I just got asked a number of questions on writing erotica. The requirement was for nice concise answers and one of the things that defeated me was my attempt to discuss the place of the narrator in erotic writing. In any piece of writing, there is a three-way going on between the reader, the story and the narrator. Yes, I’ve left the writer out. Bear with me on this, because the relationship between the narrator and the writer is a whole other post.
When Christopher Isherwood wrote: “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking,” he was lying. There is nothing passive about a camera. It decides where to look, what kind of focus, what kind of lens, the framing of the shot, etc.
In a first person POV story, the narrator is obvious to the reader because he or she is also a character: the one who calls themselves ‘I.’ In third person, the narrator is not as easy to spot but they are still there. They are the camera. They decide what to point the reader’s attention to. When you, as a reader, are shown detail, it is the narrator who has chosen which detail to show you. The narrator also lies in the language that is used. Are the heroine’s lips presented in positive or negative terms? Let me give you an example:
- The thick, red, greedy flesh of her mouth spread wide in invitation. He kissed her.
- The lush, generous red lips curved in an inviting smile. He kissed her.
Same description of a woman smiling, but who has decided how the reader should see them? The narrator. There is no ‘I’ in either of these sentences, but there is a bias in the way the scene is being presented. In that bias lies the personality of the narrator. In the space of one sentence, you may not ‘feel’ the presence of the narrator, but start reading 5,000 words of story and, as a reader, you will feel his or her presence, if only subconsciously. And subconsciously or not, as a reader, you will begin to decide either to trust or not.
So far the discussion of the narrator could be applied to any type of fiction but, when it comes to erotica, I think the relationship a much more intimate one. Erotica often invites readers down very personal paths to explore desires and acts of eroticism that most people would not venture down. And whether you, as a reader, will suspend your disbelief and give yourself over to the story, and follow along as an engaged participant is going to depend on whether you like and trust the narrator.
Readers of erotica play interesting parts. They are both voyeurs, in the company of the narrator/guide and, if the erotica is really good, they are participants – body snatchers who pour themselves into one of the characters in the story and experience it from within. This is really the most powerful of all reading experiences, and when it’s good, it leaves you wet or erect with the scent of that fictional sex still on your skin. It was the narrator who persuaded you to go that deep.
For me, the narrator is like the Dom to the reader’s submission to the story. They have to be responsible enough to take you through the harrowing play and you must trust them enough that you come out intact, and get the aftercare you need. It doesn’t mean that they mitigate the strength of the experience, but they are always there, through it. They don’t change and go switch on you in the middle, and they acknowledge the impact of the experience at the end.
RG, FW Murnau, who probably thought more about a camera as narrative device than most, said:
“Simplicity demands the maximum of artistry. The camera is the director’s pencil. It should have the greatest possible mobility in order to record the most fleeting harmony of atmosphere. It is important that the mechanical factor should not stand between the spectator and the film.” Sub spectator for reader and film for story and you have the ideal narrator. Present, but transparent, devoid of the artifice that calls attention to the narrator and interrupts the suspension of disbelief.
The omniscient narrator, VOG, allows the writer to stand outside her characters, and say, allow character A to comment on character B, while readers can note the dissonance between the narrator and character A or B’s voices and draw their own conclusion. You’re right, the narrator doesn’t say “Hey Reader, A is an asshole, don’t believe him.†Rather by careful choice of details and atmosphere, you create the high angle vantage and shading from which the reader processes the story. If your narrator is also a character, you lose that perch and are confined to the lower angle of the character’s vantage.
Curiously, I’ve found where the omniscient narrator breaks down is precisely in the throes of sex, where first person throws the reader, right smack into the act. Think of Joyce’s Molly Bloom “Yes, Yes,†soliloquy. Write that in third person and watch the passion shrivel. The omniscient narrator is free to enter the minds and bodies of characters, but the character-based narrator has a much harder time ascending to the third person perch. Even when the character/narrator proves to be an “unreliable narrator” we tend to trust the vantage of whoever is telling the story, however dark or unlikeable.
I’m intrigued by the idea of the narrator of an erotic story as the Dom. It makes sense to me but most of the time it isn’t how I use the narrator.
I’ve recently being going over my stories and I’ve noticed that the best ones are written first person present tense. They start with a strong hook that pulls the reader right into the story, flip to a back story, return, very up close and personal, to the action, and end with something having changed for the narrator, sometimes something they know about themselves, sometimes a change in their relationship with others.
This pattern repeats even when the tone of the story is quite different.
“Deserving Ruth†is a story about guilt, punishment and redemption. “Playing With Barney†is a light piece about being performing for a voyeur.
“Deserving Ruth†starts with:
“My wife says you like to come in her mouth, David.â€
We are only one drink in to the evening and this isn’t the conversational opener I’d expected. I nurse my bottle of Bud and say nothing.â€
“Playing with Barney†starts with
“I’m back in the room again, facing the mirror that he watches me through. It’s important that I pretend not to know that he’s there. If he wanted eye contact there’d be no need for the mirror.â€
Both openings establish that we are going to get right to the action but both of them also start to build the character of the narrator
For me, the character of the narrator is the heart of it. It isn’t just the narrator as camera or the narrator as lightning rod, earthing the passion of the scene. It’s that all that fucking, sucking, fisting, whipping, kissing, sodomising and ejaculating that my stories contain is meaningless without the character of the narrator. The story isn’t about the sex, its about whether you love, hate, pity or admire the narrator.
The first person present tense does give the immediacy that erotica needs, but if that POV is used to share the thoughts and emotions of the narrator and not just their sensory experience, then you are forced to walk in their shoes, even if you’re certain you’re going to need a shower as soon as its over.
The hook gets to the hot and steamy faster and convinces the reader to stay but the bard on the hook is that the character is saying “understand me in the context of a sexual act but understand that I know that the act is a choice and the choice says as much about me as the act itselfâ€
The flip to backstory has the advantage of allowing a change of pace (and tense) and let’s you pack in a few more sex scenes, but it also positions the character as on a journey, a chain of choices that change who the character is.
The up close and personal sex scene delivers on the implicit promise that erotica will arouse the reader but, if its done well it leaves the taste of the character in your mouth and their scent in your nose and their appetites and revulsion in your memory.
Finally, the change at the end gets you beyond the sense that it was all over at the money shot to something that has an end, but it also means that you can share in the impact of the sex on the character (after glow, regret, joy, revulsion, liberation, guilt or growth). If you get that bit right the story lives beyond the sex because the character of the narrator is now in your head.
Your Dom analogy is close to this. The main difference for me is that I enjoy stories where the narrator doesn’t lead, where they don’t know where they are going, where their view is unreliable and their self-perception is flawed. Maybe because, that way there is more for me to identify with.