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the typical fic
There is a Typical Fic in the 2K - 8K range, and approximately 1/3 of this Typical Fic is the Advertised Porn. Sometimes it's closer to 40%, sometimes closer to 25%, but 30% is the most common ratio.
The remaining fic is usually something like 50-69% Getting There, 1-10% Sex is Next, with 1-10% Aftermath. "Getting There" most typically includes groundwork for the trope (we are best friends realizing our feelings; we're enemies but we're in prison together; aliens are going to make us do it! etc). Groundwork for the trope can be laid by talking about the trope (which was set into motion pre-fic, e.g. the enemies start in prison) or plot to make the trope happen (e.g. the enemies team up against a Bigger Enemy and get caught and thrown in prison).
"Sex Is Next" refers to the denouement of "Getting There." The best friends confess they love each other, the enemies get bored and one mentions there's nothing to do but The Do, the aliens who are making them do said do are herding them toward the arena. In other words, the plot is either resolved or stops; the other characters go away; there is a moment of They're Going To Do It before they, you know, Do It.
The Advertised Porn is whatever kink or tropes are referenced in the title, tags, and/or summary (usually all three).
Aftermath length can vary wildly depending on whether Getting There involved Plot (the enemies have to get out of prison) or Talking About It. The aftermath for the latter is usually How They Feel about each other, usually with a little nod to how they Got There ("Why did it take us so long?" "See you next time you're in prison!" "Let us never speak of that planet again.")
I don't have any particular value judgments about the Typical Fic as I've laid it out. I have come across examples both terrible and amazing. I was just wondering if you have thoughts about it, including but not limited to: how did we arrive at these ratios, is this a pwp, what are your thoughts on yaoi
The remaining fic is usually something like 50-69% Getting There, 1-10% Sex is Next, with 1-10% Aftermath. "Getting There" most typically includes groundwork for the trope (we are best friends realizing our feelings; we're enemies but we're in prison together; aliens are going to make us do it! etc). Groundwork for the trope can be laid by talking about the trope (which was set into motion pre-fic, e.g. the enemies start in prison) or plot to make the trope happen (e.g. the enemies team up against a Bigger Enemy and get caught and thrown in prison).
"Sex Is Next" refers to the denouement of "Getting There." The best friends confess they love each other, the enemies get bored and one mentions there's nothing to do but The Do, the aliens who are making them do said do are herding them toward the arena. In other words, the plot is either resolved or stops; the other characters go away; there is a moment of They're Going To Do It before they, you know, Do It.
The Advertised Porn is whatever kink or tropes are referenced in the title, tags, and/or summary (usually all three).
Aftermath length can vary wildly depending on whether Getting There involved Plot (the enemies have to get out of prison) or Talking About It. The aftermath for the latter is usually How They Feel about each other, usually with a little nod to how they Got There ("Why did it take us so long?" "See you next time you're in prison!" "Let us never speak of that planet again.")
I don't have any particular value judgments about the Typical Fic as I've laid it out. I have come across examples both terrible and amazing. I was just wondering if you have thoughts about it, including but not limited to: how did we arrive at these ratios, is this a pwp, what are your thoughts on yaoi
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(I also had trouble because I wasn't sure if some of the other fics counted as porn; see poll.)
I don't think this says anything about the validity of your ratios; mostly I think it speaks to the fact that I don't write as many outright PWPs as I thought I did, and that I care more about the relationship development than th actual sex, which I already knew. Also of the nine fics, six were a/b/o, lol @ me.
I'm going to be thinking about your "how did we arrive at these ratios" question for a while, though. Obviously you don't have to have them! Your porn can consist of a much higher fraction of the word count than 30%, and lots of fics do. Yet I immediately knew the kind of fic you were describing. Hmm. I think to some extent it's something we've all learned together, right? A formula for storytelling we all soak up without even noticing, this generalized shape of story arrived at by averaging lots and lots of fic.
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As to how we got there...I actually don't know about learning it together. Part of the reason I wrote this post is because sometimes I'm looking for a specific kink but the lead-up kind of annoys me. But then sometimes I go to WRITE a specific kink and find myself writing lead-up.
This could be because I have been indoctrinated into this way of doing it, but every time I try to skip it, something in the back of my head says, "but why are they here? How do they feel about it? What is their MOTIVATION?" It's like I can't get into it otherwise, even though I don't particularly care about their motivations.
And I wonder whether the instinct that makes us write the lead-up is the same instinct that makes us want porn with characters we know in the first place? It's hotter to a lot of us if the characters interior lives are explored. And even though that exploration has already been done by canon, we still feel that need when we go to write or read, because we're not familiar with these versions yet.
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It's hotter to a lot of us if the characters interior lives are explored.
That is definitely true for me. Of course, I'm the person who read the lead-up and post-coital pillow talk for MANY SPN kinkmeme fills that were about kinks I wasn't even into, just because the premise sounded emotionally interesting. On the other hand, if it's not emotionally interesting at all, then I get impatient with that part even if they are my kinks.
However, I think you can absolutely get that interiority while also devoting a lot more than 30% of the fic to porn. It just kind of depends on your set up, and how much of the story is happening DURING the porn as opposed to BEFORE the porn.
And I think there's also the thing where we assume the porn is the narrative climax as well as the other kind, and sometimes that's just not true. In one of the fics I was looking at, after the sex, the fic has another 20 or 25% to go, because the sex is just the catalyst for what the story was actually about. In fairness, that was the one that I felt least sure about calling porn in the first place.
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Part of my point with this post is that the sex is not the narrative climax at all; it is in fact its own arc, either occurring after the plot arc or in fact during the plot arc, but with a separate climax. For instance, in friends-to-lovers the climax is a mutual declaration of feelings, which usually occurs before the sex, which makes the 30% of sex that fails another narrative arc (because it's too long and has too much shape to simply be the denouement). In enemies-in-prison, the narrative climax is getting out of prison/escape/defeating the bad guy, but the sex has no part in the "rising action" because it did nothing to escalate the plot and everything to escalate their relationship, thus making their relationship a second narrative arc within the plot arc of their capture.
Now I go to look at your porn post!
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As for the writing, I guess it's mostly just emulating the structure of the things that I've been reading and the basic storytelling that I learned in school. I started out by writing a lot on kinkmemes (and still do) but I'm a really slow writer, so to finish a fill in a reasonable amount of time I would focus solely on what the prompter requested without adding a significant buildup (majority of my fills were 3k or less). Also, the fact that these types of fics are popular and generally well-received is positive reinforcement. I wouldn't say that they're exactly PWP; to be completely Porn Without Plot I'm thinking of an 'in media res' type of thing where the characters just fuck and that's it, which usually ends up at less than 2k -- it's more like the porn IS the plot for these Typical Fics.
I absolutely love to read long fics with elaborate plots, but as far as being able to write one of my own, I don't know if I could and I don't know if I want to commit to trying, and I think a lot of fic writers of this type might feel the same way. When I get an idea, it's usually a small idea, and I end up with a short fic from it. I don't have a strong value judgement either; obviously I enjoy these types of fics but they're as forgettable as they are enjoyable.
I've never read/watched much yaoi since it's mostly visual and I prefer reading (other reasons too, but that's the main one). Plus, I think part of the buildup towards the characters getting together that I mentioned before is in the original media itself, and without that background, I don't enjoy it as much.
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For instance, there's really no exposition. It starts with rising action, which is often resolved in the Sex is Next phase. Even if it's not resolved, I would say that if you're looking at the common diagram usually used to explain plot structure, there is a plateau after rising action, and that the sex is another arc with its own (often separate) climax.
Take the friends-to-lovers trope example. There is no exposition to explain that they are friends because we already know all that. It begins immediately with the problem, which launches into "rising action". The rising action is, "oh, God, I've fallen for my best friend; does he love me back?" The Sex is Next phase is the part where A finds out B loves him back. That is the climax; the rising action is actually resolved. The sex they have for the next 30% of the fic is, if you go by the classic structure, actually the denouement--and it's far too long to fit the classic structure. However, as you point out, there is a literal climax built into most sex scenes, and most sex scenes build toward that peak; therefore I would argue there's a second plot arc 2/3 of the way through the fic.
Enemies-trapped-together and aliens-made-them-do-it can in fact be similarly deconstructed, but I won't belabor the point.
I agree with you about everything else, though--that you care more if you get to see these particular iterations before they start having sex, and that was the other reason I made this post. I think it's interesting that we come in caring because we already know the characters, but all of us want to care about These Particular Characters Right Now. On the one hand it makes sense, but on the other hand it's amusing just how important character and relationships truly are integral to us getting off on porn.
I love that you actually told me your thoughts on yaoi, thank you. <3
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I think caring about their relationship is a big part of why I gravitate towards written porn. Like, to some extent I can watch two actors having sex with each other and see that their characters are feeling some type of way (same with looking at a drawing). But I want to be told /exactly/ what way they're feeling! I want to be inside their head and know it! Ultimately when I'm reading those types of fics, yeah, I am 90% there for the porn, but if I wanted pure porn, I'd just go to redtube or whatever people use for that.
Yaoi hadn't really crossed my mind in a long time until reading this post. I'm curious what your thoughts on yaoi are too.
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My thoughts on yaoi are mainly:
1) I still think "what are your thoughts on yaoi" is funny
2) More people used to call all slash yaoi and that's not the case any more, so with the exception of 1) I don't think about it much at all, except,
3) When Yuri on Ice was a big deal I kept thinking people were talking about yaoi not YOI
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I think, as well, for the longest time, those kinds of short stories were published in magazines that had to be kept behind the counter for other age-related reasons, so we don't grow up seeing them in our serials as well as on whichever fiction archive we find.
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I also took a look at my bookmarks. Out of 345, only a handful meet the criteria. For a romance to work for me, it appears I need a longer buildup than is allowed for in even an 8,000 word story. Knowing the characters in advance doesn't seem to matter.
But assuming my taste in fic makes me an outlier, and that the Typical Fic is as you describe, we got here because this is what most fans want to read. This is the Goldilocks fic: not too long, not too short, the right plot/sex ratio, all elements happening in the expected order.
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I am relatively new to writing, and a little less new to the concept of fic in general. I already wrote to you in a fic comment I've always loved stories in every format though. One fateful day I discovered anime, then fic, then tumblr, and after reading a bunch of really really good stories (on both ends) and some really really horrible ones too (also on both ends) I decided if horrible is game too, why not try myself to write more of what I'd like to read as well. That was about three years ago.
Back then I thought one of my main motivations for writing was to give the characters nice sex scenes. I liked reading them too a lot a few years ago; I just came from a phase of reading lots of (in hindsight admittedly awfully written) fantasy romance novels and being smacked in the face with far better-written stories with sex I didn't even have to buy and that had my favourite characters in them…how perfect was that, huh? It was thrilling, it was flashy, it was sensual. But the more I wrote in an attempt to actually getting them to Do The Thing, the more I realised I couldn't just let them go there without building up to it. It was like a barrier that made me stuck whenever I tried to push forward too quickly. So what were supposed to be fics in the mentioned word range above always tended to explode a bit, grew 10, 15, 80k words long, with them Doing It at various points in the story and then afterwards a bit incapable of keeping their hands to themselves.
It took me a year into writing to realise that I wasn't even liking sex scenes much once the first thrilling rush had abated. Or rather, I realised I really like them a lot, but only with the emotional backdrop which I suddenly found too often be lacking when I read (I'm speaking of my personal reading experience and horizon back then, not of fics in general). And I started to observe again, adapt my writing, to select more closely what I read and to read with more attention. It also was the moment right before I realised I'd fallen in love with writing and storytelling in a way that offered people an escape and maybe even a warming smile. That I was "stuck" with this new passion, so to speak. And so I started to think more thoroughly of what I want to convey with my stories and how, and what other people do, including what I could learn from them and what I didn't want to do since it just wasn't my cup of tea. That observing never stopped, and I still use it to check in on myself during writing, to see if I'm still on the track I want to be on or if the track changed.
An observation I made is that 2-8k long porn fic writing often goes hand in hand with multishipping which also often goes hand in hand with pairing characters up that don't even interact or even see each other in the original work. Sometimes they don't even live at the same time. The reason for why is mostly "because they look cute/sexy/hot together" which is okay, of course, but it naturally cuts away lots of personality in the respective characters to reduce them to their looks. What remains in the end is lots of very explicit fanart and fic very much cut loose from the source material up to the point that the only thing remaining familiar is their names and physicalities.
To focus on a single pairing, drawing up new worlds for them to meet in and having none of the worries or struggle canon provides does offer lots of potential and range for personal fulfilment in writing, of course. But it also easily deprives the readers of the characters they started to love in the source material. Out of context porn stories tend to do this too sometimes. It's something I do not condemn or even want to put judging values on either. It's fic. It should be fun for the creators and the readers alike. Personally, however, I find myself having stepped back from these kinds of stories immensely, almost to the point of distancing myself from them with a few rare exceptions when I trust the writer to make it good for me. Still, fics like this where I started too. It offered an "easy beginning" into writing since writing a modern AU helped me to write what I know first before adapting what I know to a world and setting I now desperately want to keep in character.
To focus solely on the 2-8k fics, I think one of the big factors for them becoming so popular is the average attention span, just as is the will, capability, and/or wish for a short-time commitment. I don't know whether this is an observation reduced to my personal horizon, but coming from a fandom with a relatively young average age, I can say long stories often are discontinued by the writers after a couple of chapters because of lost interest or the spiking thrill didn't last to keep the motivation up, the writer moving on to the next story, pairing, or fandom even. Another factor is the focus distribution on various fics at the same time, followed by the realisation juggling all at once is hard, if not impossible.
From the reading angle, the shorter stories and brief oneshots often are preferred as well for similar reasons, including the legitimate question whether a WIP is even going to be finished, so why invest time and energy into something that might never be continued. Having the AO3-rating of E also seems a very popular reader magnet, just as a mention of kinks or other explicit keywords in the tags attracts lots of readers as well. So the 'demand' for sex scenes and 'typical fics' in general, no matter the story and environment accompanying them, seems very high. Which is maybe even a reason for some writers to feed this demand by writing more of what's apparently wanted. Especially if one writes for attention or mere hedonistic reasons rather than out of an artistic drive.
What also might play a big role is the ephemerality of these 'typical fics.' They often (not always, of course) don't leave an afterthought, no deep catharsis or emotions in general that linger with the readers after finishing it, so there's no transitional period between reading one fic and the next, or only a very brief one. Meaning instead of pondering over what the previous story taught or could teach, there's a direct jump to the next story, causing the request frequency to naturally shoot up as well.
It's an interesting question to ask where the pwp starts. There isn't much "time" to build up anything if you want to have a good focus on the Doing It part, so either you have to interweave it, keep it as an extra scene/fic to a story that sequence simply didn't fit in, or have a strong beginning to draw the readers in and portray the characters in a way that shows why they are here and what drives them to it. To me the pwp starts when the characters become interchangeable with nothing obvious and no details to tie them to the source material and/or their personalities/pasts/hearts.