by Ian McDuff

If the foregoing few pixels make you want to hurl, we are capable of communicating, you and I. If not, the back button beckons you.

It is I, campers, once again, bearing the Tablets of the Law (with my typical humility, ahem), here returning to address the burning question, How can you - yes, you, the one in the really bad haircut - write better slash? (Or at least 'less excruciatingly bad' slash.)

OMG, I'm a writter now! It is sooooo kewl!

Uh ... yeah. If you say so.

Let's think about this a moment, shall we?

Is Slash Respectable?

No.

Well, actually, Yes.

I shall, as ever, explain.

The making up of stories about the heroes of the tribe goes back to a time when the memory of Man runneth not to the contrary. As Rudyard Kipling put it, There are nine and ninety ways / To construct the tribal lays / And ev'ry single one of them is right. And the 'heroes of the tribe' will very often be 'real people,' or at the least based upon them, as gods arose from the memory of leaders's epic deeds. (The first slash writers would almost certainly have been Greek. The first RPS writer is Homer: remember Achilles and his 'boi'* Patrokles?**) The cycles about Odysseus and Perseus, about Alexander the Great ('Megalexandros') and Digenes Akritas, about Roland (the 'Chanson') and Arthur (the 'Matter of Britain'), about C¦ur de Lion and Robin Hood, all are fan fiction.

Hold that thought.

Slash is a subgenre of fan fiction. Is fan fiction respectable?

Of course it is. As a writer, fiercely protective of mine own work (and works: all of them far removed from slash, and none of them under this byline, I assure you), I too have an initially squeamish reaction to the thought of folks taking my creations, my characters, my intellectual property, and running with 'em.

But then I stop and think. Some of the greatest minds of the past few centuries have engaged in that practice: lawyers and judges and statesmen, writers noted in their own right, beneficed clergymen of the Church of England: all have written mock-scholarly works, biographies, original stories, about fictional characters created by someone else. They are called, of course, the Baker Street Irregulars, and Holmes and Watson are none the worse for their efforts, anymore than is Lord Peter Wimsey's name besmirched by his having been given a biography, not by his creator, Dorothy Leigh Sayers, but by a member of the College of Heralds. The brilliant philosopher, Martin Gardner, did the same sort of thing with Chesterton's Father Brown.

Fan fiction is in fact both ancient and respectable. Of retellings of the cycles of Arthur and of Robin Hood there is no end. And 'real person' fan fiction goes back to remotest antiquity.

If we grant that fan fiction is or can be respectable, why then would slash - whether fictional characters slash or RPS - not be respectable? Because gay relationships are a modern perversion, and inherently not respectable? Hardly that. (If you believe that straw thesis, we have, really, nothing to say to one another.)

Writing - any and all writing - deserves to be done reverently, with the highest regard for its art and one's duty to do one's best; for as Tolkien liked to note, writing is godlike: it allows Mortal Man to participate in the divine role of creation.

What keeps slash from being respectable, what leaves it in the literary underworld, a place of hovels - and of furtive skulking down mean streets - that makes ghettos look gentrified: what flat-out ruins slash as a genre, is the godawful caliber of far, far too much of it.

How Can Slash Be Made Respectable?

By taking it seriously. How to do that, you ask? As writers: by not publishing as slash anything that would not merit publication as one's own, best, prideful work, as free of error and sloppiness as one can make it. As readers: by refusing to accept and read and heap slavish praise upon works not written to standard, in as good English as can be had.

Grammar Gurton's Needles.

As this is the second semester, I will assume - probably rashly - that to and too, its and it's, and the correct spelling of definitely have been covered; as also, I trust and pray, have been The Anathema Against Emoticons and similar burning issues. Let's move on to less elementary mistakes. (What comes after 'elementary' mistakes? 'Teeny,' middle-school mistakes, I believe. It's logical enough.)

There's Only You and Me, And We Just Disagree:

There is enough disagreement in the world. Catholics and Prots in Ulster; Jews and Palestinians in Israel; Democrats and Republicans in DC; Yankees and Southerners everywhere they run into one another. There's no need to add nouns and verbs to the list of Those Who Disagree.

None were in disagreement with that statement. Aha! Gotcha! None is of course, simply, no one. And one is, whereas many are.

Now, I've no doubt there are passages where I've blown it similarly. Quite likely, I've done it where intervening clauses have clustered (and in the Army, by the way, cluster is a verb, and an apt one for this discussion) in there between the noun and the verb. I have a list, scores and hundreds of instances, errors, omissions, idiocies ... wait. Whoa back. What's at issue in that sentence (or what was in the process of becoming one)? List, if the next verb in the batter's box, the one just now walking to the plate from over in the on-deck circle, was going to tell us what that list was or did or meant. And a list would take a Verb! Table for one! Yet it is all too easy to blow it, if you cram a bunch of extraneous matter in, between the 'he' and the 'has' ... watch: Lance - and JC, and Chris, and Joe, and even Justin - have no idea what Lou is up to. Ah, the Haves and the Have-Nots. Of course, Lance, unless you've written really angsty fic in which the poor lad has multiple personalities, is but one lonesome bass singer.*** Has would therefore be the verb. Only Leon Redbone could make a line such as,

Lance, he have no idea

sing.

Ah, if only it were that simple. It was that simple once. Would that it were now. Huh? Was - were - whaaaaat? Precisely my point. There is a circumstance in which it is possible to say, none were in disagreement. It arises when the phrase is prefaced with, If only. If only none were in disagreement, but, alas, one is. 'Were' here expresses a contingency that does not exist, rather than a situation that used to exist, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, NKOTB was on the radio, and none was in disagreement. If only Justin's head weren't turned by fame and dreams of a solo career, the group dynamic would be as it once was. Or, If only Kevin weren't such an anal-retentive control freak [yes, the tautology is deliberate - unless you can direct me to any laid-back control freaks (JC doesn't qualify)], Howie and Nick could have their honeymoon in peace.

As You Like It:

You expect - like as not - that the next rant will have to do with like and as. You would be right.

It was long a staple of late-night, second-fifth-of-whisky bitch sessions among serious writers that the dumbing-down of America started when a Madison Avenue copywriter penned the (unfortunately) immortal line, Winston tastes good / Like a cigarette should. Some writers went on to repeat the story that the copywriter knew damned good and well what was wrong with that line, and ran with it as a gesture of contempt for the Unwashed Masses of the Public.

As when the rosy-fingered Dawn breaks over the Trojan plain, the ranks of Achæan warriors like greyhounds, leashed but straining to be loosed - oh, never mind, Homer and Shakespeare between them couldn't save that one. The point to remember is that as is often shorthand: for as if and as when and as was the case that time we all got wasted on single-malt Scotch in Pascagoula. Otherwise, it is shorthand for such as. Huh? Simple. Lance is a Southerner, as his fathers before him were. He does as he likes when it comes to NASCAR and bourbon and peanut soup, and PR can go screw itself. If he ever wrote songs for the group, he'd earn a mention in the same breath as such writers as Hoyt Axton, Ray Stevens, and Willie Nelson. It would be wrong to say, ... in the same breath as writers like Hoyt Axton, Ray Stevens, and Willie Nelson. I've looked pretty thoroughly, and with the possible exception of Randy Newman, there are no writers even remotely like Axton, Stevens, and Nelson. Designating any other song writer as sharing their common characteristics would be like - i.e., similar to - comparing apples with oranges.

Got it? Good.

Good Will Hunting:

In fact, there are two glaring errors in the ad copy we all love to hate. Grammatical decency requires that Winston taste good, as a cigarette ought. (Actually, I detest cigarettes, period, but that's immaterial to the grammatical issue.)

Should auld acquaintance be forgot? Dunno. But it ought not be. Ought is what God Almighty wants you to do. Will is what your will tells you to do, what you wish to do. And shall is a proclamation by you that you are, by God, going to do it, though the heavens fall.

Should is to shall as (not, ahem, 'like') would is to will. (Spare me the Damon - Affleck 'wood' jokes, okay?) Would that he loved me as [hint, hint. You weren't going to put 'like' there, were you? I thought not] I love him. I shall, yes, even if it busts the band up, I shall go to him tonight and tell him I love him ... and see if he might, if he can, possibly love me in return.

Sure, it's formal, and in dialogue, unless you're doing a Victorian-era AU (Lance Wilde and 'Bosie' Chasez, perhaps), you'll never use it. But in exposition, it is, I hate to break it to you, the only correct way to do this. (And I'm dead certain I've violated that rule on more occasions than Carter has oats, but, there it is.)

Who, Whom?

That was the title of a famous revolutionary pamphlet by one Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (better known by his pen-name, V. I. Lenin). Lenin was asking who did what to whom in power relationships: who, as it were, was screwing whom. Well, in slash, that's pretty much given. But the grammar behind who and whom remains an all too common stumbling block.

I came home early ... God ... I can't believe it, Bri ... I caught Nicky in bed with, with-

With whom?

Him.

It's actually quite simple. Whom goes with him. Who is there? It is I. I came with Lou. With whom? You see? It is about Lenin's question: who is doing what to whom. Really. Who says? I do. But I'm speaking for others here. For whom? Fowler, Strunk, and White. It's all about subjects and objects. Lance is subject to lust. The object of his lust is JC. It is Lance who lusts, and it is JC whom he lusts after. (Or even after whom he lusts.)

Got that, Comrade?

Incidents and Accidents, Hints and Allegations:

And now we turn to a matter that transcends grammar. Let's talk about plot and theme.

Actually, first, let's talk about story.

My fellow historian (see, I told you I had a real life) David McCullough is fond of quoting Ian Foster: 'If I tell you the king died and then the queen died, that's a sequence of events. If I tell you the king died, and then the queen died of grief, that's a story.'

That's the difference between a chronicle and a creative piece.

The series of events, the sequence, is a part of plot. But so too is the story element: that the queen died of grief, indeed that she threw herself from the battlements to the very spot in the castle's forecourt where the king had collapsed, that the crown prince had been callous towards her in her grief, that her death so incensed the peasantry that they lynched the crown prince - the new king - before he could be crowned.... That's all plot. Plot is what happened. Plot is the blurb in the TV Guide: Tonight, a new lawyer joins the firm, and Judge Hoopenlooper has a heart attack in the middle of the trial.

Plot is what happens. Theme is what it means. Plot is the answer to, What happens in the story? Nick and Howie hook up, AJ has a meltdown, Kris tells Kevin she's pregnant, Brian punches Nick Lachey at the VMAs because Lachey gets fresh with Brian's wife.... Theme is the answer to, What's it about? After all, War and Peace, I promise you, is not 'about' Bonaparte's invasion of Russia, and the coming of winter, and the Fall of Moscow, and Bonaparte's retreat through the snows after losing ninety percent of his army. It's 'about' loyalty and pride and belonging and fear and redemption; just as the story we outlined just now may be 'about' coming out and the varieties of love and the depths of self-hatred, about rage and obsession and protectiveness and joy. (And quite possibly good old-fashioned lust, but, what the heck.)

Oedipus Rex isn't about a death at a crossroads, or inadvertent incest, or even solving the riddle posed by the Sphinx: those are merely incidents. What it's about, of course, is hubris and nemesis and unintended consequences, and the thirst for knowledge even when Finding Out Is a Very Bad Idea, and fatal necessity. If your work is about something broader and deeper and higher than its mere plot points, it will live on, even as Oedipus Rex has. If not, you're wasting your time, and the reader's, and by next week, your work - and you - shall be forgotten

And that's all we have time for today, class. Your next exam will be whenever you next write - or read - slash. Don't panic. It's all open-book.

______________________________

* Not a coinage I particularly like, by the bye. Or bi.

** Okay, I 'fess up: Homer himself never actually has A&P going at it; it was the later Classical Greeks who cast their relationship in slashy terms. Anyone who wants a transfer over to the Classics Department need only see the Dean about leaving my course, deal?

*** Well, not all that lonely. He has JC. Ask any slasher.