PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Anita Rao 0:01
Recently, I have been deep in a book series that is having a serious moment. Sarah J masses A Court of Thorns and Roses, or for less of a mouthful, ACOTAR. It's about a young woman who is taken from the human world to the fairy one. There are beasts, magic and what has definitely captured the attention of millions of readers, a lot of spicy sex scenes, without getting too deep into the literary weeds of genre definition. I know that while the ACOTAR series is erotic, it's not necessarily erotica, but reading it has been a gateway for me to explore the landscape of erotica content and think about what it means to write well about sex and desire, because a story that's so riddled with cliches, it's a turn off is a world apart from one that hooks you in with an invitation to See yourself and your own body in the story. This is embodied our show tackling sex relationships and your health. I'm Anita Rao.
We're going to get a few expert takes on the art of writing erotica today, and we can't go wrong by starting with Rachel Kramer Bussel. In the past two decades, Rachel has been published in more than 100 erotica anthologies and edited at least 70 others. She got her start in the late 90s with an erotic piece featuring herself and Monica Lewinsky. But I'm gonna let her tell that story. Hey, Rachel, welcome to embodied.
Rachel Kramer Bussel 1:39
Thank you.
Anita Rao 1:40
So in 1999 you were in your early 20s, you were attending law school, and you had done a fair amount of non fiction writing at this point in a lot of erotica reading, and you came across a call out for celebrity erotica submissions, and you ended up writing this story Monica and me. So tell me how this premise came about.
Rachel Kramer Bussel 2:01
Well, I can't say the name of the anthology that I wrote the Monica story for, but it started with star, and it ended with er, and it was based on a theme about celebrity fantasies. And I was paying a lot of attention to Monica's story at the time, so she was a natural fit for me. And if you read it, the me character is named Rachel, and the clothes she wears are clothes I was wearing at the time. It's about a woman who goes to meet Monica at a book signing, and they get it on afterwards. And it was really fun to use a different part of my brain than I had with nonfiction. It was really playful and it was just a fantasy, and for it to get accepted and published in a book that I saw in a bookstore a year later, that was very exciting. And so I started writing more stories, and the early ones were also based on either my actual life and things I'd done, or fantasies that I had, and then that branched out into editing erotica anthologies and writing stories that were very different from my own experience.
Anita Rao 3:13
I want to pause you for a second because you mentioned that it was really fun, but I imagine that it was maybe also scary or nerve wracking it would be for me putting that onto a page for the first time. So what was that like emotionally for you to kind of be vulnerable in a way that other people could read it and see it?
Rachel Kramer Bussel 3:31
What's funny is that it actually wasn't scary, or at least I wasn't thinking of those parts of it. I think I've always had a knack for writing about vulnerable things or things that other people find vulnerable. I'd written about my family and alcoholism, so to me, it was kind of a natural extension of just writing about my life, except this was fiction. And then I met a woman I dated who I was very close to. We met because she was also a fan of Monica, and she came to a reading I did, and said, Did you write Monica and me? And so for me, the personal side of it and the creative side have always been intertwined, like erotica has played a part in my personal life. So I know a lot of people have those feelings. And I, I teach a lot of erotica students, and they are often very nervous, even still, in 2024 to put their erotica out there.
Anita Rao 4:30
There is a process of writing this work that is very personal for the writer. Oftentimes in exploring questions they have about their own sexuality and their sexual fantasies. It's not always the case that they're writing about something they've experienced, but for you, writing Monica and me was working through some questions you were having in your life. What were some of the things you were working through that came out in that piece?
Rachel Kramer Bussel 4:54
Embracing my bisexuality was definitely a part of that story. I think I was out at the time to my parents, but I was still relatively early on in exploring that part of my life. And I think writing that initial story, it helped me explore my bisexuality and those desires in a safe way, partly because it was fiction. So, you know, I could say, Okay, well, this is fiction. This is not a real story that happened to me. And I think for me, erotica has helped me explore fantasies about things I actually wanted to do and things that just turned me on. And it's always felt safe when I'm writing, when I'm sitting at my computer typing, I'm in total control of what comes out.
Anita Rao 5:49
I want to understand the landscape that we're talking about when we say the word erotica, because just because something has a good sex scene doesn't necessarily make it erotica. So can you talk to me about what are the defining features of this genre, and maybe through explaining kind of where this popular erotic fiction fits into this definition,
Rachel Kramer Bussel 6:13
I use — the definition with my students that erotica is writing intended to arouse which is a pretty broad definition, there aren't the same markers and tropes as there are in romance per se. So in romance, there's always a happily ever after where a couple or multiple characters get together at the end and they're headed down the path of a happy relationship in erotica, the focus is on sexual pleasure and desire and satisfaction, and that might happen within the context of a relationship, but that could happen solo. I think people are looking for different results from each for most erotica readers, they're looking to get off. They're looking to be turned on, and that counts for whatever type of erotica they're reading.
Anita Rao 7:07
So you're saying that in these kind of really popular books, like fourth wing and akatar, the function of the sex and the sex scenes is a little bit different than what it would be in traditional erotica.
Rachel Kramer Bussel 7:19
Yes, in a traditional erotic novel, The main purpose is exploring the characters sexualities and giving the readers something to arouse them. That might also happen in these popular romances or erotic romance books. But there also has to be that romantic element I've seen in the past 30 years that I've been reading both genres. Romance has also gotten a lot more explicit, and I think erotica has helped pave the way for that.
Anita Rao 7:53
So you mentioned, as an erotica writer, your primary job is to turn the reader on, and you are trying to engage their senses and their mind, but you're also not trying to put in so much detail that you kind of lose the intrigue and people get bored. And you give some really great advice in a book that you published called How to Write erotica, about how to do this, and you explain this fine line using an example of writing well, about sex toys. So could you tell us a little bit more about that with that example?
Rachel Kramer Bussel 8:23
So I think that often people especially new to writing erotica, they assume that because there's sex in their story, that that, in and of itself, makes it sexy and makes it a turn on. And I think what makes erotica arousing is also the context of why people are doing what they're doing and what's happening. So if someone is using a vibrator, let's say it's not just about where they're putting the vibrator or what the physical action is, but you also want to talk about things like, is this the first time the person's used the vibrator? Are they using it with a partner? How does it feel physically, but also, how does it feel emotionally? And that's where I think something like dirty talk added to a sex toy scene can really amp it up. And when I say dirty talk, that might be very explicit things that I cannot say on the radio, that public radio, yeah, but that could also be someone whispering the person's name in a sultry way, or saying something that's a private thing between them. That is, you could be saying, you know, doorknob, but if doorknob means something very sexy to that couple, then you know that could be something that turns the person on.
Anita Rao 9:41
Okay, I want to pause you with that doorknob example, because it reminds me of something you talk about a lot in your book, which is that we have this idea that erotica comes from these fantasies, these beautiful, romantic nights, these perfect vacations. But actually, people can get erotica ideas everywhere, and sometimes they are. Our best from the most mundane experiences in our lives. So what's like a favorite piece of yours that started from something really mundane and ended up being really sexy?
Rachel Kramer Bussel 10:13
A friend told me she went to Paris and saw a woman eating french fries off a plate that was on a burner, and I was so captivated by this image that I wrote a story called French fried about the same scenario where the woman goes into the restaurant and sits with the other woman and they feed each other French fries, and it's this very sensual foreplay. They're not having sex right there. But to me, sometimes those things that aren't officially sex, you know, no one's necessarily naked can be even hotter than when they do get naked. Like, that's the prelude. And I love stories like that, where something that you just notice, or especially something that's not just not sexy, but that is frustrating, like being stuck in traffic. I use this in real life. I mean, when I'm in a situation like I'm stuck in traffic, and I hate it and it's annoying and I'm frustrated, I start to fantasize about the other people in the other cars, and what are they doing. And you know, that helps me pass the time and be less frustrated.
Anita Rao 11:24
If doorknobs and traffic jams aren't your go to sources for erotic inspiration. I was in the same boat, but thinking about life with this mindset has honestly made things more fun, like my day long layover at the Boston Airport, got so much more interesting when I imagine the disgruntled TSA employee an overworked airport bartender finding a way to make all the travel stress and chaos go away. Some erotica writers take these thought experiments to a whole new level by bringing in elements of science fiction and fantasy. We're going to meet one of the pioneers of sci fi erotica in just a moment after this break.
This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao. I can usually identify a good erotic story from a bad one. It's not overwrought or weighed down by metaphors, and it keeps the creative synonyms for penis to a minimum, but it's harder to put a finger on what exactly makes great erotica so great. So we asked best selling romance and erotica author Megan Hart.
Megan Hart 12:41
What makes a great erotic story is simple. It should turn you on and also make you feel maybe it triggers a memory or a fantasy. It might make you feel happy or guilty or furtive, or could fill you with yearning. But to me, the best erotic stories make you feel something I don't do everything I write about, but I have to at least believe why someone would want to and try to convey that to the reader. Great erotica uses sex to show character growth. We don't read erotica. To skip the spicy scenes, they have to be so important to the story that taking them out would ruin the entire thing. I started writing sexy stories because I liked to read them, but so many of them used women's sexuality as some kind of morality story. I wanted to write stories in which women liked sex and didn't hate themselves for it, because in the end, for me, great erotica uses sex in a positive way to tell a story that could not be told without it.
Anita Rao 13:59
Someone else well versed in crafting that perfect sexy story is someone our nerdier listeners will be very excited to meet. Cecilia Tan has carved out a path for science fiction and fantasy erotica through 30 years of writing and the founding of her publishing company, circlet press. Hey Cecilia, welcome to the show.
Cecilia Tan 14:19
Thanks for having me
Anita Rao 14:20
so you've been writing all of your life, but in the late 80s, you wrote an erotic sci fi story that you felt like was probably the best thing that you had ever written. It was called telepaths. Don't need safe words. Can you talk to me about what was so exciting about this particular piece for you?
Cecilia Tan 14:38
Oh, still, the best title I ever came up with, really, and once I had that title, that story just wrote itself. I graduated college, you know, moved to the big city, trying to start my writing career. And I was on a lot of like online, the early internet, like internet with a capital I, you know, I was learning a lot about. Uh, bondage, and, you know, a bunch of stuff that I had never done in real life, but which spurred my fantasies, you know, pretty strongly. But here I am trying to start my writing career. I sat down, I wrote a bunch of stories. And telepaths don't need safe words. Was the only one that felt to me like it was a whole story, like a bell rang, and I was like, Oh, this is it. This is my voice. This is my thing. Then I went to, you know, Writer's Market to try to figure out where to send it. And of course, I discovered that of 1000s and 1000s of markets listed there, every single one that said they would take science fiction had a rule that said no erotica, and every single place that would publish erotica had a rule that said no science fiction. And I was like, How can I be the only one who wants to put the chocolate and the peanut butter together, I cannot be the only one who wants to put the chocolate and the peanut butter together. So I had to self publish it in the end, right? I had to start a publishing house. And I didn't know at the time, was anybody else going to be interested. But then, of course, as soon as I did it, people just came out of the woodwork. So it turned out, of course, I was not the only one who was interested in putting these things together, and there was a huge groundswell, you know
Anita Rao 16:03
Yeah, I want you to help us understand the specific kind of focus of circlet press, because what you mentioned is that it was doing something so different, and it was combining these worlds that hadn't been combined before. And when we hear, you know, sci fi and fantasy, we might think wrongly alien abduction stories, but that's not true, and there is a lot of kind of erotic possibility that you can explore through sci fi that wouldn't be possible in a real world setting. So what's an example of that?
Cecilia Tan 16:33
Like some of circlets, early books were all sort of thin, themed on different things, like we had one called elves in bondage. Actually, it was not called elves and bondage. We ended up calling it forged bonds. But the working title was just elves in bondage, because we're like, that's the theme of this book. You know, we explore love and relationships as well as, you know, hate and rivalry and just all the other things that go along. And there are so many stories that are about war or about, you know, different things. It's like, Why can't sex and sexuality be just an integral part of the journeys of these characters? You know, when the hobbits went across Middle Earth to throw the ring into Mount Doom, it's like, okay, maybe there wasn't much time for them to be stopping and having canoes, but maybe there was, and Tolkien just didn't tell us about it. You know, that kind of a thing.
Anita Rao 17:17
Well, it also allows you to imagine possibilities, like a world where STDs don't exist, and what does that free up for you? So like, what are some of the really creative examples that folks have used?
Cecilia Tan 17:28
Yeah, for me, I felt like part of what I was doing, also coming out of sort of the activist era of queer nation and act up and whatnot, is that by writing erotic science fiction, I could depict sexuality in ways that let people free their minds from their political context that they could Oh, this isn't taking place in the real world. This is on this other planet where it's different, but letting people think that things could be different really lets them open their minds to more possibilities on Earth and their real lives. The thing about fiction is that you put yourself in the place of the protagonist, and then you it's as if you yourself went through a new experience. And I mean, erotica is the ultimate safe sex too. It's like you're sitting at home in your imagination. There's no actual STDs that you can catch from a book, right? You can only catch ideas so and it's like, that's what I want. I want more people to have more ideas that there are more ways to have sex and experience sexuality than than what we've been told, you know, in this narrow idea that I don't know, maybe that you had to get married before you could have sex, or that you had to have heterosexual sex. I mean, you know, lots of people grow up with these messages, and it's like, maybe there's more to our human experience than that. And by putting people into a fantasy world, or, you know, another planet, I could create a society where sex was more important than it is in ours, or was, you know, how diplomatic relations were taking place, or that kind of thing. You know that I love that.
Anita Rao 18:52
Yeah, you really went into the writing of that first piece we talked about, thinking, Okay, this is my entree into this world, and now I'm gonna focus more on Sci Fi, but you actually began to really get more involved in the BDSM community through writing that erotic sci fi. I'm curious about how writing helped you explore new parts of your own sex life. What did it open up for you?
Cecilia Tan 19:16
Well, it was super interesting because, of course, I'd never done bondage, I'd never done spanking, you know, any of those things, but here I was writing about it. And then that led to meeting people in the leather community, in the BDSM community and so forth. And then I became an activist. Was a community organizer for many years, quote, unquote, now retired, but to spend more time on my writing. So it, of course, eventually led to me meeting people, and, you know, having experiences, which is not true of every erotica writer. Lots of people just write from their fantasies and, you know, whatnot. But I, I, you know, took it upon myself to do the research, you know, and I've had great fun and met some of my most intense life partners through BDSM role play and through those kinds of actions. And it. It's been a very fulfilling life. Let's put it that way. I want
Anita Rao 20:03
I want to bring Rachel Kramer Bussel back into the conversation here. Rachel is the erotica author and editor behind numerous anthologies in the book How to Write erotica. And Rachel Cecilia was mentioning doing research, making sure you get the story right. And I know that you really feel like writers have a moral responsibility to get it right, even if they haven't experienced something themselves, they need to make sure that they're representing it in an accurate way that serves the readers, and particularly when it comes to kind of BDSM and examining sexual kinks in a way that's humanizing and affirming as you're reading through erotica submissions, how do you know when kind of a character or scenario may be crossing the line, or when you feel like it's an accurate, helpful representation? How do you make that call?
Rachel Kramer Bussel 20:52
I try to think about, what will readers take away from this? Is there something that they might try at home that would be problematic consent wise, or that could harm someone. So if a character was tied up overnight or for a prolonged period and left alone, that could be unsafe if someone tried that themselves. So that's something that I would ask the author to change, and sometimes I make judgment calls that readers don't agree with. I published a story set in a bakery where the owner and an employee get it on, and I worked with the author around the consent, and because there were other employees in the bakery, which the way I read the story was that those employees were okay with what was happening and were into it, and that was part of this unique workplace. But other readers felt differently. You know, they felt like, okay, these two people in the bakery are foisting their sex life onto the other characters. And I think sometimes you can create a disagree. I mean, in real life, obviously that wouldn't happen. That's kind of story where I sometimes give leeway to the fantasy, but I try to err on the side of safety without impinging on the author's creativity.
Anita Rao 22:16
It's a fine line, and to do it well is really an art form. And I know Cecilia, you have experimented with ways to write consent in sexy and seamless ways throughout all of your work, but you have this one particularly beloved series called Magic University. It's kind of riffing off of Harry Potter, if Harry Potter studied sex magic, and there is an example in that series of how you wrote consent that felt particularly natural to you. Can you share that example with us?
Cecilia Tan 22:45
Right? Well, our hero gets to college, and then, you know, of course, begins to have relationships, and there's a bunch of different things. One of the funny ones is that I had, of course, there's a safe sex conversation where they kind of talk about, Are we safe to do this? But they there's one scene where they use a condom. And my editor wrote me in the rewrite letter, you know, like, oh, fix this, fix that. But then she also wrote, and by the way, I thought we had this whole discussion about how you always model safe sex and you model, you know, negotiation and whatnot. And I'm like, yeah, it's in there. And I had done it so smoothly that she had basically missed it, that there was a condom discussion. And she was like, Oh my God, you did so smoothly. I'm so used to the condom conversation kind of sticking out being when somebody sticks it in there, because it's clunky, and you did it so smoothly that I, like, didn't even notice. I'm like, see, that's that's how it should be, though. I'm like, I'm trying to model that this should just be part of the flow of the negotiation, and the negotiation should be part of the seduction, and that in real life, we need to be having these conversations. And here's me showing you 219 year olds doing it. You know, it's like if these 19 year old college kids who are trying to save the world through sex magic can do it. You can do it. You know?
Anita Rao 23:52
Well, a perfect example of why you need to have a good editor, but also why it's important to have other people reading your work. Rachel, you write a lot in your guide that especially folks that are writing about characters with identities different from their own, should really work with sensitivity readers, people who are reading with an eye for particular characters. Can you talk about your work with sensitivity readers? And maybe an example of something someone has brought to your attention that's changed your work for the better.
Rachel Kramer Bussel 24:25
I don't necessarily think everyone has to, but I think a sensitivity reader, which is generally someone who shares that identity with your character that you may not share, or you may share, but just want another opinion on, they can bring insights that might not have occurred to you, and I think that can always be helpful, whether or not you take their suggestions. And sometimes people hear that and feel like, well, you're saying that I can't write this. And we have free speech. Anyone can write anything, but if. You want to make your characters believable and accurate and also sensitive to a community that you're not part of. I think a sensitivity reader can be useful, and especially in erotica, if you're writing about a character whose sexuality or gender is different from yours. Yes, you can do research, you can look things up online, you can watch porn, but it's always helpful to have someone else's personal take on the characters that you created.
Anita Rao 25:34
You have expanded the kinds of folks that you write about beyond your own experience, and that does involve, you know, risk taking and maybe not always getting it right. What has been some helpful advice that's changed your own writing about characters that are different from you?
Rachel Kramer Bussel 25:53
I try to always think about the character as an individual. So I once wrote a trans boxer story, and I don't know much about boxing, and I'm not trans, but I tried to think not about trying to represent an entire community or an entire sport, or represent an entire anything. I just tried to focus on, okay, who is this person? What are their desires? Why are they doing this? What about this turns them on. And I think that sometimes when people are trying to write from a different perspective than their own, they do take on too much, and you still owe your characters their full story, and you can write other stories about other characters, but I think when you go back to the humanity of the person and focus on their specific desires and backstory, it makes them more human, and often, you might find that they share things in common with you. Their personality might be closer to yours than other characters you've written who do share your gender or sexual orientation.
Anita Rao 27:01
Cecilia, you got a piece of advice from a writer a few years ago who challenged you and some other erotica writers to stop specifying genitalia in your stories, to make room for trans and intersex readers, to be able to see themselves more. Talk about how you received that advice and how it's changed your writing?
Cecilia Tan 27:24
Yeah. Corey Alexander, who sadly has left us, who wrote under the name Zan West, was a BDSM and gender and fat representation activist who was trans and basically said, I'm sometimes kicked out of a story if the genitalia gets too specific. And really, haven't we seen all the genitalia before? Kind of like challenging me and other erotica writers, essentially, to use our craft to represent people without necessarily reducing them to, you know, Tab A and slot B. And I thought, Okay, well, I'll write a story like that. And, you know, see how it goes. And actually, it was incredibly hot. And the story is one of my best written stories. And it, you know, went into an anthology, and then I'm like, oh, let's do another one. And then I ended up writing a whole series of short stories where the gender is not specified, where you can insert yourself essentially, and most readers will make the assumption right in the beginning, one way or the other, so their assumption is never broken, right? So that's been really fun. I almost wish I had started doing it earlier, but everyone goes through phases, right?
Anita Rao 28:27
Totally. And I mean, you've been at this for a really long time, and throughout this time, there have been these shifts, these changes, these redirects and some big touch points. And I'm curious to ask you, you probably know this is coming, so we have not yet mentioned 50 Shades of Gray, but my question is about how something like that, a big best seller, affects smaller erotica writers who don't necessarily make it to the big stage, like what kind of impact do moments where people are talking a lot more about and reading more erotica and erotic Romance? How did they change things for kind of the writers who are outside of those big publishers,
Cecilia Tan 29:05
I believe a rising tide lifts all boats. First of all, and 50 Shades just proved that there was a huge amount of hunger and curiosity about kink that people were not getting satisfied anywhere else, right? And when 50 Shades came along, it was like everyone was reading it, and that gave everyone permission to read it. So, I mean, that book was stacked up in, like, the gas station. I mean, like, you could literally buy it everywhere, because so many people were so curious. And of course, it is not a how to book. It is a, you know, it's a romance trilogy. Many people in the BDSM community are like, they do a lot of stuff wrong in this, but it opened a lot of doors, though, ultimately, my own best seller, slow surrender came in the wake of that. And, you know, I got out of credit card debt and bought a car. So no shade to 50 shades in that way, no shade thrown in. It set an expectation, essentially, that people are like, Oh, you can have a higher level of. Reality in books in all genres. And I think a lot of the Sarah J Moss and whatnot that we're seeing now is that publishers essentially were like, Well, okay, you know, like they stopped trying to tamp it down quite as much for a while. So I think it's all to the good in that way. Rachel,
Anita Rao 30:17
I want to land with you and present you with a little bit of a challenge. You read so widely and are constantly putting out prompts and asking folks to generate new ideas. What is one premise that you feel like you haven't seen folks write about that you would love to see for any aspiring erotica writers out there,
Rachel Kramer Bussel 30:38
I think something I have seen, but I haven't seen enough of is submissive men. There are plenty of FEM down stories, but I think stories that there hasn't been a 50 shades of gray about a submissive man. And I think that we're ripe for that. I think that's a point of view that doesn't get as much traction as women exploring their own submissiveness with the rise of 50 Shades. And, you know, in the wake of Sex in the City, and I think there are, there's more places where women can experiment with their sexuality in our culture and publicly claim those identities than there are for men with certain less popular identities. So that's something I think would be great to see, like a blockbuster about a submissive man.
Anita Rao 31:32
I won't lie, I feel truly inspired to write my own erotica after talking with Rachel and Cecilia, and I think Rachel's invitation to see the erotic potential in news and politics could make surviving this 2024 election cycle a little more manageable. Coming up. After the break, we're going to talk about another side of the erotica landscape that's growing in popularity, audio erotica. A former producer from the spicy audio romance app dipsea will take us behind the scenes of her work. We'll get the scoop on creating the perfect butt slap sound just after this break.
This is embodied. I'm Anita Rao erotica at its core is literature or art that's intended to arouse and once you start looking fodder for creating it is everywhere. Award winning LGBTQ erotica author Lee Suksi has found sensual content in places that might surprise you,
Lee Suksi 32:41
as the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. King Solomon's Song of Songs from the Bible, good. Erotica is mostly about the investigation of pleasure and sharing what pleasure feels like in the body with language. Pleasure can involve power. It can involve emotion, but foremost, it's sensation, either mental or physical, generated by longing or satisfaction. I pulled smooth objects to the surface, some kind of fresh water muscles. He's doubtful when I tell him, so I toss one to him, and he's amazed. Later, he holds it against the top of a wooden fence post and slams it with a rock, cracking the shell to bits, which he pulls apart, revealing tan flesh. I pick up my little camera off the back seat and take his picture. He gets embarrassed. You just take a picture of me. Yeah, I said, just of you talking, not of your beautiful chest, which I'd love to spit on and rub my all over from David Juan Roberts Diary of a wolf boy. So those are some examples of writing about pure pleasure. Please write your own
Anita Rao 34:16
writing and reading are common entry points into erotica, but some of us prefer to listen. The industry for audio erotica consumers has been booming in the past five years, subscription based audio erotica apps like Quinn and dipsea rack up millions of listening minutes each year. They offer everything from regency era and Scottish accent erotica to content created for queer and trans folks for three and a half years, Selene Ross helped bring some of those erotica stories to life as an audio producer for Dipsy. She's an artist, a musician, and has an MFA in fiction from Oregon State University, where she teaches podcast storytelling and writing. Selene, welcome to embodied. Hi.
Selene Ross 34:59
It's a delight to be here.
Anita Rao 35:01
So there are very few jobs where you find yourself trying to capture the exact sound of a spank, which is something that was a part of your job working in audio erotica. So could you kind of Paint me a picture of how the creation of audio erotica works and your role in that process?
Selene Ross 35:18
So I did everything that happens after a piece is a script to when it is in the app, ready for listeners, ears. So that meant finding the right actors for a story, sourcing those actors, if we didn't already have them in the database, and directing the actors, and then cutting the audio, and then working with sound designers to really bring the piece to life, and finally, making sure that it was everything was sounding great, and every sound effect was properly timed and ready for listeners ears.
Anita Rao 35:57
So you are very much an audio file. You're a musician. You've been passionate about audio storytelling for a long time. Do you have a distinct memory of a piece you listen to or produce that helped you understand the distinct power of audio erotica in particular?
Selene Ross 36:17
Well, I've long thought of audio as this really like transportive portal that can bring listeners to so many different places, and that's what fascinated me about it all of my life. I think my fascination probably honestly started as a child, not in an erotic context, but listening to Jim Dale reading Harry Potter audio books, and just how incredibly immersive that felt, and the power of oral storytelling has long fascinated me producing at dipsea, I learned time and time again just how incredible the power of audio is, particularly When we would start putting the clips of different characters together, and that's when it felt like the story really started to like, come alive, when we could hear the interactions between different characters and see the spark of chemistry start to emerge between them.
Anita Rao 37:14
What's so wild about what you're saying is that when you as a producer, are putting together people's voices who are not in the same room, who have actually recorded these audio erotica scenes in separate places at separate times, like in different parts of the country, kind of on their own equipment. So how do you make that chemistry come alive in your outcome? Because it does sound so like it was made in that moment, like between those two people. How do you do that as an artist?
Selene Ross 37:46
Well, when I was at dipsea, we used to just say, that's the Dipsy magic. That's what happens, kind of like movie magic. But I think it really does come down to casting and to finding the right voices for each character and thinking about how they might pair together. And then in the studio, it also a big part of it is directing and making sure that we get different takes from each actor that have different tones so we can match their partner when we are putting the scene together later in post production.
Anita Rao 38:17
Can you talk about that coaching and how you introduce yourself to actors and set up that space to get creative, to kind of coach them into that voice that's inviting but also seductive, the very distinct sound that we hear in the produce piece.
Selene Ross 38:33
So as you've probably heard hosting an interview, it's often said that hosting an interview is kind of like hosting a party, where you want to emulate the kind of attitude and behavior that you want your guests to to reflect back to you. And I really feel the same way about directing, because the nature of producing audio erotica is probably acting that these actors have not done before. I don't typically go in being, like totally kind of detached and clinical, and without acknowledging that what we're about to do is new and is a little bit silly and wonderful, and probably at one point, the actor is probably going to wonder, did I do that right? What's going on here? So I acknowledge that right at the forefront of the session, and tell them that, like I am here to make them shine, this is all about them, particularly in an audio erotica context. We believe, and I believe, that there's nothing like sexier than authenticity. So a big part of authenticity is being vulnerable, and if that actor doesn't feel safe enough to be vulnerable, then neither of us are going to get the results that they want. So it's my goal is to just make sure that they feel safe and they feel supported, and that I'm going to be their cheerleader and that I'm also going to give them pretty. Direct advice on how to get to the take that we want to capture so we can both be really happy with the result.
Anita Rao 40:08
There is an art to making people sound natural and like it's not too obvious that they're reading and that they sound like you're actually just dropping into an erotic moment with someone. But that's not actually that easy to do, what are some of the kind of common mistakes people made that as a producer, you'd be like, Nope, I'm taken out of the moment. Like, this isn't hot anymore. It's not working well.
Selene Ross 40:30
A lot of people, they'll think, like, Oh, this is an audio erotica platform. I'm gonna put on my like, lounge singer, sultry voice, and I'm gonna go out there and sound so seductive and in a low whisper, but it actually just sounds artificial and forced, and does kind of kill the mood. So we would often end up advising actors to either tone down that kind of like over acted expression, or just, you know, feel more comfortable and sound a little less read. A really common thing with with reading is that people will end their lines sort of going up, like I just did, and that's not usually how people talk in conversations. Obviously it varies, but constantly directing out that kind of upward inflection in sentences.
Anita Rao 41:23
I'm curious about coaching and directing the moments of climax within the piece of audio erotica, because that is a moment of drama. You want some drama there, but not too much drama. So how do you how do you get someone to kind of shake up that pattern to make this steamy effect that doesn't go too over the top.
Selene Ross 41:44
I like to give people a really clear kind of target of where we want to go with the capturing the climax. So I'll give like, a time length. Let's get 30 seconds. Let's get a clear moment of arrival, if you like
Anita Rao 41:59
30 seconds of like, moaning or something,
Selene Ross 42:02
30 seconds for the whole kind of arc. Oh, the whole arc. Okay. I was like, that's a lot, yeah, build up a clear peak and then some recovery afterwards. And sometimes it's all about making sure that we capture varied takes. And sometimes an actor might benefit from some direction to perform a more restrained climax, one that perhaps is not so loud or even over the top, but maybe feels more restrained, maybe almost like the character is gasping for breath because it's so pleasurable.
Anita Rao 42:36
There's also all of the sound effects that help an episode come alive and help build the world that the characters are living in, wherever they're having their encounter. And one of the things that's really fun and interesting about this world is sometimes just recording the sound of like the thing itself, like a door closing, actually doesn't sound like a door when you listen to it in the final audio. So what are some of the kind of unusual things that you all and the sound designers had to try to get those world building sounds right?
Selene Ross 43:07
So Foley and sound design relies on this kind of expectation and also artifice. There's so many examples, specifically in film, like the clip clop of the horses hooves that were we kind of come to expect when we see horses on screen, but that sound actually only comes when they're on a hard floor and not running through the forest. So because listeners are kind of primed to expect certain sound effects we find in sound design, we're in all contexts, we're kind of constantly working with those expectations and creating the idea of something versus an actual, one to one representation in an erotic context, you have to be so careful, because if you rely too heavily on this kind of exaggerated sound design, eroticism can really quickly just shatter. It's like a big bubble that we're building. And if a sound effect is poorly timed, even if lines of dialog are not timed correctly, if there's too long of a pause before somebody responds to Can I kiss you, it's awkward. And if you put too loud of a of a spank, maybe too soft of a moan, like it can just sort of sound comical. I've had experiences producing pieces where we're working with like whips or toys, and sometimes the first round of sound design will include like, a really like, very, very like, from the files of your sound effects, type of whip, and that totally works in other contexts. In audio erotica, it probably is going to kill the mood a little bit. So it's all about like dialing things to this delicate balance where it is loud enough and recognizable enough to register to a listener's ears. But. But also subtle enough that it doesn't start sounding cartoonish.
Anita Rao 45:03
You have to tell us about the butt slap in particular. Like, what are some of the things that you all had to try to experiment with that sound?
Selene Ross 45:12
Yeah, so the Spanx more hours than I ever thought I would spend in my life trying to find the perfect sound for spank, the problem that often encountered with my team of producers is wanting a spank to sound like the recipient, you know, had like some heft to them that it wasn't just like a tinny slap. So we actually did, like a Foley day and tried, like pizza dough or trying to create different sounds that would register and work within the worlds that we were building. And I think ultimately, a lot of it comes down to some fine tuning of the EQ and making sure that it sounds bassy enough that it sounds like an actual smack and not just like one of us clapping our hands in front of a mic, which is probably what it actually is.
Anita Rao 46:01
So we've been talking about these different scenes and the creation of these moments between characters, and we talked a little bit earlier about working consent into erotica, and I'm curious about how y'all did that at dipsea, so that a listener could feel like they had a sense of how people felt about what was happening.
Selene Ross 46:24
Part of the mission at dipsea was always to make sure that consent was like front and center, and that was always woven into the stories that we were producing and came from when a story was first thought of, and making sure that we were thinking like, Okay, do these characters feel safe? Does the situation feel safe? What can we do to make it still feel to make it feel as consensual as possible, down to the dialog, down to the way actors would read lines in the studio, and then even in sound design, it's like with those pauses, like, did a character pause too long before saying yes, and then it sounds like hesitation, or are we timing it so that it sounds like an enthusiastic Yes? And as the database was built within Dipsy, we were learning a lot about how we've already established a lot of trust with listeners, and where there are places to know that there is already like when listeners choose a Dipsy story, they are entering a world where consent is carefully considered, and they kind of already know that when they're coming into the app. So there might be places where can I do this? Can I do that when a character speaking to another one might not actually be necessary, because this ecosystem is one where consent is so is already so present.
Anita Rao 47:42
You were immersed in these worlds for years and listening to a lot of audio erotica and thinking a lot about kind of what makes things good and what makes things sound sexy and not sexy. I'm curious about how all of this transformed your own relationship with sex and sexuality?
Selene Ross 48:04
Well, there are times when I have, like, wished that I had an app like dipsea, when work was pretty busy and like, wanting to, kind of, like, turn off my brain. And unfortunately, every piece of audio erotica I will ever listen to for the rest of my life I will listen to as a producer, and we'll just think about, okay, that's how they read that line, or, Oh, interesting music choice here. It's also made me think a lot about, as I said before, like vulnerability and what actually is sexy time and time again has been proven to be this vulnerability and this authenticity. And that is just a lesson that I keep learning and keep learning, especially in like a dialog context and in a way of expression.
Anita Rao 48:57
Embodied is a production of North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC, a listener-supported station. If you want to lend your support to this podcast, consider a contribution at wunc.org now. Special thanks to Megan Hart and Lee Suksi for contributing to this week's show. We appreciate you. This episode is produced by Kaia Findlay and edited by Amanda Magnus. Jenni Lawson is our technical director, and Quilla wrote our theme music. If you have thoughts after listening to this episode, we would love to hear them. Leave us a voice note in our virtual mailbox, speak pipe, write a review and let us know why you listen, or text your favorite episode to a friend. Word of mouth recommendations are the best way to support our podcast, and we so appreciate your support. Until next time, I'm Anita Rao taking on the taboo with you.