Writing Porn is Hard

Just in, more on my redesign of Raul the missionary, our new friend for chapter 4.

One thing that has surprised me about working on Crooked Sabre is how difficult the writing has been. I'm not complaining mind you, it has been interesting and challenging and has meant that I've really had to think about porn as a medium. I recommend the process if you are at all interested in thinking about what porn is, where it has coming from and where its going.

I wanted to move beyond wondering if the plumbing would ever get done or whether the pizza would get eaten before it went cold. I wanted to write about sex in a way that was, well realistic is not the word (especially with orcs and elves!) but I guess … natural … might be closer? Character-driven is a term bandied about a lot, but I think it applies here as well.

A couple of things I like about the yaoi genre... First of all it generally relies on being a side story in a much greater story, this idea is more obvious in the fan yaoi material. This works so you don't have to spend a lot of time establishing the world, the characters, relationships and so on. You can get straight to the context, which if you are working as an amateur is important, you only have so much time, so many pages you can produce. Even though Crooked Sabre is not fan art or set in an existing world, it is a world so similar to all that generic fantasy out there that I don't need to explain it. That's why I describe the seris as yaoi, even though some would disagree.

The other thing I like about yaoi is the focus on nuance, which I think comes out of manga generally. Manga focusses on still points between action (I think Scott McCloud talked about this) and (to me) some of the most interesting parts of porn are those moments of connection, between the bump and grind, that say something about the relationship between the two performers. Even if it's just “my leg has gone to sleep, can you shove over a bit”. That's something I'd like to play with more and an area where I think porn can aspire to be a bit more of an art, a bit less mass produced and repetitive. Yes its not real, porn performers are generally acting (with whatever skills they have) but in those moments of connection there are grains of truth, perhaps more profound than any number of

I am also thinking about the whole writing for comics process, how it is different from other genres. I know I get to be very text heavy and the discipline of cutting down words and dialogue is very interesting, but a discussion for another day when I've thought about it some more.