"I Didn't Know You Were Bi!" - How Do I Write a Slash Story?
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| Title: | "I Didn't Know You Were Bi!" - How Do I Write a Slash Story? |
| Creator: | Xanthe |
| Date(s): | November 11, 2000 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | The X-Files focused, but applicable to many fandoms |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | "I Didn't Know You Were Bi!" - How Do I Write a Slash Story?, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
"I Didn't Know You Were Bi!" - How Do I Write a Slash Story? is a 2000 essay by Xanthe.
It was posted to the X-Files website Working Stiffs where it is called "How do I write a good slash story" in the table of contents.
Introduction
I have a certain unique perspective on writing slash in that I also write in many other genres as well, including het, friendship, humour, threesomes, and so on. To be honest, I don’t approach writing slash any differently to how I write my het stories. The essential elements of both are realistic characterisation, a solid narrative, good, believable dialogue, and, (sometimes!) a plot. Just because both the main characters are male, and they end up in bed together, doesn’t mean that my approach is fundamentally different, or that writing slash requires different skills. There are, though, some obvious factors to think about, and one very obvious one indeed…
Some Topics Discussed
- realism in sex scenes
- slash is for female fans
- Xanthe's novel 24/7
- progression of slash fiction and, while the name is not specifically used, discussion of The Wave Theory of Slash
- much more
The Essay
"Sex, sex, sex — that’s all you think about."
I’ve been approached several times by nervous people asking for my advice on writing their first slash sex scene. I’ve also frequently heard people lamenting that writing the sex is the hardest part of the story. I don’t have that problem! Maybe I’m seriously kinky, but I actually find sex one of the easiest things to write. It’s the fun part of writing, the recreational part, when all the tricky plot stuff is out of the way, and you can just concentrate on physical sensation. I love writing sex!
I know some people find slash sex particularly hard to write, and I’m not sure why. I suspect it’s because they feel they can’t draw on real life to inform their writing, and they worry that they might get something "wrong". I can empathise with that. When I first started writing I felt sure that someone would spot that I was a fraud, and that <shock!> I wasn’t a gay man who’d experienced anal sex at first, uh, hand. They might guess that I didn’t have a penis, and therefore had no right describing how it feels to ejaculate. All this is nonsense of course. Most slash writers, except for the very small percentage who are gay men, are in the same boat. A few of them do some research, which is a good idea if you want to feel more confident about your subject, but I’ll admit that much of what I know about gay sex I learned from slash — and I filled in the gaps with my imagination.
I’m not advising people to write about sex without any knowledge of the rudimentaries of the sexual act, but I am also most firmly not of the school of thought that you have to have experienced something yourself in order to write about it. If that were the case then presumably we wouldn’t be able to put ourselves in the mind of a killer without first going out and murdering someone. It’s nonsense - that’s what the imagination is for. I’m always furious when I go to writing classes, or read books about writing, where the same old advice is rehashed endlessly. Always write from personal experience, we are told. Well, if I did that, I can assure you that my writing would be very tedious. Personal experience can be fodder for stories, and inspiration for them, but if you’re a science fiction/fantasy/erotica junkie, as I am, then regurgitating snippets of your life can only take you so far. The imagination is a rich place and doesn’t need to be confined by the boundaries of Real Life, in my view. I want my escapism, I want my imagination — I want my slash. To anyone scared of writing m/m sex scenes, I’d advise you to just get on and do it. Gay sex, straight sex, it’s all sex at the end of the day. It all involves panting, kissing, sweating, and bodily fluids - and if you’re writing slash then you’re also lucky enough to have not just one, but two very well endowed men to play with as well.
So, having got the anxiety about writing your slash sex scene out of the way, how should you go about actually writing the scene?
I wouldn’t necessarily advocate using too much realism in writing slash sex scenes. This might seem a strange thing to say, but we all know that sex isn’t always the joyous experience that is usually described in romance fiction of all descriptions, slash or het. Real Life sex can be awkward, painful, and unsatisfying — but this is fiction, and we can create the sex scene we want to imagine taking place, in a land where the men are well hung, the condoms and lube are always to hand, nobody has to sleep in the wet patch, and Kim never seems to overhear Mulder and Skinner going at it hammer and tongs on Skinner’s desk.
When writing any sex scene you might like to bear in mind who your audience is. I say this because the way women like reading about two men making love, and the way men actually experience gay sex may be two very different things. I know that my readers aren’t particularly interested in bodily fluids, but they are interested in how sex feels, and the emotions of the participants. Generally speaking, also, women tend to want the sex act to culminate in penetration. For gay men, anal penetration may not be all that important, but women generally tend to feel the sex act is incomplete without penetration. That’s why penetration is very much a feature of sex scenes in slash fanfiction. It doesn’t have to be — describing mutual masturbation, frottage, or fellatio can be just as satisfying to your readers.
[snipped]
I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules about what you can or should portray. This is our fantasy sex world after all, where we have a control over both the sex act itself, and even over men that we might not have in our Real Lives. When I’m writing slash I can be completely free. I can stage manage the sex, without having a female character there to identify with. I can party. I’m in control: Yes - I use slash to top!
Ooh, kinky!
I’m not in favour of self-censorship. I don’t think there should be any rights and wrongs, or any places we shouldn’t go in our imaginations. If you write something that other people find distasteful, then you’ll find out soon enough if you post it. If you write something you think might offend, then getting the advice of two or three beta readers might be a good idea. You might decide that maybe this is a story best kept on your hard drive, or you might decide to post it with copious warnings.
When I started my BDSM epic, ‘24/7’, I was very concerned that the graphic and explicit descriptions of consensual BDSM sex would draw cries of outrage from some readers, but that didn’t happen. Instead, it became probably my most popular work to date, with thousands of readers. In each chapter I have explored some complex BDSM themes and issues, and graphically depicted BDSM sex, and I haven’t (so far!) had any emails of complaint. On the contrary, that series has been nominated for several awards for "best sex scene." I am, however, careful about where I post it. It’s available on my site, complete with numerous warnings, but other than that I have only posted the text to a few specialist sites, such as the Boys in Chains archive. I have posted the story link more widely, but each time I put a warning about the subject matter. I think that’s only courteous.
Two years ago I wouldn’t even have dared to write something as explicit as ‘24/7’, but I have more confidence now, and I’m prepared to take more risks. This was a risk that paid off. Some risks might not. The net can be a censorious place after all. Bear that in mind if you’re thinking of posting something kinky.
"I didn’t know you were bi!" - Conventions of the genre
Slash has come such a long way, and it is much less self conscious now than it was even two and half years ago when I first started reading and writing it. In the early days, it was de rigueur for the characters to have a long discussion about their sexuality prior to making love.
"I didn’t know you were bi!" was a common exclamation upon Mulder and Skinner finding their lips locked, and their bodies convulsed in the throes of passion. There was a good deal of agonising about ‘coming out’ at the office, and how to tell Scully. Times have changed, and a lot of slash has flowed under the bridge since then. Now, the characters generally agree that they must be discreet, but they don’t tend to feel the need to discuss the whole "being gay" thing the way they used to. Slash is now so prevalent on the net, and so accepted in fanfic circles, that the shock value isn’t there. Why would Mulder and Skinner be surprised to find themselves in a clinch, when we read 15 stories just yesterday where they were boffing like bunnies?
[snipped]
So it’s no longer necessary to have your characters discuss the fact they’re gay. These days the boys frequently fling themselves into each other’s arms without being remotely surprised to find that they’re gay. Frequently, they aren’t even gay. This may seem surprising, but it’s a common theme in slash. What we see onscreen is a chemistry and connection between two men, and we translate that into slash by giving them a romantic and sexual relationship. We explain away previous girlfriends/wives by playing the bisexual card — or we don’t even make it that definite. Often the characters are simply gender-blind. They’ve fallen in love with each other, and that’s the important thing. As women writing slash we love the idea of two men being together, and in our ideal world gay people aren’t persecuted for their sexual orientation. Unsurprisingly, it is our bigotry-free fantasy world that we often choose to depict in our stories, rather than the real one. I want there to be emotional angst, related to the inner drama of the characters’ lives, rather than related to their sexuality every time. I take it for granted that they’re sleeping together, and that they have a fulfilled sexual relationship with very few hang-ups. It would be very boring if every story had to also contain angst about sexual identity as well. By all means write a story where Mulder and Skinner deal very seriously about the issue of being gay — but remember that if you want to write a second slash story, and then a third, that you’re unlikely to want to keep going over the same issues. That’s why so many slash writers ignore what in Real Life would obviously be a more significant issue for the characters than it so often is in slash stories.
It’s good to talk…
When I started writing slash I thought that two men would be unlikely to behave as romantically as women. I thought relationships between two men would be characterised by more violence, and gruffness, and less tenderness. I didn’t think they would talk about their emotions as often, or as honestly. These, in a kind of arrogance, I had assumed were female prerogatives, and while there may be small and very generalised grain of truth in the stereotypes, that isn’t the whole picture by any means, and, more than that, it isn’t necessarily what my readers want to read. Very soon after I started writing, a gay male writer emailed to ask why my characters were so rarely involved in honest, romantic discussions about their emotions. I replied that I found it hard to imagine men talking in such a way to each other, but he assured me that it could, and did happen, and it was a beautiful revelation for me, and had a profound effect on my writing. It’s true that I do sometimes now write my male characters with a degree of emotional self-awareness that I think few people, male or female, possess, but I enjoy writing them that way, and my readers enjoy reading them like that as well. Yes, we could all stick to a very rigid version of what we perceive to be the Real World, but what price realism if it isn’t really what people want to read? After all, if we took realism to the nth degree, then we wouldn’t be able to have any of the characters jumping into bed together, because as far as we can tell <nods to the inscrutable Chris Carter> that hasn’t happened on the show.
Rape…and character rape
There are two common pitfalls of writing slash: one is that the men are often appalling feminized, and the other is that they are equally appalling brutalised. These extremes happen because women wish to both identify with their heroes, and exorcise their own demons too. Think for a moment how likely it would be that Skinner would rape Scully. It isn’t, and I don’t think I’ve read a story where that happens. Okay, so why do you think it likely that he’d rape Mulder either? There are a surprisingly large number of stories dealing with that storyline. I know some gay male writers who are appalled by women’s preoccupation with having the male characters both inflict and suffer sexual torture. Obviously women use slash to work through some of their own fears, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Think carefully though, before you write, about whether it’s appropriate to depict characters we know and love behaving in such a brutal way. If you can make a case for it in your story — mind-altering drugs, psychosis, alien possession etc, then that’s fine, but if it’s just a case of overwhelming lust, or the need to overpower and abuse, then I’d ask you to think very carefully before writing. People won’t thank you for using the characters they love in order to work through some fear, or life trauma, of your own.
Another pitfall of slash is the kind of fic where the men are de facto women. This can be wrongly categorised as "schmoop". I say wrongly because I’ve seen some BDSM stories where the guys behave like silly schoolgirls. Schmoop is a kind of romantic, nothing-much-happens fic, which, because of the genre, can lend itself to particularly unrealistic portrayals of the guys. While I rarely write schmoop, sometimes it’s exactly what I want to read, and it can press all my buttons. Some schmoop is so well done that it’s like sinking into a warm bath with a cup of hot chocolate — it’s sweet, and warm, and comforting. Yes, it would be silly to have Mulder and Skinner calling each other ‘buttercup’ and staying home to knit each other matching sweaters every night, but that’s just bad characterisation. You can write good schmoop while still keeping the characters both male and macho. JiM is excellent at this.
Why write slash at all?
Before you sit down and write your slash story, you might like to ask yourself not ‘how do I write slash?’ but why am I writing it? When I first started writing slash I used to discuss the matter endlessly with my online friends. Why am I writing slash? What’s the appeal? I talk about it less these days because I just take it for granted that slash is part of my psyche.
I don’t write slash because I’m poking my tongue out at the patriarchal powers-that-be by appropriating images and icons of popular television and exercising power over them because I feel disenfranchised by the relationships and power structures shown on my TV screen. Nor am I putting up two fingers to the male dominated writing team at ‘1013’ by showing that we women can take their creations and re-write them in the image we want to see, although both the above may be true. Yes, writing slash is an expression of my sexuality, it does empower me, and there is something inherently subversive about it — but that isn’t why I do it either