Philosophy of writing erotica

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.

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.

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?

MacAllister said:

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.

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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.

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 said:

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

....Snipped for content.

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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 said:

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

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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 said:

Ah, oops, he's a she.

Errrm, why is there no blush smiley?

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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.

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

MargueriteMing said:

Ah, oops, he's a she.

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

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 said:

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?

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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.