Reader as Lover: Textual Cooperation in Erotic Fiction

This post will appear on July 13, 2013 on the ERWA Blog. It will contain the experiences of two other erotica authors addressing the question of model readers. These do not appear in this version.

photo by sp333d1

photo by sp333d1

You will often hear writers say that they write for themselves, and surely this is true for most writers. We are our first readers and often our harshest critics. Nonetheless, I think there is a definite progression to the development of ‘a model reader’ amongst writers in general and quite a specific progression among writers of erotica.

This post is by necessity going to be personal and anecdotal.  A model reader is the person you imagine reading the work while you’re conceiving of the story, writing it, polishing it or getting it out there.  Getting a firm sense of who that is will give you a better, more realistic sense of how many readers you can attract and some guidance as to how to classify yourself within a genre.

However, there is one very interesting difference between other genres and erotica.  A great many erotica writers write their first stories, not as forays into the art/skill of writing, but as masturbatory entertainment. They write something that they cannot find written elsewhere (in the tone or to the standard they require for their arousal) that turns them on. Many others write their first stories as a tool of seduction – to arouse a specific lover – an intimate, handcrafted, experientially endowed gift. I am sure there are probably writers in other genres who make forays into erotica just to test their skill at writing explicit sex, but I’d guess this is probably not where the majority of erotica writers start.

My first piece of erotica (a happily doomed novel) embodied some of my most deeply held erotic fantasies.  It wasn’t very well written, and the plot was a complete mess, but if I have to be entirely honest, I was writing for my own arousal. I had no reader in mind. I wasn’t seeking an erotic conversation with anyone.

As I developed as a writer, and especially after I joined ERWA’s ‘storytime’ list, the understanding that this act of writing was a form of communication – an attempt to transfer information from me to a reader through the text – became more apparent.  There is nothing like having a story critiqued to give you a solid understanding that your writing is ‘received’ and, sometimes, not in the way you intended.

But the experience also taught me that, on a list as diverse as ERWA’s, there are times when it is not a case of having written a bad story, but that it has ended up in the wrong person’s lap. I am speaking here of stories that contain good grammar, fleshed out characters and a reasonably adequate narrative structure.  One of these areas of disjunction was immediately apparent even at an organizational level.  Non-consent lies at the heart of some of the most erotic themes for me as a writer. ERWA forbids the posting of non-consensual material. [1. “Storytime Guidelines” Erotica Readers & Writers Association Website. http://www.erotica-readers.com/PRIVATE/ERA-Storytime.htm#policies (Accessed June 21, 2013) ] So, at a most simple level, there were lots of stories I simply couldn’t post.  But, at a broader level, when I posted stories on my blog, there were readers who for reasons of ethics or life-experience found my work did not speak to them at all.

Eroticism is one of those areas where lust and disgust nestle in very close proximity. [2. Stoller, Robert J. Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred. New York: Pantheon Books, 1975]   For some readers, the mention of a golden shower will ruin their experience of the whole story – so strong is their gut-level disgust of the act. For others, it’s not something that arouses them, but they can feel neutral about it and still enjoy the other parts of the story.  For some, you’re ringing their dinner bell at such a basic level, that you don’t even have to describe its eroticism to have them in your pocket.

When I got these radically positive or negative reactions to the things I wrote, I did start slowly to form a picture of my model reader. They were someone who thought critically enough to defer immediate disgust reactions if the eroticism of an act could be made apparent to them in the story.

Time to fess up. I am never going to go out and buy an anthology on watersports.  It doesn’t, as a rule, ring my bell. However, the two instances in which I read erotica that contained it and was aroused, were so different and yet, in some ways, so similar, they deserve examination.  The two works in question were “My Wet Pet” by Julius (sadly nowhere to be found on the net now) [3. Julius. “My Wet Pet” Erwa Storytime Listserve. Date Unknown] and the novel “Darker Than Love” by Kristina Lloyd. [4. Lloyd, Kristina. Darker Than Love. London: Black Lace Books (1998)]  Neither of these writers assumed a reader with a kink for watersports.  They both eloquently focused on the sensory experience rather than just shoving the kink at the reader and both leave the semiotic implications of urine as part of a sex act open for the reader to interpret in their own way.  Admittedly, in both these instances, it is the female doing the peeing and the power dynamics in both texts are strangely reversed. That might be why it works for me, but I doubt it.  I simply have never read a heterosexual BDSM description of a golden shower where the male was the urinator that didn’t textually assume it would automatically arouse me as a reader. None of them came close to describing the sensation, the power dynamic, the emotional paradox of the experience. I’m sure there must be some out there, but I’ve never encountered one. When I do, I’ll let you know.

In the last decade of writing, I’ve also come to understand that many readers are looking for very sex-positive, very uninhibited erotica where the characters suffer not a moment of ambivalence in regard to the sex.  On a personal basis, I find it very boring to write sex without paradox.  I like my fictional sex with drama and I like the drama to be in the sex itself or at least its consequences or emotional ramifications.  I write for readers who feel similarly.  And that cuts down the number readers I can expect to ever have significantly.

When I conceive of the story, at stages during the writing and, most especially, during the polishing, there are about five people I have in mind as model readers.  I don’t write for them, but I realize that I do write to them, in the intentional manner of a correspondent, if not in that precise form.

These are the readers I want to arouse.  In that sense, these readers are lovers. It is not my aim to bring them to orgasm through the act of storytelling, but I absolutely want them hard or wet and mentally aroused as hell at times, during the reading of a story. I want the paradoxes I pose in my stories to be intellectually erotic teases for them.  I want them to yearn for it all to come out right even if, knowing me as a writer, they know it probably won’t end in a happily ever after.  I want the story to leave them feeling a bitter-sweet yearning in the same way a real lover kisses you at a corner to take their leave.  It’s a good kiss, a kiss that speaks of possibilities, but it’s a complicated pleasure mixed with the pain of parting.

Most of all, if I had to describe my model reader in a single paragraph, I’d say that she or he is someone who can truly enjoy a story without having to absolutely identify with the characters. They are people who are excited by otherness.  They enjoy a level of realism that many erotica readers aren’t looking for.

Of course, I get many more readers than this. And I can see by their comments often that I have not satisfied them. For instance, many women who read romance love my male characters but despise my female characters. They cannot identify with her adequately enough to step into her place in the story and instead feel a subtext of sexual competitiveness.  Similarly, they get very upset when, at the end, the story doesn’t end happily.  This doesn’t bother me. They made read some of what I write – they may even enjoy some of it a great deal, but they aren’t my model reader.

The truth is I’m never going to sell a lot of books. And for many erotica writers, especially with the success of books like ‘Fifty Shades’ and ‘Bared to You’, there is a pressure to sell books and make money. We live in a period where this is the predominant measure of success.

But, for those of you who are struggling to accommodate the marketplace, I’d like to offer this thought. A very few of us are ever going to make a living doing this.  There is a valid and, to my mind, essential success in identifying who your model reader is and making them a happy and satisfied reader. No matter how small that readership may be, once they’ve found you and you have found them, there are life-long conversations had and an untold number of delicious seductions in  your future.

Although not specifically referenced here, these works informed this essay in essential ways:

Umberto Eco  (1996) “The Author and His Interpreters,” The Modern World: Porto Ludovica Website. http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_author.html (accessed 21 June, 2013)

Lucie Guillemette and Josiane Cossette (2006),  “Textual Cooperation”, in Louis Hébert (dir.), Signo [online], Rimouski (Quebec), http://www.signosemio.com/eco/textual-cooperation.asp (accessed 21 June, 2013)

Roland Barthes. The Pleasure of the Text. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1975)

14 Thoughts on “Reader as Lover: Textual Cooperation in Erotic Fiction

  1. Interesting to see how I apparently went in reverse – my model reader initially was my ex. I wrote for his masturbatory pleasure, never mine. Over time though it became darker, more personal, more focused on what I like rather than anyone else. Which, of course, leabes me with an audience of one and, really, no reason to write what I can just imagine.

    • But you do have readers. And clearly, I don’t often write what truly repels me either (although there are times when I do write what I know edges on disgust for both myself and my model readers).

      I guess my point is, perhaps you just haven’t gotten to know them yet? Are are you actually saying that you just don’t care what reception your writing gets from anyone?

  2. I care, but more in the abstract than the concrete. Not enough to change what I say to satisfy anyone in particular. Most of the feedback I get is negative, though, so being too caught up in what other’s think makes my already glacial writing pace come to a complete halt. In the end, if it satisfies me that has to be enough, anything else is a glorious accident.

  3. We have the same reader. It took me years to understand that most of my readers, aren’t here for sameness, That excites me to no end. I love the people I don’t write about, loving the people I write about. Or hating them etc And still enjoying my work.

    Conversely that is the kind of reader I am so I suppose it’s all very circular and comes back to me in my little brain cave.

    • It took me years as well. And then it took me a while to come to terms with the fact that this meant I wasn’t going to ever sell a lot of books.

      • Yes. I came to the I won’t sell many books conclusion fairly early on. I think that is more a matter of being a woman of color than my content. As a result I’ve lost complete interest in major/big house publishing and my writing and feelings about success are better for it. It’s a miraculously freeing thing to give not a single fuck about what the established literary canon might think of my worth as an artist.

  4. Thanks for this post RG, the whole post, but particularly your comments on non-con material. Whenever anyone comments on the fact that I even get close to non-con I feel a certain level of shame at being titillated by it. I love that you are unapologetic.

    • I’m not sure why I should feel apologetic for something that arouses me. Women have been shamed for their libidos and fantasies throughout history by men. I won’t allow men to shame Me now and I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow a certain strain of feminists to shame me either. It doesn’t follow that I’d ever excuse rape in RL under any circumstances. I think consent is an interesting erotic theme. Its presence or absence. These fantasies address deep psychological desires in us for either more agency or a relief from responsibility. I find both extremes interesting territory to explore fictionally.

  5. mondoafrodisiacoLady Flo on June 21, 2013 at 9:49 am said:

    What excites us is never an accident.
    All started from the first sensory experiences, erotic experiences and educational received from our parents.
    This is valid for a reader as a writer.
    There is always a reason why we have certain fantasies, and so we write or read them.

  6. “… there are times when it is not a case of having written a bad story, but that it has ended up in the wrong person’s lap”.

    I couldn’t agree more.

    I’m still discovering who my model reader is although, interestingly, more of what I like to read about, personally, is creeping into my work as time goes by – almost the inverse of the process described at the beginning of this piece.

    Letting myself go, bit by bit, and accepting that what I’m producing is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea has really helped from a quality perspective; in my opinion, my writing is free-er, flows far better, and is infinitely more readable.

  7. //However, there is one very interesting difference between other genres and erotica. A great many erotica writers write their first stories, not as forays into the art/skill of writing, but as masturbatory entertainment. //

    That’s a very interesting assertion. I agree. Sort of. And sort of not. Since no survey has been done, I would probably agree that many erotica writers write their first stories as masturbatory entertainment. However, I’m not as sure that this is particularly different from other forms of literature. The point of erotica, after all, is to write something erotic. If the writer does it well, then it’s going to arouse (even if the author isn’t aroused). If the literature doesn’t arouse, then I think its standing as erotica is debatable.

    When someone sits down to write their first horror novel, it probably also is not a foray into the art/skill of writing, but its own kind of onanistic exercise. If one sits down to write a poem for the first time, then that person is going to probably produce something “for their pleasure”. It’s probably going to be trite, mawkish, self-indulgent, etc…

    My point is this: I question, in any given genre, who writes their first piece *as* a “foray into the art/skill of writing”. I think, that, for the most part, this is what separates the writers from the dilettantes. They are both apt to start at the same place, but the writers eventually *do* ask themselves, even the erotic writers, if there isn’t something more to writing than just pleasing oneself.

    Just a thought…

  8. A lovely thought, too.

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