Philosophy of writing erotica

[MargueriteMing]

What is the difference between writing "erotica", writing explicit sex scenes as part of a "non-erotic" work, and writing "pornography"? is there any difference? What are our responsibilities as authors?

My questions are prompted by the taboo restrictions in the sticky thread in the erotic section of the share your work forum:

Posts containing sexualized violence, non-consensual sexual situations, or underage characters in sexual situations are absolutely not permitted, and will be summarily deleted with extreme prejudice. All posts are subject to deletion for illegal or objectionable content at the discretion of the forum moderator or board administration. By proceeding, you accept all the terms and conditions set forth.

[MacAllister]

For the purposes of discussion--those taboo restrictions aren't unique to this place. I "borrowed" them from submission and posting guidelines on several erotica sites. I found the same restrictions often enough to suspect they're an industry standard.

[MargueriteMing]

It seems to me the difference between a work of erotica and a work that contains some sex scenes is scope - the overall purpose of the erotic work is, well, titillation, whereas in a larger work the purpose of sex scenes is to drive the story.

However, when it comes to writing an individual scene I don't think the scope of the overall work is really relevant. As writers and artists we seek to entertain and inform our readers, and to invoke an emotional response. Providing a label to separate out works whose overall purpose is to evoke sexual emotions in the reader implies that the distinction is significant in some way. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, after all we have romance, thriller, suspense, and horror genres.

I guess I'm not sure where I'm going with this thread yet, I probably won't figure out what I'm trying to say until I actually say it.

[MargueriteMing]

Well, novels with severe violence in them abound, for example. How many spy thrillers have there been where the hero is tortured, or masses of people are killed? This doesn't seem to be taboo anywhere. Yet sexual violence is.

Now, I'm not arguing that writing rape scenes just for the purpose of titillating the reader is OK, I don't think it is. I guess if you're writing a work whose entire purpose is to do that than any such scenes in the work would be quite unpleasant in my view.

But what about a novel where such depiction is meant to alarm and anger the reader, meant to make the reader feel more deeply about the character or characters involved, and drives the story forward?

[MargueriteMing]

Where does eroticism end and pornography begin? Is it even a correct distinction? Certainly where the line is drawn varies from person to person. Should we be suspicious of even trying to draw such a distinction, when the location of the line is so subjective to the viewer?

[veinglory]

I would say

1) The difference between erotica and pornography is that... um... chain bookstores are unlikely to shelve something called "pornographic" romance. It's all writing aimed to sexually arouse. I don't think pornographers sit before their computer and think, 'hey, I'll try and write something with no literary merits what so ever'. Sex writing is sex writing, I don;t lose sleep over the semantics.

2) "sexualized violence" means torture as stroke material--typically combined with snuff. BDSM, spanking etc where no lasting harm is done and parties are consenting is fine. Yes, like child porn and outright rape porn (she doesn't want to have sex, is terrified and he loves that) there is a market for it and communities for it. The fishtank (desdmona.com) has no taboos list at all.

If your hero is tortured by the villain and the has sex with ther heroine, post it. If your hero is tortured and raped by the villain and you describe in detail how totally hot that is, not so much. It's a matter of horses for courses.

This isn't saying you can't write it and discuss it, just don't workshop it here please. For the record I have written 2 of the 3 taboos posted above, rules about what we do here is not the same as saying something is terrible or evil. Until recently there was no workshopping of erotic here at all, things change as circumstances merit.

[MacAllister]

These are excellent questions, though, about ghettoizing specific tastes and fetishes.

And frankly, I'm okay with ghettoizing kiddy-porn. I know there's a market for it--I just personally judge it evil, and that comes down to the issue of consent, which, while an admittedly arbitrary division, seems like a workable boundary for our purposes.

[Sean D. Schaffer]

Somewhere I read that the difference between pornography and erotica has to do with literary merit. I think what differentiates erotica from pornography is that pornography is only about sex, nothing else. Erotica, OTOH, as I understand it to be, is more of a literary endeavor with a story and with an outlook that sex is not the main goal of the work. I think what I read--I don't even remember where I read this, but I think it has something to do with the Fish Tank, if I'm not mistaken (see the sticky at the top of the 'writing erotica' forum for more information there)--was that the sex is secondary to the story and the plot, in erotica, whereas the sex is primary and the sole goal of pornography.

However, this opinion is exactly that: an opinion. I don't honestly know if my opinion is shared by the industry or not. I only know that somewhere, I read that.

[Zannie]

The distinction between erotica and pornography is very fuzzy. Some people will say there's no substantial difference at all--erotica is just a more favorable name for pornography. Some people will say it's literary merit--well-written stories are erotica, poorly-written are pornography. Some will say that erotica has more depth. Yes, it's for titillation, but there's more to it than that. One of distinctions I've noticed specified by a lot of the erotic romance/erotica publishers is that pornography degrades its subjects while erotica values them as humans (or as sentient beings, I suppose, since sometimes they're vampires or aliens).

All of these distinctions get very fuzzy, and often it just ends up with what you like being erotica and what you don't being pornography.

That said, my personal philosophy of erotica goes beyond just sexual titillation. In fact, the "hotness" factor is all in service of the character development and the relationship. I write erotic romances, though, which are a slightly different animal than pure erotica. A lot of my sex scenes aren't particularly hot at all, even though they're graphic, because their purpose is in story or character development. And since I'm trying to sustain a level of realism (in the characters and the relationship), I can't even call on a lot of the fantasy-sex triggers. I would say I'm writing novels that are just like other novels; mine just happen to have graphic sex scenes as one of the ways I develop the story.

But even those who write more standard erotica would believe (and rightly so, for the most part) they're trying to do more in the story than just turn their readers on. Or am I wrong?

And frankly, I'm okay with ghettoizing kiddy-porn. I know there's a market for it--I just personally judge it evil, and that comes down to the issue of consent, which, while an admittedly arbitrary division, seems like a workable boundary for our purposes.

On this topic, I completely agree. Yes, some people are offended by erotica as a genre, but sex between consenting adults is not illegal or destructive. Sexual contact with children is. Rape is. Physical assault is. Eroticizing those acts, therefore, necessarily becomes questionable to a lot of people. Even with the knowledge that some might argue these kinds of "fetishes" in erotica do no real harm, it would be risky to allow such content for workshop on a forum such as this one.

I've been lurking here for a few months now and was wondering why there wasn't a SYW forum for erotica. It's nice to see there's one now.

[MargueriteMing]

Somewhere I read that the difference between pornography and erotica has to do with literary merit. I think what differentiates erotica from pornography is that pornography is only about sex, nothing else. Erotica, OTOH, as I understand it to be, is more of a literary endeavor with a story and with an outlook that sex is not the main goal of the work. I think what I read ... was that the sex is secondary to the story and the plot, in erotica, whereas the sex is primary and the sole goal of pornography.

Hmm, I think that when the sex is secondary then you're writing an adult romance, not erotica. Now, a work might have multiple themes or goals; but if invoking sexual feelings is one of these then it's erotica.

With a definition like this it's difficult to destinguish eroticism from pornography, but I do think there is a difference. To my mind pornography is obscene, a quality of invoking powerful negative emotions in the viewer for the purpose of emotional gratification (sexual or otherwise). For example, a book filled with images of dead bodies could be obscene, if its purpose was just to excite the viewer (as opposed to a medical text used by pathologists for learning or reference) then it would be obscene, and I'd be tempted to call it pornographic as well.

To my mind people who generate true pornography usually feel no responsibility for their work. Hmm, maybe it's the other way around, people who feel no sense of responsibility for things they do will end up generating pornography, because they don't exert any kind of self control on what they put out there. They step over the line without caring it's there, generally for crass financial reasons.

The problem is there are large groups of people who have severe negative reactions to generating sexual material for the purpose of gratification. I expect some of them are hypocritical and use the issue to get attention, but there are many people who honestly feel this way. If there weren't then the former group of folks wouldn't get as much attention as they do.

As a writer I want to make the strongest emotional impact with my writing as I can. It is my intent to be as in your face as I can possibly be, to reach down inside readers and grab them by the balls, so to speak. It's my belief that I have no taboos left, save that I will not write pornography, as I've attempted to define it here. I do believe there are lines, and I do care which side of them I'm on.

[Sean D. Schaffer]

I think you make a good point there, MargueriteMing. I can see where you're coming from.

However, I know some people--myself included--who have in the past used things such as medical textbooks and stuff like that (I kid you not) for pornographic purposes.

So I guess if you really want to be technical, anything that has the power to sexually excite could be considered pornographic.

BTW, I took the time last night to look up both Erotica and Pornography in the dictionary. What interests me is not so much the definition of Erotica as the lack thereof. I could not find the word 'Erotica' in my dictionary, whereas I could find the word 'Pornography'.

So there are a lot of different attitudes toward the difference between the two words. In fact, a lot of people would not make a distinction, much like you pointed out.

What is interesting to me as a writer is that I'm even writing erotica now, considering the way I was raised. I was brought up in a fundamentalist belief that all erotica and all sexual depiction, was automatically porn. Of course, I never much cared for such definitions, because by my figuring, much of the so-called pornography--which was nothing more than nudity--was originally intended by God as natural.

I won't get into all the fancy religious implications here. Rather, to make a long story short, I will just say that the definition I have held of what is and is not pornography, has been blurred over the last few years. I am still in a process of searching for the meanings and all that cool stuff, but what I am finding is that there is not much difference between much of modern Erotica, and the Bibilcal book of the Song of Solomon. That was actually my justification for writing Erotica in the first place. I mean, if Solomon got erotic writings into the Bible, what really is wrong with it?

I guess this is a roundabout way of saying I really don't know what the major issue is about erotic works. It's a natural part of life, and very enjoyable. I don't see why there is such a major problem over the erotic in literature.

But then again, there is the problem, and I suppose it will remain a problem for decades to come.


So I really don't know how to define the two different genres. My previous post was more of my thinking out loud--kind of like this one is, sorry for the rambling--than my actually forming a hard-and-fast opinion.

[MargueriteMing]

These are excellent questions, though, about ghettoizing specific tastes and fetishes.

And frankly, I'm okay with ghettoizing kiddy-porn. I know there's a market for it--I just personally judge it evil, and that comes down to the issue of consent, which, while an admittedly arbitrary division, seems like a workable boundary for our purposes.

I'm not clear on what you mean by "ghettoizing." Do you mean using it to gratify readers?

Another can of worms we should open and examine is the definition of "underage." Where is the age of consent? Is this a purely legal issue, with a hard and fast number, or is it more a matter of the maturity of the characters involved? It wasn't so long ago (less than 200 years) when people were often married and out on their own at the age of 16. Life was short (and generally risky and difficult), and people were often seeking to reproduce at the earliest ages possible. Juliet was 13 in Shakespeare's famous play - "Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen." - Nurse Act 1, scene 3. Presumably her age was not an issue to people of that age, although it certainly would be today. For the romance to work it must have been credible in those times that Juliet and Romeo could marry and live their lives as an adult couple.

So I guess one of my questions is: how young is too young to portray on these boards?

[MargueriteMing]

Well Ian, I think the fact that something *can* be misused doesn't mean it should be censored. In your example, your use of textbooks doesn't make them pornographic. I think it's the purpose of the writer and how the work is intended to be used that should be the determining factor.

[Sean D. Schaffer]

I'm not clear on what you mean by "ghettoizing." Do you mean using it to gratify readers?

....Snipped for content.


I think what MacAllister means by 'Ghettoizing' is separating something and making it harder to acquire. If I remember correctly, a 'Ghetto' is like the proverbial "Wrong side of the Tracks" or the bad, crime-ridden portion of a city.


I hope this helps.
:)

[MargueriteMing]

Ah, thanks Ian, that makes more sense of what he wrote. He's casting it out.

[Sean D. Schaffer]

Ah, thanks Ian, that makes more sense of what he wrote. He's casting it out.


You're very welcome. I'm glad I could be of help to a fellow writer.
:)

ETA:
So yeah, she's basically, like you said, casting it out.

[MargueriteMing]

You're very welcome. I'm glad I could be of help to a fellow writer.
:)

ETA:
So yeah, she's basically, like you said, casting it out.

Ah, oops, he's a she. :hooray:

Errrm, why is there no blush smiley?

[MacAllister]

No worries. It's hardly as if it's obvious, in this context. :)

Essentially, what we're saying is this--to post a story here, it shouldn't be about rape, sexualized torture, or pedophilia.

We're still sort of feeling our way along, frankly.

[Sean D. Schaffer]

Ah, oops, he's a she. :hooray:

Errrm, why is there no blush smiley?


It's OT, I know, but if you go to your smiley section in your WYSIWYG editor, you can scroll down to a place that says "See All Smileys". Click on that, and it will take you to a much more extensive list of smileys. If I'm not mistaken, there should be the blush smiley you were looking for in that list.

[MargueriteMing]

Well, I'm glad to hear that the policy is more of a working position. Hopefully this discussion will help you refine it.

As for the smileys, I looked in the complete list and couldn't find blush. I'll try it anyway - :blush: - maybe it works.

[Sean D. Schaffer]

Huh. I must have been thinking of another forum I belong to. Sorry about that.

[LloydBrown]

Ah, oops, he's a she.

It's telling that everyone associates her roadkill avatar with a dude. ;-)

[James Buchanan]

Well, and each issue has separate issues -- it really is a can of worms. There are many people who would be just fine with my books if they had a m/f pairing... but even if I write sweet, sappy and less sex then Cosmo carries, I'm going to be labled erotica by many and porn by many more. It boggles me that just the pairing of two men is automatically assumed to be sexual in nature.

Underage is purely legal these days. US Federal law (in it's various paternalistic measures) has come down on 18 being a magic cutoff. Many erotica publishers are in the US so hence that becomes the standard. Now, how much mental diference is there between and 18 year old and a 17 year old... not much at all. But they drew a line somewhere and that's where it got drawn.

Now, as far as writing historically accurate erotica... most people who need to write true characters just never say exactly how old thier characters are. Dumas' Chavaliers were going to war at 15, Le Grand Mademouslle (sp?) was intriguing at court and taking lovers at 16. If I were to write a truely accurate peice in the 17th century it would have to encompass that -- but it won't mention it anywhere.

[MargueriteMing]

And of course there is no such thing as underagae sex going on, so if our characters are talking about their first sexual encounters they all took place after age 18, right?

[Sean D. Schaffer]

And of course there is no such thing as underagae sex going on, so if our characters are talking about their first sexual encounters they all took place after age 18, right?


I don't know, honestly. But I don't believe that a character saying, "My first time took place at age 13" would be illegal. If that character were describing it, in flashback style, I think there would probably be an issue with that. But a character just mentioning in passing, "I got laid for the first time at such-and-such minor age" shouldn't be the problem. It's the descriptive of the act between minors, if I understand correctly, that the law has issues with.

[MargueriteMing]

Ah, but as writers we're supposed to show, not tell...

Legally there is a difference (at least for the participants) depending if one or both are minors, also there is a difference depending on actual ages, I think. There's a big difference between a situation where an 18 year old is having sex with a 16 year old, and a 40 year old is preying on 9 year old children.

It's yet another question of where to draw the line.

[Kelly Raine]

Munch on this quote: "Erotica is about mutuality, while pornography is about dominance."

[veinglory]

Quoted from where? I don't buy that one at all. For a start dominance and mutuality aren't really diametric and I see both in erotica and in porn (i.e. work described as being erotica and porn).

[MargueriteMing]

Doesn't seem very munchable to me. A masturbation story can easily be erotic, where is the mutual in that?

You could take a consensual erotic story, strip out the good parts so it's nothing but "A did this to B" and I'd probably consider it more pornographic than erotic, but it would still be mutual.

[torrentwaters]

I've been following this thread from the begining and have to wonder if in the end isn't this all a matter of opinion. I guess what I'm saying is what I consider porno to another person is erotica and what I consider erotic to others is porno.
So heres my opinion erotica has some sort of a story, a plot, possibly some sort of sexual tension. Where porno is just sex, no story line or plot.
As to the child... age limit thing. Again this is my opinion, but anything under 16 shouldn't be allowed. If a person can't make legal decisions for themselves in the real world then we as writes shouldn't be able to make them have them in our worlds. Again this is just my opinoin, I had to speak up.

[veinglory]

The degree to which is is opinion is even broader than that--I think it is all both.

[MargueriteMing]

Hmm, I'm not sure if I understood you correctly Emily. Do you mean that you think explicit writing is both pornographic and erotic at the same time?

[veinglory]

I just see it as as sex-writing. I guess I would call it erotica at a polite party, but if someone called it porn I wouldn't mind. I think it's just like a class system for fiction and I'm not terribly interested in buying into that.

[James Buchanan]

Within groups of writers I tend to intro myself as "a writer of gay smut." Like Veinglory I see the distinction as semantics for people who don't want to admit that they write/buy/enjoy porn. Erotica sounds cultured. Porn sounds like back rooms and cheesy films. But it's all, really, the same thing.

[torrentwaters]

I do agree that the terms are both used for sex, but when I hear porn I think wham bam thank you mam. When I hear erotica I think roses, candles, and maybe a little foreplay.

[veinglory]

I think erotica is a term that has become aligned with romance, but plenty of people write non-romantic literary 'erotica' with masses of symbolism and deeper meaning but no love relationship.

[torrentwaters]

I didn't say anything about love. You can be romantic and not have a love relationship. But I guess your right though, I do kinda combined romance and erotica.

[JulesJones]

I think that porn = stroke fiction and erotica = porn with plot, used in a non-pejorative fashion, can be a useful distinction. There are different types of smut writing, after all, and some of us write both. It's useful to be able to talk about the different styles. But all too often it turns into a game of irregular conjugations -- I write erotica, you write porn, she writes obscene filth.

[MargueriteMing]

Labels, labels, labels. I hate them, really. People use them to draw lines in the sand. Then they start allocating to the different regions. Joe is a homo, Sally is a dyke. This book is porn. Pretty soon they have the world all neatly compartmentalized. A lot of it is learned behavior, but there must be forces that keep people from unlearning it.

This could be partly responsible:

http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/nonfiction/uncanny-valley.html

People like to classify so they feel safe. They feel they know you once they have you in the proper box, at least they don't have to fear the unknown any more. If something is so unknown to them that it takes them out of their comfort zone the urge to identify and classify must be even stronger.

Unfortunately, it's divisive. It pushes people apart, breaks down communication, and when an entire group is marginalized it leads to conflict, which in this context I think is a bad thing, because it's a conflict within ourselves.

It is my hope that my writing will lead to greater understanding, even though I hope it will be powerfully erotic as well. I think the more you make your readers feel the better they will hear what you have to say, so I definitely don't consider what I am working on as porn.

[Giles English]

What is the difference between writing "erotica", writing explicit sex scenes as part of a "non-erotic" work, and writing "pornography"? is there any difference? What are our responsibilities as authors?

My questions are prompted by the taboo restrictions in the sticky thread in the erotic section of the share your work forum:



First reaction: The difference is in the eye of the beholder, or the pretension of the writer. Both fuel the sexual fantasies of the reader.

However, perhaps - just perhaps - you could argue that erotic fiction provides more context, so that the explicit action carries an emotional charge.

Regarding the morality of what we depict: easy for me, since I write male orientated femdom. Harder for somebody writing m/f S&M. Maybe a good rule of the thumb would be that a scene is OK if it could be played out by consenting adults without too much make-believe.

[MargueriteMing]

Here is a definition of the difference between porn and erotica from Freya's Bowyer, an imprint of WIld Child Publishing, an epublisher.

http://www.freyasbower.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=61

I find it interesting that they don't mention writing that is derogatory and demeaning towards men as being porn...

[veinglory]

They are flagging the most common kind of erotica they find objectionable--there being rather little man-objectifying porn. This just reinforces my idea 'porn' is now used as a derogatory term not a real category. A lot of erotic romance places say 'no porn' -- few both to say what they put in that category (anything they don't like, anything the look down on, their taboos). Particularly as as m/m writer devoid of mind reading abilities it means and unspecified 'no porn' means I don't generally submit to that market.

[James Buchanan]

Ditto.

[LilaDubois]

I remember reading on an editor's blog (I think, or maybe on these boards, I've got the flu so am pretty slow right now) that genres only really matter to the writters. Editors and publishers just want a good story that they will then fit in where it needs to go.

While this is great in theory I can't stop myself from saying that I write Fantasy Erotic Romance.

[veinglory]

Well, to an extent. A romance publisher is still only going to publish romance, on the whole. ;)

[Lee_OC]

I think that porn = stroke fiction and erotica = porn with plot, used in a non-pejorative fashion, can be a useful distinction. There are different types of smut writing, after all, and some of us write both. It's useful to be able to talk about the different styles. But all too often it turns into a game of irregular conjugations -- I write erotica, you write porn, she writes obscene filth.

I agree with this. I write erotica when I want to focus on the characters and plot. I write porn when I just want to write about hot sex. Usually it's just a label.