Laylah Hunter's Blog, page 9
June 18, 2012
a perspective on perspective
So last week or so I got into a conversation in a friend's online space about POV in fiction—she'd asked people to weigh in on the circumstances where they preferred first vs. third person, and what factors went into that preference. Some interesting discussion ensued about how that choice influences how much a reader identifies with (or is expected to identify with) the POV character, and when that works and when it doesn't. And in the aftermath, I had a much more specific and personal thought about how that relates to how I write and read erotica.
This is where I admit that I tend not to enjoy erotica in first person. Part of that may be just familiarity; I've spent several years in fanfiction circles in which first person was practically unheard of. But a much bigger part of it, I think, is the identification issue.
First-person narrative puts the reader squarely in the experiences of the narrator. (Sometimes this is the setup to make the reader realize sie's consuming an unreliable narrative; sometimes it's a way to unsettle the reader by making edgy content personal. The statement still holds.) Even the most limited third person isn't quite as immediately filtered through the narrator's priorities and interests.
And that trips me up in erotic fiction, because that isn't the way I fantasize. I don't want a single point of identification. I want to be picturing the charge that both (or all) parties get out of the experience. (I think this might be why Thirteen's Fancy Man stories work better for me than some first-person stuff; the narrator there has a kink for imagining what's going on in the mind of the guy he's working on.) The fantasies that play in the privacy of my own head are at least as sloppy in POV terms as they are in fluids terms. I want to be free to touch on the bottom's humiliation and the top's triumph and the physical struggles and pleasures of everyone who gets involved. I'm too much of a switch to want to be stuck in a single role in my imagination.
Obviously this is not intended to be a blanket statement about which POV is "better" for erotica—there are few arenas where YMMV more than erotic imagination. But it's certainly a thing for me to consider more carefully as I'm reading other people's work and thinking about what I can learn from them.
comments
This is where I admit that I tend not to enjoy erotica in first person. Part of that may be just familiarity; I've spent several years in fanfiction circles in which first person was practically unheard of. But a much bigger part of it, I think, is the identification issue.
First-person narrative puts the reader squarely in the experiences of the narrator. (Sometimes this is the setup to make the reader realize sie's consuming an unreliable narrative; sometimes it's a way to unsettle the reader by making edgy content personal. The statement still holds.) Even the most limited third person isn't quite as immediately filtered through the narrator's priorities and interests.
And that trips me up in erotic fiction, because that isn't the way I fantasize. I don't want a single point of identification. I want to be picturing the charge that both (or all) parties get out of the experience. (I think this might be why Thirteen's Fancy Man stories work better for me than some first-person stuff; the narrator there has a kink for imagining what's going on in the mind of the guy he's working on.) The fantasies that play in the privacy of my own head are at least as sloppy in POV terms as they are in fluids terms. I want to be free to touch on the bottom's humiliation and the top's triumph and the physical struggles and pleasures of everyone who gets involved. I'm too much of a switch to want to be stuck in a single role in my imagination.
Obviously this is not intended to be a blanket statement about which POV is "better" for erotica—there are few arenas where YMMV more than erotic imagination. But it's certainly a thing for me to consider more carefully as I'm reading other people's work and thinking about what I can learn from them.
comments
June 4, 2012
O Brave New World
2012 is apparently the Year Of Get Off Your Ass And Submit over here. After years of "someday," finally I'm sending out fiction for publication. After years of telling myself, "Nothing you write is publishable, it doesn't fit what people are looking for," I'm discovering that's no longer the case. It's a little terrifying and a lot thrilling.
I blame the internet in a few different ways. First, and most obviously, the rise of ebook publishing, making it possible for more specialized small presses to survive: defining more niches, expanding the field of publishable content. A story is no longer unpublishable just beacuse it's too queer or too kinky or just plain too weird for the big New York houses. The first story I sold to ForbiddenFiction is something that I wrote on a whim, and then despaired of doing anything with because it seemed too creepy for an erotica publisher and too sexy for a horror publisher. Then I sent it to FFP and was told, and here I paraphrase, "We'd like to take this on, if you can make it more creepy and more sexy." It's a beautiful time to be writing.
Second, for me personally, I blame online fandom. I've spent years there, and it's given me a huge amount of practice in a number of ways: honing my language, making writing a daily habit, teaching me to write to deadline (often multiple overlapping deadlines) and to someone else's specifications. Taking challenge prompts isn't so different from looking at an anthology call or a special collection theme: here are the parameters someone else has set, and now it's my job to do the most interesting thing I can within those constraints. It's an exciting adventure, taking that practice into a new arena.
Speaking of which, I have an angel/demon story to be working on. So long for now.
comments
I blame the internet in a few different ways. First, and most obviously, the rise of ebook publishing, making it possible for more specialized small presses to survive: defining more niches, expanding the field of publishable content. A story is no longer unpublishable just beacuse it's too queer or too kinky or just plain too weird for the big New York houses. The first story I sold to ForbiddenFiction is something that I wrote on a whim, and then despaired of doing anything with because it seemed too creepy for an erotica publisher and too sexy for a horror publisher. Then I sent it to FFP and was told, and here I paraphrase, "We'd like to take this on, if you can make it more creepy and more sexy." It's a beautiful time to be writing.
Second, for me personally, I blame online fandom. I've spent years there, and it's given me a huge amount of practice in a number of ways: honing my language, making writing a daily habit, teaching me to write to deadline (often multiple overlapping deadlines) and to someone else's specifications. Taking challenge prompts isn't so different from looking at an anthology call or a special collection theme: here are the parameters someone else has set, and now it's my job to do the most interesting thing I can within those constraints. It's an exciting adventure, taking that practice into a new arena.
Speaking of which, I have an angel/demon story to be working on. So long for now.
comments
