“Between the Sheets: Between the pages – Where romance flourishes and porn finishes.”
Romance V Erotica
I am way too young to remember the old days before the Universe became available at the touch of a recognizable finger print. I have older people around me on my literary journey, recounting tales of the old days, but it’s a history that feels like fiction to me.
My generation don’t even use the word ‘internet’. We assume its always been there to hold our ‘abbreviated apps’ – why say snap-chat when you can say SNP? Yet my mentors refer to it as if its a scary thing that emerged from a black hole and we should be wary of it.
Apparently, and I am only taking the word of those around me here- before amazon they used to buy literature from places called book shops? And within the bookshops, they had book sections? Am I getting this right?
And so in theory if you want a book on a particular subject you would look for that section it would have the specific subject book and author in analphabetic order which you wanted. Easy. Oh and they said when you bought a book you would use paper money or metal round things! WTF. That’s for another day.
Obviously I am writing like a joke bimbo here but I do like the concept of clear labelling. It might be easy to buy online these days but the lines to me seem to be blurred about subject and content.
And don’t get me started on quality suffering at the hands of quantity. But again all this is for another day.
My main interest and focus as an aspiring writer, new to the world and wide eyed for all the new inspiration I can swallow, is more emotional fiction, love and tingles is a nice way to put it to start off.
Now I have listened to many olden days tales of book-shops, I can see just how blurred the lines in the fiction sections of romance, erotica, romantic erotica and porn and its almost impossible to separate the categories online with platforms such as Amazon to basically putting everything in boxes like a garage sale in terms of specific sections.
To be fair to sites such as Amazon, many cheeky new authors self publishing are going for sales and likes and best seller status so finding a book category empty of competition is a fast way to shoe horn a book to success. I guess. As a novice. But also noting this process for further information!
However, when buying on line you don’t have the pleasure of looking through bookshelves and sampling a chapter and feeling the printed paper. Many people don’t have the luxury of book shop access these days and have little option but online perusing.
So those of us looking for good old-fashioned romance have to scroll down and up and across endless postings of misclassified porn and erotica to find it, and those looking for porn and erotica have to filter out all the romance to find what they want. It’s frustrating and confusing, and readers everywhere are asking, what’s the difference? What constitutes porn, erotica, romance, and romantic erotica? I haven’t got the answers for you I am afraid. I can only tell you my young take on it. Which is effectively what I like.
Also I guess in deciding these desires, there are our own personal boundaries in our minds as to what we want to let into our imagination based on how it makes our mind and souls and body feels as we read and live in that fictional world.
Porn
Porn isn’t for me in a reading and writing sense. Although each to our own. I like to have my mind stretched and taken to levels up and down and around and around. I personally feel that porn is too direct. I like a little effort to be made by myself. That’s me personally.
It feels like writing meant to cause sexual arousal. That’s it. It’s material designed for orgasm only. Maybe I’d call it the quickie of erotic literature.
Now, some may argue that any book with detailed, graphic sex scenes is porn. But I am not making that kind of sweeping generalization’ I don’t think it can be that simple even with this not being my particular genre. Maybe the lines are blurred as life changes? We all become more open? Taboo isn’t what taboo used to be?
Considering my reading experience, which I admit is very limited and these thoughts of mine are based on how I live in this present era and knowing what I would like to read – I feel that romance, erotica, and romantic erotica, are strongly character driven so the sex scenes have a purpose based on the power of these connections. I mean a kiss for me described in a connected scene with two specific people with a specific bond and mutual desire is way more intense than two randoms kissing deep tongue and ripping clothes off in a porn clip way because they like the cliché look of each other. I would be more aroused at 10 paragraphs setting up the kiss than the kiss itself, until the kiss itself become the spark lighter on the dynamite.
Erotica
Maybe this isn’t as clear cut and a reason for blurred lines sometimes.
Oxford reference describes it as ‘The collective term for materials of an erotic nature, and particularly for prose or verse narratives of sexual fantasy ranging from explicitly pornographic novels to jocular poems on sexual subjects, whether or not these are illustrated pictorially.’
Hope that makes it clearer for you. Not for me. I am not sure using a word to describe a word is very helpful for my distracted mind. And also it seems to create more blurred lines than it dismantles.
It’s sexual fantasy as the heart of it. Not necessary and romance.
Erotica is writing that includes explicit, titillating sex scenes, and thus happy endings aren’t always guaranteed, and neither is OTP (One True Pairing).
In today’s erotica, as of writing this, you’ll find lots of ménage action that may or may not ever culminate in monogamy. Taboo suggested but with things not considered taboo and character relationships that may be fiction, but we want to drag into the real world for our own self interest.
Sex is also often the main conflict in the story. In other words, the way you can determine if a story is erotica is if it would be severely impacted (or decimated) if you were to remove all the sex scenes.
Romance
Red hot levels may be more varied and stand out a lot more in romance novels. I am not sure if there is an authors temperature gauge for this development but many romance novels have no sex. Not every reader associates sex with romance. Not every reader wants sex. Not every reader differentiates between romance and sexual attraction and desire as others do. Romance doesn’t have to be the domain of lovers.
In some romance novels, readers are likely to be left to their own imaginations regarding the characters having had sex, but all the action happens outside of the writing. Whereas some other romances may be eye wateringly steamy with explicit sex scenes.
I don’t believe, or should I say I am hoping that, it’s not the sex that sells a romance novel, its the character and connection of them which is the focus and yet the addition of sex that sells when it then becomes the erotic novel.
In a romance, the story revolves around two people falling in love, and eventually having their life and fun and dreams and fantasy in a committed, monogamous relationship. If you were to remove all the sex scenes from a romance novel, the story should stand alone nicely. If you’re reading a story that doesn’t focus on two people falling in love, chances are you’re not reading a romance novel. Again my own opinion as an as yet unpublished amateur writing trying to figure out what presses my buttons!
Erotic Romance
Maybe the best way to describe this is the illegitimate and wayward love child of romance and erotica. Romance higher up the thermometer. Steam factor 10. Many more raunchy scenes.
Having said that, the overall focus of an erotic romance is still the story of how the main characters fall in love. Its a big sexy mixing bowl of all the above and leads me sometimes to wonder if these are just categories created to sell more than actual categories full of quality. I just like what I like and tingle when I tingle.
Like what I like
I would never for one moment disparage any category or any author or any work. Who am I to do that?
But I do know I like what I like, and I also hope there will be a collective out there who respond to my creations. By reason of the numbers game there must be!
I will tell the stories I want to read, in the voice I have with some fiction and some fact. Some love and some over the edge.
So I researched boundaries and tried to find categories and a route. But all I found is some I like and some which doesn’t do it for me. And that’s all OK. You can use this measuring stick for my work to come.