What is erotic fiction? - Assignment 1 by anonymouse

[anonymouse]

This essay is a kind of catharsis for me - a close and personal examination of the components and processes that come together for me during the act of writing erotic fiction. It is also my own distillation of the various prescribed readings for this assignment. I feel like I'm at school again (not a bad thing) however, I'll refrain from use of formal academic citations. (See 'stickies' in the main thread )

Parz says (in Writing Tips from Fellow Authors) that the purpose of erotic fiction is to 'transport the reader from their current reality into a world of erotic fantasy'. I agree with this completely and, it's such an important point, I will expand on what Praz wrote.

Fiction generally, but erotic fiction specifically, aims to appeal to very basic desires in people. Praz writes of an 'arousal' factor as motivation for readers to become engaged in a story, and this is certainly true. In advertising, there's a saying: 'Sell the sizzle, not the steak'. This is a good, simple analogy to apply to the craft of writing anything - fiction or non-fiction. So then, what is 'the sizzle' when it comes to erotic fiction?

The most obvious metaphor is 'hot sex'. Those two words, when combined, form a kind of word sculpture - an artifact, not unlike Rodin's 'Thinker' sculpture. What does it mean? What is he thinking about? People all bring their different interpretations to it. However, like Rodin's sculpture, when words are conjured to describe it, essentially, something that exists in a three-dimensional space is being reduced down to a one-dimensional space. It is the task of the author, with words, to try and reconstruct that three-dimensional space.

Of course, fiction (by definition) doesn't actually exist in any space outside the author's imagination. It's also the case that the reader's imagination is its own empty space in which the author intends to exhibit their work. So, to clarify what Praz has said, the 'transportation' he wrote of is one of outer-world reality and consciousness into inner thought sub-consciousness. If effect, we're talking about magic and sleight-of-hand trickery.

I'm not a magician, but I understand the principles of magic and deception. In fact, magic acts work because they play directly to human perception. A pencil dunked in a glass of water will appear to bend. Human logic will say, 'That's impossible', but still we see a bent pencil. I have no idea where the rabbit comes from, but it comes out of a hat. It comes out of a hat, and then dives down a hole. Big becomes small; up becomes down, and people (like Alice) believe it.

I've used this analogy because Lewis Carroll's tales provide the perfect blueprint to erotic fiction and fantasy. Whenever I write, I think of Carroll and Alice's adventures. I don't mean this in any literal sense - just the clarity in which Carroll was able to create, with words, a transition from solid 'reality' into the fluid reality of the imagination. The greatest allure and inspiration from this, for me as a reader of Carroll, is I can't precisely pinpoint where reality ended, and fantasy begins.

Other analogies of the same mental phenomenon can be found in folklore, such as The Emperor's New Clothes or the Hindi story, 'Blind men and an elephant'. Perception is like Play-Doh, and it is the 'material' that a writer ultimately plays with and moulds.

anonymouse