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This is number forty-six in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“IF YOU ARE A MAN, you know women better than most women do.”
My response to that reader fan mail from a few years ago was “If you are a woman, thank you.”
Sadly, I believe the writer was a man and knew women even less well than I did—which was often somewhere between puzzlement and wonder. Nonetheless, since I don’t write army war dramas or cowboy operas, my books all involve characters of both sexes. The real question is not so much how well I know women, but how well I know my characters.
When I’m reading, I often come across phrases or comments that make me stop and wonder who this author was writing about. It seems so out of character for the person who was described that I wonder how well the author really knows his characters.
And that, I believe is the first criterion to writing engaging fiction of any type, but especially of erotica.
My third year participating in NaNoWriMo, I set myself a unique challenge. My mystery novel would take place on the literal thirty days of November 2006. As a result, I watched the weather and events occurring wherever the characters were at the time and wrapped up Wayzgoose's For Blood or Money in exactly 30 days.
But, for me, the significant thing that was happening was preparing to continue the story from a different character’s perspective on the 31 days of December. That story, Municipal Blondes, did not have the external pressure of NaNoWriMo to govern its development, but was definitely a work of passion.
What most people didn’t know was that beginning in September, I created blogs for both Dag Hamar (hero of For Blood or Money) and Deb Riley (hero of Municipal Blondes). The Dag Hamar blog was simply a run-up to the adventure in November, but the Deb Riley blog was a concerted attempt to capture the voice and style of my twenty-five-year-old female protagonist.
I started Deb’s blog on September 25th with this statement:
This site is written and maintained by Wayzgoose a 57-year-old male, not by Deb Riley, a 25-year-old female. Deb Riley is a fictional character in the upcoming NaNoWriMo book For Blood or Money. But For Blood or Money is written from the viewpoint of Dag Hamar. Deb Riley is his associate. I thought it would be fun to let Riley (as Dag calls her) comment on the action, and even on some of the daily life around the office leading up to November 1. She'll also be commenting through the month of November on the story from her viewpoint. Then on December 1, the intention is to let her pick up the narration.
The only problem is that Wayzgoose doesn't really know how to write like a 25-year-old woman. So, he's using this site during the warm-up to find her voice. We (Deb & Wayzgoose) have friended a lot of people who have contributed to her character in the period of time leading up to Nano. Hopefully those people will friend her back and comment on what she is seeing and how the case is going during the month. If you know someone else who would like to be friends with a character from a fiction that is about to be written, please invite them along. The journal is open. Feel free to join.
The response was pretty phenomenal, with a number of young women (in their twenties) friending Deb and interacting with her. They sent me quizzes, games, puzzles, and interview questions. And I had to respond to each in character. I’m sure my wife and daughter questioned me pacing around my basement office reading my posts aloud in as softened and feminine a tone as I could to see if it sounded like a young woman.
The result was that some of my female followers for that blog intentionally forgot that I was an old man imitating a young woman. They responded with suggestions and comments for Deb Riley, not for me.
When November ended and I continued the story from Deb’s perspective, my followers stuck with me. I continued the adventure taking place on the thirty-one days of December. But there’s a holiday in there and I got a little bogged down with family duties, so took a break for a few days.
I got a panicked email message:
Deb, We haven’t heard anything from you since you got in the car with that Ray fellow. I hope you can trust him. Please post something so we know you’re okay!
I knew at that point that I had a female character who was believable.
Municipal Blondes is available on Bookapy. Also available at other sites in eBook and paperback.
In order to write from the perspective of a person of the opposite sex, you need to suspend your own sense of disbelief. The natural perspective of a 57-year-old man in looking at the 25-year-old woman was “I can’t believe she’d say a thing like that.” But that was the old man’s perspective, not the young woman’s.
I will say that the same is true about women writing about men.
I was surprised to discover some years ago how many straight women were writing M/M gay erotica. A great deal of fan fiction called ‘shipping’ is based around gay relationships. Shipping is derived from the concept of ‘relationshipping’ or writing a relationship between two characters in a popular story. I recall a number of young writers talking about ‘shipping a Harry/Draco’ story, pairing up the male archrivals of the Harry Potter stories.
I had a publishing business at the time and also offered some critique and editing services. I was asked to read and critique a male/male spy love story. Not my usual cup of tea, but I took the job.
My principal critique revolved around the characterization of the two men in this bizarre relationship. They were enemies, but in love with each other. At one point they fought, beating the tar out of each other while they talked about their feelings and how much the other had hurt them.
The critique I sent to the author was that I didn’t believe that gay men were just chicks with dicks. What I was reading was basically a story about a conflict between two women, escalated by the masculine abilities of the men. Instead of scratching at each other and pulling hair, they were punching and trying to strangle each other.
To the straight young woman who wrote this, however, this was the essence of gay erotica. On further investigation, I discovered a large segment of the readership for gay erotica is female. Just as a large segment of the viewership for lesbian porn is male. The story didn’t need to be based in how two gay men would actually deal with each other as much as it needed to be what women wanted to see in men’s relationships.
That was a sobering revelation.
There is no shortage of ideas on this topic, so I’ll figure out another segment to deal with in the next installment. Possibly, where I get my research for female characters. We’ll see next week.
This is number forty-five in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
WHEN I STARTED writing this blog in March of 2023, I was reading Rachel Kramer Bussel’s book How to Write Erotica. At the time, I accepted her definition of erotica: Writing that is intended to arouse. Now, I think it’s time to refine the definition.
First, there is such a wide range of material that is intended to arouse that the definition loses impact. Pornography is intended to arouse. Soft romantic poetry is intended to arouse. Fiery political speeches are intended to arouse. There are different kinds of arousal and we can start by refining the definition to ‘writing that is intended to sexually arouse the reader.’
Still not good enough, because readers become aroused by different things. For one person it might be a description of a woman’s breasts rising and falling with each breath as she talks about the love of her life. Another person might only be aroused by explicit descriptions of what is felt as the penis slowly enters the receptive folds of a woman’s vagina. Others might not be aroused by any written words, but instead require pictures. The intent to arouse is important, but not exclusive.
In this post, I’m interested in the difference between pornography and erotica. Many sources attempt to define that difference with varying degrees of success. The Encyclopedia Britannica says, “The distinction between pornography (illicit and condemned material) and erotica (which is broadly tolerated) is largely subjective and reflects changing community standards.”
In the Britannica’s terms, the sexual element in erotica is part of the larger aesthetic element. It is recognized as art, where in pornography, sexual arousal is its main purpose, even if it has some literary merit.
In last week’s blog, I hit on one of the differences between men’s and women’s outlook on the subject and I realized I’d really identified my own aesthetic. In erotica, we deal with the people involved. In pornography, we deal with the body parts involved.
I understand that might realign the definition of some of my own writing from erotic to pornographic. I’m sure I’ll come up with ways to justify it, but for now, I’d like to explore the distinction and see if it holds together.
Sex is a normal part of relational development. When the story is about that relationship, the sex—even when it is explicit—tends to be more erotic. It embraces the emotional, mental, and physical experience of the people involved. The sexual activity is a part of the relationship, but is not the exclusive focal point.
A story that is ‘about sex,’ however ignores the relationship perspective. It embraces the physical experience without paying more than peripheral attention to the emotional or mental experience. In porn, we are focused on the body parts involved in reaching an orgasm. We tend to treat them as separate from the whole person.
I believe this is a significant feature of pornographic video. There is usually very little story development. The pizza delivery guy shows up and the customer confesses she has no money, but suggests she could pay with her body. It takes about six lines of dialog before the two are naked and fucking. The camera focuses on her breasts, her mouth as she fellates him, her vagina as he penetrates her. Then it’s all about changing positions so the camera can get a better view. In each position, the participants will make sure the hair is out of the way, the hands don’t block the camera, and an ‘open’ position is maintained. Finally, the come will be sprayed where it is visible. The intent is not the pleasure of the actors, but the pleasure of the viewer.
When it comes down to it, erotica gives a much more realistic view of life, because it deals with the whole relationship. I’m not saying that the pizza delivery guy never tags the customer, but if the frequency were anything like what is portrayed in porn, there would be lines of males waiting to become pizza delivery guys. The number of stepbrothers and stepsisters who get involved with each other is nowhere near what is portrayed in porn. How many women in real life kiss another woman and suddenly realize they’re lesbians?
The focus on the genitals in porn makes the situations much less common than they are portrayed. Whereas every developing relationship has erotic elements that strike home with the reader. He’s so sweet to help her like that and take care of her. Of course she’ll become attracted to him! Maybe he’d like cookies.
Pornography includes stories intended to arouse by focusing on sex acts and genitalia. Erotica includes stories intended to arouse by focusing on relationships that may include sex as a part of the development.
Now, if I could apply that to what I’m writing, I’d be much better off!
An editor’s note to me after reviewing this post: “You know, this topic could easily fill a couple large books, right?”
My response was: “Yes. They're called The United States Statutes at Large.”
I’m not through dealing with pornography vs. erotica, but I don’t plan to attempt to redefine the legal code or thousands of pages of judicial rulings. We’ll get a little deeper each time.
I was asked this week about writing from the perspective of the opposite gender. Yes, I have written books with a female protagonist rather than a male, and it is very difficult. Next week, I’ll deal with “Capturing the Character.” I’ll especially deal with capturing the character of a person of the opposite sex.
This is number forty-four in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
OBSERVATION: Women are different than men.
You might believe this is obvious, but as Wesley said, “The obvious seldom is.” (The Book of Wesley, CC185) In the enlightenment of the twenty-first century, for example, we have learned there is a difference between sex and gender. While sex refers to the physiological or biological characteristics, gender refers to behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits often associated with a specific sex.
Of course, we have also learned that the physiology might not be as simple as we once thought. Where it was once deemed that an x chromosome or a y chromosome determined one’s sex, biologists have discovered there are many other genes that determine sex, and specific combinations of those genes can and do create sexual variants that many cultures in the world have been aware of for millennia, but did not have the scientific descriptions for.
Now that I have you all on your high horse about how many sexes there are and who determined them, let me get to the point. I’m referring to gender roles and traits when I discuss Mars and Venus. Women respond differently than men in terms of social situations, cultural assimilation, and emotional responses. And figuring it out can be a lifelong work of futility.
Whatever is a writer of erotica to do?
I often joke that I write ‘old men’s erotica.’ That means that we need to sit and talk about the weather for half an hour before we get to any action, and that sexual activity must be described in detail because men in general, and old men especially, have a poor imagination. I have been asked in comments and email to include much more detail in my descriptions of women in my stories, down to bra size, shoe size, weight, and height. I don’t believe most women understand bra size, let alone men.
I’m more inclined to refer to relative characteristics rather than absolutes. A breast larger than my palm. A waist so tiny I could fit my hands around it. A few inches shorter (or taller) than I am. I believe those terms can be adapted by any man if he takes even a moment to consider them.
In the fall of 2018, I began writing "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins" series, beginning with Double Take. It was my fun take on a do-over in which the hero comes back as his younger self, but in a different timeline and an alternative universe. He has to try to use his accumulated life experience to understand his new reality. He discovers his past life is a real hinderance to enjoying his present life.
SPOILER ALERT. In chapter 44 of 47, I revealed that one of the characters was a trans-female. She was not only on hormones, but was mid-op in having her sex changed. If she was a nobody character, that might have gone unnoticed, but she was a best friend/girlfriend of Jacob. All manner of hell was rained down upon me for this. For me, it was a sign that Jacob could adapt to a different world in some of the most extreme circumstances—something many of my readers proved they could not do. I lost nearly a third of my readership that day.
I felt it was an important element to the story and to the relationships that were built into the story.
It ultimately prompted my disclaimer that I now put at the beginning of all my stories:
This book contains content of an adult nature. This includes explicit sexual content and characters whose beliefs may be contrary to your religious, political, or world view.
Let me say that women read over the reveal without flinching. It was only men who were so shocked and horrified by this that they could not process it as a fictional story. Double Take is available on Bookapy. The series is available both as individual books and as a discounted collection.
There are many other differences between the way men and women look at erotica. I mentioned recently that I had read a mainstream romance and was surprised to find that it included an explicit sex scene. But as well-done as the scene was, the female author had never used any common sex slang. She did not say pussy, cunt, tit, boob, cock, prick, dick, fuck, or screw. You would be hard-put to find men’s erotica that did not use these words.
My wholly unscientific opinion on this is that women do not catalog body parts separate from the body. Where a man might say, “I slid my dick into her pussy,” a woman would be more apt to simply say, “He slid into me.” In her mind, the dick was the man and the pussy was her. They weren’t separate things that acted on their own.
I find that watching porn or talking to porn actresses—which I often do—their language is more detached the way a man’s is. And that is understandable. Porn is primarily created for men. Remember my comment that men need to have things spelled out in detail? That’s what porn does. It takes the focus off the people who are engaged in sex and puts the emphasis on the parts of the body that are connecting.
Men tend to focus on their orgasm until it arrives. Then they are done, or need to wait until they can get to an orgasm again. In other words, men think about coming. Women, on the other hand, need to get out of their heads in order to have an orgasm. Often, thinking about an orgasm actually prevents them from coming. Often, a woman feels she has to have an orgasm in order to be good for her partner. Hence the age-old myth of the faked orgasm. Or maybe it isn’t entirely a myth!
It's one thing to know or understand these things, but something else entirely to write stories that acknowledge them. How can an author be fair about the differences between men and women that go beyond the classic ‘Tab A into Slot B?’
I think I’ve opened the door to several possible posts. After all, the essence of heterosexual erotica is getting a man and a woman together. I think next week I’ll explore “The Difference Between Erotica and Porn.”
This is number forty-three in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“I DON’T MAKE RESOLUTIONS because I don’t want to suffer through the disappointment of breaking them in a couple of days.”
Sound familiar? In fact, I’ve heard that statement in one form or another from countless friends and acquaintances. Resolutions turn the New Year into a year-long Lenten Season in which the purpose seems to be to deny ourselves something.
Stop eating sugary things.
Quit smoking.
Lose twenty pounds.
Exercise three times a week.
Those are a few of the things that are common resolutions. They all require a punishment of some sort for having screwed up in the past. That’s the way I’ve always looked at them.
Then I recently ran across an article that suggested we only make fun resolutions. These are not punishment, but rather a reward for living in 2024.
Eat more ice cream.
Order a different dish at your favorite restaurant each time you eat there.
Learn how to swear in multiple languages.
Always ask for a senior discount before paying.
Somehow, all of these sound like fun things that I could accomplish in the coming year. Of course, as fun as those are, they aren’t the focus of what I’d like to accomplish this year.
When I started the Photo Finish Series, I was incredibly excited. In many ways, it was the closest thing I had to an autobiography and it felt good to get some of these feelings and stories on the page. Nate Hart was the pseudonym I used in high school for my writing—mostly poetry. He shows up again in Living Next Door to Heaven as the mysterious author of poems Brian reads in competition—poems that I wrote in high school. And many of Nate’s experiences and most of his philosophy came right out of my life.
I knew the series wouldn’t be as popular as anything that was more neutral, especially as I chose to lay bare the struggles of attempting to be a conscientious objector in 1966-1973. It’s not, in general, a very popular stance—and for that matter it never was.
There is also a lot of wish fulfillment in the story: Nate has multiple girlfriends, and an active sex life. Something I went without. And he has a talent that attracts girls to him—something that being a writer never did for me. I may have been so excited about fulfilling my fantasies that I went a little overboard and lost a good many readers as the series goes on. Now as I’m about to begin posting the final book in the series, Follow Focus, in February, I realize that this is what the story has been leading to and may be the best book of the series, but many readers won’t pick it up because of what has gone before.
Resolved: To become a better writer.
I’m a good writer, even though I sometimes lose my way in a story. Usually, I manage to get it back. But I haven’t really focused on getting any better at my craft lately. I currently have three books in process and they all three have great potential. I’ve completed the first draft of Nathan Everett’s (Wayzgoose) A Place Among Peers, the sequel to the story of Liam Cyning and Meredith Sauvage. I’ve also completed the first draft of Nathan Everett’s The Staircase of Dragon Jerico. And I am well into writing the next volume of Devon Layne’s The Props Master series, Promethean, Child of Earth.
I would like to turn these three books into the best I’ve ever written, and that’s going to require some work. So, where do I start?
The Staircase of Dragon Jerico is a romance drama. It’s not erotica, though. So, I decided to read some romances to see what I could find out. I’ve only gotten through one so far, and it was not really what I expected. This is from a bestselling author, so she must be doing something right. It’s well written and literate.
The characters are clearly developed with additional information exposed all the way through the book. It is written in a third person limited POV, meaning that each section is from the perspective of a single character featured in that section, but in the next section, it may well switch to a different character’s POV. That’s a stretch for me, but I like the result.
One of the things that surprised me was that the sex scenes that came in the last quarter of the book were as explicit as those that I’ve written in my erotica! At the same time, she did not use any of the common words found in just about any story on SOL. She never said ‘pussy,’ ‘cock,’ ‘cum,’ or ‘fuck.’ Yet the scenes were explicit.
I avoided sexual tension in Staircase and as a result, the draft is rather dry and the love between the two principal characters seems to come out of nowhere.
I’ve been criticized on occasion, including by my alpha readers, for having minor characters who were two-dimensional and didn’t really feel like real people. I noticed that in this book, too, so I guess both the author and I have some work to do in that regard.
I have a couple more romances that I picked up at a half-price outlet for used books. I expect I’ll have some extra reading time this week as I’ll be in the hospital for a procedure on Thursday-Friday. But I am already considering what I should change or enhance in my stories to lift my writing to the next level.
I expect I’ll also take a look at a couple of the major texts on writing by successful writers. I’ve never taken the advice of those writers seriously because it’s always seemed like an afterthought to their success, not as a plan for their writing. I have Steven King’s book, On Writing, and have yet to crack the cover. I plan to re-read Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat. I’m sure I’ll find some more.
In a movie short, “A Day in the Life of Pablo Casals,” filmed in 1957 when Casals was 81 years old, director Robert Snyder asked the world-famous cellist why he continued to practice four and five hours a day. Casals answered, “Because I think I’m making progress.”
Well, I’m only 74. I write every day. I think I can still make progress.
We shall see what kind of progress I can make, but don’t expect 2024 to start with a phenomenal breakthrough. I’m looking at the difference between a man’s and a woman’s POV in next week’s post: “Mars vs. Venus.”
Happy New Year!
This is number forty-two in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
“THE DIFFERENCE between life and fiction is that fiction must be believable,” I was told in my first writing class back in 1969. Real life can throw anything at you and it doesn’t make a difference if you believe it or not. It simply is.
I recently mentioned to an editor that I had an acquaintance who was in the top tier in national competition in working a Rubik’s Cube with his toes. She couldn’t believe it, but her comment was, “OMG with his toes!!!!! lol You couldn't make that up lol.” Unbelievable, but that’s life.
But it is not true that fiction has to ‘be believable.’ Fiction needs to be plausible within its universe.
I recall a scene from the movie Thank You for Smoking in which the tobacco lobbyist was working with a movie producer to put a character smoking in a sci-fi movie on a space station. The objection was that in the oxygen-rich atmosphere of the space station, smoking could cause an explosion. I don’t recall the exact line, but the producer said something to the effect of, “All we need to do is drop in a line like, ‘Thank God we got the gas mixture for our atmosphere adjusted so we can smoke without blowing up.’” Consistent within the movie’s universe.
I have many unbelievable situations in my erotica (as does just about everyone who writes it). Take, for example, polyamory. Conceptually, multiple consensual relationships in which everyone is happy with everyone else are reasonable and known in the real world. But they are not as common as I depict them in my books.
In my “Model Student” series—now available both individually and as a discounted series on Bookapy (finally)—I first began exploring the ‘guy with multiple girlfriends’ concept that has been featured in so much of my writing. I personally find the idea of a guy living with two women who love him and love each other just as much to be patently unbelievable. If it weren’t for the many ‘happily’ married people I know, I would suggest that a man and a woman living together happily ever after is unbelievable. But that’s life. I think.
But the situation is, to many, desirable. We’d like to believe it was possible. And so, we willingly suspend our disbelief to include a world in which multiple polyamorous relationships are both possible and common.
I mentioned to my daughter this week that I was writing a blog post on the willing suspension of disbelief and her comment was, “What an appropriate topic for Christmas Eve.” Perhaps she was talking about Santa Claus.
The essence of ‘faith,’ however, is belief in the unbelievable. We willingly suspend our disbelief, without asking for proof or facts.
But what makes the unbelievable believable in our fictional world?
First, it needs to be something we find attractive or desirable. In other words, we have to be able to visualize the concept. Perhaps it is something we can dream of. Do fish dream of riding a bicycle? It’s not within their realm of fantasy. Fish don’t swim upstream to spawn thinking “This would be so much easier if I had legs and a bicycle.” But readers of fiction can conceive of that. We could conceive of flying to the moon, and dream of it, and achieve it.
Secondly, it needs to be consistent with the world of the story we’re being told. In erotica, polyamory is completely consistent with a sexually liberated and exploratory environment. I believe that one of the reasons we do not see many stories of fifty-to-eighty-year-olds engaged in sexual adventures is because sexual liberation and exploration is not consistent with the world we know they inhabit. Sexual liberation and exploration are topics of discovery found mostly among teens and young adults. They’ll try anything.
Third, it needs to be in character. If the character who will engage in a sexual act is sexually repressed, she can’t simply kiss another girl and immediately progress to a loving lesbian relationship. It’s not consistent with her character. She will suffer anxiety over it. She will set up barriers. And ultimately, if she is to progress in that way, there must be a catalyst or a trigger for her actions. What pushes her over the edge and into this relationship?
In the “Model Student” series, Lissa and Melody both have some same-sex experience before they start fooling around with each other. But even with that, it is the catalyst of Tony loving both of them that liberates them enough to fall onto each other and ultimately to marry. Kate is the youngest of the five principals in this story. She is driven by her own sexual awakening. She knows the object of her desire is only achievable through a relationship with all of them and she spends several months testing the water a little at a time before she becomes active with Melody, Lissa, or Wendy.
Finally, within this universe, the relationship or event needs to have some probability. In other words, given that Tony and Kate go to the same school, have the same lovers, work together on various projects, kiss and make out whenever possible, and have similar values, how likely is it that they will get married? By the same token, with Kate’s background and experience is it also likely that they will have children? While marriage has an acceptable degree of probability, parenthood does not.
When we pick up a book—of any genre—we commit to suspending our disbelief in the world represented there. We do not, however, blindly accept whatever happens in that story. Within those constraints, the fiction needs to be believable.
So, I guess the old adage is still true. The difference between life and fiction is that fiction needs to be believable—within the boundaries we set for it.
Next Sunday is New Year’s Eve. I think I’ll talk a little bit about goals and what I’d like to achieve in my writing of erotica: “Resolved.”
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