Buck: It's a fuck movie. I don't watch a fuck movie for the story. I watch a fuck movie to see fuckin'.
PWP is an acronym that stands for Porn Without Plot. It's a shorthand flag for stories whose sole purpose is to present a sexually-explicit situation (often with descriptions of varying quality); "stroke story" is another term for the same, especially in erotica. A PWP is almost always a short story, as going more than a few scenes risks accidentally discovering a plot which may well take over the story, change it to Porn with Plot, and even shove the explicit sexual content off to the side.
However there exist many multi-chapter PWP fan fictions written with the intention of cramming as many explicit sex scenes in as possible — some of these end up discovering a (gasp!) plot, with the sex subsiding and then happening only every other chapter, which rather spoils the whole experience.
PWPs are convenient for the writer who wants to produce smut, because they do not require justification; they simply happen with no explanation. PWP can also stand for "Person With Person", because of the frequent occurrence of...non-standard couplings, also without the need for justification. Many years ago, its most common translation was "Plot? What Plot?", although that meaning has somewhat faded except among the much older fanbases (such as Star Trek).
Obviously deals with Pornography. See also Lemon, Slash Fic, Doujinshi, Summer Blockbuster, Excuse Plot, Yaoi (in its original Japanese meaning). The Furry Fandom in particular seems to be fond of this trope. Contrast Porn with Plot and Explicit Content (if it happens to involve the former trope instead).
Compare No Plot? No Problem! for the non-pornographic version of this trope.
YMMV variant: Sexually explicit mainstream films and TV shows, especially shows who have non-simulated sexual scenes (something becoming less rare in film than it used to be) are often accused — sometimes accurately, often not — as being this. Conversely, there are many pornographic films that have very strong plots (so much so that many have been released in non-hardcore and even non-sexual edits and still stand up; examples include CafĂ© Flesh and Star Wars XXX).
Discussed examples only:
- Interestingly, this is where the word "Yaoi" comes from. It was originally used to refer to plotless gay erotica, and was an abbreviation of "yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi" (no plot, no point, no meaning), and rapidly spread in usage from there. Male/male romance, in general, is more properly referred to as the Boys' Love Genre, for reasons that should be obvious.
- Smut Peddler: 2012 Edition: Lampooned in "Extended Version". When the protagonist selects the "adult" option, her viewing experience of the films is a brief synopsis of the story before it devolves into back-to-back sex scenes.
- In D'arkYagam'i's Choose Your Own Adventure story set in the Dark Yagami universe, protagonist "Evillll Yagami" films a porno with the president of Sexvania where the whole plot is as follows: Evillll wants pizza but his oven is broken, so the president inexplicably arrives with a pizza delivery for him, to which he replies he can't pay for it because his wallet is in the oven (which is why it's broken). Then he decides to pay by "sexxing" her. Considering it's most likely a Troll Fic, we can assume it's a parody.
- Boogie Nights: This trope is discussed at length. Jack Horner is an ambitious porn director who does not want to do this; he wants to make pornos that tell stories. Towards the end of the film, when the changing circumstances in the industry basically force him to do this—specifically, a project in which he takes one of his porn actresses around in a limo, to have sex with men taken randomly off the street—it's portrayed as a low moment for him.
- In DISCO (2017), Vince seems to think that a porn composed of nothing with sex is better than a porn with a script, taking the conversation very seriously.
- Discussed by Umberto Eco in one of his non-fiction books, where he says that you can tell the difference between a Porn movie, and an Art movie that just happens to feature explicit sex scenes in that in a Porn movie it takes a character exactly as long to do something mundane, like drink a glass of water, as it would in real life (because the director doesn't want to bother with anything more that will probably be fast forwarded through anyway).
- Drew Carey lampshades this in one episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, comparing points to the plot in a porno.
- Coupling: In one episode, Steve feels compelled to defend pornogr- erotica. He goes on to insist that Lesbian Spank Inferno does have a plot; it's about a group of lesbians who set up a film festival. Asked if the films entered in the festival have plots, he says they're "conceptual pieces".
Steve: What makes an erotic film different from pornography?
Susan: A plot you can't summarize in diagrams! - Jeremy Clarkson's Top Gear review of the Alfa Romeo 8C compares buying it for its performance capabilities to "buying a porn film for its plot".
- MAD lists "the plot to a porn movie" in their article "Do You Really Need to Know..."
- Blur the Lines converses about this trope before moving into an in-universe discussion
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Rick: Porno could be so much more in the right hands... but it's mainly just, "Whoops, wrong door! Let's fuck!"
Drew: How about we make our own porn? Want to lick this spoon clean, or lick it off of me?
Rick: So, this would be a porn where I'm picking body hair out of my teeth for a half-hour? Yeah, there's a plot. - Ennui GO!: Discussed when Hashim, Noah and Izzy are watching Outlaw of Gor and Hashim admits that he doesn't see the point of fanservice in works that aren't explicitly sexual because he prefers porn and actual stories to be kept separate.
Noah: If you were in charge of the world, we'd have never gotten peanut butter cups.
Izzy: Or Blacula! - Discussed in this MĂ©nage Ă 3 strip and the one immediately following, where two characters agree that they prefer porn with plot, while implicitly acknowledging that some doesn't have any. The trope is later somewhat averted in gags about the past career of Amber Larose, an ex-porn actress whose work seems to have had some plots, if only because the references can be made funnier that way — see, e.g., strip #652 (September 29, 2012, NSFW).
- In the Oglaf strip "Perhaps", a bard sings of several completely unrelated couples that have sex for no reason. In the end, he admits:
