So You Want to Write Slash - 1. So You Want to Write Slash

So You Want to Write Slash

Hi there! I’m a non-certifiable writer of no major credentials outside of a couple short stories on a site not even a fraction of the U.S. population knows exists! And I heard, from a very special friend, that YOU want to write a homoerotic slash story! Well, that’s great! Good for you! And you know what? I’M here to help you along every step of the way! So come on! Let’s begin the fantastical journey that is writing gay fiction!

First, you need to have an idea for what it is you’re going to be writing about. Let’s see here...what to write about. You don’t want to think TOO hard, or else all your creativity will just float right out the window! I know! How about teenaged boys who are actually half-angel, half-demon, half-elf, half-vampire, half-werewolf, half-human hybrids, who are also in the mafia, who are in SPACE, and have a master/slave relationship going on with each other, and have to save the world, no, THE UNIVERSE, by having lots of anatomically incorrect, rough-to-the-point-of-it-being-illegal, homosexual SMEX! And cat people! There MUST be cat people in there somewhere, even if it doesn’t make any sense at all to have them in there! Because EVERYBODY loves cats! And if they’re combined with impossibly feminine pretty boys who are minors no matter what country you live in, then that’s the best of BOTH worlds now, isn’t it? NOBODY has already done this dead horse plot before!

Well, that pretty much sums up the characters, which we were supposed to plan out AFTER we got the plot figured out. Don’t worry about more detailed forms of characterizations for the characters. As long as your characters have sex, nobody is going to care what they think or how they feel. While we’re still on the characters, however, we should probably give them names. Hmm...since everyone knows that all gay guys live in Japan, how about Mrikrahnrd-Ftgyhu-Yagami for the uke (and all fans will know what you mean by “seme” and “uke”) and Xermdwiq-Uhygtf-Britannia for the seme. Yes, those will do nicely I think. You might want to consider making them loosely blood-related later on in the series (if you have enough willpower to make a series).

Now for the actual plot of the series. Well, we described it earlier on, right? Well, that should be enough for the readers to go on. We don’t want them to actually THINK now, do we? WE don’t like to think, so SURELY everybody else on the planet feels the exact same way. As long as the gratuitous sex scenes are long, mechanical, and clearly shows that we have never seen a male’s anatomy before, then that’s all that matters. Readers will swarm to this fic like honey to bees! Wait...let me try that again. Like bees to honey!

We needn’t worry about other, normally important story devices, such as setting, time frame, and research done to ensure that everything we type is as accurate to the real world as possible. As long as the sex is rough and non-consensual, who’s really going to care? We could make it take place in early Victorian times, and then in the next scene have them chatting on phones about how their jeans are too tight. Nobody will ever notice.

Now that we have the characters and the plot mapped out, it’s time to start actually writing the story!

...What? You’ve got writer’s block already? Well, that’s okay! Everybody gets them every once in a while. Like J.K. Rowling! Or J.R.R. Tolkien! Or...yeah, those two! There’s not much you can do besides wait it out, so just sit back and relax and wait until it all comes back to you.

Eleven months later...

Hi there! Good to see that you’re still kicking! It looks like you finally remembered that you almost started a story about a year ago! Have you found that much needed inspiration you were looking for? You haven’t? Well, you DID promise a legion of people that you’d have a story all written out THIRTEEN months ago, so you might as well wing it for now. I’m sure that something will strike your inspiration bone somewhere down the line.

So, plot. How to begin it? Well, we already said that the characters are teenagers, the setting will have to be a high school, so they’ll have to be high-schoolers. We’ll focus on one character only at the moment, so that they can crash into each other in the middle of the first chapter, where it will be their first encounter despite the fact that it’ll be halfway through the semester and they should’ve already met dozens of times before. But THIS time, it’ll be for real! Then, we hurriedly introduce TRUE LOVE! Love at first sight is the ONLY acceptable kind of love, after all. The main character will blush, since bishounen boys NEVER get an erection, since that would be disgusting in fic that’s solely based on boys. The love interest will say something insulting, since hurting the ones you love is strangely erotic to you and all your soon-to-be legions of fans.

But first! We MUST start out the story with the main character waking up to an annoying alarm clock on their very first day of high school. Readers CANNOT comprehend a story (or reality) where this does not happen, and we don’t want to scare our readers away, do we? Of course, the character will be late, even if the clock was presumably set to a safe time to ensure that this wouldn’t happen. As he is getting ready for school (as no character ever prepares for school the night before), he will have to go through a long list of characteristics that describe him, even if the story is told in the first-person and there is no “audience” for the character to be talking to, thus making it sound more like he is just reaffirming to himself that he possesses all of the qualities that he is listing in his mind. For clarity, I have happily provided you with a sample, seen below. Please take note of various things that have been mentioned so far.

“I woke up to the sound of my alarm clock, blaring its noisy noise. I looked at the clock. Oh noes! It was six-thirty already?!?!? I was supposed to be up at six!!!!! How did that happen?!?!?!?!?!?!? I rushed out of bed and went to my dresser. I pulled out my designer Abercrombie & Fitch navy blue t-shirt that I got at Old Navy two years and seven months ago, my laced belt that my mom and sister got for my for my birthday last year (that I secretly ADORE because it’s my favorite color: pink!), my Spongebob Squarepants briefs that I got from the children’s section at Walmart (no I didn’t steal them and I don’t care if Spongebob is childish, I think he’s cool!), my baggy cargo pants that are so baggy that some people often mistake them for a dress (what’s up with that?!), and two sky blue socks to match my shirt. Oh! I should probably tell you about myself. My name is Mrikrahnrd-Ftgyhu-Yagami. I am White and live in California. I am now a freshman at Tokyo High School. My hair is brown. My eyes are blue. I am 5'5" tall. I weigh 105 pounds. My penis size is five inches. I have a slender build with barely any fat on me at all. Anyways, I put on some cherry chapstick for my delicate ruby red lips, since they always seem to crack whenever I get nervous around hawt boys. I also decided to put on my mother’s moisturizer, since I think I look very beautiful with a clean and zit-free face, which will hopefully draw the man who’s right for me to me.”

See? Didn’t that help clear up some of your anxieties? Writing slash is EASY! Now I know there are some things in there that maybe you didn’t understand. That’s okay. That’s why I’m here to help clarify them for you! Notice how the whole sample was one, giant paragraph. According to the rules of writing, if nothing of importance happens, then you don’t have to make a new paragraph! Since nothing of importance happened in this example, we didn’t need to make a new paragraph! Besides, knowing WHEN to add a new paragraph is hard work, so it’s best to just forget all about it. Remember, as long as the two characters do the nasty-wasty, all your worries will be gone!

Also notice the gratuitous (that means “many”) use of the question mark and exclamation point. If you REALLY want to get something across to your readers, the more question marks and exclamation points you use, the more serious you’re trying to be and the more the readers will figure out that what’s being said is very important. Remember, visual clues are your friend! If you also noticed, there was extreme attention being made on what the character was wearing. If you don’t describe in excruciating detail what the character is wearing, then how will the reader know what the character is wearing? It would be like if the character was going out in the nude! No one wants that!

Another thing you’ll notice is that the character was putting on various applications to his face. In the case of the uke, well, he has to look pretty for the love interest, right? No GIRL goes out and looks pretty without first spending at least half an hour in front of the mirror deciding which brand of eye-liner in their makeup cabinet to use, so why should your MALE character? But, he is a boy, so the lipstick has to be replaced by chapstick, and the facial creme can be substituted for either moisturizer or a special brand of soap (from Japan!). After all, you wouldn’t want your readers to think that your highly effeminate boy wearing shoes that the guys from the Riverdance stage production wore that he bought secretly off of eBay and dyes his hair that goes down to his hips blonde (or blonder) is a GIRL now, would you?

So once your character goes to school, he’ll have to be in such a rush that he became blind and promptly crashes head-on into somebody else. The crash will be so forceful that the character will fall back onto his butt, spraying his papers everywhere. However, the person that was crashed into will not move a muscle, because he’s too manly to be moved by somebody weighing in at over 100 pounds and traveling at speeds upwards to 10 mph. This person will, of course, be the love interest, whether you decide to introduce other characters later into the series or not. As stated earlier, your character will blush and stammer out an apology, and the love interest will threaten the character in some fashion or another. Remember, pain is love. Why else would so many male characters in all those shounen animes you like argue with each other so much? OBVIOUSLY they are trying to mask their true feelings for each other and not showing off their masculinity to nearby girls or establishing their dominance and superiority over the other because that’s why boys typically fight in the real world.

After the first encounter, like a deadly virus, “something” will get into your main character’s system, causing them to constantly think about the boy who just insulted him in a highly romantic, if not erotic (if you want to rush this), way. Of course, just to be “mysterious,” you’ll actually address this unknown emotion to your readers as “something.” They’ll NEVER figure it out that this unknown emotion is TRUE LOVE.

Of course, since you want your readers to know how the love interest is feeling, you’ll have to switch points of view abruptly so that readers will know just how much he loves this weird flamboyant boy that he (purposely) knocked to the ground. No one will mind the sudden change in points of view, even if you change them without prior warning. As long as they have sex soon, who’s really going to mind?

Now then, as we all know, girls love to be raped. It’s an established fact. Just look that all those other amateur fanfics of Harry Potter, Twilight, and Sailor Moon! You can’t shake a wand, fang, or short shorts without hitting a story that has some form of rape in them! So obviously your uke is going to be raped by the seme, and within the very first chapter, too! We’ve got to pull out all the stops as soon as possible, or the readers will surely leave the story in disgust. At some point during the school day, we must switch back to the love interest’s point of view, and blatantly tell the readers (remember, we can’t have them THINKING, the poor dears) that the love interest has randomly decided to rape the main character, even if he has been previously established as straight somewhere prior.

You might find yourself asking yourself how to get the two characters alone so that the love interest can rape the main character. This part is easy! Simply have the love interest write a sappy anonymous love note and slip it into the main character’s locker, asking to meet behind the bleachers after school. The main character will automatically believe it to be some sexy guy despite the fact that realistically it would be some not-so-sexy girl who thinks she stands a chance with someone who is clearly as feminine as her and won’t dump her for a hot cheerleader like last time and the time before that. As a side note, it is completely okay to let your own personal life bleed into the story and influence it in unrealistic ways, even if it involves creating a character that is essentially you and can do no wrong and can turn gay guys straight if you want to.

But now is not the time to get sidetracked (you can do that in your story though, if it’s for detailed purposes, such as describing a dress your character is wearing). Your character stands underneath the bleachers waiting for his Prince to come. It might be wise to add rain here, as we all know it is never sunny with a slight sea breeze blowing through when somebody important is getting raped by his future husband. The love interest will come along, acting smug and bad boy-ish. After an exchange in words, where the love interest says that the main character should submit to him and the main character says no and starts to cry, the love interest will either slap or punch the main character to the ground and proceed to undo his bad boy belt, revealing his monster penis of 16 inches (not TOO big now), tear off the main character’s pants (you can omit the fact that he was described earlier having boxers on), and start raping to his heart’s content. The main character must inform the readers explicitly that what is happening is very painful, and that he can feel the “thingy” reach his esophagus, because that’s a fancy word and that will impress your readers.

After the first half an hour of raping, your main character will suddenly, without any sort of prepping for the reader, start to like being raped. They will then proceed to moan and groan, which will only further encourage the rapist love interest. The love interest will start to prod the character, saying things like “You like this, don’t you?” and “You want me to stick my thingy all the way in you, don’t you?” Of course, the main character will agree to this, usually verbally, and by this point there’s no reason to keep this up so the love interest will ejaculate into the main character. There’s no reason to inform the readers that this is unsafe sex and that they shouldn’t do this at home. Nor is there any reason for either character to think about the possibility of any sexually transmitted diseases being contracted. Remember, condoms don’t exist in the fictional world. The love interest will pull out and either make one last snide remark at the main character or just leave without saying anything. The main character will never have a chance to orgasm himself. But that’s okay because obviously they both love each other and that was their first act of love together and the uke’s place in the relationship is to be totally subservient (that means “to be bossed around”) to his master who is his lover and husband.

By now the main character has been verbally and possibly physically abused and raped by the love interest. So of course, he is totally in love with him. The love interest will be all that he thinks about. The fact that said love interest showed no emotional reciprocation to the main character’s feelings nor the fact that the love interest is a convicted rapist (there is DNA evidence inside the main character’s butt now) will ever cross the main character’s mind. It was all obviously acts of true love by a lonely and hurt soul. The main character must now invade the love interest’s life constantly and uninvitedly, and must prove to the love interest that they are star-crossed lovers and meant to be husband and wife.

The love interest must play hard to get. Since we’ll be going back and forth with different points of view, we’ll also have to tell readers via the love interest that he really DOES love the main character, but is too afraid to admit it or too afraid to love. A tragic past involving another guy (again, it doesn’t matter if he’s been previously established as straight) is a must. ALL brooding guys have tragic pasts. This ups the angst factor to eleven, allowing him to essentially become a bipolar emo teen with muscles. Mood swings will be frequent. One moment, he is being kind to the main character, even reciprocating his love; in an instant, he will be back to raping him (out of love) and beating him to a near deathlike state (again, out of love). The main character will always believe, though, that there is good inside of him and that he, the main character, is the only one that can change him. He will never leave his abusive not-yet lover to find a more stable relationship to get into because he loves him too much.

This whole process of going back and forth between the two points of view and will-they-or-won’t-they will consist of all but two, possibly three of your chapters. Sex will be in every one of them, no matter how inconvenient or unlikely. After all, that’s why your readers clicked on your story (NOT located in the erotica section of whatever site you’re posting it on) to begin with.

Now I think it’s time for some ADVANCED rules! Because I think that YOU are very good at what you are doing, and are ready to take the next step! Aren’t you happy?! Now is the time where we try to “spice things up a bit” to keep the story from getting bland!

Somewhere in the middle of the story, between the routine rapes and the routine beatings, we’re going to introduce...THE FEMALE!!!!! This will be the only female in your entire story, because females don’t belong in a story about two boys who are in love and doing it. She will be the antagonist of the story as well (and not, say, the local resident rapist that is boinking your main character on a daily basis). To make sure that she is truly evil, you will have to base her ENTIRELY off of that one girl that stole your crush that you were secretly pining for and yet never gathered up the nerves to actually do anything about it. If you don’t actually KNOW anything about said girl, then just imagine every bad quality that she COULD have and highly exaggerate every single one of them and apply it to this character. It’s also okay to make both the first AND last name of the character the same as the girl she is being based off of. What are the chances that the girl is going to read your fic?

The main purpose of THE FEMALE is to get in the way of the main couple’s happiness (whether there be happiness there or not). She will either attempt to sabotage their relationship somehow (usually by starting rumors) or try the direct approach and date the love interest (she will never try to date the main character). Whenever you get tired of her, or after she has served her purpose, you have two options. Either you can not mention her ever again and act like she simply never existed, or you can kill her outright. It is better to choose the second option, and to go with the most violent death you can think of. That way, readers will know that she is definitely dead, and you can vent out all your frustration and rage against the real life girl you hate so much via THE FEMALE’s tortuous death.

Something you should try to avoid is mentioning the parents of any character. Readers don’t want to read about people who are not them, and all readers are your age, and you are definitely not your parents, so therefore, in a typical high school fic, nobody above the age of 18 is allowed to exist, except for maybe a teacher or two, whom you can base off of real teachers you hate and can have the characters bash them in your story. Bonus points if you decide to NAME the fictional teachers after the real teachers in your life. Speaking of parents, it is best to mention, offhand, that the love interest lives with only one parent. Whether it be through means of divorce or death (re: VIOLENT death), the result will help amp up the angst that surrounds the love interest everywhere he goes.

After about twelve chapters of the same old thing, you will start to realize that your story is about to come to an end. After all, many popular anime shows end at around twelve episodes or so, and what could be more honorable than to have your written piece of gay slash fiction be compared to animated foreign cartoons that are NOT gay slash fiction and are purposely scaled to 12 episodes because of budget limitations? Thus, you should probably end it soon. Besides, it’s not like there are great works of literature out there that have attained immortal fame and praise AND have been over 12 chapters long.

Towards the end of the story, you should have the main character’s life endangered in some way. Since you killed THE FEMALE several chapters back (Thank God!), it can’t be her...unless! Unless you decide to randomly inject supernatural elements into your story, even though there has been nothing of the sort throughout the entire series. Readers LOVE a random genre switch surprise! But if you decide AGAINST that, then some other form of endangerment will have to do. Perhaps you introduce a third gay guy into the series, literally two chapters before it ends? Yes, that method has been proven to be tried and true numerous times before! Okay, so the third guy kidnaps the main character, and it is up to the love interest to suddenly care and rescue him. Of course, this means another point of view shift. To add flavor, switch the point of view AGAIN to the THIRD guy. Make him as brainless and dull as possible, seeing as how he’ll only be existing for upwards of two chapters. A good place to have a final confrontation is an abandoned warehouse (again, even if the time setting doesn’t allow for it, such as Australia before Jesus was born). Also, no matter what, it must ALWAYS be raining, if not outright storming.

The confrontation will be corny, seeing as how you’ve personally never been in such a situation before, and so will the lines be. But it doesn’t matter. As long as the third guy ends up dead and the two main characters end up together in the end, that’s all that matters. Completely ignore the fact that, 9 times out of 10, the love interest will commit cold-blooded murder to achieve this ending.

By this time, you’re feeling pretty happy with yourself. You’ve managed to successfully make an outstanding slash story! But wait! What’s this?! You said, in your own summary page, that the story involved teenaged boys who are actually half-angel, half-demon, half-elf, half-vampire, half-werewolf, half-human hybrids, who are also in the mafia, who are in SPACE, and have a master/slave relationship going on with each other, and have to save the world, no, THE UNIVERSE, by having lots of anatomically incorrect, rough-to-the-point-of-it-being-illegal, homosexual SMEX! And cat people! You didn’t include any of that, did you? Well, that problem can be easily solved! Simply make two more chapters. Have one of them include everything that you said it would include, all stuffed into one convenient chapter! How convenient! Now readers can’t say that you lied to them. Have the final chapter simply revert back to what you’ve been doing the whole time (with them being ordinary high school students, with no mention of anything that happened in the previous chapter), and have the two characters have MORE ROUGH SEX! Sex is the only reason why preteen girls read stuff on the Internet, so why disappoint?

Congratulations!!! I’m SO proud of you!! You created a top-quality slash fic!!!!!! The readers will ADORE you, I’m sure! Soon, publishers will start proposing to you, claiming that your work is the next Shakespeare, BEGGING you to let them publish it onto hardcopies, and have major retail bookstores sell them. FILM MAKERS will come to you, pleading that they want to turn your story into next summer’s hottest romantic movie. You will get a hot boyfriend out of all this! But most of all, you will be famous. And isn’t that REALLY the reason why you wrote this magnificent story?