The fiction section on sadOsam has become very popular. It seems that many of you really love to read kinky stories. Often something you read can be hotter than every porn you watch. I can understand that totally because if you read something the people in the story look the way the author describes but in combination with your own fantasies. So they can fulfill your desires and needs much more than the porn actors.
One of our very popular authors is Max Potter and I’m really happy to have him here with me today. In this interview, you will also get some of the links to his stories (together with the great illustrations of Theo Blaze).
Hi Max. Is what you’re writing just fantasy or do you give us also a little inside into your experiences?
Hello Marc, it’s great to get a chance to chat with you. My stories are mostly just that, stories, but as you allude, not entirely. Fiction gives us a chance to explore things we may not want to in the real world, or it could be the introduction to something we had not considered before. My first exposure to puppy/dog play, for example came from stories, and where I’ve not engaged in it, I think my fascination with collaring a boy springs directly from there. Stories are a very safe place for you to check out something and see how you react to it. Not everything is going to work for everybody. Reading gives you a chance to try things out all on your own, to see if it stirs anything in you, if there is a new desire rising in you. Or it can solidify in you that there is no interest.
Kinky stories include a lot of emotions, desires and needs. To describe them is something very difficult, even more if they are not your own sensations. How are you able to describe that without having had them by yourself?
A good writer is a good reader. Reading gives you an idea of what does and does not work in relaying your point. If if it’s not a scenario you are particularity interested in, following a writer’s ability to describe, to take the reader exactly where he wants the reader to be, that is the key. A skilled writer should be able to transport the reader to places the writer has never seen, engage in activities the writer as never done, and those readers with those actual experiences should feel memories coming up in them and not be able to tell. Truly being able to do that is a goal of mine.
Reading does not, and should not, be limited to erotica. I think a writer needs to read great prose to see how the words flow together. To practice with other genres, sharpening their skills. I can speak and write in an impromptu fashion, give me a scene, and I can go on for some time. I worked on this to hone my craft. Not everything I’ve done in that would I want people to see, but the idea is to start it and watch where it goes. I’ve been surprised where my fingers take me sometimes. I’ve started out thinking I was going one direction, but the characters took the reigns and went elsewhere. That’s part of the magic of writing. When the story grips you and you are more of a conduit for it then not. My eyebrows have literally shot up as characters do things on the page with me typing that I don’t know where they got it from. Just like in the real world when your partner does something you don’t expect and you thoroughly enjoy it. I’ve had to adjust plots because the muse took me in a direction I didn’t expect
As for kinks I don’t do, here again reading is valuable. I look for people who practice what they do and look at their descriptions. I then compare to what makes me feel a similar way. The most straightforward example is perhaps the difference between a sub and a Dom. Read the descriptions of a sub serving, how it fills their heart, mind, and soul with satisfaction. How a sub doing his duty feels content, worthy, and complete. I get that feeling when a command is obeyed. As a writer, I have to try to break apart the cause and the effect here. I may not fully understand how doing something I do not want to would fill me with joy, but I do understand how much I enjoy it when a sub does as I order knowing they do not want to except for my telling them to. So I take my feelings, and switch out the cause. How the sub desires to serve more, how the Dom desires to command more. Each order from the Dom fills the Dom with happiness, and fulfilling an order does that for the sub.
Another avenue to this is actual experience. I have no desire to be whipped, but I have certainly felt a cord snap and strike me. I can remember the burn, the sharp bite, the line of red that appears. I can take that, magnify it and extend it to how a sub would feel being lashed. Not one strike, but many, not one line, but several. That gives me a basis for description. Embarrassment is something else everyone has experienced. It may not be the humiliation of a sub forced to do, but we have all had a case that makes our face go red. I use the mundane embarrassments of my life to describe what it would be for a sub to debase themselves for his Dom. It does get tricky combing pain or humiliation with the arousal a sub feels, but if I’m doing my job right, a sub would read it as an experience they have had.
I also chatted with subs and Doms about what goes through their minds. Just asking a non-writer how they see what they do, what goes through their minds, and how it effects them gives me a better understanding, and more resources to draw on.
You say that your characters start to have theire independent existence. Means that, the plot you have had in mind at the beginning is not what it is at the end? And is this new plot mostly better than the basic idea you’ve had or does it become sometimes also a waste of time?
It’s better. Part of my process is thinking about the characters for a while before I start to write, so I get something of an idea of who I want them to be. What are their interests and lives about. What turns them on. How aggressive are they. I think this gives them some depth, even if none of that ever makes it to the page. I strive to give my characters some differences in what they do and do not like. Not every Dom or sub will be into the same things.
When the characters take control, hence moving the story in ways I don’t expect, it comes alive. The characters shift outside of what I had planned, and take on a depth I didn’t see before. Sometimes it’s a little act, or off hand comment, other times it’s an action. I may be the only one to notice, but it does flesh them out in my mind, and that should make it a better read.
I also get comments from readers, and that is a great encouragement for me. Knowing there are men out there reading and enjoying what I’m writing makes it worth while. I get suggestions, and particularly if the idea is not something we’ve seen before, I really work to incorporate that into the story.
I have had some runs where things just didn’t work out. Most of the time, I can tell it’s going off the rails pretty soon and go back and adjust it or scrap it completely. Fortunately, that’s fairly rare, so I don’t get depressed by having to toss out big blocks of work. Some of that can be salvaged. I’ve taken ideas from one story that I got exploring on and when it just doesn’t fit, move it to another.
It seems that you can handle the writer’s blocks quite easily. Not bad. How do you chose the perspective of a story and can changes of the perspective also help if you have such a block?
Writer’s block is a bane of any writer. And I get it, of course. Right now, I’m doing a number of stories so when I get stuck on one first switch to another. I have a couple that are “regular” on-going, meaning I’m trying to produce chapters at a fairly frequent clip, at least once a month. Others I have on a less frequent schedule, so there are longer gaps. A lot of that is based on feedback. If a story is popular, if I’m seeing comments and getting messages, I focus more on it.
If I’m really blocked, I give it a bit of a rest, and try to puzzle out where it should go next. Sometimes (now actually on one), it’s that I have the characters at one point, and I need to get them elsewhere, and finding out to do that takes some work. Stepping away can be the best option, at least for me. Let it percolate in the back of my mind, then re-read it and see what happens. It can be frustrating, but the breaks help, as do suggestions from readers. If if I don’t use an exact suggestion, it could spur something on. I would really encourage every reader to write to authors they enjoy. I’ve not found anything that makes me want to continue a story more than someone contacting me and saying they are looking forward to my next installment.
Choosing a perspective or voice for a story often comes from the tale you want to tell. I often write from the sub’s perspective because I feel a reader wants to know how it effects the sub, letting the inner voice of the narrator describe what is going on, how the sub feels when he is humiliated, beaten, or given an order. This is often where you get the richest descriptions, and I think can be related to by Doms and subs. But sometimes the story just won’t work from the sub’s perspective. “Dominating a Neighbor” is my first told from the Dom’s perspective because the sub was kept in the dark at first, and it would have been confusing and unsatisfying (I think) to have that voice telling the tale.
When the story forms in my mind, I get it from one side or the other usually. If it works, meaning I can come up with enough that a reader would get it, I go from there. I do mess up as I’m writing, and will have to go over my work to make sure I’ve not switched in the middle of it. Fortunately I have a great editor that helps me there, pointing out when I’ve switched perspective and showing me where I need to go back and fix things. It can be a simple scene or image that comes to light, and I work around how things got to that point, and where they will go.
If you’re living the SM in real life it has always to be consensual and the limits of the slaves have to be respected. How is it in stories? What kind of limits and taboos are you giving yourself as author?
In real life consent and limits are absolute requirements, no exceptions. Stories are different, because the author sets the bounds on what will be done and what can be borne. It’s quite different because what happens with consent as well as limits are for the flow of the story. One of my stories is very obviously non-consensual, but in this I have set up a conceit in the form of absolute mind-control that there is no question that is it fictional. Tales allow us to explore cases we would never do in real life, to read a fantasy we may enjoy, but should never engage in, non-consentuality being one.
I think in stories, if you are violating such a rule, doing it in a way that could not actually happens gives it enough unrealness as to make it ‘acceptable’, or as acceptable as it would be. Since these are characters, no actual person is being harmed. I know there is a thought that just the story is wrong-headed, but I suspect a lot of readers go for stories more extreme than they would actually do.
As for what I won’t get into, I’m not at all turned on by real incest. I’m fine with characters playing the “Daddy/Son” trope, but when the characters really are a father and son, or brothers, it turns me off, so I’ve never written that. There are some fetishes I’m not personally into that I either don’t use or don’t put in much. Sometimes a story needs it. There are cases where what I would do is more limited them the Dom I’m writing. Characters will act in ways I would not, because to give them some personality, they have to be different from me.
I agree that there are many reader of kinky stories are into harder things than they live. I think it is like a valve for own phantasies, dreams, needs which will never be lived because the circumstances don’t allow it or because it is really to extreme for them to live it in real life.
What kind of special scenarios can we expect in your upcoming stories?
Quite, there is a value to looking at fantasies, and a certain eroticism. We can lift out a number of limits. One of the things that happens in stories is the number of characters who are into whatever is going on. If a writer wants a house full of frat boys wanting a cumdump, there it is. I don’t know how long you would have to search to find it in real life.
My newest story is a jock who loses a series of bets to an old rival. He’s crushed by his defeat, and ends up submitting in ways he never expected, and doesn’t believe he does. For me, it a change from how I usually have subs submit in stories, where they are usually willing, or under a form of mind control. I hope to explore the difference in this by going through the tormented mind of a newly-minted sub not able to grasp why he does what he does.
I am kicking around another one where a Dom has a chance meeting with a really insatiable sub. The sub is constantly horny and wanting more. This one needs a bit more fleshing out, as I have a decent basis for it, but I think I need something to add to it. That will come to me, I’m just not sure right now when it will be out. Sometimes I struggle with moving things along, sometimes my fingers can’t keep up with what I’m trying to get out. I know I’ve said it before, but feedback from readers really does make a difference. Messages from someone who has enjoyed my stories is like getting someone new and exciting in bed, making you want to call out of work so you can do more.
