How to Write a Classic Bad Hatstander for Bodie and Doyle
| Meta | |
|---|---|
| Title: | How to Write a Classic Bad Hatstander for Bodie and Doyle |
| Creator: | Mosby Singleton, aka Nancy Loser, aka Nansi Alexander |
| Date(s): | Early 1980's |
| Medium: | essay |
| Fandom: | The Professionals |
| Topic: | bad fanfic |
| External Links: | online |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
How to Write a Classic Bad Hatstander for Bodie and Doyle by Mosby Singleton is an satirical essay poking fun at genres, tropes, and language in Pros fiction.
Some Topics Discussed
- Phrases
- Terms of Endearment
- Accoutrements
- Characterization
- Alliteration/Figures of Speech
- Titles
- How to Make Sure Everyone Knows You Wrote This Story
From the Essay
There is a classic misconception among many that it is easy to write your average bad Bodie and Doyle story. On the contrary, to be truly awful is a task of such difficulty that only the truly talented can ever hope to attain the level of dreadfulness required.There was a time when just anyone could sit down and turn out moderately readable Professionals stories. A couple of car chases, the odd massacre or two, and one was set for at least thirty or forty pages. To be what can only be described as awesome is not easy. These days it requires a depth of ingenuity usually found only in the coroners' reports of certain big city hospitals.
For example, it is no longer enough to simply have the customary two car chases, three close calls with the bomb squad (an excellent opportunity to employ a small number of extras over a large range of parts) and a casually choreographed gun-battle-over-the-roof- tops-with-some-shooting-at-a-fellow-who-will-die-horribly-and-then- turn-up-in-the-next-episode-as-agent 6.2. Ah, 6.2 -- what would we have done without him, eh???
Nowadays, food aside and the question of civil rights having been dealt with in previous paragraphs, it is necessary to be truly inventive, which truly is difficult.
I am sure there are those of you who still hold to the old-fashioned idea that a plot is necessary to advance your story. Pish, pish, pish. To the contrary, the very BEST of the bad Bodie and Doyle stories have little or no plot at all -- or, alternatively, have so many holes in what little plot there is, that a large L-1011 jumbo jet could be driven through them with room to spare.
One should of course, stay well away from writers under the age of twenty, for these poor misguided individuals can only write those stories which I can most delicately refer to as containing plot, characterization, and a definite sense of knowing where they want to go. Any fool knows that the only place a truly bad Bodie and Doyle story should go is to bed, and in as many positions as possible. And a few that are impossible.
Go ahead -- - let your imagination (what little of it there is) run riot, or at least through the jam and jelly section of your local market. I would be remiss in my duty if I left you with the impression that sex should rear its ugly head to excess in such stories however. Try to keep it to one five-to-twenty page scene (diagrams optional) every three or four pages.
For these long inbetween tender love scene sections, you can easily throw in a little esoteric discussion as to life, the universe and whether Doyle will still respect Bodie in the morning if he lets him use KY in odd places tonight. This should not be confused with plot, which, as has been stated, belongs in your explanation to the tax auditor, not in your story.
Reactions and Reviews
1986
It's good that we can laugh at ourselves as writers. [1]
1996
As I understand it, the term "hatstand" entered (Pros) because very early on a non-slash fan was shown some B/D stories, and she exclaimed, They're all bent as bloody hatstands!" The word became a technical term for a short B/D story, so that there is a very funny circuit piece called "How to Write a Classic Bad Hatstander for Bodie and Doyle," and Lois Welling's hysterical "How to Write Slash — A Desk Reference For the Millions" [2] includes in its list of necessary components of a slash story.
- a. desire fraught with
- b. anxiety (based on misconceptions and lack of faith)
- c. attacks of conscience (usually misdirected, see (b) above)
- d. soul searching, 10 minutes to 200 years
- i. hatstand: 10 minutes
- ii. novella: 3 years
- iii. trilogy: 2 generations (of someone or something)[3]
References
- ^ from The Hatstand Express #8
- ^ This is in Pig Tails & Other Swill.
- ^ from Strange Bedfellows (APA) #15 (November 1996))