This is a conflict I've encountered a couple of times in various smut and kink communities, and I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts and share some of my own. I don't think there's is a "right answer" because of how heavily subjective it is, but I do think that by taking a moment to consider the balance we can learn something about lit erotica as a whole. I'll also clarify that my writing of this is my own exploration of the idea, more than any authoritative claim. As I'm sure we've all seen, if an author tries to tell a story in the context of a one off sexual gimmick, it usually falls flat once the concepts associated with that gimmick have been hastily mined for any sexual gratification. Stories that heavily chase after erotic content tend to run the length of the hedonic treadmill and leave the reader unsatisfied and disinterested once the sex has become ordinary, leaving all the preceding plot points unresolved. More than that, it seems like even the authors become bored, or quickly realize that there is no act that can follow what they've just written, and simply decide to leave the lose ends hanging. On the other hand, if your goal is a long sustainable story, the use of sexual acts can actually deflate your story. When reading fantasy novels that have sex for sex sake, I almost always skip those scenes. They don't interest me in the context of that novel. How do you bridge that gap of writing a long mature story that includes meaningful erotic content? What I do is to continually nod at the sexual gimmick, but to only include explicitly erotic content that is in service to the story. It has to tell something about character development. It has to catalyze plot progression. It has to introduce drama and complexity. Or, it has to introduce the context of the coming chapters. What are the take away's? If you plan on extracting a concept for nothing but its sexual satisfaction, then plan on a short intense story arch that can be communicated and concluded as swiftly as the gimmick is explored. A story can't be driven on a sexual kink, context, or gimmick. It still has to still has to be driven by environment, characters, and conflict. The exploration of a tangential sexual gimmick can only prop up a story so long, and can cause a severance in narrative harmony if your narrative doesn't allow for that shift. For stories that you intend to sustain, the erotic content should be in service to that plot, as a catalyst or tool for communicating progression. For an erotic story that wants to sustain itself over the long term, no sex scene should exist solely for its own sake. Maybe this is just pretentious bullshittery. Maybe I'm talking out of my ass. But, I've probably got around 300,000 words in the writing of various kink stories, and this is the clumsy articulation of the the concepts I've slowly figured out based on which stories succeed, which stories lose momentum, and which stories sustain themselves to conclusion.
To be interesting stories need advancement of the plot and character growth. + for chyoa format it needs meaningful choices. Provide that and it doesn't matter if story has 95% sex or 5% sex. Main problem is that majority of sex rich stories are stories about Mary Sues (Gary Stues) effortlessly fulfilling author's fantasies in exactly same way, again and again.
I think "conflict" is something which is missing in many stories. And room for escalation. If your story is called "How I Became A Slut" you shouldn't start with a bareback gangbang because then there's nothing left to tell (sexually)
I think that it really depends on what kind of experience that you're trying to deliver. If the thing that gets the reader to click is the expectation of a certain type of smut, then I think that it's enough to do one scene with a few different options for how it can play out and then be done with the story as a whole. It doesn't need to be long or even have much in the way of a plot. It just needs to deliver on whatever the title, image, and summary promise. I might just be weird, but when I'm reading a book for the story (or watching a movie or a show for that matter), coming across a sex scene, even when appropriate, can be a little off putting. I think that it's possible to have a balance, but it's easiest for me when my interesting stories and my smut are separate.
@Peri2g has some excellent points. It's a tricky balance. A lot of CHYOA stories don't have any particular arc - there's no outline to them, they don't end, just...run out of gas. So a lot of the finer details of plot, structure, character growth, etc. are tertiary concerns. By contrast, titillation is almost the name of the game. While you could have a serious CHYOA story with no sex and lots of adult elements like you would never see in a real-life book, most folks tend to focus on the more erotic side of things. CHYOA end up being erotic stories drawn out over time, with maybe a few different branches. Nothing wrong with that. Personally, this is why I instituted the "twenty chapter" rule for Lois Lane's Night Out - keeps the length of the story manageable and gives me a definite goal to work toward on any given branch. If I'm writing a chapter 18? I know I have two more chapters to wrap up this storyline. I generally have a hazy idea of where I want things to go, but that gives me a bit more focus as far as timing out plot-vs-sexy-times. Mostly because I like to end on a bang (literally), but also because I want it to be a satisfying ending for anyone that has gone through the whole twenty chapters. I still struggle with porn-vs-plot. I track my likes and bookmarks fairly close, and I notice chapters that are mainly plot, building up to the next scene, tend to be less popular than the ones that are centered mostly around carnal acts (although chapter titles are a part of it too, I think). The farther you get into the story, however, the more that...flattens out. Either the last few hangers-on don't quit, or they're a bit invested in the plot and want to see how things come out.
