Well, NaNoWriMo is over for another year. Any of you who follow me on twitter should already be aware how I fared. For those of you who don't, YOU SHOULD, but also, I won! My final word count as of November 30th was 50 518 words. Now, I'm sure I'll need to add at least another 20 000 to properly finish the story, then comes the long and arduous process of editing, but right now, it feels good to have accomplished so much in one month.
Reading back over what I've written gave me pause for consideration. The novel I'm writing could cautiously be described as steamy. It involves sex, domination, and sensuality, but I didn't set out to write (nor have I created) a work of erotica. So we come to the topic of this post.
What separates Literary Fiction that centres around sex and self discovery from Erotica? How do you define Sci-Fi, and is it really a genre? What makes one modern novel about vampires Urban Fantasy, and another Horror?
Genre is a loose classification system which is really very arbitrary. If you get two readers in the same room, reading the same books, they’ll likely disagree about what genre a certain book fits into. I’ve looked all over a bookstore for a specific work, and then found it in the exact section I was avoiding.
For the purposes of this blog post, I’m going to be focussing on my first question. What makes something erotica, versus just Fic-Lit involving sex. The reasons for this are that my NaNoWriMo experience is still fresh in my mind, and I’ve got good examples to illustrate this point in particular, though I may go further with this topic in future.
The key difference between Erotica and literature containing sex isn’t whether you use certain words, or how explicite you get with your descriptions, nor is it the quality of the writing. I’ve heard people say that the thing which elevates Erotica into Literature is the quality, and that’s absolutely not true. I’ve read bad literature, and I’ve read good erotica. The real thing which separates erotica from other literature is the purpose for which it was written. Erotica is written to get people off.
Before I go any further, let me preempt any objections to that statement by saying that I’m not passing judgement here. In fact, people who think that I’ve somehow slandered Erotica by saying it’s just about getting off aren’t giving human sexuality its proper respect. In the same way that good science fiction should make us think and good literature should make us feel, good erotica should arouse us and help us understand sexuality. If you want to make a moral judgement, then that’s your business and I’ll have none of it here.
Now, back to my point. Erotica is written to get people off. My novel includes several scenes of domination and submission, mostly in the context of teaching, but there are a couple of straight up sex scenes. These scenes are written not for the purpose of getting people off, though I’m sure they might. These scenes are written to further explore the characters and themes presented in my novel. That’s the distinction.
To illustrate this, I’m going to use some written examples. If you’re offended by sex and sexuality or aren’t interested in reading my erotic content, just skip the rest of this blog post.
This excerpt is from my erotic short story series about a female submissive living in a home with several sister submissives.
“A tingle shot down her spine as she felt him grip her neck. He began to press and she relented, bending at the waist until her breasts and cheek touched the cool wood of the table. She then felt a foot between her ankles, and at his urging, she spread her legs wide, letting the table support her as much as her feet. He stepped back then, and she knew he was examining her. A feeling of slickness ran to her lips. His hands were on her buttocks, spreading them apart. She felt exposed, terribly exposed, gloriously exposed and naked to this, her Master. She had hoped when she came here to serve that he might take an interest in her body, but hadn't counted on it. Kitten was his oldest and truest, and since the new girl had appeared, she'd spent almost every night in his bed, worshipping him. Lady had always been in the background, more a pet to Kitten than to Kitten's Master, but this was her time, her turn to be seen by the Master.
She tried not to get too ahead of herself. Just because he was inspecting her didn't mean he was going to make use of her, but her body trembled in anticipation of it. Then the most amazing thing happened. She hadn't registered him sinking to his knee, in fact she hadn't registered anything except his strong hands on her ass, but all of a sudden she felt the hot slick probing of his tongue on her anus. God, it almost made her cum. That would have been a disaster, but she couldn't help her quick intake of breath on a moan. She'd never, NEVER been touched so intimately by a man in all her life. To have his tongue reaching into her ass... it would have been mortifying if it didn't feel so good.
His hands moved down from her buttocks to her thighs, and she felt his thumbs pry so that she blossomed open. Her clit felt like there was a dew drop balanced on it, about to fall. She bit her lip to keep from moaning again, and then whining as he pulled back to examine her closely.
"Why haven't I ever fucked you before?" he asked.
"I don't know Sir" she gasped.
"Would you like me to?" he asked, even though he could clearly see that she was ready for him.
"If it pleases you, Sir." came the trained response, even though her mind and body were screaming yes, yes, yes, GOD yes.
She heard the jangling of his belt as he loosened his pants one handed, his other palm pressing down against her tailbone, and his thumb dangerously pressing on her slick anus. She let go of her lip, knowing that tensing up would only make it worse for her. If he intended to take her ass, something very few men had gotten to do, she was determined to enjoy it. As it turned out, she needn't have worried.”
In this scene, there is definitely character development, but it’s clear that the point is to arouse. To contrast, here is an excerpt from the draft of my novel, “Novice”(working title) in which the protagonist has just learned that in order to take part in the society in which he finds himself, he’s going to have to undergo a spanking. He accepts, hesitantly.
“The slaps came quickly. It really didn’t hurt at all for a while. She was just slapping my skin to bring the blood to the surface, as she’d shown me. Every time her hand struck me I clenched my muscles and a thrill traveled up my spine. Then she began to get more serious. Still, it didn’t really hurt for a long while. It stung, it was annoying, but nothing I couldn’t take with grace, and when she stopped to run her hand across my cheeks, there was a tingle of sensation so intense it made me shiver.
“Wooh…” I couldn’t help myself. “That’s interesting.”
“Mm, yes. Isn’t it?” she said with a laugh in her voice.
The next moment my world was centred on a sharp tight pain as she slapped me sharply.
I set my jaw and tried not to react, but before I could process one blow, she'd landed another, and another. She kept her hand moving, never staying in one spot, and I found my mind engaged in the task of anticipating where she would go next. Most of the time I could tell where she was going, but a few times she caught me off guard, and it stung worse, as I hadn't braced for it.
I was too proud to cry out or ask for a moment to rest. She probably knew all about it. We men are proud creatures, I knew I wasn't the first she'd spanked.
She's too good to be new at it. I thought.
I could feel the heat radiating from my ass, my thighs, and I imagined they were bright red. If this was a simple hand spanking, what would the switch feel like? I wasn’t sure I could take it. I wasn’t sure I could take much more of this as it was. Then, she smacked me one final time, so hard that it forced a sound out of me. The shock of the blow was immediate, but as I waited for the next blow, something happened which I wasn’t expecting.
The pain was sharp, but faded slowly. It resounded, and I could feel my pulse flow through the reddened flesh. A warmth spread from the place she’d struck, travelling farther with every beat of my heart. I imagined the pain like a raindrop spreading a shock wave of warmth through my whole body, fading as it travelled further out.”
This scene is definitely arousing(at least to me), but it should be clear that the point is character development. Even the descriptions in the scene show how the character views the world. Now, it’s true that all forms of literature, erotica included, should use good description and incorporate the character’s views into crafting the world, but even though the journey may be the same, the destinations will be different depending on what type of story you’re trying to tell. In this case, and very few others, it’s not how you get there, but where you’re going that matters.
Thanks for reading,
-Step
P.S. If anyone would like to read more of my fiction, send me an email or comment below and maybe I’ll make it happen!
P.P.S. This weekend I’m going to be helping the lovely and talented purveyor of Angelique Trinkets pimp her fantastic jewelry at the Ottawa Pop Expo. If anyone out there reading my blog is going to be there, please stop by the table to check us out!
