Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Interesting Developments

Interesting Developments

Right now a group of talented erotica writers are talking about sensual prose as a means or end. (See the Quickie Contest Forum)

The question is should the erotica stand alone or should it supplement a story line.

Six months ago the submissions would have indicated a stand alone answer. This is not to say they were pornographic but rather that they were designed to “excite” They were written to resonate with that compelling sexual need without getting “In the Face” of the reader.

More recently there has been a trend to use the erotica enhance a storyline that was designed to carry the overall structure along.

Different writers have expressed different views….with one being more traditional and the other more progressive.

What is interesting is that the anchor of definition seems to be pornography. I suppose this is because most everyone knows exactly what that is and knowing that it is possible to back off the known and soften the raw graphic impact into something more palatable to many readers and writers.

One writer expressed the view that the graphic component should be about one part and 5 with the story line component. This view seems to have some support among the writers who have commented….Now whether the ratio of weights is 5 to 1 as being discussed or 1 to 5 as it was six months ago is something to be assessed in looking at the nature of the submissions over the next six months.

Rather than having this decided in some arbirtary fashion by the writers it is my hope that it will be decided by the readers and that “Views” will be the arbiter. I think it is possible to classify a story by assigning weights to these two components and then seeing how many views the piece got in a six month period. What this would do is help indicate to writers where the "sweet spot" is in the readership at larges attraction to the genre…There is definitely an interest in erotica and I am tempted to classify my own stories and run some statistics….The problem is that most of mine (quality aside) don’t approach the “Porn” threshold of 5 graphic, 1 storyline that we see in mainstream pornographic literature.

The question that should intrigue writers is where that sweet spot is because a sensual touch can take a rather uninspiring piece of prose to a whole new level.