How mandatory is a decent plot to you when writing erotica?...

[Guest]

I come down firmly on the side of plot, but I have nothing against the "quick to shag" vignettes provided they accomplish one thing... At the end, at least one of the characters should be changed by the experience--mentally, emotionally, socially. (Add "financially" if you're buy-sexual.)

Without SOME meaningful impact on at least one person, sex is basically sweaty exercise. (I'm drawing upon some of the one-night stands I had in my [pre-AIDS] mis-spent, sluttish youth when I say that.) Fun, yes, but about as meaningful to the outsider as a party in which everyone gets drunk and just sits there; nothing else happens. The participants have a good time but it's boring as all hell to watch. I think it's equally as boring to read about.

Just my USD 1/50th.

 

[artlover637]

Having written two stories and not posting either of them (due to my opinion of whether they are Literotica-worthy), I would say it is a lot easier to write a porn story than an erotic story. Coming upon a reasonable plot was the hardest thing for me, since I was looking to write something believable.

 

[Matadore]

Imparitive. Unless one is writing for a medical journal.

 

[Purifier]

Plot is extremely important, but it only has to serve one goal: increasing the arousal created by the story.

I don't give a damn about what sappy things happen to the characters before or after the story. Everything that makes the story more sexy is good plot, everything that doesn't is useless fluff and has to go.

Creating good porn plot is an art in itself, because it has to be minimal, yet still original and stimulating. There are a few authors in the nonconsent/reluctance, incest and bdsm sections who excel at this task though.

 

[Matadore]

Yours is a valid opinion, for you.

What I mean is that it depends on your definition of the genera, "porn" and on the sophistication one needs to be intellectually stimulated enough to physically reach climax, don't you think?

Also, pardon me if I sound preachy here, your particular selections to recommend as examples might suggest that you are more aroused by sadistic and domination themes. Which is wonderful for you and many other folks to be sure, but perhaps you are confusing "I know what I like!" with "I like what I know." May it be that you feel that you speak for a majority when you are actually voicing your own opinion and disregarding that other people don't feel about the subject the way that you do? Or have you a direct line on this?

 

[Penelope Street]

Since the thread's title is "How mandatory is a decent plot to you when writing erotica?...", I would expect responses to be expressions and examples of what works for the poster, and not about what works for others.

 

[Anwar80]

I guess I'm strange because I believe in character driven stories. If the characters are well developed and real, they will drive the plot without having to worry about plot development. I always ask myself when I'm writing, "Would Harriet really do that?"

Because of that, Characters and Plot are so intermingled and inseparatable, that the plot flows naturally. I doubt I could write a pure stroke viginette. Harold's 'insert tab A into slot B' just doesn't work for me.

Totally agree with you, I like the story to have some decent plot & believable characters. s

 

[ANiceGuy]

Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't

Sometimes I feel like just getting right to the hot parts and sometimes Iwant to enjoy getting there I don't like a story that was just written around one hot sex scene. I also don't want to read four chapters before the action starts either. It's really good when your not sure whats going to happen in the end but it is fun getting there. I like Literotica because it has stories for all tastes.

 

[wordytom]

Importance of plot in porn

Plotless porn is like sex with a stone lesbian when you are stone straight. Possible but improbable and not too gratifying for either. My own take is that if the writing is so poor you skip over to get to the graphic scenes you the reader are cheated,

Back in the wild days of sex in the park and threesomes as an ice breaker at parties I had Henry Miller's trilogy on my book shelves alongside Mailer and a collection of Chekov's erotica. I also had some graphic novels that would have a gynecologist puzzled in how they did that.

Well written graphic stories beats the junk every time.

 

[a_bent_ampersand]

abent&sez

Plot owns everything for days.

Plot.
Character.
Dialog.
How good is yer sex?

Boom.

I work in that order. I have a strong group of readers who agree.

Well, maybe character and plot can be arranged.

 

[andy_charles]

I think that fundamentally it all boils down to who you're writing for, and in many cases we write for ourselves. One of the reasons for this may be because we cannot find anything others have written to satisfy our own desires, or its very difficult to find such stories.

Using myself as a personal example, I'm a big fan of soft-core porn, and though the plots for most of these films are becoming thinner and thinner these days, there is still a plot somewhere there. That's what turns me on - getting to know the characters before getting it on with them...or what you wish.

 

[Jedikool]

I think that fundamentally it all boils down to who you're writing for, and in many cases we write for ourselves. One of the reasons for this may be because we cannot find anything others have written to satisfy our own desires, or its very difficult to find such stories.

Using myself as a personal example, I'm a big fan of soft-core porn, and though the plots for most of these films are becoming thinner and thinner these days, there is still a plot somewhere there. That's what turns me on - getting to know the characters before getting it on with them...or what you wish.

Yeah, I think that's key for me too. Knowing the characters. Providing some sort of context for who is engaging in the sexual parts of the story and why they are doing so.

 

[Keroin]

Porn is easier to write, because if you can describe a sexual act, you can write porn, and a lot of people can so a lot of people do. It doesn't take much to trip a human being's switches. Bury the word "tit" in a page of the Congressional Record and see how it jumps out at you.

Writing good porn, that's another matter. Finding a way to make the same old sexual acts fresh and arousing takes a good bit of skill and inventiveness, a dose of poetry.

But then, it's also easy to write bad Erotica. You can throw a sex scene into any old story and call it erotica, and that's bad erotica.

Dr M, you are the reason I am still on Lit, after discovering this site about eight months ago.

I'm, temporarily, living on a remote island, with no library, no book store, heck, we don't even have a stop light. Looking for some erotic stories to read online, I found Lit and was I ever disappointed. The name of the site suggested erotic fiction but all I seemed to find, story after story, was badly penned porn. (Yes, I think of them as different genres). I was ready to leave when, somehow, I stumbled on one of your "Good Student" chapters and was hooked. An interesting story, with characters I cared about, and sex that was hot without being cliche - hooray! I then went on to discover some of the other gems on this site but it was your story that stopped me from clicking away permanently.

Impressive. Thank you. (I really should have commented before now).

If I want porn, if want masturbatory fodder, I'll look at photos or watch a DVD. My brain can make up whatever stories it likes. When I read, that's a higher level of engagement and my demand for quality likewise increases.

Tension is the glue that holds readers on the page. In erotic fiction, this is usually expressed sexually, but not necessarily. A good plot boils over with tension - macro and micro. Even in a short scene, there should be a sense that something is at stake for the character(s). Two people having sex is ordinary, no matter how rambunctious the act. Two people having sex when one or both has something to lose because of it, gets my attention. Done well, two people thinking about having sex, when one or both has something to lose because of it, is excruciatingly erotic.

Throwing sex into any old story doesn't make it erotic. Throwing a monster into any old story doesn't make it horrific. Throwing a lot of obscure, multi-syllabic words into a story doesn't make it "literature".

Tight plot, high stakes, lots of tension, characters I care about, fresh descriptions, skillful writing and a dash of poetry, that's what makes any story worth reading (or writing)...to me.

 

[BellaBestia]

for me plot is the foundation
the erotic or porn "action" has to evolve from the plot otherwise i'm not involved, and if i don't feel involved, i'm bored, no matter how much detail correct or otherwise you put into it. i want to know why, as well as how, two (or three) characters are having sex. motivation is more interesting than straight-forward sex descriptions. I try to do that in my writing, to varying degrees of success and failure, lol

 

[andy_charles]

But of course there is always the danger of the writer getting way ahead of themselves. You can write as much set-up as possible but still end up being bored with it and heading straight for the sex scene instead of focussing on the plot and character motivation.

I made that mistake with my first attempt for Literotica, "Mike's New Job", and as a result was unsatisfied with the end product and did not finish it. When I came back with "Sorting Out The Smiths" I feel that, though it will obviously not be to everybody's tastes, I had written a better piece of erotica because I forced myself to take the time to focus on the important ingredients.

Equation for a good piece of erotica:

(Plot + Character + Motivation + Sex) x (Read Throughs + Re-Writes) = Good Erotica

 

[Five_Eight]

How mandatory is a decent plot to you when writing erotica?

Readers who want a thrill and nothing else are going to skip right to the good part despite how much effort we artists have put into plot and character development. I get slammed by readers (who often don't know how to spell or punctuate simple sentences) for too much plot in my Literotica submissions. When I do give them what they want (HAUNTED HOUSE CLUB) I get 30,000 hits a year.

Then there's the secondary challenge of actually getting erotica to work on paper. The act of writing stimulating erotica which results in wet panties and pup tents says it without saying it, i.e. tucking it between the lines. To me, that means NOT deploying words like dick, pussy, tits, and cum.

Anaïs Nin is hailed as a great eroticist but I think her writing is impotent. On another note, Richard Manton (whose droll veddy veddy British voice I 'appropriated' for ANNALS OF POTENTATE III) is little better than your garden variety pornographer, but when he's on top of his game he can really get the blood charging through the circulatory system.

Manton is very good at depicting sex acts, but goes astray with the spanking and underage chicks. Two of Manton's best plot driven novels is the two-book series narrated by a Flashman rip-off character (of the Sussex Regiment): THE AMOUROUS MEMOIRS OF CAPT. CHARLES DEVANE and BOMBAY BOUND; they're hilarious AND stimulating. His best non-plot driven titles are TOMBOY, APHRODIZZIA, and THE DAYS AT FLORVILLE. He has a bad habit of recycling entire passages from book to book though and has written the literary equivalent of a snuff film in utter garbage like THE BLUE TRAIN and ELAINE COX. His book MAX is about as exciting as watching Mr. Ed re-runs.

To plot or not is oft a losing situation dictated by the vagaries of who's reading your work. Me, I seldom deviate from the traditional beginning-middle-end style of storytelling.

Write on.

 

[zex95966]

ironically enough, when i search for stories i do skip past some things if there is a long intro that doesn't interest me however when i write i want a background of some sort of the characters.

I find that the stories that i find the hottest are when i don't know that i'm reading erotica, for example i went to another site searching for non-erotic stories and as i was reading what i THOUGHT was non erotic, suddenly they are doing very erotic things, which because of the surprise was hot.

However i can get just as hot if a story is so good that i pay attention to it and forget that i was trying to get myself off... until the hot stuff starts.

one of my fav stories has a long intro, but the background and characters were so interesting that I kept reading.

Ideally it has both, but I am ashamed to admit that I skip some things sometimes.

 

[Dragonlipz]

A decent plot, that is, one that's developed and crafted well will forgive any number of literary errors.....except the lack of a decent plot

 

[Five_Eight]

Plot rules, but we oughta have a contest on writing the 'fuck' vignette just for laughs.

 

[CWatson]

I think, however, that even wham-bam-stories have a certain amount of plot: the writer must have thought out some sort of setting for the fucking, how they fuck and when and how the climax occurs.

A challenge! I dare somebody to write a completely context-less stroke story.

In the meanwhile, I think our responses are all biased to a certain extent, because we're all writers or at least all literate. We know what we think... But what does the average Lit reader think? If we did the statistics on stroke stories vs. plotted ones--how many clicks, how many reads, how many votes, what the average vote is--I wonder what we'd find.

(What continues to amuse me is that the "Most-Read" category is absolutely dominated by incest. And by "amuse" we mean, "This is one of those things where I laugh at it because the only other option is to cry.")

 

[driphoney]

A challenge! I dare somebody to write a completely context-less stroke story.

In the meanwhile, I think our responses are all biased to a certain extent, because we're all writers or at least all literate. We know what we think... But what does the average Lit reader think? If we did the statistics on stroke stories vs. plotted ones--how many clicks, how many reads, how many votes, what the average vote is--I wonder what we'd find.

(What continues to amuse me is that the "Most-Read" category is absolutely dominated by incest. And by "amuse" we mean, "This is one of those things where I laugh at it because the only other option is to cry.")

Isn't it interesting how old this thread is? But I digress before I even start.

You have such a valid point. Most stroke stories carry those elements and I guess the talent or creativity, like Dr. M stated ages ago (!!), is in how well those are laid out.

But I can't get all worked up, I'm too blue-collar. I enjoy a good story wherever I find it, regardless of whatever label someone might want to stick on it. Porn is good, when it is good, and erotica is good when it is good? And what makes it good or who says it's good? I guess that's up to the individual reader.

 

[Firebrain]

I'm coming to this thread very late, but here's my two cents anyway:

I think plot is very important but it should be proportionate to the size of the story. You're not going to get much into 25 words but you can still be indicative of what is going on. For longer pieces, I do like a storyline to string the endless screwing together; it's more fun for me as a writer to explore and indulge in my characters. They have feelings as well as genitals!

The most commented on stories on here seem to have a reasonable build-up and plot, so it would be reasonable to assume that it's a popular approach.

The wonderful thing about writing, though, is that you don't have to do anything.

 

[Ellebeth]

I've written erotic short stories for a few years for friends. They've all had plot to them and every guy I've sent them to has had no problem getting off to them. Every one has told me I should think about writing seriously, and Literotica is mentioned often. I'm new here, but as soon as I can get one cleaned up enough to submit I hope to please some more readers. Glad to see that some peeps do appreciate the plot that leads up to the hot sex.

 

[4glory6]

A challenge! I dare somebody to write a completely context-less stroke story.

In the meanwhile, I think our responses are all biased to a certain extent, because we're all writers or at least all literate. We know what we think... But what does the average Lit reader think? If we did the statistics on stroke stories vs. plotted ones--how many clicks, how many reads, how many votes, what the average vote is--I wonder what we'd find.

(What continues to amuse me is that the "Most-Read" category is absolutely dominated by incest. And by "amuse" we mean, "This is one of those things where I laugh at it because the only other option is to cry.")

I do believe that sr71plt's "Licorice-Centered Milk Chocolate" stroke story is not only contextless, but it also can pass as either Gay Male or Female/Male. There was quite a discussion of it in what was once the story review board when it first posted. (I think that it wasn't submitted to the Gay Male category but was mistakenly placed there because of what sr71plt was mostly writing--and the reviewers yammered about where it should have been placed. I've just checked, and there is discussion about that on the comments on the story too.)

 

[xPoisonx]

When I'm reading I like some instant gratification too lol unless it's really well written and/or got an interesting plot. I think sexual detail is important but let's face facts, this is an erotic site and unless your story is going in the Non-Erotic or Novel/Novella category a lot of extra wording isn't really needed.