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Monday 25 June 2012

Interview with Gay Erotic Author Nate Tanner

More than one audience seems to exist for gay-themed fiction. How do you view these categories and where do you place your work?
I suppose the easy answer is to claim that gay men and women form different audiences, gays inclining more toward straightforward or hardcore or fetish material and women more toward paranormal, erotic romance, etc. But the truth is, I don't really know... I tend to write rather direct, more confessional stories and I suppose I probably have more male than female readers, but I couldn't back that claim up with any solid evidence. I just write what makes me hot --- I couldn't do this job any other way --- and I don't really have any answer other than that.

What's more important between the hotness of the men involved or the uniqueness of their situation?
Both are subjective, of course, but I'd say the latter. In written porn, once you've described the guys involved, that's really all you've got to work with. But their situation can always keep getting hotter, more involved, more fraught. Since my job is to create that tension and manage its buildup to an explosive climax <3, I pay more attention to ratcheting up the situation than to making sure I've described every last contour on Dude X's washboard abs. In fact, I'm tempted to say that sometimes it's better for an erotica writer to leave the characters just slightly sketchy, so that the reader can project their own fantasies into them. (I like to think of this in terms of Scott McCloud's "masking effect" in comics, described here: http://www.comicscube.com/2011/06/comic-book-glossary-masking-effect.html) There's probably also such a thing as "overselling" a guy's hotness in fiction. I quickly tire of hearing how SUUUPER HOT a dude is (it's far better to hear a single evocative detail that makes your mind fill in the rest of the picture), but I rarely get tired of a situation that keeps building up and twisting in new directions.
What balance do you prefer between sex and plot?

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive -- IE, orgasm is generally the payoff to all the plot that came before and is therefore part of the plot, people can get discovered during a sex act, fucking can be interspersed with dialogue, BDSM scenes about power and control can serve as plot setups and payoffs... However, I generally aim to have my stories be about 2/3 buildup to sex and 1/3 pure sex. And even when I experiment with story structures other than the traditional meet-flirt-kiss-suck-fuck this seems to happen!

For instance, my latest story, Thirteen Brojobs, is only about 7000 words long, but it has thirteen scenes and thirteen sexual encounters that track various stages in the relationship between two mostly-straight guys. It was started as an attempt to write a pure sex story... but I got interested in the characters and its ratio between sex and connective tissue still ended up being the same as in my other stories! However, I'm happy with the story anyway :-) If you want to read it, it's free for the next five days at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008EA3460
How important do you feel the sex act itself is as compared to erotic detail and tension?

The mechanical sex act itself is definitely less important than detail and tension. When it comes to simply depicting the ins and outs of a gay fuck, erotica loses out to visual porn in nearly every respect. If readers were just interested in two hot bodies getting it on, they would visit Gaytube or whatever and would never bother to read (or pay for!) an erotic story. But in erotica, it's the character arcs, the seemingly extraneous details and tensions, that catch the reader's interest and make them care that it's not just two random guys fucking, but rather, THESE particular guys. That's why in the hands of a good author, a single long-delayed kiss can sometimes be hotter than a cumshot.
How do you covey the hotness of a man who is beautiful to you but not necessarily to others?

Well, I think all men fall into this category! Every single man on earth probably looks hot to at least one other guy, but remains uninteresting to many others. There's nothing I can do about this, so all I can do is write about the kinds of guys I happen to like and hope other people are on my wavelength. Of course, it probably helps that I don't have particularly unusual tastes in men :-)
More than one audience seems to exist for gay-themed fiction. How do you view these categories and where do you place your work?
I suppose the easy answer is to claim that gay men and women form different audiences, gays inclining more toward straightforward or hardcore or fetish material and women more toward paranormal, erotic romance, etc. But the truth is, I don't really know... I tend to write rather direct, more confessional stories and I suppose I probably have more male than female readers, but I couldn't back that claim up with any solid evidence. I just write what makes me hot --- I couldn't do this job any other way --- and I don't really have any answer other than that.

What's more important between the hotness of the men involved or the uniqueness of their situation?
Both are subjective, of course, but I'd say the latter. In written porn, once you've described the guys involved, that's really all you've got to work with. But their situation can always keep getting hotter, more involved, more fraught. Since my job is to create that tension and manage its buildup to an explosive climax <3, I pay more attention to ratcheting up the situation than to making sure I've described every last contour on Dude X's washboard abs. In fact, I'm tempted to say that sometimes it's better for an erotica writer to leave the characters just slightly sketchy, so that the reader can project their own fantasies into them. (I like to think of this in terms of Scott McCloud's "masking effect" in comics, described here: http://www.comicscube.com/2011/06/comic-book-glossary-masking-effect.html) There's probably also such a thing as "overselling" a guy's hotness in fiction. I quickly tire of hearing how SUUUPER HOT a dude is (it's far better to hear a single evocative detail that makes your mind fill in the rest of the picture), but I rarely get tired of a situation that keeps building up and twisting in new directions.
What balance do you prefer between sex and plot?

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive -- IE, orgasm is generally the payoff to all the plot that came before and is therefore part of the plot, people can get discovered during a sex act, fucking can be interspersed with dialogue, BDSM scenes about power and control can serve as plot setups and payoffs... However, I generally aim to have my stories be about 2/3 buildup to sex and 1/3 pure sex. And even when I experiment with story structures other than the traditional meet-flirt-kiss-suck-fuck this seems to happen!

For instance, my latest story, Thirteen Brojobs, is only about 7000 words long, but it has thirteen scenes and thirteen sexual encounters that track various stages in the relationship between two mostly-straight guys. It was started as an attempt to write a pure sex story... but I got interested in the characters and its ratio between sex and connective tissue still ended up being the same as in my other stories! However, I'm happy with the story anyway :-) If you want to read it, it's free for the next five days at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008EA3460
How important do you feel the sex act itself is as compared to erotic detail and tension?

The mechanical sex act itself is definitely less important than detail and tension. When it comes to simply depicting the ins and outs of a gay fuck, erotica loses out to visual porn in nearly every respect. If readers were just interested in two hot bodies getting it on, they would visit Gaytube or whatever and would never bother to read (or pay for!) an erotic story. But in erotica, it's the character arcs, the seemingly extraneous details and tensions, that catch the reader's interest and make them care that it's not just two random guys fucking, but rather, THESE particular guys. That's why in the hands of a good author, a single long-delayed kiss can sometimes be hotter than a cumshot.
How do you covey the hotness of a man who is beautiful to you but not necessarily to others?

Well, I think all men fall into this category! Every single man on earth probably looks hot to at least one other guy, but remains uninteresting to many others. There's nothing I can do about this, so all I can do is write about the kinds of guys I happen to like and hope other people are on my wavelength. Of course, it probably helps that I don't have particularly unusual tastes in men :-)

To give a less flip answer, i think the method has something to do with showing an enthusiastic protagonist noticing his partner and becoming aroused. This works as a kind of framing device. Say I mention that guy X has deodorant stains on his T-shirt. That's not exactly the sort of detail everyone would find sexy. But, if I show protagonist Y noticing guy X's deodorant stain and instantly going so hard that his jeans bulge out and he begins walking funny, suddenly that stain seems to take on a different character. It's not that I'm telling the reader what to feel, but rather by showing the protagonist being turned on, I also give the reader permission to be turned on by that detail too. (Or something.)
To give a less flip answer, i think the method has something to do with showing an enthusiastic protagonist noticing his partner and becoming aroused. This works as a kind of framing device. Say I mention that guy X has deodorant stains on his T-shirt. That's not exactly the sort of detail everyone would find sexy. But, if I show protagonist Y noticing guy X's deodorant stain and instantly going so hard that his jeans bulge out and he begins walking funny, suddenly that stain seems to take on a different character. It's not that I'm telling the reader what to feel, but rather by showing the protagonist being turned on, I also give the reader permission to be turned on by that detail too. (Or something.)

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