Writing Update and Inside the Writing Process: Suspension of Disbelief in Erotica

Good evening everyone!

A couple of quick updates on where I’m at with writing, and then I have a topic I want to discuss, in one of my very occasional series on the writing process.

First, after a month of Patreon exclusivity, “Comfort Zone” was released on Literotica today, and it is truly getting savaged by the anti-cuckold crowd as usual lol. I anticipated that, but I won’t lie and say it doesn’t sting a bit. One quick release note: when I began preparing the story for publication, the “bittersweet” ending and the “bitter” ending had been dead-tied for a week. I made an executive decision and made the “bittersweet” ending the canon ending. Since then, the “bitter” ending has pulled ahead somewhat, so I do feel a bit bad about that call, but it had the advantage of setting up well for a potential sequel. If people badly want to read the teased scene implied by the “bitter” ending of Tom attending Paige and Liam’s anniversary celebration, then I wouldn’t be opposed to writing a “what if” at some point.

Currently, I am about a third of the way through drafting Commission 4, which is a very interesting prompt that is pushing me to get creative. I hope the results will be interesting to read! The commissioner is in a bit of a time crunch here, so I am prioritizing this draft first, then editing Downward Dog 3, then writing Cool Mom 2 (It's been a while since I released a short story, sorry!), and then finally, Hottie in the Mirror 4.

Today, I want to talk about the drafting process for writing stories. And, as part of that, I want to talk about the suspension of disbelief, or as I call it when applied to erotica: porn logic.

When people read erotica, or, indeed, watch porn, there is a certain level of heightened reality that we just accept. As a simple example: pizza delivery drivers don’t often have sex with customers in real life. In an erotic story, a woman might get turned on by her boss hitting on her, where in real life she would be creeped out and angry.

Understanding the limits of porn logic is vital when writing erotica, and can be the difference between a story feeling hot and a story feeling silly, or worse, gross. Like I said, the audience are willing to accept a certain stretching and heightening of reality, but if you take things too far, they will snap. I’m constantly on the alert to make sure that, while my scenarios are heightened, they don’t get too far-fetched and ridiculous.

To make matters more complicated, you really want to avoid too much real-world logic when writing an erotic story. As a gross example: in the real world, a free-use gangbang would be an awful idea because of STDs. You don’t want your audience thinking about stuff like that at all. You want to keep them safely in the porn bubble, where real-world concerns like that don’t even come up.

So it’s a balancing act. You want things to be grounded, but not so realistic that it ruins the fun. Here are two real writing conundrums I ran into with recent stories:

When writing “Kitty in the Middle”, I ran into a bit of a problem when drafting one of the final scenes. The original outline called for Kitty’s Mom and sister to reveal their relationship with Kitty on stage to the entire crowd. The problem was, because of the circumstances of their relationship, doing so would be a wildly bad idea in real life, leading to massive social and legal consequences. It broke the bubble of porn logic for Laura to openly admit what had been happening to a crowd of people. It would feel silly. In the end, I had to change it so Laura and Becca’s identities were hidden.

When drafting “Wet Witch of the West”, I ran into the opposite problem. In the final, climactic showdown between Adam and Tory, the initial solution that Tory used to force Adam to back down was a threat to go to the cops. It made sense in the story, and would be a plausible threat that would force Adam to give up. After all, what Adam had been doing was both awful and illegal. But that was the issue. Bringing up the police injected too much real-world logic into the scenario: it would make the reader reflect that Tory, the “hero”, was also doing some pretty awful things according to real-world logic. I changed the scenario so that Adam was defeated by a rebellion from Carol, and I think the story was stronger for it.

This is something I put a great deal of thought into, and it isn’t easy. Another complicating factor is that everybody has different thresholds for how far “porn logic” will take them. Look at any highly commented story on Literotica and you’ll see some people listing reasons that the story is “unrealistic” while others praise it.

I hope that you enjoyed hearing me muse for a while. I enjoy these looks at the writing process, but sometimes they are a little navel-gazey.