Realism vs. Eroticism

[RicoLouis]

I was writing a chapter that started getting a little out of hand recently as I wanted to make it hot but then is it still believable. I generally write a chapter twice with the first round being more erotic and then tone it back so it feels like something the characters would actually do in the scene but I some times loose something in the process. Sometimes what i take out gets put on the back burner for a latter scene so i am not putting all of my eggs in one basket so to speak but I am wondering what other writers opinions are. I know stories like free use for example typically throw realism out the window in favor of eroticism.

 

[JWtts]

Outside of more fantastical or porn-esque type stories and scenarios, I tend to start somewhere in the middle, but skew more toward erotic. This is mostly based on what I've seen and read elsewhere that I've enjoyed or known to be popular. Gotta have perfect lighting, slightly sweaty bodies, synchronized orgasms, and sexy, ad-free jazz music in the background.

All jokes aside, I think it depends on the story, the characters, and what you're going for. Are you suspending disbelief for the sake of perfect, erotic sex where penises are the perfect size, vaginas are always wet and perfectly tight, breasts are perky without sag, abs are ab-tastic, it's the best orgasm ever, and so on or... more real life where things are messy, weird noises are made, things jiggle, someone gets a cramp mid thrust, etc.? Or somewhere in-between?

But I think I get what you mean about trying to cater to what your characters would do. If the character is selfish and gets winded going up a flight a stairs, it might feel weird and out of character to have that person suddenly be a selfless lover who can go all night. At the same time, you could still have a shorter but still hot scene with that character and forgo the detail that they had garlic pizza for dinner and are now breathing all hot and heavy over their partner and STDs don't exist. Or maybe not. Just depends.

 

[Zeebop]

I generally start out realistic and get progressively more fantastic as the story progresses - but the realism is important. If you start out with head-sized breasts, two-foot-long penises that slide into perfectly elastic holes without pain or mess on the first try, you've basically gone straight to cartoon anatomy. Some folks like that, and f you like it there's nothing wrong with it - but there's also no drama or conflict in that. Sometimes the struggle to find the right position is more rewarding than the instant connection of tab a into slot b, and sometimes it's creatively interesting to slowly ramp up the unnatural elements and see how the characters respond to things.

It is kind of weird to say in a website devoted to erotic fiction, but the most interesting and satisfying part of a sex story is rarely the sex itself, but the lead-up to that point--the engagement with the characters, the setting, their interactions, how they get to the point of a sexual encounter and how they respond to that can be absolutely more important and interesting than just going straight to graphic orgies of quivering flesh.

 

[Haoro]

There's always a balance to be struck between the two, and leaning too much one way or the other does tend to make a scene much less sexy, for me at least.

I do like the feelings and emotions my characters have around sex to be at least fairly realistic. So, something that happens when attraction between the partners has already been demonstrated with a bit of build-up and it's a step that does have consequences for a relationship between characters. I really prefer writing from the perspective of fairly innocent, naive male characters so sex feels like a big thing to them, rather than something to just jump into casually, and I try to capture some of that realistic awkwardness and tension that should happen as a result. No shade on authors who write more free-use focused stuff where sex is just everywhere and jumped into without any thought between characters who don't really have a connection, that's just really something I'm not into at all.

As for the physical side, I don't find very fantastical, out-there depictions of sex with overtly impossible anatomy to be very arousing myself, though in my own writing I usually skip past a few of the messier aspects of sex to keep things more romantic and sexy. I have tried playing around with much more fantastical elements like gender-bending and tentacles and such, mostly at the urging of some readers in the comments of my stories who wanted a branch to go that way, and found it just really didn't work for me.

 

[TheLowKing]

I think either approach has merit. There are several sexual fetishes that I enjoy that either are not actually possible (cervix and nipple penetration, for example), or are a bad idea for health reasons (say, ass-to-anything or throatfucks that last for multiple minutes without breaks for breathing). One advantage of sex stories over real life sex or live action porn is that the things you write don't have to be realistic. If you don't want to deal with STIs, or pregnancy, or the messier sides of anal sex, or the physical constraints of the human body, you can just pretend they don't exist. In fact, not only can you write widly unrealistic things into a story, in many ways stories are the best medium to depict them. The suspension of disbelief is pretty robust.

That said, just because you move beyond the physically possible doesn't mean the other guidelines of writing suddenly cease to exist. Your stories still need escalation, your characters still need to grow (no, not in that way!), your plot lines still need to progress. If chapter 1 starts at an 11/10 on the intensity scale, then when you want to raise the stakes in chapter 2, you'll have nowhere left to go. Even a story with as simple a premise as Blowjob Universe eventually had to deal with the realization that, well, "guy gets to throatrape every woman he sees" needs at least some evolution to remain interesting. (And please don't misunderstand, I don't mean 'simple' as a pejorative. Simple stories can be fantastic, and Blowjob Universe is a great example of an amazing yet simple story.)

For my own work, I've generally tended to the realistic, even when the setting was a fantasy world. However, that's less a conscious artistic choice than a deep-seated personal compulsion for things to Always Make Perfect Sense. I do have several half-formed plans for more fantastical sex stories, exactly because I do at some point want to overcome that limitation and explore just how much you can do when you throw realism out the window.

 

[zankoo]

Fantasy enough to turn me on. Real enough to be possible.

 

[raziel83]

I have enjoyed extremely realistic story, being impressed by the realism, but I have also enjoyed stories that go full into fantasy. There was this one writer on Literotica (apparantly they deleted their account so the stories are now gone) who prefaced some stories by pointing out that they take place in "Oedipus County" which is intentionally working on porn logic and populated mainly by MILFs with massive breasts and their 18+ big dicked sons.

I liked the blatant admission that realism will take a back seat because the writer wanted to do some porn without worrying if it was "realistic."

 

[ToniDaring]

I liked the blatant admission that realism will take a back seat because the writer wanted to do some porn without worrying if it was "realistic."

That's a good point. I tend to write in a Fantasy/Sci-Fi vein and that leaves me free to create excuses to go a little nuts. My naughty stuff is all written mostly to amuse myself, and for fun. I try to write coherently, but if it makes things steamier, or even just funnier, I don't bother to keep things realistic.