[oooh, porn meta! *leer*]
Jul. 11th, 2006 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reenkaI was just thinking about my fic-- which is finally(!) going well now that I have actual stuff I should be doing instead (because my brain = evil, thanx to my ex for pointing that out, btw)-- anyway, I was thinking about why I just take it for granted that of -course- it's smutty. I write smutty & read smutty (if the situation allows & we've gotten past 'I HATE YOU, POTTER, DIE!!!' at least a bit). Anyway, this is without really being a 'smut writer' or whatever. It's not my identity, it's just fun-- one of the 'good parts' of writing like banter is, unlike those pesky exposition parts I cringe to contemplate. I mean-- plot is fun to conceive of, maybe, but sort of plodding and not very imaginative to execute in details and particulars.
So in retrospect, it seems interesting-- odd?-- that one of the main complaints non-smut-writers have about porn is that it's repetitive and they're afraid they'll sound like every other porn scene they or anyone else had ever written. Indeed, a lot of evidence does corroborate this, because many sex scenes do sound alike within a single writer's work and also in general.
Now, many people have already written about this & it all sounds like an old hat (now meta-- that's repetitive), yes. People say that you should customize your sex scene to that specific situation & the characters, and I do believe that's a big part of the puzzle, but-- the point remains that even when a scene seems customized, it can still appear dull or plodding-- that is, the descriptions of the reactions aren't interesting (shocking? arousing? and doesn't reader-arousal often depend on novelty or that unexpected stomach-churning guh moment at least to some degree?) even if the reactions seem realistic enough.
The bottom line is more likely to involve the writer's relationship with sensorily descriptive passages in general, it seems like.
Like, a really great smut writer would usually-- I'm betting-- also be good at describing emotional states, getting in character's skin and showing the reader what a strawberry tastes like to them, how they experience cold, their reaction to a rainy day, their relationship to food and what they find beautiful or what they notice in the physical world around them.
All of this has the potential to be repetitive just as much as sex-- after all, haven't we all tasted a strawberry many times?-- and also the potential to be intensely, deeply singular and individual to both the person and the moment in a way no other part of writing can touch.
I think people who don't naturally enjoy the sensory-descriptive end of things as writers tend to think of sex as a mechanical act-- a set of actions-- whether or not they actually do write sex-scenes prolifically. Especially with men, I think, all they need is the actions to get turned on as they write or read-- it's just not very good as far as writing, whether or not there are orgasms as a result, and this is what the non-porn-writers complain about.
If you view actions as means to an end-- like, your character goes to the store only to see what happens when they get X item or meet X person there-- then yes, written sex can't help but be repetitive and a bit pointless. In other words, if you write for the orgasm alone, yours, your characters' or your audience's, the result can't help but be rather limp.
On the other hand, good smut-writers -do- write for their own orgasm a lot of times (ahem), so really... it's important that what you're writing means something to -you-. If it doesn't, that too can easily leave things limp and plodding.
So... although I'm drawing this parallel between the tendency towards sensual & sexual sensory description, I don't think it's necessarily linked all the time. I mean, in terms of overall fantasy lit, for instance, you'll find authors like Tolkien (who constantly describe everything -but- sex, though obviously we have to figure in genre & era) and authors like GRR Martin, who's quite good with both physicality, rawness and moments of poetic beauty, but his limited sex scenes almost invariably fall flat or seem rather cliche or strained.
Then there's Lynn Flewelling, the one who wrote the Nightrunner series-- and she's full of overload-level descriptions of cities & nature & a million sensory details, plus her het sex-scene in 'The Bone Doll's Twin' is quite physical, vivid and sexy-- but her homo scenes were meh, quite wooden in comparison. In other words, there are many issues involving the writer's preferences, ethics, interests, the sexual imagination itself, etc-- it's just that in my experience it works the other way around, where good smut-writers could easily write other descriptions well.
...And now that I've mentioned it, I have to say what I mean by 'the sexual imagination', I guess. ^^;;
Basically, while some people are heavily visual in terms of how they imagine things, some people are auditory and some people tactile-- and of course some of us are also mixed breeds or even synaesthetic. Some people might even just imagine things based on words alone and don't 'play things out' in their heads-- so the sex-scene is likely to seem really boring/rote, right? This probably plays a large role in individual interest in writing sex -and- the sort of sex scene one writes, I think. Like, for a good intense scene, you'd probably need an intense tactile imagination the way you just wouldn't if you were describing strawberry eating or watching a sunset.
For example, I was just reading a smutfic yesterday by a famous smut writer in fandom and even though it was okay-- you know, competent-- it wasn't really all that descriptive, so even though the situations were inventive enough and the reactions personalized & internally consistent, it fell flat. I couldn't get into the characters' skin-- I could only watch, or more precisely hear a retelling that never seemed to live in the moment itself. I couldn't begin to taste their sweat as a single bead rolled down one jaw onto the sheets, feel their desperation to fuck now, hear their groans.
I'll admit a sensory feast (uber-realism plus, haha) isn't always fitting in that point in a story, or what everyone wants in the scene as readers. However, it's what makes an intense, unique, tantalizing experience, even if a fraction of the full-fledged approach is used. You don't need to go into minute mechanical detail-- you just need the right details to recreate the experience in a reader's mind.
To finally make things even more complicated ('cause y'all know how I love that!), I have to say it's perfectly plausible (and often even better!) to write a sex-scene with very few descriptions at all, which relies on dirty talk and dialogue to bring on the sexy. A lot of times it's just boring if the description isn't broken up by dialogue-- which always feels more immediate to the reader, you just can't help it. This is why I've become a little -too- into Japanese-yaoi-style written-out moaning-- no matter how many times I write 'moan', it just doesn't compare to a well-placed "Uuh"-- at least to me. But! I'm susceptible-- or rather, auditorily sensitive. I can imagine there are plenty of people who'd just get turned off 'cause they think it's too bad-porn-movie-like or they're just not into dirty talk. No piece of smut can please everyone in ways that just don't apply to other sorts of (descriptive or other) writing!
'Uuuughh', basically :>
~~
Also: you know it's a bad online sorting quiz when not only does it not include Zacharias or Luna, but it says I'm either Hermione or Fudge :/ heh
So in retrospect, it seems interesting-- odd?-- that one of the main complaints non-smut-writers have about porn is that it's repetitive and they're afraid they'll sound like every other porn scene they or anyone else had ever written. Indeed, a lot of evidence does corroborate this, because many sex scenes do sound alike within a single writer's work and also in general.
Now, many people have already written about this & it all sounds like an old hat (now meta-- that's repetitive), yes. People say that you should customize your sex scene to that specific situation & the characters, and I do believe that's a big part of the puzzle, but-- the point remains that even when a scene seems customized, it can still appear dull or plodding-- that is, the descriptions of the reactions aren't interesting (shocking? arousing? and doesn't reader-arousal often depend on novelty or that unexpected stomach-churning guh moment at least to some degree?) even if the reactions seem realistic enough.
The bottom line is more likely to involve the writer's relationship with sensorily descriptive passages in general, it seems like.
Like, a really great smut writer would usually-- I'm betting-- also be good at describing emotional states, getting in character's skin and showing the reader what a strawberry tastes like to them, how they experience cold, their reaction to a rainy day, their relationship to food and what they find beautiful or what they notice in the physical world around them.
All of this has the potential to be repetitive just as much as sex-- after all, haven't we all tasted a strawberry many times?-- and also the potential to be intensely, deeply singular and individual to both the person and the moment in a way no other part of writing can touch.
I think people who don't naturally enjoy the sensory-descriptive end of things as writers tend to think of sex as a mechanical act-- a set of actions-- whether or not they actually do write sex-scenes prolifically. Especially with men, I think, all they need is the actions to get turned on as they write or read-- it's just not very good as far as writing, whether or not there are orgasms as a result, and this is what the non-porn-writers complain about.
If you view actions as means to an end-- like, your character goes to the store only to see what happens when they get X item or meet X person there-- then yes, written sex can't help but be repetitive and a bit pointless. In other words, if you write for the orgasm alone, yours, your characters' or your audience's, the result can't help but be rather limp.
On the other hand, good smut-writers -do- write for their own orgasm a lot of times (ahem), so really... it's important that what you're writing means something to -you-. If it doesn't, that too can easily leave things limp and plodding.
So... although I'm drawing this parallel between the tendency towards sensual & sexual sensory description, I don't think it's necessarily linked all the time. I mean, in terms of overall fantasy lit, for instance, you'll find authors like Tolkien (who constantly describe everything -but- sex, though obviously we have to figure in genre & era) and authors like GRR Martin, who's quite good with both physicality, rawness and moments of poetic beauty, but his limited sex scenes almost invariably fall flat or seem rather cliche or strained.
Then there's Lynn Flewelling, the one who wrote the Nightrunner series-- and she's full of overload-level descriptions of cities & nature & a million sensory details, plus her het sex-scene in 'The Bone Doll's Twin' is quite physical, vivid and sexy-- but her homo scenes were meh, quite wooden in comparison. In other words, there are many issues involving the writer's preferences, ethics, interests, the sexual imagination itself, etc-- it's just that in my experience it works the other way around, where good smut-writers could easily write other descriptions well.
...And now that I've mentioned it, I have to say what I mean by 'the sexual imagination', I guess. ^^;;
Basically, while some people are heavily visual in terms of how they imagine things, some people are auditory and some people tactile-- and of course some of us are also mixed breeds or even synaesthetic. Some people might even just imagine things based on words alone and don't 'play things out' in their heads-- so the sex-scene is likely to seem really boring/rote, right? This probably plays a large role in individual interest in writing sex -and- the sort of sex scene one writes, I think. Like, for a good intense scene, you'd probably need an intense tactile imagination the way you just wouldn't if you were describing strawberry eating or watching a sunset.
For example, I was just reading a smutfic yesterday by a famous smut writer in fandom and even though it was okay-- you know, competent-- it wasn't really all that descriptive, so even though the situations were inventive enough and the reactions personalized & internally consistent, it fell flat. I couldn't get into the characters' skin-- I could only watch, or more precisely hear a retelling that never seemed to live in the moment itself. I couldn't begin to taste their sweat as a single bead rolled down one jaw onto the sheets, feel their desperation to fuck now, hear their groans.
I'll admit a sensory feast (uber-realism plus, haha) isn't always fitting in that point in a story, or what everyone wants in the scene as readers. However, it's what makes an intense, unique, tantalizing experience, even if a fraction of the full-fledged approach is used. You don't need to go into minute mechanical detail-- you just need the right details to recreate the experience in a reader's mind.
To finally make things even more complicated ('cause y'all know how I love that!), I have to say it's perfectly plausible (and often even better!) to write a sex-scene with very few descriptions at all, which relies on dirty talk and dialogue to bring on the sexy. A lot of times it's just boring if the description isn't broken up by dialogue-- which always feels more immediate to the reader, you just can't help it. This is why I've become a little -too- into Japanese-yaoi-style written-out moaning-- no matter how many times I write 'moan', it just doesn't compare to a well-placed "Uuh"-- at least to me. But! I'm susceptible-- or rather, auditorily sensitive. I can imagine there are plenty of people who'd just get turned off 'cause they think it's too bad-porn-movie-like or they're just not into dirty talk. No piece of smut can please everyone in ways that just don't apply to other sorts of (descriptive or other) writing!
'Uuuughh', basically :>
~~
Also: you know it's a bad online sorting quiz when not only does it not include Zacharias or Luna, but it says I'm either Hermione or Fudge :/ heh
