Alright, this is part one of two in response to the ask I got a few weeks ago about some aspects of writing erotica. Here was the pertinent part of the question again:
When writing erotic stories, do you think it’s more important to put the story or the erotic part first, or to try for both?
To start off, lets clarify what we’re talking about, and define our terms. The two aspects of writing we’re discussing here are “story”, which I will be calling “narrative”, and “eroticism”. Eroticism is the easier term to define–it’s the smut. The sexual passages that get you off in a given piece of writing. Put simply, “narrative” is everything else–plot development, character development, setting, theme, etc. Of course, there are many different types of narrative that an author might choose to employ, be it more Literary or more genre, lowbrow or highbrow–we’re going to leave those to the side for a moment, and discuss something more basic: balance. How can an author strike the right amount of sexy against the right amount of narrative?
The question above, to be honest, isn’t a very good question–or to be more precise–it’s the wrong question. In erotica, either eroticism or narrative can be important–it depends on what the author is trying to do. However, I firmly believe that good erotica manages to strike a healthy balance between them. That said, and to bring in an engineering term, part of what matters is where you want to put the fulcrum. Strong stories can be written which lean heavily on eroticism, or heavily on narrative–but understanding the specific challenges of these different kinds of balance is crucial to putting out a good story which will interest your audience–because lets be honest. Contrary to expectations, too much eroticism, no matter how well it’s written, can be boring as fuck. And even worse than that, a narrative which claims to be “erotic” and yet contains no sex is even worse. So lets start with the extremes, and work towards the center.
– The Eroticism Heavy Story –
Let’s say that, for your story, what you really want is a fuck–you don’t necessarily want to focus on a grand story or strong characters, you want a series of tight, well written sexual encounters to get readers off. That’s fine–you want to write a story which is eroticism heavy. However, you are, at the end of the day, still writing a story–you need to find some way to tie these sexual encounters together so that they make sense as a unit. Here are two techniques you might use to keep the story balanced.
- The Flash: The best way to get narrative out of the way so you can get to the sex is the flash. After the sex ends, cut off the scene and pick up at the beginning of the next sexual encounter. The challenge here is to make sure that the progression between the scenes is clear enough that the reader can know what happened in the interim, without you having to rely on heavy exposition and narration which will only weigh down your story. I can’t tell you how many horrible flashes I have seen–writers who want to cut to the sex only to find themselves having one character fill in paragraphs of exposition in the least interesting way possible because their plot was too complex to allow for a flash. Here’s the thing–if you want to go eroticism heavy, you can’t support a deep plot. Don’t try it, it won’t work out.
- The double duty: Alright, alright, you want to try to have your cake and eat it too. This is a difficult technique, but the double duty can be great if you pull it off. If you do it well, your sex scenes can do double duty, by allowing for exposition while your characters are in a sexual situation. The challenge here is to keep from bogging down the sex with long, overwrought exposition. Again, if your plot is too complex, this isn’t going to work. But for a slightly more complex plot that a flash will obfuscate, the double duty might be something to try. AgainstMyWill is great at the double duty by the way, go read his stuff.
Between the flash and the double duty, if well executed, you can craft a story with minimal downtime between sex scenes which still makes sense, without requiring heavy exposition to fill the gaps. Still, the key here is to craft a simple plot, use a universal, easily understood MacGuffin, and focus on using strong original triggers. These are the keys to success on this side of the lever.
– The Narrative Heavy Story –
So, what if you don’t have a simple plot? What if you want well developed characters, and you have a complex plot full of sexy twists and turns that you want to tell, while keeping the whole thing sensual and sexy throughout? Well, that’s the other side of the lever, and a whole lot harder than the eroticism heavy story. The main issue here is pacing–people are coming for erotic content. No matter how great your story is, if you can’t get them off, and keep them sexually engaged, they won’t read the whole thing. So how do you manage pacing?
- The Scheduled Sex Acts: I don’t recall where I read it, but it was a quote that, when abridged, went something like this, “You can get started writing anything in romance and erotica. Just write what you usually write, and make sure you put sex in every chapter.” This really isn’t that fucking hard people, oh my god. How many times have I read a story only to be thwarted for the first couple of chapters, with no sexual payoff? It’s awful. Sex. In every. Chapter. If you’ve written a section, and there’s no sex, go back and put some sex in it or you aren’t doing your job, and people are going to get bored, and stop reading. And for the love of all that is holy, don’t leave us at the end of a chapter with a sexual cliffhanger–and even worse–don’t then go the entire next chapter trying to maintain the sexual cliffhanger! Gah!
- The Slow Burn: Alright, alright, I get it. You don’t want the story to be about the sex. You want it to be about the characters–about the plot. Or maybe the drive of the story is to build to a huge sexual climax a few chapters in, but you don’t want to spoil the energy. That’s fine, but you still need to give your reader something. This is where you need the slow burn. Erotica doesn’t have to be sex–a well written, well executed tease is often enough to drive up the sexual energy of a story without giving away the pay off of your character’s orgasming. Still, this is a hard kind of “sex” to write. Not impossible mind you–just not easy. That said, the payoff can be pretty spectacular, if you can edge your audience to a huge climax. That said, two things to keep in mind. NO CLIFFHANGERS. They don’t work, they just frustrate. No one wants to be teased and then denied. Make sure your teasing has a full arc of tension and some sort of release, without just cutting off. Second, this is a great place to also apply the double duty–making your narrative do some sexy work will help with the slow burn more than anything else.
Alright, so if you want plot, make sure you actually remember to put sex in there. What helps here as well is to not publish your story in five thousand tiny, 1000 word sections, because those are your chapters, and readers will expect something sexy in every one of them. Write enough to keep your reader engaged, and publish in larger segments–it gives your readers something more meaty to suck down.
Now, to the original question–which is more important? It depends on what you want to do with your story, and every story is going to strike it’s own balance. Using these four techniques will do wonders to assist with the flow, but only if you apply them correctly in the situations that call for them. At the heart of it, you have to understand your story, and what kind of balance it needs to strike, and then use the techniques above to mitigate the problem sections where there is too much or too little sex or narrative.
Bracken's Corner 