What is erotica anyway?

So today I had a comment on my blog from what appeared to be a real person. This made me so happy at first because I don't get near enough comments on my blog. But then, I read the comment...

It was the first 3 sentences of a story with a link to read the rest. I deleted it within a second. WHY? Because it was pornographic.

Whoa whoa wait? What? I deleted something for being pornographic?!?! I know y'all are confused by this because - lets face it - I have plenty of things on my blog that contain, describe, or somehow feature sex. I'm probably the last person people would expect to be mildly offended by someone posting porn on my blog, but I am.

Why?

Well, here's the thing, I'm kind of a grammar snob. I am a writer in the true sense, meaning I devote a lot of time and effort into creating something that most people will enjoy. I add graphic sex scenes to some of my writing because I fully believe that sex is a big part of life and that no story talking about someone's life would be complete without a little - or a lot - of sex.

In short, I do write some erotica, and I'm pretty good at it, but it's not the only thing I write.

So wait, back up. What exactly IS erotica?

Let's take three types of stories and compare them. Romance, erotica, and pornography.

Pornography is probably the easiest to describe. Here's an example:

He walked into the room and saw her in the middle of getting undressed, so he walked over to her, lifted her into his arms, tossed her on the bed, and proceeded to fuck her until the headboard banged into the wall. She was naturally delighted and moaned and gasped out her pleasure repeatedly. The fucking took all day, and then when he had finally gotten his rocks off, he left her in bed while he went home.

The entire story exists ONLY for sex and it is graphically described (maybe not so graphic in my example paragraph), but it has no real emotion to it. It's usually a product for men to read or watch so they can masturbate to it. From beginning to end, it has no story but sex, and if it does have a story, it's only to explain why this sex is new and different or enviable.

ROMANCE - on the other hand - is a story that talks about how the couple met, the things they did, and how everyone felt. The story revolves around them falling in love and very likely overcoming some obstacles to be together. It may contain sex, and heck! Very often contains graphic sex. But the sex is not the crux of the story. It's not the reason the story exists.

Erotica is fairly hard to categorize because it is a mixture of the other two genres. It usually has a story, but the story either revolves around sex or it relies heavily on sex to fill the gaps in the plot. It could go something like this:

A man and woman met for the first time because they were set up on a blind date. Both had fun on the date and found the other person funny, but they felt no beginning pangs of love. After a couple of hours, they ran out of things to do but didn't really want to go home and be alone, so they decided to go back to his place and have sex. The sex turned out to be epic, so they had more sex. Then, the next morning, they decided to exchange numbers and call each other if they ever wanted a booty call. For the rest of the story, they run into troubles finding love, so they hook up to have sex at least once a chapter. By the end of the story, they might actually be together, but their story was based on sex and love happened to be the product.

So, to recap: Pornography equals no real story for the sake of sex. Romance equals story for the sake of love, and erotica equals an actual story for the sake of sex, complete with plot that makes sense but isn't intended to have the characters fall in love.

A LOT of times - especially in my writing - romance and erotica end up being the same thing, lol! But the most important thing of all is that I as the author get to decide what category my story falls into, lol!

So anyway, the reason I am against pornography posted to my blog is this: I want a story. I want the characters to get to know each other and fall in love - or at the very least a very solid friendship. I want my readers to be happy and feel good after they read one of my stories (most of the time, lol). I also know that there are times when a reader wants to read something without sex, so I have separated my stories into sections for that very reason.

So yes, it did actually mildly offend me when a man posted pornography on my blog. Sigh... Anyway, rant over. Have a happy day :-D