I'm starting to write again. This is a good thing. As I do however, I am finding I have miniseries level storylines floating through my head.
As I am attempting to pen (or type in this day and age) one of the stories I am seeing that there are certain characteristics that make up good erotica.
So I am wondering what you other authors do to take a storyline and keep it interesting for a reader that comes online looking for erotica?
To me, good literature includes sexuality. An intense flash scene needs to be steamy and raunchy. How do you keep yourself in the middle ground and keep your readers entertained?
I suppose a good corollary question is whether you write for yourself or for your audience, but I'll leave that for another thread.
I'm fascinated by the people as much as the sex so that inevitably tends to move me to write more than just a sex scene. I actually find it hard to write "stroke stories" (stories that just one big sex scene for people to stroke off to) because I always want to know more about who the partners are and why they are doing what they are doing. Even in my shorter pieces, I tend to hint at backgrounds and motivations. In longer ones, I have fairly long non-sexual narrative passages filling some of the blanks about the characters. If anything, I tend too much to the story and not enough to the sex at times and have to remind myself that I'm writing for an erotic stories site.
And, yes, I'm writing largely based on what I like and desire and hoping it finds an audience (and with two stories over 30K views, the Famous Story level, I think I'm hitting the audience occasionally) more so that looking for an audience and writing what they want.
Oh, I have one longstanding story that predates my Lush days that started as a planned erotic story but is now going to be more of a straight romance because I found the sex just didn't fit. So sometimes, you just can't find the balance and need to go in another direction.
Wouldn't you rather have a nice cup of tea?
I agree with Seeker4, as well. Stories that are one big sex scene with little to no context aren't really that interesting to me. On the other hand, starting a story with "It was the dawn of time," and then reading through pages of the history of evolution to get to the sex scene may not be very interesting either from an erotic point of view (unless you consider evolution one big orgy stretched out across the entire span of life on Earth, and the idea of microbes fucking is the sort of thing that turns you on). While there are many authors who could stand add some kind of prologue to a couple jumping each other, there are others who could stand to be leaner in their story-telling (I may be guilty of the latter).
Kurt Vonnegut recommended starting a story as close to the end as possible, but there's got to be some kind of hook, some intrigue or suspense or building up of tension that makes getting to the end worthwhile. When I'm not invested in the characters or their situation, the sex in itself, no matter how wild or well-described, isn't going to be erotic. When the author is more in love with showing off how much they know or how well they can write, instead of telling a good, well-paced story, I might not even make it to the sex scene. I think pacing is an art that gets better with experience (and feedback).
As for the original question, I think the only reason lines need to exist in writing is so that authors can kick dirt over them. The only line I worry about is writing I enjoy and writing that I don't.
Don't believe everything that you read.
For me there IS NO dividing line.
If I want to write literary erotica that crosses all sorts of boundaries, is a story and lyrically sound almost like a poem and a hot fucking turn on I shall do so on a whim.
In fact, I've done exactly that quite often.
My first two comp entries (which didn't place but did get RRs) were like that. Not quite my usual but I had interesting ideas that I wanted to see if they would work.
