Violet Blue is hard at work editing the 2006 edition of Best Women’s Erotica, and today on her blog she writes:

“I don’t know, but I have to say that I’ve noticed a huge difference in the way that previous generations of women have edited erotic anthologies in comparison to my generations’ attitudes about sex. We don’t think that “literary” erotica, especially women’s erotica, needs to be somehow qualified by sadness, anguish, pain or suffering… A message to the publishers and editors (and filmmakers) who imbue the hot fuck with a moral: you’re not relevant anymore… I’m running totally sexually fucking amok with BWE ‘06. I’m tossing OUT all the fucking depressing submissions I’m getting. I want erotica that totally turns my head around, and makes me want to fuck.”

While it’s relatively easy to write a “Penthouse Letters” stroke story with happy ending (no pun intended), it’s no small trick to keep a more substantive story about hot sex from veering into “sadness, anguish, pain or suffering”. Drama requires elements like balance and consequence. Never mind steamy sex, if the characters in a story are having too much fun riding bicycles, you can be sure that someone’s going to have a bad wreck. That’s just the way that story-tellling works. (I think we have the ancient Greeks to thank for this.) Add to that our deep cultural suspicion of pleasure (sexual and otherwise), and it adds up to a lot of stories about people having really great sex, but paying for it in the end. (Let that be a lesson to you, dear reader!)

How then can you tell stories about good sex that don’t end badly? I’ve had some success avoiding sadness, anguish, pain, and suffering by employing the “slice of life” device. In my “hardcore love stories” the much needed sense of drama and consequence comes from constantly being aware that the people on screen are real flesh and blood human beings; that their friends and neighbors and family might see them fucking; that by choosing to share themselves with us in such an intimate way they are, in fact, taking a very real risk.

Of course this “real life” approach is a limited way to explore both sexual pleasure and story telling, and as long as we’ve been doing this work, Mrs.C and I have also been throwing around ideas for how we could produce fictional sex films that wouldn’t tumble off the sadness/anguish/pain/suffering cliff. Between story-telling considerations, audience comfort, and the ever-present constraints of low-budget filmmaking, it’s a tough nut to crack, but I think we’ve laid a good conceptual foundation, and we’ve even got a couple rudimentary of treatments we’re working on. After Violet’s proclamation this morning, I’m very eager to see Best Women’s Erotica 2006. I want to hear more stories about people having good sex and not having to pay for it in the last reel!

Speaking of good sex and happy endings, I’ve got a new tease for you; the first from last February’s San Francisco Bay Area shoot:

Barely out of their teens when they first got together, Matt and Khym spent many years generously taking care of others instead of concentrating on themselves. Now in their thirties, Matt and Khym have taken the time to rediscover the joys of married life and married sex. In this clip, Khym and Matt talk about their first encounter and their first impression of each other, and Khym reveals a surprising secret…

Matt and Khym: Better Then Ever

I think you’ll find this clip utterly free of sadness, anguish, pain or suffering, and hopefully it will make you want to fuck too!

-T.C.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 27th, 2005 at 9:58 am and is filed under Matt and Khym, Real Couples, Real Sex, Storycraft, Violet Blue, erotica. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.