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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.”
This is number forty-one in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
THIS ABOVE ALL, to thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell. My blessing season this in thee.
Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3
I’m not sure how long before I was actually cast in Hamlet I became aware of this quote. I suspect, however, that I assumed it was biblical. Any good quote must have come from the Bible. Right?
But it’s one of the gems of literature that I also think is often misinterpreted. When I hear it quoted these days, it is usually to the tune of “I do whatever I want and I speak my mind no matter what.” That essentially denies the preceding twenty-one lines of fatherly advice Polonius gives his son Laertes before sending him off to France. The beginning of this soliloquy is “And these few precepts in thy memory look thou character.” Polonius generally exhorts his son to high character, reserved behavior, and limited speech. He expects that his advice to be true to himself is reflected in a noble character.
Which brings me to writing erotica. I write, as I said last week, to be read. Unlike the writers I hear who state they don’t write for others, only for themselves, so they don’t need to please anyone else, I do write for others. But at the same time, I must be true to myself.
When I first started writing erotica, I was surprised at the response of readers to what I was writing. I originally wrote The Art and Science of Love as a kind of therapy because I needed a happy ending. The success of the serial surprised me and lifted my spirits considerably. I decided to write a book that I’d thought of years earlier, but never really got off the ground. But it would be a long story and I wanted to keep my name fresh in the minds of readers on SOL so they didn’t forget about me.
That next story—a short story titled “Welded Together”—was a dismal failure. There were some real reasons it flopped and they were lessons I needed to learn. You see, ASL and “Welded Together” were not my first projects. I already had three books in the market with more underway. I’d published over a dozen books by other authors. I considered myself a professional in the industry.
But I started writing on SOL because I wanted a happy ending, and I forgot that was what most of my readers also wanted. My literary fiction and mysteries (see Wayzgoose on SOL or Nathan Everett on Bookapy) did not have particularly happy endings. People who read those genres are not necessarily looking for happy endings. I betrayed my own intent, however, by giving “Welded Together” a bitter ending, and I received scathing comments as a result. I rewrote the ending in time to stem the flood, but the story was not very good at that point.
The story stuck with me because I thought the concept had a lot of potential that I’d failed to live up to. So, when I wrote the stories in Pygmalion Revisited a few years later, I rewrote that story as “Iron Alchemy” and included it in my stories of Pygmalion. “Rewrote” is too light a term. I completely threw out the story and started from scratch with the same basic theme, and it is one of the most beautiful stories in the collection. The fact was that in the original, I had not been true to either myself or my readers—corrected in the new version. Pygmalion Revisited is available on SOL by author aroslav.
So, my first principle in writing erotica is that we get a happy ending. If I don’t have a happy ending to my erotic stories, then I’m not being true to myself or my readers.
However, that doesn’t automatically make every story happy all the way through. In fact, my second principle is that you can’t have a “happily ever after” if you have “happily ever before.” Pain and loss are things that make people compassionate, loving, empathetic, and aware. Loss is an obstacle that must be overcome in order to have that happy ending.
I have often been accused of letting my liberal political views creep into my stories. In fact, I recently received a truly lovely (unintentionally) compliment in the comments to Double Take. “Woke garbage,” said Papawtoo. Thank you. I try to always be aware of and concerned about social injustice. That is the definition of woke, and I’m happy that makes it into my stories. For me, that means equally fair treatment to characters of all races, religions, genders, sexual preferences, and political viewpoints. It is who I am and I must be true to it.
I place a disclaimer at the head of my stories now that I never used to consider important.
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.
If a person is unable to deal with religious, political, or world views that differ from their own, I don’t consider them adult enough to read my stories. You don’t have to agree with it. Just deal with your own response to it. I don’t write material to offend people. I write material that will be thought-provoking and entertaining.
“This above all, to thine own self be true.”
What and who I am will always be revealed through my stories. I cannot help it and wouldn’t if I could. There is nothing about my religion or politics that requires me to convince you that I am right. Nor is there anything in my religion or politics that requires me to listen to you trying to convince me.
Enjoy the story for what it is.
I remember hearing once that the difference between reality and fiction is that fiction must be believable. Next week, I’ll deal with what is believable and what is not believable in erotica: Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
This is number forty in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
I'll also mention that as of this posting, my Sunday chapter of Over Exposure has not yet cleared the posting queue. It is currently list as "Submission Processing." It happens sometimes. The chapter will be up soon, I'm certain.
“YIKES!”
That’s internet alarmist-speak for “This person thinks his work is worth being paid for. Avoid!”
I made a point in my last post that the important things to me in writing erotica were:
1. Get readers to read what I’ve written.
2. Engage with readers and get feedback.
3. Write lots of different kinds of things.
I also said, “I realized that my heart wasn’t in the idea of writing for money.” So, why the heck do I sell my books?
When I burned out in theatre in 1978, I started my career writing and publishing technical manuals and training material. Times were hard. I wanted to be a novelist and possibly a playwright. But I needed money. Something about paying rent and eating. I was fond of both. My one marketable skillset, honed during my graduate studies and previous jobs in film, was my ability to type 100+ words per minute on a Selectric typewriter. When I presented that credential to a temporary agency and they tested me to confirm, I was immediately sent out on a replacement secretary position for a home manufacturer.
I’d been at the company for a week or two when one of the company executives passed my desk. He turned around and came back to me and accusingly said, “You aren’t really a secretary. What do you really do?”
With the first test of big balls I didn’t know I had, I responded, “I’m a writer.”
“Good! Come to my office. I have a job for you.”
Who knew getting a job as a writer was so easy?
I was met at his office by a director of sales and they laid out a writing assignment for a three-volume sales training manual and paid me close to $6,000 over the next six months to write and produce it! In 1978, that was a lot of money!
I was hooked. I could get money for writing about subjects I technically knew nothing about. They paid me to learn the steps of the sales process, the construction process, and the financing, so I could in turn teach it to sales people who knew even less about it than I did.
That started a journey into writing and publishing that has continued to this day, though the characteristics have changed significantly. It was always, “Learn something so thoroughly you can teach it, and then write about it.” It’s funny, but even in writing erotica, I’ve had to learn art, racquetball, cooking, television and movie production, photography, government, real estate, ranching, music, history, autism, basketball, martial arts, military ranks and government pay scales, theatre, paganism, Greek mythology, world history, and much more. I had to learn the subjects well enough that I could talk about them convincingly in a story (though I’m still caught out by real subject matter experts on many stories).
So, writing erotica was much like writing the technical manuals and training material for other subjects. But I was doing it for free. I posted my stories at StoriesOnline as serials and anyone who wanted to could read them. People started contacting me—unsolicited—asking me how they could contribute to my writing fund. I accepted donations and after a great deal of encouragement, began to produce eBooks and even some paperbacks.
I discovered that nearly all my donations and sales came from people who had already read all or part of the story online for free. People were willing to pay for my stories! But I also remembered when I started reading erotica on ASSTR and from there was introduced to SOL, I didn’t have any spare money. The idea of paying to read a sex story was insane. I was going through loss of job/income, divorce, and unsettlement. I couldn’t ‘waste’ money on a feelgood story.
The more I wrote and the more I was introduced to my readers—including over 400 respondents to a survey—the more I realized that the vast majority of my readers were in the same boat. Unable or unwilling to pay for stories. Just like I had been. So, I made a pledge that all my stories would be available for people to read online for free. Period.
That did not preclude me from selling eBooks and paperbacks through other channels. To this day, 90% of my sales are to people who have either read or are reading the story online for free. The same is true of my Patreon members. I do not feel dependent on those sales and contributions for survival—as I once felt about my technical and non-fiction writing—but they do enhance my quality of life, as the only other income I have is social security.
In the publishing world, my erotica is authored by Devon Layne. My online moniker for those stories is aroslav. My literary fiction, mystery, and thriller is authored by my alter ego Nathan Everett. My online moniker for those stories is Wayzgoose. You can find all my stories available for free online reading, and I renew my pledge to continue that practice. Nearly all my stories are also available through major eBook distributors. My patrons receive my new eBooks for free, in advance of their public release.
I’m a little behind on getting blog posts written in advance, but my intent is to continue the series next week with an analysis of what works and what doesn’t work in my erotica. I think I’ll title this one, “To thine own self be true.”
This is number thirty-nine in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.”
So, how do I celebrate the end of NaNoWriMo 2023? My 2023 novel has not left me devastated or depressed. Readers will probably be happy about that, too. But writing a story with a really happy ending is very much in mind. And I have a few of those stories ready to be finished.
I’m in the mood to have a little magic in my life. I think my editors will like the change of pace a bit, too. The first series of stories I began back in the late 1970s was “The Props Master” series. But before I finished it, I became wrapped up earning a living and writing non-fiction. So, I think it is time to complete “The Props Master” book four, Child of Earth.
["YES! - editor Pixel the Cat]
The entire first three volumes of “The Props Master” were focused on ‘the real world’ in which some mystical things seemed to happen. Those who believed saw the magic. Those who didn’t merely saw coincidence. In Child of Earth, it will be far more difficult to ignore the supernatural occurrences as anything other than supernatural. That will be how I celebrate NaNoWriMo 2023 TGIO. I’ll start writing it this week.
I’m aware that my blog about My Life in Erotica has not had much to do with erotica the past two months, but has rather been generally about writing. Well, writing good erotica requires the same disciplines that any good writing does. But next week, I’ll get back to looking at erotica more specifically with “Profit and Non-Profit.”
This is number thirty-eight in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
And so is The Staircase of Dragon Jerico. Or at least it will be this week. There is always a sense of joy, accomplishment, and let-down when I reach the end of NaNoWriMo. Next week: “TGIO.”
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