I am wondering something. I know romance and erotica are usually separate things, but can a work be both. I just wrote "The New E.D. Treatment" and am wondering if it is a romance. Can a romance have hot and heavy graphic sex scenes and still be a romance, or is the sex scenes that make it erotica. I notice that my smut is different from the standard TG stories out there. There's an anger that is missing, there's no sense of revenge. My stories tend to be about people who find each other. In this new story Jacqueline and Nelson find each other. When I first started writing it, the transformation was done through trickery, but that didn't set right with me. I doubt it ever will.
Anyhoo, I'm just wondering about the classifications. Romance, erotica, or both.
Comments
I think romance can be a part of erotica, but ...
... erotica does not have to have romance as part of it to exist. Romantic love can act as a catalyst for lust and raise the intensity of a sexual encounter. But lust can be overpowering even when no love is present, and drive a riveting, passionate liaison that could kindle a reader's desires and yet end in nothing more than a nod and a wink goodbye as those who surrendered to their lust choose to part.
Just my humble opinion. *grin*
Randalynn
It all deals with character development...
If you spend hundreds of pages slowing building up a romance to the love scene, then it is romance.
If you start the love scene at the start, of give shallow reasons for a love scene, then it is erotica.
categories
The two category classification system on Amazon stinks, doesn't it? It really desperately needs to evolve into a tags based system because the current system makes it so different to clearly define a lot of books. I felt that way even before putting up Glass but it really made me want to start pulling my hair out once I did. All I can think of is that they are worried about people being able to just tag books with 'all the tags' to abuse the search system... but in locking it down from that sort of abuse, its almost impossible to properly categorize something.
I've really been frustrated over the last few months when trying to look for new books to read, too. The current Kindle reader/shopping app will only show you the top '100' books in a given category. And only a handful of categories based on your recent/past reading history. So if you have any diversity in your reading habits, it's all sorts of messed up.
Artificial categories created
Artificial categories created for marketing and advertising purposes.
Any author with an ounce of self-respect will ignore them and write what comes naturally.
Unfortunately
Unfortunately when you create and list a Kindle book, you get to choose two to list your book under. I'm not suggesting by any means tailoring what you write to fit the categories... but it is a serious difficulty in connecting with your target audience when you can't even clearly categorize what genre your book fills... let alone any more accurate information such as we take for granted here or on any of the common storysites.
Romance, Erotica, Whips, Chains and Smut.
I suppose it depends upon what is implied and what is described? I don't usually use certain very explicit words, and when Intercourse is engaged in, mostly it is implied. However, I have written things that are a bit over the top as an experiment just to see what I could do.
I wrote "Extreme" and "Natural Slave" as experiments to test my limits. "What you did to me", was a formula story to see if I could write to the site formula, though I did not try very hard and it did OK. It was a surprise to me how well "Katia" did. It seems there are those who like strong sexy bitches who can kill with malice and Katia certainly did that, and true to life, she did find a place where she could not continue doing Rambo like combat.
I don't actually think that Romance and Erotica separate very well. And much to the critics surprise, stories like "50 Shades" do very well. Though, I think the key with that story is that in spite of his being dangerous, his good side came out under the nurturing of Anastasia. This made women feel powerful, and every woman wants to feel she has power.