I've got several stories working, but one of them became a novella, and while there's fair amount of sex, there's also a lot of character development and non sexual dialogue.
If you're reading one of the novels or love stories, how much sex do you expect?
I know, I'm weird.
I'm one of those women who actually hope for a small amount of plot in pornos...:-)
"A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere." - Groucho Marx
I tend to think like you do about this. I love sex, but without context, the characters aren't nearly as arousing...and the sex is only as arousing or interesting as the characters involved. The more surrounding plot and development, the better.
The difference between "Sex" and "Love making", I agree with the two of you, romance, teasing, exploring and loving builds an excitement like no other!
I am looking forward to reading the two of you! Slowly and Lovingly!
Run
I prefer plot and storyline and some sex to stories with just sex within them
I think one of the biggest mistakes a lot of new authors make especially, is in just throwing 2 people together we hardly know, and then going right into the details of how they screwed each other.
How are we expected to relate to a situation that doesn't make any sense to us? You can't get lost in a story where you don't get to know the characters first, feel what they are feeling, understand what they are thinking, learn how the characters came to be drawn together etc.
Character and plot development are crucial elements of making any story entertaining. Jumping right into the wham bang turns me off a story immediately.
On the other hand, this isn't a romantic fiction site, where the action often stops at the bedroom door. Longer stories of that nature are welcome in the Love Stories or Novels sections.
As a personal preference, and this will be different for everyone, I'd like to see at least 4 or 5 paragraphs setting up the premise of the story before anything remotely sexual happened.
I completely agree, yet I also completely disagree. There are, in my experience and preference, two (at least) kinds of erotica. There's the good read, which is all of what you guys are talking about, and there's the stroke story. I fully enjoy reading and writing both. Erotica takes more time and investment to read, and certainly to write. A stroke story... doesn't. Lush is much more an erotica site, but don't dis them strokes. Right to the action, long or short, they are the literary equivalent of quickies, and they have their place.
Now that doesn't really answer CQ's question. My answer, since I like the short and the long, is that sex in a well written erotic story must be greater than 0, but does not have to equal 1.
IMO, if it doesn't have good character development, plot--or some kind of backstory--it isn't worth reading.
Perhaps the one exception is the first-person confessional where writers often reveal a bit more about themselves that they realize, which helps compensate for the absence of character development. But even a confession can use a modicum of plot development to hold reader interest.
Hey, porn is like what Justice Potter Stewart once said: it's hard to define, "But I know it when I see it." Come think of it, porn is what he WAS defining.
