This for bother authors and readers a like. I've found that there are two dominating styles of erotic stories. One is the highly descriptive kind with very little dialogue. Where the author chooses to describe the characters feels and emotions during sex and climax rather then vocalize them. The other would be of course the more vocal type. (ie/ "I'm cummmming!")
Which do you prefer when reading or writing?
I don't know about writing. I haven't written that much. I think as a reader it just depends on how good the story is.
True it does, but I'm talking about the kind of story that is dominated by dialogue versus one that is dominated by by descriptions of emotion.
A perfectly balanced story would contain equals parts of both placing dialogue where it should be.
The actual question hidden in my words do you prefer a sensual building story or a hardcore porn like story?
As a reader, I prefer a slow buildup and a bit of background before the action starts. I like to know how the main characters came to be together. Emotions are important - knowing what's going on inside their minds makes it more real.
With regards to detail, I enjoy reading descriptive stories broken up with sensual dialogue.
I will be the first to admit that dialog is not my forte'. Most of my stories are narratives from the 3rd person. I do feel my descriptions of the sexual situations are good, but my strength as a writer is in capturing the emotions of my charactors. This is where I try to focus my stories from
I will read both, but I like more of a build up.
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Sassy
I agree with some of the previous posters that a good build up makes the story more enjoyable. Knowing how the characters came together is what makes erotic literature different from porn. Most porn starts out with action right away. It's visually stimulating so it doesn't need to be creative. When you read about a sex it's the relationship the characters have with each other that is interesting not the tits, asses, dicks and vaginas.
So to answer your question I like the descriptive stories with a nice build up the best. LadyX and DamonX are good examples of writers that get the balance of dialogue, description and backstory just right in my opinion.
Everything has a time and place. These days it is almost always the story for me. I like developing characters that are strong but flawed like real life. I hate perfect people in stories. In real life perfect people want to run yours. I digress.
I like trying to create characters and a story. Sex for me is secondary at this point, meaning the characters come first. (shameless plug alert) When gypsymoth and I wrote Catherine, the difficult part was making Catherine and Bryce believable as people. I thought in the beginning the sex would be easy to write but when you develop characters then the way they have sex has to be in character. It wasn't that easy and took time. A lot of thinking about how would Bryce act, how would Catherine act. You have to get outside of yourself when you do that.
If sex is primary then the characters can be cardboard, nobody cares. The interest is primarily focused on the physical and the emotional aspects are limited to the sexual experience. In this case, and this is only my opinion, the writer is catering to sexual fantasies either theirs, the reader or both. Nothing wrong with that for what it is but in my opinion that is more porn oriented than erotic.
Regarding dialog, I have an opinion on that. Dialog, is a tool that is dependent on the writers skill. Sometimes I use it, sometimes not. It all depends on how I feel it works within the story. Sometimes, I don't use it because I have no idea what the characters would say. This is a weakness on my part but I work around it. Other times I know exactly what they would say. Then other times I don't feel the need for dialog.
There is a place for both styles either alone or as a mix.
Since starting to write I have become obsessed with dialogue, as I find it very difficult to pull off well.
This Monday I was watching Coronation Street (a UK popular soap opera set in the north of England). I was paying attention to the dialogue from a writer's perspective, listening and thinking that some guys were sitting around a table making this stuff up and wondering how they came up with such natural sounding exchanges. Some of it is very clever stuff indeed. I'm not talking plot, just the casual exchanges. Years of practise I suppose.
I have only just started to add dialogue to my writing and what I come up with seems contrived and stilted.
I would be interested to hear how others generate dialogue. Does it just arise in you heads naturally as you write, or have you made special effort to listen to the people around you, or absorb stuff from film & tv, for future use?
Dialogue - I love, inner monologue I love even more...all my stories have evolved because I heard an exchange of dialogue in my head...it is so important to me as a writer and a reader...Most of my sexual encounters start with a good amount of dialogue before the sex happens so I want a story to reflect that...I love the the flirtation,the banter and the lewdness (grins)
Snakeoil, Dancing Doll's advice about saying your characters dialogue outloud and acting it out is good. In some of my later stories I did this and I feel it turned out better than in my earlier stories where I just wrote it.
I also imagine what my friends would say if in the same situation as my characters and I find that really helps.
Thanks for that Dancing_Doll And Magical_felix. I'll have a go at verbalising out loud as I write.
While I am tempted to follow Dancing_dolls advanced users technique of saying my character's dialogue out loud while showering, I would be afraid that it may become habitual. I would hate to find myself in a shower cubicle at the gym and have the other guys listen to my fledgling characters trying out their lines. Can you image..........
"Take me now big boy. I want you cock hard inside me. All the way. Oh yes!"
*shudders*
I hadn't really given this much thought. good question. So I looked over several of my stories. I use dialogue quite a lot, especially if my story is written First Person POV. The chief character not only uses dialog to show the action and relationships with other characters, but carries on an internal dialog with the reader. In addition, I use word choice, slang and spellings that mirror an accent to provide more information about the location, age and personality of the chief character without having to spell it all out. I've written stories in Author Omniscient where there is little dialog, but most of my stories with dialog get read by more people and rated higher.
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I personally prefer to use a lot of dialogue with limited description- I like to build up the chemistry between the characters. My goal, however, is to use dialogue only to advance characterization and plot, and not just to pad my story with extra words. While I do use some description in talking about the character's physical appearance and setting, I like to leave that mainly for the reader's imagination. That's just me though.
"Don't forget your penis cream."
-Eugene Levy
I love to read and write both.
