I’ve been asking myself genre-defining questions by the bucketload lately, in an attempt to better understand the stories I want to write and their place in the grander scheme of things, and one question that keeps popping up in my mind is one about Worldbuilding.

I’m not afraid to say that I lovelovelove worldbuilding. I love developing cultures, and spinning out the worldviews that become the lenses through which the characters experience the events of the story. I love threading through the evolution of the strange-to-us becoming the commonplace to the characters. I love exotic situations where the expected is turned on its head. I love making myself, as the author, shift my own worldview to adopt that of the character’s. I’ve always been a fan of the “walk a mile in another’s moccasins” philosophy, and it holds twice the meaning for a character in a world of my own making–I learn not only about the character, but about the world itself.

And the wackier the world, the better. I write futuristics, and I find the thought of a future world that’s pretty much the same as ours, only with more batteries, depressing (even if it is more probable than the ones I come up with). One of the reasons I first started reading SF back when I was a youngling was that the worlds were so exotic. So different and strange, and hella more exciting than living in Mundania, USA. But the books I liked weren’t what appealed to my romance-reading friends. Now I admit, back then we were just as interested in scouring the Johanna Lindseys and Janet Daileys and Penelope Neris (and loads of others) for the smutty parts as we were reading them for their story value (but we did read them eventually. After we’d dog-eared all the love scenes). We read the stories and we all liked the stories of handsome warriors and headstrong women with traitorous bodies betraying them (yes, it was the 80’s and yes, we were teenage girls).

At the same time we were googly over Raistlin Majere. and we all wanted golden Pern dragons of our own to ride. But while most of the other girls in our little gaggle wanted the dragons and the wizards to come here, some of us wanted to go there, wherever “there” happened to be. I spent hours imagining down to the last detail of what it would be like to wake up every morning and go feed a dragon, read a magic spell book, or clump along the corridors of an alien habitat composed entirely of sentient jelly that only responded to commands given in song.

What appeals to you in an SF story - the weirdness of it? The differences between the SF world and the contemporary world? Or the keys of commonality? The similarities?

In surfing some erotica-writing sites, and re-reading my copy of Susie Bright’s “How To Write a Dirty Story,” I keep coming across the idea that one of the purposes of writing and reading erotica is to stretch your boundaries. Erotica that is described as “edgy” or “pushes the envelope” seems to be the thing to strive for. When I really think about this, I’m puzzled and conflicted. Mostly because reading erotica stories that push the envelope often leave me wanting to send the thing back to the post office.

I realize that everybody’s boundaries are different, and I’m certainly no vanguard when it comes to adventurous sexual themes. But I find myself wondering at a piece of my writing and remembering how much passion I put into it and then realizing when I look at it that, well, it ain’t that new. But I read it, and if I’ve done it properly, when I read it again, I still feel the same heart coming through the writing.

Romance as a genre is partly predicated on the fact that there are certain conventions–reader expectations, so to speak, that need to be present in order to make the story more enjoyable. It creates a conundrum, then, when I look at what I’ve written and it doesn’t seem unsettling. It didn’t make me nervous, or challenge my sense of boundaries…but it made me feel content that those characters were in a better place from where they started out. I put the piece down and I’m happy that the characters have grown into something better, or happier.

But when I read some of that boundary-pushing erotica, I finish the piece without that happy, contented feeling about the characters. Like Story of O. I finished the piece wanting to rewrite the last half of the book to show O discovering mutant superpowers, kicking the boyfriend in the jaw, and burning the Chateau to the ground. And then finding a nice, respectful man who would worship her to settle down with. Or at least, stop being a damn dishrag. Oh, sure, later on, I thought, “Wow, what an amazing commentary on the psychology of submission, and how interesting it is that a person can feel fulfilled by allowing their self-determination to be subsumed by someone else’s desires. And wow, I think I used ’subsumed’ right but I’m not totally sure. Oh, look–shiny!”

So the question that begs for an answer is this–how do the expectations of romance intersect with the deliberate absence of expectations in erotica? What kind of balance does an author strive for between the emotionally comfortable and the thought-provoking squick?