In defence of smut
I really struggle with negative reviews. There
is no getting around it; they are depressing. Recently I received this review,
titled ZERO STARS, for one of my stories, The
Laundromat.
This is smut, trash that shouldn't even be sold in porn shops! I am not a
prude, I love the 50 Shades and Crossfire series BUT THIS IS NOT A EROTIC
ROMANCE! I wish I could wash this story out of my brain! I would give it zero
stars but Amazon requires that I give it a star rating. Shame on Amazon for
recommending this!
Well, when you get a review like that, complete
with ungrammatical all caps, you know you really have upset someone. My first
reaction is to reminding myself that the same story has hundreds of
appreciative readers. Then I begin to wonder
if this story will ever have thousands of paying readers. If not, why not? This
review shouted at me that my story was trash and would never be a best seller,
partly because my story was NOT A EROTIC ROMANCE. Were they right?
From the beginning my story was going to be
erotica, not romance, and I saw these as quite different genres. My working definitions
for these genres were along the following lines. Romance stories are about love
between two main characters, ordinarily a man and a woman, whose love for each
other is tested in some way before a live-happily-ever-after ending. Erotica is
a story that explores sexuality in ways that are intended to arouse the reader.
For some people erotica is a sub-category of Romance, but I personally see them
as separate.
I think the hybrid category Erotic Romance
can be confusing because people will differ on what should be the main emphasis:
sex or love. Is it about sexy love or lovely sex? Can it be either of these as
long as it is not smut? Thinking about this — and getting confused — I decided
to look for a definition of smut. The first one listed from my search was the
following from urbandictionary.com:
Highly developed stories with love
lines and other things that appeal to women that also include a lot of sexually
explicit scenes.
I read this definition and felt pleased.
This exactly describes what I was trying to produce when I began writing The Laundromat. It seems like my ZERO
STARS critic might have got it right. My story really is smut. I have a hero
author, Philip K. Dick, who wrote a great story called Confessions of a Crap Artist. I begin to wonder if I should have
called this author takeover piece Confessions of a Smut Writer.
I now also realise all my stories so far
have been about a woman undertaking a journey. During this journey the main
character explores what love and associated topics mean for them as they
participate in a succession of sexually explicit encounters. I always really
hoped my stories would appeal to women, which was one reason why I write from a
woman’s point of view. I also thought this made them more interesting to write
and read.
I wanted to explore a range of topics in The Laundromat including the potential
benefits of submission as a liberating sensual force and how the joys of tantric
sex might be experienced and described. Another issue I really wanted to
explore was polyamory. I was hoping to celebrate the sexuality of mature woman
who are no longer a twenty-something too.
In other words, with The Laundromat, I was aiming to write a highly developed story, a
literary story, exploring lots of topics, and full of sex. From the beginning I
was writing smut. I think I even said that at the time, half joking, without
fully realising how highly appropriate a term it was for my writing.
The critic above was not the only person
though who found fault with my story. Here is another negative review:
I'm so sorry to say that I couldn't finish this book. I made it as far as
53% of the way through. Maybe if it was shorter, much shorter, I'd have
finished it but I just couldn't. There was way too much sex in it for me, so
much so that it was exhausting to read. It read like a cheap porno. Lots of
characters having lots of sex with lots of different strangers and to make
matters worse, it went as far as different rooms at the Laundromat displaying
different sexual scenarios. Too much of an unrealistic storyline to this book
for me I'm afraid, but that doesn't mean that others won't like it.
I was grateful that this reviewer at least
left the door open to other people possibly liking my story. The obvious
conclusion to make is that not everyone likes smut. This review makes me begin
to think that it is the frequency of sexual encounters recounted within the
story that matters even more so than the level of explicitness. Clearly there
is a line somewhere that separates those whose main preference is for sexy love
from those who really like to read (and write) about lovely sex.
Ronnie’s girl is another person who didn’t
enjoy reading The Laundromat, and she
didn’t ever finish it either. She asked me to write a more romantic story, and
gave me a brief story outline. She said to me: ‘write something I might like to
read about me going out with another man on a date; remembering, holding hands
for me is a really lovely intimate act’. She also said something like ‘you
don’t need to write a whole lot about us having sex. Please just make it nice
and something I would like to read’.
I found writing this story very difficult and
about six months later published Kate
Gets Marks. Ronnie’s Girl wouldn’t read it for quite a while and not until
I insisted. When I asked her what she thought about it she told me it was
alright, but it made her feel aroused. I took this as a compliment, even though
the way she said it made becoming aroused sound troubling. I had written smut
again, but I really do think this story also does qualify as Erotic Romance. I
certainly hope so because it might sell better than smut.
I wonder what other people think about
smut, erotica and romance as categories. Are they different points along a
continuum? I think this is of more than intellectual interest because
publishers and readers want to use categories to help them sift through what
people might and might not like. I think I am going to use the term smut a bit
more proudly though, even though it might have stigma attached to it. Please tell
me if you think I am being foolish.
Link to The Laundromat and
its reviews:
Kate Gets Marks:
Dolphin Heat (free, complete smut)
Ronnie Strong Website
