinion. If it is followed by a "Because...", it's an argument, whether you like the wording or not.

Accept or refute the argument. Think it's wrong? Insubstantial? Show it without insults (you are bad, hence your argument is wrong) and fallacious claims (it is not popular enough by my standards, hence it is wrong).

 

[oggbashan]

Just like in food, drama is out of place in erotic art. Reader motivation is already fully in place if the sexual tension is properly conveyed.

As for establishing characters, it is very beneficial, but writing a 2000 word novella is counterproductive. It's like if restaurants forced everyone to do a workout before they were allowed to eat.

I have not read your stories. Maybe you're brilliant. "Buildup", though, is a common shorthand for "wandering", "pretending this infodump is development" and "losing focus entirely". Let me quote Vonnegut: "Start as close to the end as possible." In an erotic story, the end is your sexual subject. Get to it ASAP.

I fully agree that "Wow, let's fuck!" will not do. The solution would be writing better sexual content than that.

...

It's either the main point of the story or it isn't. If it isn't, it's not erotica. If it is, get to it.

It works for all genre fiction. If people walk around and then there's a short action scene in the end - is it an action story? It's probably a thriller, not an action. Same with what you refer to as erotica. It's family drama, a thriller, or just slice of life, with some sexual scene in the end. You can call it "buildup", you can call it anything, but it's taking the bulk of the story.

In any case, since you resorted to personal attacks, I will have to disregard your future posts.

@Bramblethorn
Let me put it this way: the better you are, the less words you need to establish those. If you must spends pages upon pages establishing characters in a short story about sex, so be it, but that's nothing to be proud of.

@lovecraft68
I've presented plenty of my own opinions, coupled with my rationale behind every one of them.

Two points.

1. Novels must have different content, because otherwise they'd be unbearable. But if it's a genre, say, action short story, is must be mostly that, or it isn't an action short story. If it's mostly a character drama, then it's a character drama, regardless of whether they shoot in the end or no. If they make love, it still isn't erotica. It's a character drama or a slice of life.

2. Build-up can not be longer than genre content itself. I maintain that if you have more build-up than content, you're wasting the reader's time. Look at any Stephen King novel with supernatural elements. That guy can be slow. And even in his work, at which percent of the story does the horror strike, say, in the Shining? Somewhere around 10% in? And the supernatural - telepathy - appears almost immediately. If it was a short story, it would have been the middle of the first page.

...

@spurious
Good. Let me use the foreplay - backstory analogy to explain my point further.

Imagine that in bed, as foreplay, you're launching in telling your life story. It would tremendously humanize you if your partner manages to sit through. Maybe they'll even fall in love with you. Since it leads to the sex act eventually, everything is foreplay, including whatever nonsexual things happened to both throughout the day, and the retelling of the personal history.

Which is all good in most fiction, but:

Equations I consider correct:
1. Meet + fall in love + have sex + resolve plot = love story.
2a. Have sex = erotica.
2b. Have graphic sex = pornography.
If we reshape definitions, we're still talking about the same things, but with different names. So, for you, if it deals with sexual love, it's already erotica first and foremost? I disagree - it'll be mixing the terms, but the argument, then, is merely etymological.

Have fun foaming at the mouth, ladies and gentlemen. Just make sure you don't try to refute my anonymous person instead of my claims or arguments, like Brambleton keeps doing.

I have multiquoted from your posts, and put in bold your assertions.

If you had given them as your opinions, then I could debate them. But you didn't. You presented them as statements of fact.

I'm sorry. They aren't facts. They are your opinions and nothing more.

 

[andromon]

If you had given them as your opinions, then I could debate them.

This is backwards. "In my opinion" means "I might be wrong", it's not quite up to debate - it's a personal preference. Making a statement still does not mean, even according to the speaker, it's the ultimate truth: it means that, precisely, the matter is up for objective debate due to it's claim to truth.

Fact = objective, undebatable.
Claim = objective, debatable.
Opinion = subjective, discussional.

 

[oggbashan]

But if there is no evidence to prove a fact's claim to be a fact, it is arguable that it isn't a fact.

Part of my difficulty with your posts is the presentation. It is always difficult to express oneself in plain text without being interpreted in a way you didn't intend.

On Literotica we have seen many people come to the forums claiming that they have found the true way, the shining example of advice that will solve all our problems from writer's block to bad breath.

If they are presented as "Look what I have found. Isn't it great?" then we can discuss it and come to a conclusion (or not) that it might help some of us but it isn't the solution to everything.

But if it is presented, as you have, as "This is the way to go" then we will react differently. The immediate response is going to be hostile because the post is a challenge.

Take a simple example from you: Just like in food, drama is out of place in erotic art.

That is a clear statement. It is wrong. Drama can be an essential part of erotic art. If the reader/viewer has no interest in the people involved in the act then the erotica will be flat and uninteresting. If, however, the reader/viewer knows who the people are, how they got to this situation and in what way the sex resolves conflict, then the erotica is more engaging because of drama.

Again you say: It's either the main point of the story or it isn't. If it isn't, it's not erotica. If it is, get to it.

Three clear statements. You are very definite about them, as if you are a world expert declaiming from on high. I wouldn't take such statements on trust from an Emeritus Professor.

As I said earlier, it is about presentation. You have presented yourself as being the expert. It isn't surprising that we disagree with your view of yourself.

 

[andromon]

@oggbashan

Here are some possible valid responses to my drama in erotica statement:
- I agree.
- I disagree, because ...
- This is unsubstantiated, so I consider it an opinion and refuse to discuss it.

Here are some poor responses:
- You are a terrible person, so you are wrong.
- I've been here for ages, so you're wrong.
- You're not up to my standards, so you're wrong.
- Your tone is assertive, so you are wrong.

The immediate response is going to be hostile because the post is a challenge.

Responding to an opinion, however, in your eyes, unsubstantiated, with an insult is never right. This is a fact. It's neither an opinion nor a claim. I make this statement without opening it up to debate... but you can still point out the lack of argumentation supporting this statement and dispute it. Would you like to?

 

[Derroreaper]

Let me reiterate the thread for you:

OP: "What are your opinions?"
Someone: "Here's my opinion."
I: "Here's mine."
These two gentlemen: "You're a no-name hack and a non/con-mongering faggot who is so wrong."
I: "This is an insult, not an argument."
Gentlemen: "In this case, it is an argument. Also, f* you."
I: "This is no good."
They: "Sure is, because your views are shit."
etc.

Not a chance, you started insulting people in your forth post.

Having an erotic story that has protracted segments that have nothing to do with sex is called "losing focus". Do you want them to masturbate or do you want your work to have literary merit? Both are cool, but pick one. Wanting to pick both is immature.

Of course D.H. Lawrence pretty much proves you're wrong, and he did it in 1928. Of course you'll disagree I'm sure, but "Lady Chatterley's Lover" is definitely erotica, with literary merit.

 

[andromon]

Drama can be an essential part of erotic art. If the reader/viewer has no interest in the people involved in the act then the erotica will be flat and uninteresting. If, however, the reader/viewer knows who the people are, how they got to this situation and in what way the sex resolves conflict, then the erotica is more engaging because of drama.

Back to discussion.

With which of the following do you epxlicitly disagree (you don't need to say why; I will explain my stance on the disputed ones):

1. Sexual tension can, i.e. is technically possible able to be the seperate entity from dramatic tension.
2. Sexual tension can be as strong as dramatic tension.
3. Sexual tension can be the subject of a work of literary art.
4. In art, sexual tension can be purposefully used instead of dramatic tension.
5. #4 produces pornography.
6. Less explicit examples of #2 are called soft-core pornography,
7. ...i.e. erotic art.

 

[andromon]

Not a chance, you started insulting people in your forth post.

Really? Where? And which people?

 

[Derroreaper]

Really? Where? And which people?

I think calling us immature is an insult, at least in the context you used.

Now please explain how D.H. Lawrence was immature, for tying literary merit into erotica please.

 

[oggbashan]

Really? Where? And which people?

Post #26.

Who? Everyone else who had posted before you.

Apart from you, 18 people have contributed to this thread. All but one disagree with all or some of your statements. The other posted '42' - the answer to everything.

 

[andromon]

@Derroreaper
I called the persons directly insulting me immature.

Now please explain how D.H. Lawrence was immature, for tying literary merit into erotica please.

I am not familiar with the work.

@oggbashan

Apart from you, 18 people have contributed to this thread. All but one disagree with all or some of your statements.

And? Are you implying something? If you so happen to mean to say that popularity or unpopularity of the statement serves to prove or disprove it, you are committing a logical
f
a
l
l
a
c
y,
sir.

About insults: please be specific. What in post #26 was insulting towards you? If I insulted someone else, please say whom and how. Enough of conjecture. Quote me on being insulting.

 

[Derroreaper]

Well why don't you go do a little reading, and then come back and argue your point with a few facts, because reading the same crap over and over is getting boring.

And quit acting naive, like you don't know what an insult is, lol. Now you're acting immature.

 

[SecondCircle]

Damn, is this thread still kicking? This one seemed like a no-brainer to me, but here we are talking about drama and tension and such.

Okay let me dig in this murky bowl of slop I call a mind.

For something to be erotic, it doesn't have to involve fucking. At least, not physically speaking. Erotic can be hints towards such. Anything that turns you on, gets you hot and bothered, makes you feel naughty, awakens your monkeys, spins your washing machine... whatever, if it makes you feel that way, I consider it erotic. Sex could be implied, but it isn't required. It usually happens in most of our stories, but I don't think it HAS to happen.

Not sure what the whole "drama" debate is supposed to be about. Seems like you're reading too much into things. If an author writes something that has a lot of character development and plot, whether it has to do with sex or not, I'm gonna friggin read it. Why? Because it builds the character, and it builds the story. It makes me feel like I actually know the people in the story and what they are dealing with, so that when they do "throw down" it feels more realistic and exciting. I'm not justifying someone who writes completely random things in their story, but if they are writing to build their story and their characters, then cool.

I don't think I'd read a story that has the tiniest sliver of backstory, and gives me no reason to like or hate their characters or any way to relate to them, and then gets straight to the "insert penis here part." If I wanted an undeveloped story with gratuitous sex, I would just watch porn. Plain and simple. Erotica is deeper than just screwing. It's why we screw, how we screw, how it made us feel, and everything else that goes with it.

So sure stay on track, but if you can do anything more to help your characters and story, do it. I'll read it if no one else will.

 

[andromon]

Well why don't you go do a little reading

I don't need or value your advice, thank you.

And quit acting naive, like you don't know what an insult is, lol. Now you're acting immature.

Enough. Point out the insults or stop talking about them.

 

[Derroreaper]

I don't need or value your advice, thank you.

Enough. Point out the insults or stop talking about them.

Wow, now that was an intelligent response. I guess this proves my point, you're just full of shit.

Have a great day

 

[oggbashan]

There seems to be a consensus (except one who wants the last word) that sex can be minimal, can be in a plotted story without being explicit, and the story can still be erotic.

However many of the stories on Literotica are overt sexual scenes with little plot or story except the action. Some of them are highly rated and popular. I think that is because some Literotica writers can produce arousal with a few words and get the reader involved with the characters with minimal description.

There is room for both extended plotted erotic stories and erotic accounts of physical couplings on Literotica. They take different techniques to write them and each has value for what they are.

 

[sr71plt]

However many of the stories on Literotica are overt sexual scenes with little plot or story except the action. Some of them are highly rated and popular. I think that is because some Literotica writers can produce arousal with a few words and get the reader involved with the characters with minimal description.

There is room for both extended plotted erotic stories and erotic accounts of physical couplings on Literotica. They take different techniques to write them and each has value for what they are.

This. And I too just turn off on anyone "instructing" me on the only way the readers want it here. Which is why, other than reading this thread in amusement, I moved on.

 

[andromon]

@oggbashan

Well, I -- I agree to all points. I think that postponing genre material undermines the point of genre art, but, regardless of what I think, extended characterization is a proven technique that has been demonstrably effective in all forms of literature.

So, uh. Good day, then.

 

[Bramblethorn]

In any case, since you resorted to personal attacks, I will have to disregard your future posts.

And yet here you still are.

Conjecture.

Now then, not to get tiresome, but arguing against the tone instead of the argument itself is also a well-defined logical fallacy.

Yep, and let's hold that thought...

Accept or refute the argument. Think it's wrong? Insubstantial? Show it without insults (you are bad, hence your argument is wrong)

...and that right there is a tone argument on your behalf, the selfsame thing you just complained about.

Yes, you're being insulted here. If you show up on an internet forum and act like a doofus, people will call you a doofus. But you've latched upon this as a convenient excuse for ignoring everything else we've said about why your claims are wrong.

and fallacious claims (it is not popular enough by my standards, hence it is wrong).

Oh please. Your story is rating in the bottom 5% - in a stroke-friendly category, at that. At that point it's no longer a matter of "by my standards".

As a reminder, you're the one who came in and made sweeping statements about what "the reader" likes in their smut. Now, having been confronted with evidence about what "the reader" actually does (and doesn't) like, you're squealing "ad populum! ad populuuuum!" and telling us we're not allowed to examine the popularity of stories when discussing what it is that makes stories popular with "the reader".

What you've presented is a hypothesis (the readers want terse stories that fast-forward to the sexyfuntimes) and a postulated mechanism to support that hypothesis (dilution of focus yada yada).

That's okay as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far. It certainly isn't any sort of proof; human psychology is complicated enough that there's pretty much nothing you can prove (or disprove) by theoretical argument alone. So it always goes back to: is this consistent with what we see in the real world?

And as far as I can tell, you haven't provided a single shred of evidence that the real world supports your theory about what people like.

I feel like I'm listening to some earnest fellow offer a very elaborate "proof" for why heavier-than-air flight is impossible and I should put my money in zeppelins. And if I point out that we're standing at LAX and the 747s are rumbling overhead even as we speak, the response is "but you haven't answered my arguments".

I am not obliged to give that guy a crash course in aerodynamics. It would almost certainly be wasted effort; people who hang on to their pet theories in the face of real-world evidence usually aren't mentally equipped to learn. I might not even know enough aerodynamics to be able to pin down the flaw in his argument - but I don't have to. Pointing up at the sky is enough to prove that he's wrong.

At this point I think we're unlikely to get anywhere we haven't already been, so I'm going to bow out of this argument*. Feel free to throw a few Latin phrases around and tell us again that the popularity of stories is irrelevant to a discussion about what makes stories popular, but I've got some writing to do.

*Just for clarity, this is an actual "bowing out" and not the "claim I'm leaving and then go on responding to every post" variety.

 

[andromon]

@Bramblethorn
Insulting me to prove me wrong is the fallacy. Tone of the insult is irrelevant: it is not proof, it's an insult. "You are terrible, hence you're wrong" is a fallacy even if the terrible part is properly proven.

Your story is rating in the bottom 5%

I thought it had the 3.65/5 rating, i.e. the 67%, not "bottom 5%". But even if it was 0%, or 100%, it could not have served to prove or disprove anything in the argument.

And yet here you still are.

Ok, as per your own repeated request, not replying to you anymore. You fight with insults, you justify the insults with more insults, you are outraged so easily - you are a complete, utter child, and I did not come on Literotica to play with children.

 

[Rad'l]

A debate that got a little tedious - - -

And I dropped out way before the last post. This is something rare for me to do because I generally enjoy the give and take of a thread.

 

[lovecraft68]

All this round and round simply leads me to believe that our expert erotica author, who has in his brief time here deciphered all the secrets of writing wants someone to acknowledge his genius and it is not happening.

If you believe everything you say to be correct, then good for you, now run along and write by those rules until your heart is content.

In the meantime leave the people who have been writing here for quite sometime and have developed fan bases based on people enjoying their work the hell alone.

Also and simply put, talks cheap. In all your arguments here you could have written a half dozen 2k minimalistic amazingly well written stories and shown us all up so why don't you do that?

Or anything else that will stop you from posting the same crap over and over again.

 

[Cleophila]

If you had given them as your opinions, then I could debate them. But you didn't. You presented them as statements of fact.

I'm sorry. They aren't facts. They are your opinions and nothing more.

Realistically, though, most people express their opinions as fact most of the time. It's much more common to make a statement as 'this is true' rather than 'I believe this to be true' simply out of convenience. It's a shorthand and it's fairly obvious that it's expressing an opinion most of the time.

Since it leads to the sex act eventually, everything is foreplay, including whatever nonsexual things happened to both throughout the day, and the retelling of the personal history.

This is actually true, though, it is all connected and it makes for a more involving story to highlight that. In my last story, all the minor details of daily routine were connected to what happened later in the sex scene, that was the point of building them into the story.

Which is all good in most fiction, but:

Equations I consider correct:
1. Meet + fall in love + have sex + resolve plot = love story.
2a. Have sex = erotica.
2b. Have graphic sex = pornography.
If we reshape definitions, we're still talking about the same things, but with different names. So, for you, if it deals with sexual love, it's already erotica first and foremost? I disagree - it'll be mixing the terms, but the argument, then, is merely etymological.

It's never so black and white simplistic with any genre though. Most stories, even those specifically put forward as genre fiction, tend to cross over elements in other genres. Yes, literotica stories are about your narrow definition of erotica, but there wouldn't be categories like 'romance', 'sci-fi' or 'horror' within literotica if there wasn't a notion that genre storytelling is a bit more complex than that.

There is room for both extended plotted erotic stories and erotic accounts of physical couplings on Literotica. They take different techniques to write them and each has value for what they are.

This is what it comes down to in the end. Part of the point of a big site like literotica is to try and cover all the bases. Not everybody has the same tastes, so all sorts of different styles can be found here.