Emotional Immersion and Trust with the Readers

[madelinemasoch]

Do you ever think about the reader on this website specifically and how it seems that they might have trouble buying in on your story and going through the experience of your POV characters non-judgmentally? I think this is accomplished by a certain type of reading that allows them to read between the lines and come to a state of emotional immersion, almost like they're watching a film, so that they can come to an intuitive understanding of the story based on said emotional immersion in the experience expressed within the story. I like that kind of thing a lot.

What I'm asking though is whether or not you consider this and kind of make the story easier to understand for these specific readers by breaking certain conventions of "good writing." A key example of this would be whether or not to use filter and filler words, which technically breaks close POV, but might be an easier way of expressing said experience to these particular readers. So you're technically not writing quite as well but it might be read better for that very reason. The alternative way of reading that leads to misunderstanding and a lack of immersion I think is a kind of logicizing everything, algorithmically sorting through these stories for particular words to trigger arousal essentially, and sorting out the ones that have particular words that trigger bad feelings.

I find this kind of reading incredibly shallow as it makes it so the reader fails to bear witness to the actual story at hand. Because of the lack of immersion said reader is blind to the changes in sense of the words used in a particular story as defined by their relations to the other words used in the story. A logic bro with definitional thinking about the meaning of words or some strange John Lockean intentionality theory about how words get their meaning will never truly be immersed in fiction that uses words in non-colloquial ways. For example you can use the word "torture" in a way that in relation to the other words in the story makes it no longer mean a literal unbearable immoral action but an almost facetious and post-ironic word to mean an experience that is actually enjoyed by the character. It redefines both the experience of torture and the meaning of the word on the page.

That's probably the limit of my own ability to control for the readers right there, because you can't make them immersed at will. You just have to trust them and earn their trust as well. It's this strange eldritch partnership and in the context of stories with so much sexual content it's almost a sexual one. This probably accounts for the vitriol of disappointed readers in some cases on this site. You have violated their notions when they lash out at you and they did not find that you are trustworthy to strike a deal with. I'm worried about that, too, specifically around the real life issues that my stories deal with, but also in the ways in which I am constructing the narratives, because I really do believe that lack of immersion totally ruins the experience and forces them into misinterpretation, and that the emotional immersion is key to coming to an understanding about what the words I use actually mean.

To what extent do you as a writer consider thee things in your own work and in what ways do you find yourself controlling for these factors in the construction of your narratives?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Hi Madeline. Do us a favor and break this huge wall of text into smaller paragraphs? It hurts the eyes.

 

[StillStunned]

Well, for a start I keep my paragraphs to a manageable length so that readers are more likely to actually read everything.

 

[madelinemasoch]

Hi Madeline. Do us a favor and break this huge wall of text into smaller paragraphs? It hurts the eyes.

No problem.

 

[countdowntolov3]

I'm not sure I fully grasp what you're laying out. But if I try so summarize it, I think maybe you're asking:
"Do you ever do things like use filter and filler words in close POV knowing that it makes your writing less 'technically good', but you do it because you want to help the reader into a certain emotional space?'

Did I get somewhere near the question?

If so, then my answer is, "Yes, very often." And in my reading journey, most successful mainstream writers do too. It's an absolutely critical part of the craft, IMO. I just think amateurs (like me) overuse these things and so benefit from early-on receiving the advice that they should not be the norm in your prose.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Well. There is no easy answer to what you are asking. It's all about what the author expects to get from publishing on Literotica. Many, many authors here overexplain rather than letting readers read the story on their own, as far as I have seen. I've done my share of that in my first stories as well, and I can easily admit that I did it due to inexperience. I am not happy when I read some of my earliest stuff.

Now, whether other authors do that intentionally or not is a whole different question. My guess is that a number of them do, because they know who the average Joe reading these stories is. My guess is that the market-oriented authors do it on purpose, sacrificing some quality for readability and the enjoyment of the average reader. I think you will see that many of the most popular stories aren't exactly of the highest quality, and sometimes you will even hear their authors saying that they don't consider those stories their best work, regardless of their success.

So, an author's actual skill aside, it mostly gets down to what one wants to achieve from publishing here. Some just want to write to the best of their ability and publish their stories. Some pander to the readership with kinks and themes but also with the readability of their stories. Some even butcher the artfulness of their stories, sacrificing everything for the speed with which the stories are delivered. It happens with some Patreon-oriented authors, for example. I've seen one or two admit as much.

Once again, the motives and desires of Lit authors vary a lot, so the answer to your question is bound to be subjective.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

A writer needs to aim for the intersection of what he wants to write and what the readers want to read.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Do you ever think about the reader on this website specifically and how it seems that they might have trouble buying in on your story and going through the experience of your POV characters non-judgmentally? I think this is accomplished by a certain type of reading that allows them to read between the lines and come to a state of emotional immersion, almost like they're watching a film, so that they can come to an intuitive understanding of the story based on said emotional immersion in the experience expressed within the story. I like that kind of thing a lot.

I think emotional immersion with a POV character encourages readers to sympathise with that character, but that doesn't necessarily result in a less judgemental reading. They are perhaps less likely to judge that character negatively, but more likely to judge other characters who are seen as threats to the POV character.

For instance, one of my stories has a clandestine relationship between Y (POV character) and P. P's mother dies, P tells Y that the funeral is a small family-only affair, so Y doesn't come. Later Y finds this was a lie, she gets hurt and angry, they break up.

Told from Y's perspective, that makes P sound like an asshole, and some of my readers reacted accordingly with some very hostile judgements about P.

But what she's missing is that P was overwhelmed by complicated grief, scared that telling the truth would've led to conflict with her remaining family at a time when she couldn't cope with it, and could've been harmful to Y - since P's father is Y's boss, and wouldn't be at all happy to know the two of them were in a relationship. Lying might not have been a great choice but it wasn't meant to hurt her. There was enough context gived for readers to put these things together, if they'd wanted to consider P's side of things, but judging by reader comments many didn't try to see that side of it until the reconciliation where I discussed those reasons more overtly.

OTOH, if the concern is specifically that readers might negatively judge a POV character, then yes encouraging sympathy with that character might mitigate that.

 

[lovecraft68]

Honestly, I don't think about it all that much.

 

[StillStunned]

I find the best way to immerse the reader is to write as best I can. I wrote about this in another thread just the other day. Engage the reader by letting your prose enhance the story. Use rhythm, stress and alliteration to draw their attention to specific words. Use those words as a skeleton that the reader fleshes out with their own imagination.

The more the reader draws on their imagination to see the story, the more engaged they'll become, because the pictures in their mind are their own.

And as they become more immersed and engaged, if you've written your story properly, they'll pick up on your hints and draw the conclusions you want them to.

 

[bigcockstallion]

My brain hurts
My eyes are dry
I was hoping for tits
Wrong room


JK

 

[Voboy]

The "rules of English" are all very fine, and they work pretty well. With that said? If there's a better way to turn a phrase that "breaks the rules?" Well, hell. The better-turned phrase is what I'll use every time.

I'm not sure I'd say I do it for the readers, and frankly that's more thought than I even give it. I write the way I write because I like the way those words flow in order to tell the story I want to tell, and I'm gratified that my readers seem to agree with me. Honestly, that's about as deeply as I look at things like this.

 

[Not2Pervy]

I think I fall somewhere in the middle here. I break “the rules” all the time. Rule-bound writing always seemed stifling to me. Call it a product of a public school system dominated by teachers who were products of 1960s trends in education.

A lot of the rules I do know, I picked up on my own. I think the predominant form here is also limiting. With the exception of those writing novels, even though delivered in short installments, most of us are writing short stories. Interior development of a character through showing and not telling takes time. The little added descriptions and windows into what characters are thinking are a shortcut, or at least for me they are.

Maybe more so in erotica than other genres, feelings and emotions are especially important. To create the flow we want the reader to be immersed in, to keep them inside the fantasy space, breaking the rules can help.

A better writer than me would probably try to do both, and to the extent I have tried, it’s really really hard! Here, at least for me, I’m not sure the payoff is worth it.

 

[lovecraft68]

My brain hurts
My eyes are dry
I was hoping for tits
Wrong room


JK

Try the politics forum, biggest boobs on lit are over there.

 

[madelinemasoch]

I think I fall somewhere in the middle here. I break “the rules” all the time. Rule-bound writing always seemed stifling to me. Call it a product of a public school system dominated by teachers who were products of 1960s trends in education.

A lot of the rules I do know, I picked up on my own. I think the predominant form here is also limiting. With the exception of those writing novels, even though delivered in short installments, most of us are writing short stories. Interior development of a character through showing and not telling takes time. The little added descriptions and windows into what characters are thinking are a shortcut, or at least for me they are.

Maybe more so in erotica than other genres, feelings and emotions are especially important. To create the flow we want the reader to be immersed in, to keep them inside the fantasy space, breaking the rules can help.

A better writer than me would probably try to do both, and to the extent I have tried, it’s really really hard! Here, at least for me, I’m not sure the payoff is worth it.

Both in terms of what? Breaking the rules to keep them immersed is kind of what I was talking about in the original post.

 

[Not2Pervy]

Both in terms of what? Breaking the rules to keep them immersed is kind of what I was talking about in the original post.

I can’t shake the thought that a really good, truly skilled writer could both manage to follow all the generally accepted rules of quality writing, and also create the kind of immersive experience for the reader that I think we’re all trying for. And that such a writer could do it in the same number of words, or less, that I expended in the effort.

 

[Not2Pervy]

I’m thinking Hemingway, Proust, Joyce, etc. Those guys used to torture themselves over getting it just right. I will give it a go, and probably even revise a couple of times, but then I’m done with it.

 

[VallesMarineris]

That's probably the limit of my own ability to control for the readers right there, because you can't make them immersed at will. You just have to trust them and earn their trust as well. It's this strange eldritch partnership and in the context of stories with so much sexual content it's almost a sexual one. This probably accounts for the vitriol of disappointed readers in some cases on this site. You have violated their notions when they lash out at you and they did not find that you are trustworthy to strike a deal with. I'm worried about that, too, specifically around the real life issues that my stories deal with, but also in the ways in which I am constructing the narratives, because I really do believe that lack of immersion totally ruins the experience and forces them into misinterpretation, and that the emotional immersion is key to coming to an understanding about what the words I use actually mean.

To what extent do you as a writer consider thee things in your own work and in what ways do you find yourself controlling for these factors in the construction of your narratives?

You can’t control much. One of the first decisions that you, the author, can control is who is your audience. Different audiences expect different pleasures from the story, and are willing to suspend their disbelief to enter and navigate the world you create in your story. I just read, for example, a funny bit: if Miss Marple were real, then Interpol would be following her around to every parish she visits, because there’s bound to be a major incident. But mystery readers don’t have a problem with her encountering one strange death after another. On the other hand, they would be horrified if, at the end of the story, Miss Marple said, “Oh dear, there’s not enough evidence, so I can’t figure out who the murderer is.” Even though in the real world most crimes go unsolved.

The audience of this site wants to read about sex, explicit and often transgressive in a particular way. That’s why you and they are here, and why there are categories. You don’t, and can’t, control your readers. Rather, it's a selection process: you write what you want to write; you select a place to publish where you think you’ll find readers who want to read what you write; the readers select your story if it looks like you’re going to give them something they want to read.

So I just write what I like to write, trying to follow the rules of “good writing” (which probably differ from your rules in some ways) and hope for the best. I’m accumulating a group of followers who seem to like to read what I’m writing. That’s great, and their response encourages me to write more. If anything, they control me, because their positive feedback motivates me to write more, and to write more of what my audience likes.

 

[Audiflex]

Do you ever think about the reader on this website specifically and how it seems that they might have trouble buying in on your story and going through the experience of your POV characters non-judgmentally? I think this is accomplished by a certain type of reading that allows them to read between the lines and come to a state of emotional immersion, almost like they're watching a film, so that they can come to an intuitive understanding of the story based on said emotional immersion in the experience expressed within the story. I like that kind of thing a lot.

What I'm asking though is whether or not you consider this and kind of make the story easier to understand for these specific readers by breaking certain conventions of "good writing." A key example of this would be whether or not to use filter and filler words, which technically breaks close POV, but might be an easier way of expressing said experience to these particular readers. So you're technically not writing quite as well but it might be read better for that very reason. The alternative way of reading that leads to misunderstanding and a lack of immersion I think is a kind of logicizing everything, algorithmically sorting through these stories for particular words to trigger arousal essentially, and sorting out the ones that have particular words that trigger bad feelings.

I find this kind of reading incredibly shallow as it makes it so the reader fails to bear witness to the actual story at hand. Because of the lack of immersion said reader is blind to the changes in sense of the words used in a particular story as defined by their relations to the other words used in the story. A logic bro with definitional thinking about the meaning of words or some strange John Lockean intentionality theory about how words get their meaning will never truly be immersed in fiction that uses words in non-colloquial ways. For example you can use the word "torture" in a way that in relation to the other words in the story makes it no longer mean a literal unbearable immoral action but an almost facetious and post-ironic word to mean an experience that is actually enjoyed by the character. It redefines both the experience of torture and the meaning of the word on the page.

That's probably the limit of my own ability to control for the readers right there, because you can't make them immersed at will. You just have to trust them and earn their trust as well. It's this strange eldritch partnership and in the context of stories with so much sexual content it's almost a sexual one. This probably accounts for the vitriol of disappointed readers in some cases on this site. You have violated their notions when they lash out at you and they did not find that you are trustworthy to strike a deal with. I'm worried about that, too, specifically around the real life issues that my stories deal with, but also in the ways in which I am constructing the narratives, because I really do believe that lack of immersion totally ruins the experience and forces them into misinterpretation, and that the emotional immersion is key to coming to an understanding about what the words I use actually mean.

To what extent do you as a writer consider thee things in your own work and in what ways do you find yourself controlling for these factors in the construction of your narratives?

You’re spot on about emotional immersion being key to storytelling, it’s a delicate balance between guiding readers and trusting them to feel their way through. Breaking conventions, like using filter words, can sometimes make a story more accessible, even if it’s not "technically perfect." Redefining words within a story’s context (e.g., "torture") adds depth, but it requires reader trust. Not everyone will dive in, but for those who do, the experience is richer. It’s all about that unspoken partnership between writer and reader.

 

[AG31]

A key example of this would be whether or not to use filter and filler words, which technically breaks close POV,

Could you give a concrete examplee of this?

The alternative way of reading that leads to misunderstanding and a lack of immersion I think is a kind of logicizing everything, algorithmically sorting through these stories for particular words to trigger arousal essentially, and sorting out the ones that have particular words that trigger bad feelings.

Likewise?

To what extent do you as a writer consider thee things in your own work and in what ways do you find yourself controlling for these factors in the construction of your narratives?

I'm having a lot of difficulty figuring out what your abstractions are pointing to. Until I figure that out I won't be able to answer this question.

 

[Audiflex]

You can’t control much. One of the first decisions that you, the author, can control is who is your audience. Different audiences expect different pleasures from the story, and are willing to suspend their disbelief to enter and navigate the world you create in your story. I just read, for example, a funny bit: if Miss Marple were real, then Interpol would be following her around to every parish she visits, because there’s bound to be a major incident. But mystery readers don’t have a problem with her encountering one strange death after another. On the other hand, they would be horrified if, at the end of the story, Miss Marple said, “Oh dear, there’s not enough evidence, so I can’t figure out who the murderer is.” Even though in the real world most crimes go unsolved.

The audience of this site wants to read about sex, explicit and often transgressive in a particular way. That’s why you and they are here, and why there are categories. You don’t, and can’t, control your readers. Rather, it's a selection process: you write what you want to write; you select a place to publish where you think you’ll find readers who want to read what you write; the readers select your story if it looks like you’re going to give them something they want to read.

So I just write what I like to write, trying to follow the rules of “good writing” (which probably differ from your rules in some ways) and hope for the best. I’m accumulating a group of followers who seem to like to read what I’m writing. That’s great, and their response encourages me to write more. If anything, they control me, because their positive feedback motivates me to write more, and to write more of what my audience likes.

You’re actually right, writing is as much about finding your audience as it is about crafting the story. Different readers bring different expectations, and part of the magic is aligning your creative vision with what resonates with them. The Miss Marple example is perfect, mystery fans accept her improbable streak of solved crimes because that’s the pleasure they’re there for. Similarly, on this site, readers are here for explicit, often transgressive content, and as a writer, you’re tapping into that shared understanding.

It’s a two-way street: you write what you love, and your audience’s feedback shapes your direction. That dynamic is what makes storytelling so collaborative and rewarding.

 

[madelinemasoch]

Could you give a concrete examplee of this?

Likewise?

I'm having a lot of difficulty figuring out what your abstractions are pointing to. Until I figure that out I won't be able to answer this question.

A great example would be a sentence I wrote yesterday that prompted this post when I had to edit it to third-person because I'd made a mistake today:

Seeing her right before her eyes, the living embodiment of the love she felt inside, Maven felt like she had died and come alive.

This breaks close POV because of the "seeing her" part and the "felt" part, the filter words. In a really close POV whether it's third or first person, you wouldn't use words like this, you'd just describe it as if it's happening to not just the character but the reader as well. In close POV the narrator is just an inbetween entity closely jammed within the character and the reader, so that the experience is largely the same.

The issue I was facing with this is that I don't know how else to express what this sentence expresses without the filter words. If I leave it out entirely, the reader might not even glom on to the experience that the character is going through. While I don't want them to passively and detachedly observe said experience–I want them to feel it for real so that it teaches them all something–I don't know how to achieve this sentence without the filter words that may get in the way of that goal and still go on trusting that the reader will have that experience without the sentence. If anyone could help me do that, that would be greatly appreciated.

 

[YmaOHyd]

To be clear you mean 'felt' as in 'the love she felt inside,' right? Not 'felt like she had died and come alive.'

 

[Not2Pervy]

Interesting idea, to dive deep into writing what I love and then react to the audience. I might try to lean into that. But the problem is also that I get bored with myself and even my most heartfelt fantasies and desires.

 

[madelinemasoch]

To be clear you mean 'felt' as in 'the love she felt inside,' right? Not 'felt like she had died and come alive.'

Either or both, tbh.