Has there ever been a True Story category? Should there be one?

[CharleneBarr]

Autobiographies are supposed to be 'the truth'.

But they aren't 'the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth'.

I once went into a library where books allocated according to theme, as well as by A-Z of author.

red tape = thrillers (blood, OK)
dark blue tape = scifi (spacey color)
yellow tape = romance (vomit-inducing kind)
green tape = general fiction (sort of neutral I guess)
brown tape = autobiographies.
I asked the librarian, why brown?
She said brown = bullshit.

 

[HuckPilgrim]

I once went into a library ...
brown tape = autobiographies.
I asked the librarian, why brown?
She said brown = bullshit.

Hahaha!

And librarian's never lie!

 

[CyranoJ]

Good point. This sort of response to fiction seems unique to erotica, or maybe it's just unique to this place. It's pretty crazy!

It's not unique to erotica or this place. Linda Hamilton reported that she used to have people confront her in the market about supposedly thinking she was a tough chick after her performance in Terminator 2. George R.R. Martin regularly gets called a creepy pervert over all the rape, torture, incest, betrayal and murder in his books. Some people unfortunately just have no sense of the line between their own most literal interpretation of the content and the intentions of an author or creator.

It may be more prevalent by degree in Loving Wives. I've been kind of looking over that category with fascination since coming to the boards and seeing all the horror stories (I never used to read it), and the sense I get is that readers in that category seem to quite stringently demand whatever they think "realism" is, and aren't satisfied with the standard fantasy-tropes of porn or erotica.

 

[Hypoxia]

At very least, NEWS OF THE WEIRD provides many plot bunnies.

 

[NaokoSmith]

I think the challenge is more for the writer to express this POV without embellishing, rather than identifying any sort of objective truth. For me, it means finding the heart of the story in my life events, which requires some thoughtful analysis about one's life and how to present it as narrative. For example, I probably wouldn't select my first time story based solely on chronology or any particular act, although obviously those are factors to consider. I would base it on what I believe to be the acts, characters and motivations from my life that add up to a good first time story ... for me! It's all very subjective.

I do like the idea of a tag. A category probably won't happen, but I would enjoy working in it, if it did.

Naoko, so good to see you posting on here! Even better, I'm happy to report that I have found a job. I may have a little more time to write and start threads and such on here.

I am so thrilled to hear this good news! Especially if it means you can write more too.

I am doing well too, after a rough (not in a good way! ) patch, so I am coming ( ) back quite often to post.

I had so many thoughts about truth and what would count as a 'true story' that I had to go away and forget most of them, LOL, or it would have taken too long to type them up.

The thing with telling one's true story is, what is the 'truth' to which you want to get? Do you want to explore what actually happened (historical biography) or do you want to expose some inner philosophical/spiritual/psychological truth which is why you are interested in telling the story. If the latter, some embellishment, or more usually some editing, is often necessary to make the 'truth' clearer.

I sometimes tell little true anecdotes on my review blog as part of reviewing a story. I think I have two motivations in doing so. One is to show off, about something that happened that is too hilarious and I really want to share it with people, and the other is to get people reading the blog to think. I do both embellish (very slightly! OK, but I think he really did have at least 7 inches), and edit out un-necessary detail, as my main interest isn't in telling 'the truth, the whole (12 inches of the) truth and nothing but the truth' but in getting to the heart of the story past a lot of fat which I save to chew over later.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

I thought Laurel closed this up succinctly and finally. The site publishes fiction. Nothing stopping anyone posting a true story as erotica fiction but don't forget it is a story. In fiction we blithely ignore bodily functions, STDs, contraception, and much more.

Why would readers give a damn if a good erotic story was 'true' or not?
I thought Naoko made great sense on her last post.

 

[electric1]

Legal issues aside, I think most readers would agree that true stories about incest and rape are not fun or sexy - they're horrifying. Why would Literotica want them?

 

[HuckPilgrim]

The thing with telling one's true story is, what is the 'truth' to which you want to get? Do you want to explore what actually happened (historical biography) or do you want to expose some inner philosophical/spiritual/psychological truth which is why you are interested in telling the story. If the latter, some embellishment, or more usually some editing, is often necessary to make the 'truth' clearer.

Sure, that's all fine. But that's fiction. There's nothing wrong with fiction, but it's not a true story because it's been embellished. It's based on truth and it may contain some truth, but it's not the same as memoir.

There is a US author named Tim O'Brien whose most famous work is a collection of fictional short stories about the Vietnam war. It's powerful work and it's fiction. If you read O'Brien's memoir about being in Vietnam, it's interesting but not quite as powerful as The Things They Carried.

He has given talks about the difference between writing about the actual truth from memory and embellishing to get at something more vivid. For O'Brien, fiction was probably the right vehicle to get at the "truth" that he wanted readers to know. But there are many other authors who have written memoir in such a way that it's just as powerful as fiction. The big difference between the two is that one embellishes, while the other does not.

 

[HuckPilgrim]

Legal issues aside, I think most readers would agree that true stories about incest and rape are not fun or sexy - they're horrifying. Why would Literotica want them?

Agreed!

I was thinking that it would add a more interesting component to other categories, like first time or ehibitionist/voyuer.

It would also be interesting to see what would happen with true gay man, lesbian stories or any sort of transgender stories, because these are social minority groups, with very little visibility. My guess is that at the character level these stories might become more interesting, because they wouldn't have to rely so much on conventions.

But, yes, the downside is that it would shut the door on fantasy element of some categories that are morally abhorrent when it comes to real life. I just assumed authors wouldn't go there? Other than O.J's attempt to write a memoir about the murder he committed, who writes memoir about their own crimes?

 

[HuckPilgrim]

Looking at the Salon story Manu posted (about Literotica being selected as one of 7 classiest porn sites), maybe a better direction for this would be a "true confession" category.

I saw one of the sites in the linked article involved confessions, which is really just an eroticized version of memoir.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

A well crafted, first-person, retelling of erotic events can be fun. True or not? If it's well crafted, who cares? Problem would be with how to classify the story's content - I find reading a true, first-person lesbian story lots of fun. Do I suspect that it's probably made up and could have been written by a man (regardless of the pen name?) - of course I suspect that - but not while I'm wrapped up in the story.

Same could be said for most of my favorite ghost stories, too.

 

[NaokoSmith]

There are some 'true' stories sprinkled around here. There's What Color is your Underwear and I was thinking about truth vs. fiction in relation to the Hysterical Literature readings in which women truly orgasm while reading a book. This truth is art, as opposed to porn in which women pretend to orgasm so men can get off on it.

What Color is your Underwear works because it's brief (ho ho!), anecdotal. A quick flash of what knickers someone is wearing; that can be titillating.

The careful truths of biography maybe aren't what we look for when we want an erotic story. The 'ring of truth' might make a sexual encounter more meaningful in the reading, however this is a side issue, unlike when we read about somebody's life or a period in history. What we 'truly' look for in an erotic story is perhaps not a factual but a spiritual, individually psychological truth, more so than in a story about crime or big city life.

Oh, and we look for tit-illation

 

[Erodicus]

It seems like an oversight that there is no category for true stories. Maybe it's because so many of us use handles and pen names to separate our real life personas from our erotic fiction adventures, but I think it would be a great category. I realize you can always just use an existing category and offer an author note (This is a true story!), but it would be more of a commitment to the genre (of telling true stories of titillating personal erotic experience) if there were a category explicitly for true stories.

It might just be me. I read a lot of memoir and I enjoy knowing that the author put the story together expressly to tell me something about her life. It adds an extra dimension that fictional stories, even if they include an author's note claiming they're real, don't really reach.

What are your thoughts? Would you post in such a category? Would you read in such a category? Would you write in such a category?

Great idea. I find stories inspired by personal experiences to be much more credible and better written than pure fantasy. It's a technique used by many famous fiction writers. But I'd suggest expanding it to "true stories or stories based extensively on actual events." I think that would attract many more contributions - and probably a high proportion of existing stories in other categories.

 

[EmilyMiller]

It seems like an oversight that there is no category for true stories. Maybe it's because so many of us use handles and pen names to separate our real life personas from our erotic fiction adventures, but I think it would be a great category. I realize you can always just use an existing category and offer an author note (This is a true story!), but it would be more of a commitment to the genre (of telling true stories of titillating personal erotic experience) if there were a category explicitly for true stories.

It might just be me. I read a lot of memoir and I enjoy knowing that the author put the story together expressly to tell me something about her life. It adds an extra dimension that fictional stories, even if they include an author's note claiming they're real, don't really reach.

What are your thoughts? Would you post in such a category? Would you read in such a category? Would you write in such a category?

I’ve written a lot of what I call quasi-autobiographical stories here. A mixture of combining things, exaggerating things, editing out inconvenient or boring bits, compressing time, creating amalgams of real people, and some out and out fabrication, where the story requires this.

I guess these are mostly “inspired by real events,” as the phrase goes.

Never felt the need for a separate category for them. I just put them in the most relevant category.

Em

 

[Bamagan]

There will likely not be such a category, as the content guidelines for what the site allows specifically exclude:

• Works professed to be true about real people in the title, tags, and/or description. You can use “true” within the body of a story as part of your fictional storytelling. This policy is to protect authors as well as third parties.

If someone wants to write a biography or autobiography, they're not likely to be accommodated here.

 

[KeithD]

I have stories and books that I label "factional" (e.g., https://www.amazon.com/Flying-High-Diving-Deep-habu-ebook/dp/B008DXZP74?ref_=ast_author_dp), because, while embellished, they largely are true stories.

I don't think we need a separate category for that.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Ten year old resurrection thread, just sayin'.

That aside, I have one completely autobiographical story here that touched hearts. I also have several stories where readers have commented, "Thank you both for sharing," which means they thought it was a true recount from a couple's lives, when in fact the story and characters were completely fictional. Many of my stories are littered with autobiographical elements coupled with pure fantasy, and vice versa.

If you write well enough, no-one can tell where truth ends and fiction begins; and I'm sure there's many a story where readers would say, "Well that would never happen" but it very possibly did.

 

[KeithD]

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If you write well enough, no-one can tell where truth ends and fiction begins; and I'm sure there's many a story where readers would say, "Well that would never happen" but it very possibly did.

As I've noted before, frequently the one "did it happen?" element of one of my stories that is challenged by a commenter is, in fact, the only true element in the story.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Please let us not venture into "true stories" the incels already can't separate reality from fantasy, fact from fiction. You'll only confuse them thoroughly if we have true stories.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Hi, Hypoxia - gotta disagree with you re incest laws. Adult incest is actually illegal in all 50 US states. There may be countries around the world where it is legal, but it is not legal in the US.

This is not to suggest that the laws are often enforced; but they are there, and they are enforced on occasion. I checked into this in detail in researching my 'Milk and Cookies' 2-parter (My favourite stories, and my lowest scores, and I'm so sad).

Here's a link to a Slate article regarding one such case.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/12/is_incest_a_twoway_street.html

Cheers - MC

Your research has holes in it, particularly as to how incest is defined in the various states. The degree of consanguinity defines the legality of the act.

In some states the laws apply only to "blood" relatives, while in others, it applies to "step" and "half" relationships as well. Then there are the states that have no restrictions concerning cousins of one degree or another. The laws are generally in place to prevent incestuous relationships that pose genetic risks associated with reproduction.

 

[SimonDoom]

This is a non-starter because the content guidelines clearly forbid using tags, taglines, or descriptions to say that the story is "true." Specifically, the Site prohibits:

• Works professed to be true about real people in the title, tags, and/or description. You can use “true” within the body of a story as part of your fictional storytelling. This policy is to protect authors as well as third parties.

 

[lc69hunter]

There are a lot of true stories told on this site. However, we all take some literary license, even on the true ones. And, especially in the LW genre, if a hater does not like the topic or the outcome of a story, they project it on to the writer personally anyway

 

[HuckPilgrim]

There will likely not be such a category, as the content guidelines for what the site allows specifically exclude:


If someone wants to write a biography or autobiography, they're not likely to be accommodated here.

Seems more likely that's more to do with writing true stories about someone else, which makes complete sense. I'm more interested in what people have to say about themselves and what they're willing to own. Nothing wrong with writing fiction, but presenting something as "true" offers a different way of evaluating the work.

 

[Bamagan]

Seems more likely that's more to do with writing true stories about someone else, which makes complete sense. I'm more interested in what people have to say about themselves and what they're willing to own. Nothing wrong with writing fiction, but presenting something as "true" offers a different way of evaluating the work.

There's a very narrow amount of 'true' storytelling one could write about oneself that doesn't involve other actual people, and presenting such things as true events, even if the names are changed, is not necessarily good enough. I think the site wants to avoid getting drawn into the weeds deciding on how much detail has to be fictionalized from a 'based on actual events' that many people use as the seeds of their stories, so they will just say, "No thank you," to anything purporting to be 'real' in that sense.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Your research has holes in it, particularly as to how incest is defined in the various states. The degree of consanguinity defines the legality of the act.

It's kind of circular; everybody is related to everybody if you go back far enough, but "incest" generally means a relationship with somebody who's close enough to be legally off-limits under whatever laws are applicable. By that definition, incest is illegal everywhere, but what counts as "incest" varies.

In some states the laws apply only to "blood" relatives, while in others, it applies to "step" and "half" relationships as well. Then there are the states that have no restrictions concerning cousins of one degree or another. The laws are generally in place to prevent incestuous relationships that pose genetic risks associated with reproduction.

I think that last is over-simplifying it. Prohibitions against incest have been around for a long long time, millennia before we understood concepts like "harmful recessive traits", and those rules go well beyond what can be explained by reproductive considerations.

Back in Shakespeare's time, it was considered incestuous for a man to marry his dead brother's widow; this comes up in Hamlet and before that was part of Henry VIII's schism with Rome. Today, incest laws still apply even for same-sex couples who aren't capable of reproduction together.

I'm sure the reproductive aspect has influenced those taboos, but it's not the only reason why a society might develop a taboo on such relationships. There's a lot of potential for strife and abuse.