clarentine (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clarentine) wrote2005-07-28 11:51 am
clarentine) wrote2005-07-28 11:51 am
Entry tags:
Unbearable intensity of being
I've been following with interest some of the recent discussion of Big Gay Fantasy novels and why so many of them were written by women. This is Oracne's post on the subject. One thing that struck me was ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
desayunoencama's comment that women writing m/m relationships write about the relationship itself, while men writing the same sorts of stories write about fucking. (/paraphrase)
This sort of makes sense in the light of what various experts say about what the genders (assuming two, for the moment) seek in a sexual encounter - that, for women, it's emotional, while for men it's a physical thing. Given that we write and read to satisfy ourselves in some fashion, doesn't it then make sense that women write about the emotional aspects of a pairing, and that men write about the physical content?
Then that satisfaction issue collided with a question in the back of my brain. You see, I write m/m pairings, happily. I also make a point of using a non-gender-specific by-line and avoiding gender clues about myself...not because I'm uncomfortable or manipulative, but to avoid preconception about the tales I tell. (You know, the old statistic about women reading both male and female authors but men not being willing to read female authors. Why lose half of the potential readership by virtue of a name?) Some readers, having read and enjoyed my work, are capable of applying the proper gender label to me, but a large number get it wrong - and this is heartening. I apparently write m/m encounters in such a way as to satisfy both male and female readers. Yay!
But, my brain wanted to know, what is it about my characters in particular, in the way they're depicted, that works for both genders? And, to bring this note around to where it started, why do some novels featuring gay male characters satisfy a wide range of readers while others get labeled Big Gay Fantasy (in the sense, as Oracne noted, that they're over the top in some fashion, not realistically portraying the relationship)?
I think the answer to the question lies, not in which gender is writing the relationship, but in the way it's depicted. The relationships that succeed on the page have much in common, I think, with all good character depiction. That is, the characters are real. They're so intensely real you feel they could walk off the page. They have lives beyond the boundaries of the novel. It's that unbearable intensity of being that marks the best characters...and I think it's the intensity that makes my m/m characters, even in their sexual moments with one another, believable.
Either that, or I'm fooling myself something fierce. >;-]
desayunoencama's comment that women writing m/m relationships write about the relationship itself, while men writing the same sorts of stories write about fucking. (/paraphrase) This sort of makes sense in the light of what various experts say about what the genders (assuming two, for the moment) seek in a sexual encounter - that, for women, it's emotional, while for men it's a physical thing. Given that we write and read to satisfy ourselves in some fashion, doesn't it then make sense that women write about the emotional aspects of a pairing, and that men write about the physical content?
Then that satisfaction issue collided with a question in the back of my brain. You see, I write m/m pairings, happily. I also make a point of using a non-gender-specific by-line and avoiding gender clues about myself...not because I'm uncomfortable or manipulative, but to avoid preconception about the tales I tell. (You know, the old statistic about women reading both male and female authors but men not being willing to read female authors. Why lose half of the potential readership by virtue of a name?) Some readers, having read and enjoyed my work, are capable of applying the proper gender label to me, but a large number get it wrong - and this is heartening. I apparently write m/m encounters in such a way as to satisfy both male and female readers. Yay!
But, my brain wanted to know, what is it about my characters in particular, in the way they're depicted, that works for both genders? And, to bring this note around to where it started, why do some novels featuring gay male characters satisfy a wide range of readers while others get labeled Big Gay Fantasy (in the sense, as Oracne noted, that they're over the top in some fashion, not realistically portraying the relationship)?
I think the answer to the question lies, not in which gender is writing the relationship, but in the way it's depicted. The relationships that succeed on the page have much in common, I think, with all good character depiction. That is, the characters are real. They're so intensely real you feel they could walk off the page. They have lives beyond the boundaries of the novel. It's that unbearable intensity of being that marks the best characters...and I think it's the intensity that makes my m/m characters, even in their sexual moments with one another, believable.
Either that, or I'm fooling myself something fierce. >;-]