Levels of Plausibility

[TheNovelist2000]

I have been trying out stories on the other site. You know the one with three letters. The one that must not be named. What I have encountered was many of the stories that achieved a high score did not make any efforts in establishing a plausible plot. That is to say, everyone who the main character(s) tries to make a move on is as eager for intimacy as them.

I will discuss them the stories I have already read there.

1) A story about two daughters and their mom who live in a universe where feminism never happened. In this story, the women are like the 50s housewives but worse. For example, they eat the leftovers of men in their family. They do all the cooking, cleaning and even heavy labour like carrying tables and chairs while the men are treated like royalty.

This story is the second least jarring of the stories, and it is understandable from the outset that this is more like a fantasy novel, set in a different reality, but seeing these women submit without any coercion or pressure from other men just takes away the pleasure. It's the same thing repeated many times. The main female character (one of the daughters) would challenge their sexist norms, and her mom would explain why they are inferior. They would be open to any advances made by the strangers. (like letting them touch their bums on the street or answering any personal questions without alluding to indecency). The premise was interesting at first, but I hate the way the women in the story would be so eager to a very unrealistic level.

2) The second story is about a woman getting a job in a company. There is no padding or background exposition that she lives in a different reality. She goes into the interview, and as a reader, you'd expect the same norms and décorums that you and me and familiar with, even if they are laxed for erotic purposes. But as soon as the interview starts, the interviewer offers the woman, without any expectation management beforehand, a job where she would have to be naked and blow the staff. And she, without any hesitation, eagerly takes it. Then, she goes home and tells the family about her new job and without any internal logic, they are eager for it. Then, the husband immediately turns her into a sex slave with her adult kids fully participating.

3) The third story is about a rich billionaire dating an Indian girl. The story starts in the girl's living room. Her whole family is there and she has one of her guy friends over as a guest, and the rich boyfriend comes in and starts discussing about her panties and how he likes her without them. He also flirts the girl's mom in a very explicit way, telling her how he doesn't like her (the mom) wearing any bras, etc. And the reaction of the whole family, including the gf's sister, is that there is nothing wrong with his behavior. In other words, they don't behave like you and I would behave. It is as if the narrator, the characters and the reader were already in an agreement that they live in a whole different reality to ours and that no one should question anything that unfolds in the story.

4) The last story is from a Lit author I admire very much, and I'd say this story is the least jarring of all the stories. It's about a step-daughter filling in for the mom on Valentine. The story begins with a conversation where the mom lets the husband knows that she will make her daughter have sex with him that night. That she's arranged a date for him with her. This story is the least jarring because the conversation alludes to the fact that the couple might have talked in the past about such a possibility, but the way the daughter would eagerly embrace the role without any reasoning came across to me as very unrealistic. Still, I really love this story; don't get me wrong. It's just that I felt I was reading something so hot but at the same time was very aware that this was just a fantasy.

See, the thing is that I love all the stories listed above. I understand the eroticism of these fantasies, but as I read them, I kept thinking it would hit a million times harder if the authors tried to make it a bit more realistic.

I remember reading stories like Owning the Dominant Bitch or Upsetting the Apple Cart as a youth, and even though both stories entertain very implausible premises, with the former being about a young man who starts a harem at school and the latter being about a very daring boyfriend taming the gf's mother and aunt as his sex slaves, the way the stories handles realism kept making me think that if I were told they were real, I would believe it.

A little detour to how both stories achieve realism.

The first story---Owning the Dominant Bitch---starts with a girl who was very submissive. (Very plausible; there are women like her out there.) The main male character is sort of given a chance to become emboldened without any repercussions because of this submissive character. Then, he gets a girlfriend. (also very plausible.) The girlfriend tolerates the sub not because she's too eager for anything the main character is feeding to her, but because she has a streak of dominance and it is guaranteed by the MC that the sub will never become a girlfriend and wouldn't be treated as such. This little rule makes the story so plausible. Imagine if the author had the girlfriend agree him having a sub for no reason other than she is someone in his sex story, the result would be very jarring.

In the second story, the main character is a mischievous troublemaker. It is already established that he would push his gf's limits constantly, and taking risks is his character. When the mom saw them having sex on the sofa in the middle of the night, she freaks out like any mom would. She is not instantly attracted to him. Even then, she stays away from him afterwards, and the main character has to grope her and sort of threatens/coerces her to get into her pants.

Sorry for making this post very long. The main purpose of this thread is to find out about your takes on varying levels of plausibility and realism in writing very improbable premises (common in stroke stories). Is making stories realistic a virtue we must strive for? Or should we give into the temptation of writing stories that are unrealistic and far-fetched, given that there is an audience out there who will lap up anything you feed to them.

The flip side of the coin is that stories that are tightly rooted in realism are very rigid, and it becomes difficult for eroticism to grow there. Think about those BTB stories, where a great deal of the stories is about the practicalities of getting the bitch. Not having kinky, fun sex.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Edit: In retrospect, my response reads a lot hotter than I actually felt. Not trying to poo-poo the discussion, I actually think it's a good one to have. But my opinion is that the focus should be more on degrees of plausibility than virtue, since plausibility is something that is debatable, whereas virtue is primarily a lesson in pontification. The following is not an attack on anyone, nor am I singling out or referencing any specific individual on this forum or anywhere else. It's more a statement of my dislike of the kind of snobbery I've encountered as a writer whose been around for more than two decades in this space and has heard plenty of very elitist, snobby writers deride "lesser" writers for a whole plethora of reasons, usually out of jealousy.

Is making stories realistic a virtue we must strive for? Or should we give into the temptation of writing stories that are unrealistic and far-fetched, given that there is an audience out there who will lap up anything you feed to them.

Hard, hard, hard no.

I dislike hate when writing a certain way is considered a "virtue," as if there's some inherent pedestal we ought to strive for in order to prove our devotion to The Craft, because if we do it The Right Way, then we are Great and Noble Writers who are far superior to the cretins who dare bow to the whims of popularity, and no matter what reception our work gets, it's a hell of a lot better than that guy who wrote a 5k-word T/I porno where the Mom and Son were just named Mom and Son, even if it got a million views, won contests, and has a 4.9, because it was Pandering, and that's not True Art.

Look, it's stories, and stories can be done any which way someone want to do them. The only thing we should strive for is to tell the story. Whether you're doing it to make a buck and you have no real stake in it, or if it's a 90-year passion project, neither is inherently more virtuous or better than the other. In the end, it's an author writing what they want to write, for whatever reasons, internal or external, and that's really all that matters.

Framing it as, "Well, if you just 'sell out' and write flimsy smut because you want to be popular or have readers, that's not a good story," is one of those false Writers as Noble Idealists stories we tell ourselves for whatever reason. Usually it's an elitist argument leveled by those looking down their noses as "common" writers, because those people are the sole arbiters of what makes a story art, and what makes it pandering, using whatever hand-wavy critieria they use, applied unevenly, that reeks of neptism.

If someone wants to write stories that are flimsy pornos, that doesn't make their story any less valid than someone who wants to write the next great novel. Personally, I'd rather write something with substance, with a plausible in-world reasoning, fleshed out characters, humor, and use it as a lens of some sort to showing something about society.

But I'm under no illusion... I'm 10000000% writing anthro porn It's just the porn is interwoven with higher levels of complexity than a straightforward stroker (so far, that is; I definitely have some flimsy-plotted strokers in the WIP folder).

So, you wanna write deep, meaningful work that just happens to contain sex? Go ahead and do that. You wanna write a story with a plot so thin it'd disentigrate if you tried to blow your nose with it, go ahead and do that. You want to write because this is a passion project decades in the making? Great, do it! You wanna write a story purely to make money? More power to you!

That said, I do appreciate stories where the in-universe logic is sound, and the character motivations are fairly robust and make sense. Those stories tend to be better in terms of reader enjoyment when evaluating from a non-erotica lens, because they make you feel something beyond arousal. My preference is for those stories, frankly. But I can also appreciate stories where everything is contrived and the sole purpose is reader titilation. They're two completely different animals, and to try to compare them is like comparing Citizen Kane with The Three Stooges. While you can use some criteria to evaluate them both, ultimately they're so different that a lot of your criteria doesn't really overlap very well.

We can tell ourselves that some stories are more worthy than others, but then we're just foisting our opinions onto the universe. There's no objective measure of whether one story is better than another, or whether one story should be told, or if one is virtuous, it's all subjective and nobody can possibly agree on them.

For the reader, all that matters is that they enjoy it. Everything else is gravy, my friend

TLDR: Write whatever you want, and don't let people shame you for writing what you enjoy

 

[KittyOfSteele]

It's called fiction. It's meant to be a lie. Also, realism is boring. There's a reason people in fiction don't talk like normal people.

The only virtue I strive for is this: YOUR WRITING IS VALID, WRITE WHATEVER YOU WANT!

 

[anthrodisiac]

I think it would be better to nudge this in a more useful, less virtue-specific direction, if you'll allow me I just think the virtue angle isn't a particularly useful one due to the elitism and snobbery that tends to undergird discussions of writing with respect to which stories are more virtuous and worthy than others. It's insulting because it insinuates that writers who write strokers are doing it simply to pander to the audience and aren't doing it because that's the story they want to write, when really we don't know what reasons they have for writing that story. Maybe they're new and it's the best they can do. Maybe they enjoy writing stories that way and their thought isn't on writing for popularity. Could be that they prefer to write stories that are narrowly tailored to the erotic aspect. But ascribing "stokers = lazy, not virtuous stories" is painting a massive swath of authors with a broad brush, and frankly, none of them deserve the paint of denigration slapped upon them by that brush stroke.

I think better questions are:
What level of plausibility do you require from a story? How does that vary between a non-stroker erotic piece, stroker, and non-erotic piece?
What level of flimsy plot/characters/logic are you willing to accept from a stoker before it gets to the point where it's not enjoyable, even if it hits every single one of your kinks?
Which elements are the most important for your personal enjoyment when it comes to plausibility? Plausible plot, plausible characters, or plausible in-world logic?

 

[StillStunned]

I dislike hate when writing a certain way is considered a "virtue," as if there's some inherent pedestal we ought to strive for in order to prove our devotion to The Craft, because if we do it The Right Way, then we are Great and Noble Writers who are far superior to the cretins who dare bow to the whims of popularity, and no matter what reception our work gets, it's a hell of a lot better than that guy who wrote a 5k-word T/I porno where the Mom and Son were just named Mom and Son, even if it got a million views, won contests, and has a 4.9, because it was Pandering, and that's not True Art.

Look, it's stories, and stories can be done any which way someone want to do them. The only thing we should strive for is to tell the story. Whether you're doing it to make a buck and you have no real stake in it, or if it's a 90-year passion project, neither is inherently more virtuous or better than the other. In the end, it's an author writing what they want to write, for whatever reasons, internal or external, and that's really all that matters.

I agree.

A good story is one that serves its intended purpose. And that purpose can be any of a number of things: processing your personal traumas, influencing the reader's opinions, making them laugh, making them cry, distracting them from reality for a few hours - and even getting them aroused.

If a story achieves that goal, however it's written is clearly good enough. If it lacks justification for the in-story events but that doesn't stop the reader from getting off, then it doesn't need that justification. All it needs is the elements that arouse the reader.

 

[anthrodisiac]

The flip side of the coin is that stories that are tightly rooted in realism are very rigid, and it becomes difficult for eroticism to grow there. Think about those BTB stories, where a great deal of the stories is about the practicalities of getting the bitch. Not having kinky, fun sex.

You do make good points that having exceedingly realistic plots and characters can make it harder to build the eroticism, and it's especially true that extremely realistic plots/characters make certain erotic elements very difficult. A very realistic story that tried to be an incest erotic story would almost certainly fail. And any anthro ones fail before you get five steps into them. There does need to be a level of suspension of disbelief, and it's a really good discussion to see where different people fall on level of realism needed in the story they're reading in order to enjoy it.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I have been trying out stories on the other site. You know the one with three letters. The one that must not be named. What I have encountered was many of the stories that achieved a high score did not make any efforts in establishing a plausible plot. That is to say, everyone who the main character(s) tries to make a move on is as eager for intimacy as them.

Same as here.

the women in the story would be so eager to a very unrealistic level.

It's porn. (shrug)

All of your examples are male fantasy porn. Men getting every kink that they desire with zero effort or friction at all. This is what sells. This is what scores because the audience on sites like this is largely male porn fans. That's just the reality of it. You want something deeper? You'll have to look very hard for it ... or write it yourself.

 

[AlinaX]

I have no problem with implausibility, but the implausible still needs an underlying logic to it. What you're describing in these stories is mostly laziness. What's missing, as you point out, is the underlying motivations for the characters to accept their reality.

A billionaire who gets away with treating you and your family like shit? A dystopian reality - awfully similar to our own - where billionaires basically own people. Women stuck in the 1950s? Look where we're heading now... A wife seeking a job and getting turned into a freeuse slut? Hmm.

Nightmare visions dressed up as fluffy fantasy. Laziness.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Is making stories realistic a virtue we must strive for?

Nope.

The flip side of the coin is that stories that are tightly rooted in realism are very rigid, and it becomes difficult for eroticism to grow there.

That is not true at all. There is plenty of drama and eroticism in everyday life around us. I think what you mean is that there is no male porn fantasy rooted in rigid realism. That is why it is fantasy. ; )

Do you want porn or do you want realistic erotica? Or maybe some of both? The choice is yours and any choice that you make is valid.

 

[StillStunned]

Another factor that's often overlooked in this discussion is that there are plenty of stories in speculative fiction where the fantastical elements don't have any explanation or justification.

My cyberpunk story "Into The Night" handwaves the whole issue of what "the Night" is, and what it does, beyond the basic implication that it's some form of virtual reality. Heinlein's "Glory Road" has thousands of worlds that can be reached by instantaneous teleportation, but with no explanation of how or why. The inciting event in "The Rivers of London" is when Peter sees a ghost - no explanation for why *he* sees it. And so on.

So why should porn have to justify its assumptions that make the sex possible?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

So why should porn have to justify its assumptions that make the sex possible?

It doesn't have to. I guess porn is the same as wrestling. It's totally fake and men seem to get really excited about it anyway. (shrug)

 

[StillStunned]

It doesn't have to. I guess porn is the same as wrestling. It's totally fake and men seem to get really excited about it anyway. (shrug)

So do plenty of women.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Another factor that's often overlooked in this discussion is that there are plenty of stories in speculative fiction where the fantastical elements don't have any explanation or justification.

My cyberpunk story "Into The Night" handwaves the whole issue of what "the Night" is, and what it does, beyond the basic implication that it's some form of virtual reality. Heinlein's "Glory Road" has thousands of worlds that can be reached by instantaneous teleportation, but with no explanation of how or why. The inciting event in "The Rivers of London" is when Peter sees a ghost - no explanation for why *he* sees it. And so on.

So why should porn have to justify its assumptions that make the sex possible?

I love when fantastical elements aren't explained, and everyone takes them at face value. To me, that makes a story feel more real, because you don't have someone interjecting to explain why XYZ every five seconds. In a world where that's possible, characters just accept it as base reality, and interjections explaining it, unless handled carefully, read more as author intrusion.

A sexual encounter a little different from those fantastical elements, in my opinion, given that usually the reasons leading up to the sex are built around character motivation and the logical series of events leading to sex, whereas fantastical/technological elements tend to be build-in parts of the world and not explaining them doesn't detract from the story at all, or in some cases enhances the mystery around the tech/plot point, which leads to speculation and interpretation.

That's not to say that porn has to justify why the sex happened, but having the internal in-world logic (as AlinaX pointed out) does at least give it the characters more texture beyond "author likes scenario, here are puppets to fuck at their bidding" if we understand why Dad wanted to break a massive social taboo and be buggered by his son. It adds a level of dimensionality that gives the story more depth in a way that not explaining how Jim is able to cross universes by sneezing doesn't (though I'm damn curious how Jim sneezes his way through branes).

But you're absolutely right, it's totally not necessary to justify anything. Someone wants cardboard cutouts fucking for their specific scenario, then by all means, card-bone away.

 

[TheNovelist2000]

Edit: In retrospect, my response reads a lot hotter than I actually felt. Not trying to poo-poo the discussion, I actually think it's a good one to have. But my opinion is that the focus should be more on degrees of plausibility than virtue, since plausibility is something that is debatable, whereas virtue is primarily a lesson in pontification. The following is not an attack on anyone, nor am I singling out or referencing any specific individual on this forum or anywhere else. It's more a statement of my dislike of the kind of snobbery I've encountered as a writer whose been around for more than two decades in this space and has heard plenty of very elitist, snobby writers deride "lesser" writers for a whole plethora of reasons, usually out of jealousy.


Hard, hard, hard no.

I dislike hate when writing a certain way is considered a "virtue," as if there's some inherent pedestal we ought to strive for in order to prove our devotion to The Craft, because if we do it The Right Way, then we are Great and Noble Writers who are far superior to the cretins who dare bow to the whims of popularity, and no matter what reception our work gets, it's a hell of a lot better than that guy who wrote a 5k-word T/I porno where the Mom and Son were just named Mom and Son, even if it got a million views, won contests, and has a 4.9, because it was Pandering, and that's not True Art.

Look, it's stories, and stories can be done any which way someone want to do them. The only thing we should strive for is to tell the story. Whether you're doing it to make a buck and you have no real stake in it, or if it's a 90-year passion project, neither is inherently more virtuous or better than the other. In the end, it's an author writing what they want to write, for whatever reasons, internal or external, and that's really all that matters.

Framing it as, "Well, if you just 'sell out' and write flimsy smut because you want to be popular or have readers, that's not a good story," is one of those false Writers as Noble Idealists stories we tell ourselves for whatever reason. Usually it's an elitist argument leveled by those looking down their noses as "common" writers, because those people are the sole arbiters of what makes a story art, and what makes it pandering, using whatever hand-wavy critieria they use, applied unevenly, that reeks of neptism.

If someone wants to write stories that are flimsy pornos, that doesn't make their story any less valid than someone who wants to write the next great novel. Personally, I'd rather write something with substance, with a plausible in-world reasoning, fleshed out characters, humor, and use it as a lens of some sort to showing something about society.

But I'm under no illusion... I'm 10000000% writing anthro porn It's just the porn is interwoven with higher levels of complexity than a straightforward stroker (so far, that is; I definitely have some flimsy-plotted strokers in the WIP folder).

So, you wanna write deep, meaningful work that just happens to contain sex? Go ahead and do that. You wanna write a story with a plot so thin it'd disentigrate if you tried to blow your nose with it, go ahead and do that. You want to write because this is a passion project decades in the making? Great, do it! You wanna write a story purely to make money? More power to you!

That said, I do appreciate stories where the in-universe logic is sound, and the character motivations are fairly robust and make sense. Those stories tend to be better in terms of reader enjoyment when evaluating from a non-erotica lens, because they make you feel something beyond arousal. My preference is for those stories, frankly. But I can also appreciate stories where everything is contrived and the sole purpose is reader titilation. They're two completely different animals, and to try to compare them is like comparing Citizen Kane with The Three Stooges. While you can use some criteria to evaluate them both, ultimately they're so different that a lot of your criteria doesn't really overlap very well.

We can tell ourselves that some stories are more worthy than others, but then we're just foisting our opinions onto the universe. There's no objective measure of whether one story is better than another, or whether one story should be told, or if one is virtuous, it's all subjective and nobody can possibly agree on them.

For the reader, all that matters is that they enjoy it. Everything else is gravy, my friend

TLDR: Write whatever you want, and don't let people shame you for writing what you enjoy

Ok. I must have used the word 'virtue' very carelessly here. The thread is not supposed to be a literary debate on whether we should condemn improbable writing or not. Every question I've asked on the forum pertains to one thing and only one thing. Would doing X increase the level of arousal I can induce in my readers? That is the only thing I've ever cared about. I have no literary degrees or have never alluded to anyone that I write well or that I care about the virtues of a great writer. I am just a simple man who wants to write simple stories and be told that my stories are hot. In that regard, I want to get better.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

So do plenty of women.

Porn or wrestling? : P

Yes but not nearly so many.

 

[TheNovelist2000]

I think it would be better to nudge this in a more useful, less virtue-specific direction, if you'll allow me I just think the virtue angle isn't a particularly useful one due to the elitism and snobbery that tends to undergird discussions of writing with respect to which stories are more virtuous and worthy than others. It's insulting because it insinuates that writers who write strokers are doing it simply to pander to the audience and aren't doing it because that's the story they want to write, when really we don't know what reasons they have for writing that story. Maybe they're new and it's the best they can do. Maybe they enjoy writing stories that way and their thought isn't on writing for popularity. Could be that they prefer to write stories that are narrowly tailored to the erotic aspect. But ascribing "stokers = lazy, not virtuous stories" is painting a massive swath of authors with a broad brush, and frankly, none of them deserve the paint of denigration slapped upon them by that brush stroke.

All ( most of) the stories listed above are strokers. The two stories I found very plausible are strokers. In fact, I love writing strokers. The purpose of the question is to find out whether plausibility affects reader enjoyment or not. That's all. If we can tweak our strokers slightly to make them more logical and the result is more enjoyable reading, then we should be striving towards making strokers more grounded. If plausibility doesn't affect the enjoyment, then it makes the job of writing easier. Yk.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Would doing X increase the level of arousal I can induce in my readers?

Would including more depth and plausibility in plot increase the level of arousal? It depends on the audience. There is a significant readership here that appreciates (or even yearns for) deeper plot to heighten the arousal or not, but they are a definite minority. The majority however won't care, as evidenced by the massive popularity and high scores of the plotless unicorn here and on other sites. In fact, in my experience, if you waste too much of your word count on kinkless plot and character development you could actually annoy the porn crowd and possibly even hurt your score, no matter how naughty your sex scenes are. Certain know-it-all people on this forum have even confirmed this to me.

 

[TheNovelist2000]

I think better questions are:
What level of plausibility do you require from a story? How does that vary between a non-stroker erotic piece, stroker, and non-erotic piece?
What level of flimsy plot/characters/logic are you willing to accept from a stoker before it gets to the point where it's not enjoyable, even if it hits every single one of your kinks?
Which elements are the most important for your personal enjoyment when it comes to plausibility? Plausible plot, plausible characters, or plausible in-world logic?

Please. Everyone chime in on these questions. I am very eager to read your answers.

 

[StillStunned]

having the internal in-world logic

I think that in a lot of porn, the in-world logic *is* that people are willing to do these things. As a reader/watcher, that's the assumption you should have going in.

You and I and other writers here might prefer an explanation, but there are plenty of sci-fi fans who scoff at books that don't include technical explanations of FTL drive, and fantasy fans who claim that the magic system in The Wheel of Time is better than magic in Middle-Earth because the author explains how it works. Different people want different things, and it's fair for some "porn worlds" to handwave the technicalities.

 

[anthrodisiac]

Ok. I must have used the word 'virtue' very carelessly here. The thread is not supposed to be a literary debate on whether we should condemn improbable writing or not. Every question I've asked on the forum pertains to one thing and only one thing. Would doing X increase the level of arousal I can induce in my readers? That is the only thing I've ever cared about. I have no literary degrees or have never alluded to anyone that I write well or that I care about the virtues of a great writer. I am just a simple man who wants to write simple stories and be told that my stories are hot. In that regard, I want to get better.

Good to know I wasn't implying that I thought you were snobbish or that you thought you were better than anyone else. It's just I've been around long enough that plenty of people use things like virtue or story worthiness as code for snobbishness and derision of writers who do anything other than Pure Art, whatever that is. Apologies if it seemed I was implying that about you.

It always depends on what your goals are. If you want to write stories that have erotic content, that's a different approach than if you want to write erotica that has story content.

If your primary goal is titilation, then you'd probably lean less heavily on story and character development and focus primarily on the sexual content. You should still have enough character depth and plot to make sure that the in-universe logic is sound enough that it holds up under some scrutiny, but you don't need to build an ironclad case as to why two or more people are fucking. You just need enough bones to give it an air of plausibility that these people decided to do whatever it is they're doing, even if it goes against social norms. Specific to incest stories, you need to have at least some plausible reason for the two characters to break that taboo, and make sure that the characters themselves are built in such a way that it makes sense for them to do that. You wouldn't want to do a story where a character believes that incest is a mortal sin against God, he's incredibly devout, would never risk his soul or has looked at another woman, but then decides to fuck his daughter. His internal character motivation doesn't track with his actions. But if he finds some way to mentally justify it to himself, then you're good to go (however you manage to do that).

If your goal is to tell a story, and the story just happens to have erotic content, then your approach is very different. You want to build up the characters and story so they have depth. The scaffolding for the sex is a lot more rigorous, and the sex itself is a crucial point of the story, not simply a thing that happens during the story. In other words, you want to fold the sexual acts as part of the plot rather than simply being an incidental thing. It means the sex is more narratively intentional and serves a greater purpose beyond simply arousing the reader.

 

[TheNovelist2000]

I have no problem with implausibility, but the implausible still needs an underlying logic to it.

Exactly! You got my question.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I think that in a lot of porn, the in-world logic *is* that people are willing to do these things. As a reader/watcher, that's the assumption you should have going in.

You and I and other writers here might prefer an explanation, but there are plenty of sci-fi fans who scoff at books that don't include technical explanations of FTL drive, and fantasy fans who claim that the magic system in The Wheel of Time is better than magic in Middle-Earth because the author explains how it works. Different people want different things, and it's fair for some "porn worlds" to handwave the technicalities.

No arguments from me. Like I said, the only thing a story needs is a way to tell it, everything else is simply reader preference.

I simply think that as long as there's some in-world logic or in-character logic as to why these people are doing something, especially if it goes against social norms like incest, it feels less like cardboard cutouts doing a thing simply because the author tells them to. But some people have 0 problems with cardboard cutouts, because they're simply there for the sex, and the underlying characters engaging in the sex is fairly irrelevant, they're more interested in how they're related (incest), what they are (non-human), and how they're fucking.

 

[TheNovelist2000]

Apologies if it seemed I was implying that about you.

No. It was my mistake for assuming that a good writer here is someone who writes hot stories. Hence, a virtue being anything that achieves that. I used that word in that way.

You should still have enough character depth and plot to make sure that the in-universe logic is sound enough that it holds up under some scrutiny, but you don't need to build an ironclad case as to why two or more people are fucking. You just need enough bones to give it an air of plausibility that these people decided to do whatever it is they're doing, even if it goes against social norms.

Now, you understand my frustration for stories that don't even try to do that.

If your goal is to tell a story, and the story just happens to have erotic content, then your approach is very different.

I wouldn't conflate plausibility with this. Even if you want to write something non-erotic, the degree of plausibility still comes into effect.

 

[TheNovelist2000]

Do you want porn

Even in porn, there are ones that don't follow any in-universe logic, and there are others that are logical in whatever context they are in. Imagine a porn video where a step-father fucks their daughter in the middle of a church while the rest of the congregation cheers at them. It would be very jarring for me compared to the guy being slick at home and fucking the daughter in the bedroom.

 

[TheNovelist2000]

Another factor that's often overlooked in this discussion is that there are plenty of stories in speculative fiction where the fantastical elements don't have any explanation or justification.

My cyberpunk story "Into The Night" handwaves the whole issue of what "the Night" is, and what it does, beyond the basic implication that it's some form of virtual reality. Heinlein's "Glory Road" has thousands of worlds that can be reached by instantaneous teleportation, but with no explanation of how or why. The inciting event in "The Rivers of London" is when Peter sees a ghost - no explanation for why *he* sees it. And so on.

Would your examples still work if there are many instances of 'no explanation'? I haven't watched A Space Odyssey beyond the first five minutes. I would have appreciated it way more if they'd cared to explain what the fuck the monkeys were doing.