Constance Daley's Blog - Posts Tagged "acceptance"
The Nature of Acceptance
I like to think that by its very nature, erotica is held to a lower standard when it comes to believability than other stories are. This is partially because- to me- erotica is about fantasy, and fantasy is by its very nature something that is either difficult to bring about or has unacceptable consequences. Today, I want to talk a little about believability in the context of two of my stories, Acceptance and Open Invitation.
There is no denying that the actions of the main character of Acceptance are about zero percent likely to ever occur in the real world. The chances that someone called in front of a group of people would perform the acts the protagonist does probably are too low to be measured. But as the writer, I don't have to worry about the real chances. I just have to make sure that the reason she does it is good enough for her. Specifically, I have to make sure that her reason is good enough that the reader will accept it. Thankfully, most readers recognize the stories are fantasy and are willing to go along with you provided you don't overreach too drastically.
Open Invitation presents a different issue in that where the character in Acceptance is being coerced into doing something she doesn't want to do, the character in Open Invitation is very eager. The problem here is maintaining the fantasy element while injecting the exact right amount of reality. Strangely, this has little to do with the protagonist herself. The key is her husband. It needs to be believable that his character would have no problems with his wife behaving in such a manner. And basically, there are two ways to do this. Both have to do with acceptance, the question just becomes who is doing the accepting.
One of the two options is to have the man accept that his wife wants to do this. In this scenario, though he's still turned on by the idea and enjoys it, the focus is on the wife's fantasy, not his. This is the route I went with Open Invitation, because the specific fantasy I was channeling required the husband to be providing his wife with exactly what she wanted, to the extent that he knows the right things to say and do the whole time. The other option is to have the wife accept that the husband wants her to do this, that he is turned on by it, and for her to do it for him. Honestly, this isn't a fantasy I've explored very much in my writing to this point, but thinking about it is arousing, and I suspect I will be writing a story of this type very soon.
Of course there's the third option, but it's so completely unlike the other two that it's not really something you can choose in place of those. That option is cuckolding, which I suppose at some point will deserve a blog post of its own. I haven't played around too much with this one either (though Good Fences comes right to mind as an example ,with Sliding Doors a similar theme but not the same to me), though I'm sure I will at some point. If you are into cuckolding, I must admit that I very much enjoyed Eva Benedek's story Covering the Spread.Acceptance
There is no denying that the actions of the main character of Acceptance are about zero percent likely to ever occur in the real world. The chances that someone called in front of a group of people would perform the acts the protagonist does probably are too low to be measured. But as the writer, I don't have to worry about the real chances. I just have to make sure that the reason she does it is good enough for her. Specifically, I have to make sure that her reason is good enough that the reader will accept it. Thankfully, most readers recognize the stories are fantasy and are willing to go along with you provided you don't overreach too drastically.
Open Invitation presents a different issue in that where the character in Acceptance is being coerced into doing something she doesn't want to do, the character in Open Invitation is very eager. The problem here is maintaining the fantasy element while injecting the exact right amount of reality. Strangely, this has little to do with the protagonist herself. The key is her husband. It needs to be believable that his character would have no problems with his wife behaving in such a manner. And basically, there are two ways to do this. Both have to do with acceptance, the question just becomes who is doing the accepting.
One of the two options is to have the man accept that his wife wants to do this. In this scenario, though he's still turned on by the idea and enjoys it, the focus is on the wife's fantasy, not his. This is the route I went with Open Invitation, because the specific fantasy I was channeling required the husband to be providing his wife with exactly what she wanted, to the extent that he knows the right things to say and do the whole time. The other option is to have the wife accept that the husband wants her to do this, that he is turned on by it, and for her to do it for him. Honestly, this isn't a fantasy I've explored very much in my writing to this point, but thinking about it is arousing, and I suspect I will be writing a story of this type very soon.
Of course there's the third option, but it's so completely unlike the other two that it's not really something you can choose in place of those. That option is cuckolding, which I suppose at some point will deserve a blog post of its own. I haven't played around too much with this one either (though Good Fences comes right to mind as an example ,with Sliding Doors a similar theme but not the same to me), though I'm sure I will at some point. If you are into cuckolding, I must admit that I very much enjoyed Eva Benedek's story Covering the Spread.Acceptance
