How do we define erotica?

I don't really care. What it is called doesn't change anything about what the story is, only who I submit it to. And no one uses these terms consistently.

I would say that I don't think they are mutually exclusive or morally weighted such that using the work 'fuck' 8 times rather than 7 suddenly makes it pornography, or that if it did this would be a bad thing.

I say the sex has to have a purpose. Not just overall, but why here? Why now? Why between those two (or more) people?

Like every other scene, it has to either reveal character or move the plot along. Preferably both.

Porn gets the reader off. Erotica does the same for the characters.

I prefer to think of erotic as an adjective modifying some other base genre, rather than erotica as a genre in and of itself. I'd define 'erotic' as "containing explicit sex and intended to arouse the audience".

Erotica is written pornography. But most people are writing erotic stories, not genre erotica.

But as publishers do not have standardised deifnition, I would suggest looking at examples and reading submission guidelines. Because even publisher that release very similar material will disagree whether it is erotica and/or porn and whether that s good or bad.

Thinking you know what these words mean and that everyone uses them the same way is probably even more dangerous than not knowing.

It's erotic - it either makes Willy's willy go really willy or Jill's jill jill gel. How one goes about it is up to the writer and the audience.

That's the sad thing about Borders closing down in the UK. They had a fairly decent erotica section whereas Waterstone's...has nothing.

Just as well I have an ereader now; I get all my erotica in ebook format.

My less than expert definition for me: if you take out the erotic and you have no story, it's erotica. If you take out the erotic and there is still a story, it's erotic romance, thriller, whatever.

If you have a honking load of erotic but the characters are well developed, it's erotica. If your characters are paper puppets that exist only to do the sexual moves in the story, it's porn.

xtine said:

The erotica section at the local progressive/arty bookstore was skimpy at best (as you can imagine), and all the books were 50+ years old (not the books themselves, but the writing of the books). Looking there seemed like a good idea at the time, but it seems like even the arty-leaning mainstream doesn't want to hear from modern people writing about modern sex.

Though I'm probably looking in the wrong place. I'll figure it out.

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If you want to purchase books of erotica, a lot of them are sold online because it's more private than purchasing them in person. Ellora's Cave is a place you might start looking.

I haven't put anything in SYW for a while, but if you end up looking back far enough to see mine, it may be one of the weirdest pieces in that archive.

Ruth's defintion is a fairly common one in some communities (like online erotic romance writers). But it has many exceptions and does not apply to other groups (e.g. stroke books for men). Even when looking at online erotic romance writers a large minority (30% in my last survey, including myself) have no trouble calling their work pornogrpahy, and so presumably not think porn is just a bad word used to insult bad writing.

I'm sorry, new here - what SYW is? And how do you get to the NC17 forum?

I heard a good definition once: "porn makes you want to masturbate, erotica makes you want to go out and find the real thing".

As a rule of thumb, I consider that which is specifically meant to arouse you physically, porn - if you can appeal to the emotions as well, then it's erotica.

And no, there's nothing wrong with good porn, it just isn't necessarily the same thing as good storytelling - a story has a beginning, a middle and an end, dialogue, character development, conflict and resolution, change, some insight into the human condition - closure of some sort.

In porn the conflict is always basic lust, the resolution is orgasm, and it doesn't so much end as sort of peter out - nobody changes, there is no real closure, it can only lead to another sexual act - and another, and another, and another...

Not that there's anything wrong with that, lol. Anyway, my Two cents.

Hey xssve, PM veinglory.

As an editor who reads submissions for, contracts and edits erotica--

Pornography is a book about sex. Erotica is a story with graphic sexual content and lots of it. For erotica, the sex is necessary to the story. It can be gratuitous to a degree but must still somehow forward the plot--whether heightening the conflict or resolving it, deepening the emotional connection between the characters and integrating into the narrative seamlessly. Do your characters have to be in love? No. Does the sexual act in some way impact your characters strongly enough to fuel the storyline? Yes.

Veinglory is also very correct in one aspect: you need to very carefully read the submission guidelines to the publishers you submit to. Some acts are acceptable in some places and taboo in another.

As a writer--

My best advice? If you aren't reading erotica currently on the market and relying upon fifty year old books then you're not going to have a clue about what is acceptable and what is not much less what is working in the genre at the moment. BUY and READ some erotica to get a good handle on it--heck, for that matter there are plenty of erotica authors on this site (like veinglory) whose books are critically acclaimed and have broad and loyal readerships.

Just like any other genre, you have to know your market. If you don't know your market and don't bother to find out about it before you write (not submit, WRITE) a story in that genre, then you're spinning your wheels. Market knowledge is research just as important to erotica writers as it is to any other genre--in some cases even more so.

Go buy some books. Read them. You'll find everything you need to know from them. E-publishers like Ellora's Cave, Samhain and Aspen Mountain Press have tons of selections in multiple sob-genres of erotica. You should have no trouble finding something to suit your taste and provide you with the answers to your questions.

Then there's this opinion that all of this dithering about as to the meaning of various things is just a way to make sex (omg define sex) more acceptable, and that in reality it's all porn (what a dirty word).

The thing is to say 'erotica is porn with character development' is immediately define porn by a lack of literary quality. Plenty of written porn has character development. To treat erotic and pron as mutually exclusive categories tend to have the same result. Porn becomes an inferior category.

I will check my PMs.

veinglory said:

The thing is to say 'erotica is porn with character development' is immediately define porn by a lack of literary quality. Plenty of written porn has character development. To treat erotic and pron as mutually exclusive categories tend to have the same result. Porn becomes an inferior category.

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Is there any other good, widely-used terminology, then, that differentiates between the kind of porn that is only about sex and the kind of porn that has a meaningful story, character development, etc.?

I wonder if perhaps part of that large majority is coming from fanfiction and other online amateur writing communities. Fanfic authors (well, the ones I know) tend to describe NC17 stuff as porn quite cheerfully. I don't think I've ever seen "erotica" used on fanfic regardless of plot or intended audience.

Again, entirely anecdotally, it seems those who most object to the word "porn" come from the romance community initially. I'm guessing decades of defending romance against the term tends to sour it slightly. I hadn't realised quite how entrenched it was until the launch of Ravenous Romance, which had a lot of the romance community up in arms by describing its output as porn for women.

I guess what you call it, really, depends on who you're selling it to. I haven't noticed a particular difference in content between self-described porn writers and self-described erotica writers, even in just-for-the-sex oneshots.

That's the sad thing about Borders closing down in the UK. They had a fairly decent erotica section whereas Waterstone's...has nothing.

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My local Oxfam bookshops has an erotica section. Because I needed another reason to love them!

I don't object to either term, but I don't come from any other writing community either. I also consider most anything depicting sex to be pornographic in nature. The reason I like to use the term erotica vs. pornography? I'm so shallow as to use one word over the other just because my ear thinks its pretty.

Then you have the etymology of the words. Porn being about prostitutes, and erotos being about sexual love. One is clearly more societally acceptable than the other. And, I'd think that if I were a bookseller, cataloguing a work under the headline of erotica is more likely to keep me out of the 'war on porn.' imo, sex is sex and that's okay.

Is there any other good, widely-used terminology, then, that differentiates between the kind of porn that is only about sex and the kind of porn that has a meaningful story, character development, etc.?

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I just read the synopsis and go from there.

"Pornographic" literally means, sexual imagery" - thus any sexual imagery, literary or otherwise can technically be called "pornographic".

Some people draw the line at explicitness: "he drove his rock hard cock deep into her greedy cunt" is pronographic, "he penetrated deep into her molten core", etc., erotic - i.e., it is in some sense, a subjective distinction.

In my mind, however, after ruminating on it further, I realize I've been thinking of it more in terms of figure background relationship: in porn, the sex is the foreground, the characters and plot, if there is one, are distinctly background - in fact in porn, the personalities of the actors/characters are often deliberately obscured, the plot a crude device, in order that the viewer/reader can more easily identify themselves with the actor/character, i.e., enter the sexual element of the fantasy without distraction - a common technique in pop fiction in general, where characters tend to be drawn broadly and sympathetically, with the exception that this sort of fiction is typically plot driven - in porn, sex is the plot.

In erotica, the characters and plot are firmly in the foreground, the sex remains largely in the background - the relationship might be reversed during the sex scenes, but reverts again once the interlude is over, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, my current take on the subject, for what it's worth.

A couple of examples: in The Story of O, O is pretty generically drawn, little more than a symbolic feminine archetype, "Woman", at the mercy of primal forces beyond her control, both internal and external, and this makes her in some sense, easy to identify with, she really doesn't display much of a personality of her own; the reader phases in and out of identification and a more remote sort of voyeurism.

In Lolita, by contrast, the major characters are very specifically drawn, with very distinct personalities and foibles, and not always sympathetically - the reader is pretty much confined to a voyeuristic role, a fly on the wall in terms of imagery, the intimacy is generated by Humbert-Humbert's confessional narration.

O is generally considered erotica I believe, but is closer to pornography than Lolita, in which attraction and repulsion are given more equal weight, and in that particular work, repulsion eventually prevails.

Other classic works of erotica are often marked by tragedy, dissipation, etc., while others are broader and have happier endings - I think it's really a question of knowing/finding your audience.