Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: geeky
  • Music: The Bloodhound Gang, 'Bad Touch.'

Plot with porn vs. porn with plot.

Saturday, I stopped in at the Other Change of Hobbit to pick up copies of the July issue of Locus Magazine and chatter with the staff, since they're all super-interested in the whole process, which means I can talk about it without feeling like I'm being a weird obsessive. (Seriously, right now, I could talk about the publishing process for about three days without stopping, and since new things keep happening, I keep getting more things to talk about. I am a faintly neurotic soul who likes to talk things to death. Having people who are actively interested and ask me questions spares all the rest of my friends from a death worse than fate.) Being as I was in the store and already spending money, I decided to browse around and see whether I could find anything I particularly wanted to read.

Now, I am a reader of urban fantasy. That's probably part of why I became a writer of urban fantasy. (My lifelong obsession with folklore probably explains the rest.) I've watched the growth of the genre with delight shading into bewilderment -- delight because there are so many awesome titles out there these days, bewilderment because about half the covers show women crouching in black vinyl catsuits and wearing impractical heels. None of my urban fantasy heroines would be caught dead in a black vinyl catsuit, wearing impractical heels. And they don't, as a rule, crouch. All the other covers show half-naked women or carefully chosen bits of women, usually accessorized with some sort of weapon. That's actually a little more understandable. There are lots of way to get a character naked.

As I sifted through stack after stack of urban fantasies I'd never heard of before, I realized one horrible, irritating thing: I couldn't tell the porn-with-plot from the plot-with-porn. I've already read most of the 'sure things' -- the books I know meet my specific preferences in terms of the balance of 'sex' to 'not sex' -- and what I was left with was a whole lotta books where their back cover blurbs could have made them anything from the next Anita Blake to, well, the next any heroine who can keep her pants on for more than six pages at a stretch.

It's not that I dislike porn-with-plot. I read romance novels -- hell, I write romance novels -- and sometimes there's a very good reason to get everybody hot and bothered. It's just that I really prefer to choose my erotica, rather than accidentally tripping over it and falling into a puddle of unexplainable fluid. This isn't the fault of the authors. This is just, well, packaging combining with genre trends to leave me deeply perplexed. But there is a solution!

The pie chart.

I say we start stamping all urban fantasies somewhere discrete with little pie chart symbols detailing the ratio of 'plot' to 'porn.' If that sounds too judgmental, we could go with the ratio of 'naked' to 'clothed,' or even 'sexual tension,' 'action,' and 'actual pay-off.' I'd wind up following series where they started with a lot of the sexual tension pie and moved on to the actual pay-off pie after I was already invested in the relationship, while other people could go straight to the 'lots of kinky sex' pie, and everybody would win! Also, I wouldn't accidentally stumble across sex scenes that would make a porn star blush. Again, everybody wins.

Now to sell it to marketing...
Tags: contemplation, literary critique, silliness
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  • 12 comments

azurelunatic

July 7 2008, 18:27:41 UTC 8 years ago

That would be very, very useful. Although everyone's plot-to-porn ratio is different -- the one romance I have finished writing is, in my head, about getting these two characters into bed together. However, the actual story, once written, seemed to be about what happens when you take the sort of geekboy who ought not to be meddling with dark powers, and give him dark powers, and make our heroes have to sort it out. There's far more plot than I anticipated, and once I get done editing, there will be even more. This is definitely something that should be set by someone else...

Typo? 'discrete' instead of 'discreet'?

kyrielle

July 7 2008, 18:28:34 UTC 8 years ago

Heeeee. *grins*

Though to be fair, there are also some where the ratio of plot to porn is pretty solidly on the 'plot' side but the porn is...woo boy didn't need that much detail thank you very much!

blackpaladin

July 7 2008, 18:30:41 UTC 8 years ago

> It's just that I really prefer to choose my erotica, rather than accidentally tripping over it and falling into a puddle of unexplainable fluid.

This sentence MADE. MY. DAY. Thank you! :-)

technoshaman

July 7 2008, 18:41:53 UTC 8 years ago

Made me snicker, too. It definitely takes a fan of both badda boom badda bing and things that go bump in the night to come up with that.... :)

archangelbeth

July 7 2008, 18:34:28 UTC 8 years ago

Oooo, I totally agree. I want the PornPieChart...

(Also, I would love to hear the publishing stuff. I mean, I know some of it myself, probably, but I am always interested in new stuff.)

raelee

July 7 2008, 18:42:18 UTC 8 years ago

I was going to say I don't have much to say on this topic since, unless I'm specifically seeking out porn, I don't want porn. However, I guess that means I agree. I'd prefer to have some kind of label that would helpfully steer me away from the books that so overflowing with the porn that I find myself only reading the 1/3rd of the book that has plot.

Anyway. My real reason for replying was to say... LOVE that icon!

technoshaman

July 7 2008, 18:51:18 UTC 8 years ago

Hey, I got a better idea. Wouldn't it be better if the readers did the rating? You could do something like rottentomatoes for urban fantasy, where folks could not only give one to five stars, but ... hmmm... better multiple scales than a pie chart... after all, you could have a discussion of the Beast with Two Backs turn into a firefight real fast.... or there could be neither plot nor pr0n (in which case two stars at best, but hey, there are such things!)

But, yeah, having the publisher self-rate? maybe not so hot. They're likely to push the rating to the "plot" side, and we really don't you ending up in something sticky if you don't want to be.

qnofhrt

July 8 2008, 01:38:15 UTC 8 years ago

and what I was left with was a whole lotta books where their back cover blurbs could have made them anything from the next Anita Blake to, well, the next any heroine who can keep her pants on for more than six pages at a stretch.


There was a time when Anita Blake books had a plot with very little porn. Now they have porn with very little plot.

mokatiki

July 8 2008, 02:14:08 UTC 8 years ago

Hear Hear!

Also, your boobs look HUGE in your icon, can't wait to see the cover art!

amanda_nye

July 8 2008, 03:20:41 UTC 8 years ago

sounds like a good idea to me, and should make all the browsers happy

rockin' icon!

palmer_kun

July 8 2008, 04:59:37 UTC 8 years ago

This, I would love. It seems that for ANY supernatural/urban fantasy these days, heaping helpings of porn is not only expected, but required. For some reason, "urban fantasy" and "paranormal romance" are the same genre to publishers.

This is what I loved about Rosemary and Rue. NO SEX. Just lots of awesome PLOT. I always end up skipping the bodice ripper scenes in these books, which irritates the hell out of me.

tigertoy

July 8 2008, 14:56:06 UTC 8 years ago

I'm all for plenty of explicit sex in books. A good writer can even make kinks I'm not at all into interesting to read about. But it doesn't substitute for a solid plot and characters that are actually interesting people (not just interesting sex objects). When the plot is either not there at all or just blatantly contrived to bring about the next situation the author's trying to reach, it's a bad book -- whether or not that situation is a great sex scene.

(Just to be perfectly clear, I'm all for books without any sex at all, too -- if long as the lack of sex actually fits. When characters that obviously belong in bed together just talk about the weather, it can be as annoying as truly gratuitous sex that has nothing to do with the story or the characters. I read a fair number of books packaged as YA. Some of them feel like the author has blatantly edited out the sex so it can be YA. On the other hand, there are books that feel like the author has blatantly inserted some sex so it *won't* be YA.)