Follow the Rules!
January 8, 2012
I’ve learned the hard way, if you’re going to play the game, you better follow the rules. And as an author of mm romance, I’ve discovered there are many, many rules which must be followed. If you don’t, you’re sure to hear about it. So I decided to take the time to make a list of all the major no-nos , and perhaps it will be beneficial to fellow authors and readers alike. I’ll call it the “Thirteen Commandments of MM Romance”.
1. 1. No infidelity. Central characters, or “protags” as they are mandatorily abbreviated, must be in a committed, monogamous relationship throughout the story. Who cares that this is anything but the norm in real life. After all, this is fiction, and even though we demand our characters be flawed, this is one particular flaw they cannot EVER have. It is also irrelevant that in real life many happy and stable long-term gay relationships do not follow the strict, traditional boundaries of monogamy.
2. 2. No pee. Don’t even think about including any form of water sports in your story, and if you do decide to foolishly do so, you better take out huge internet ads warning readers . Oh, and don’t even bother to submit your book to the popular review sites, because if you do so, you will be insulting them. Pee is disgusting and it is never a part of a normal gay couple’s kink. It’s certainly not something you would ever see in a BDSM relationship.
3. 3. You must have a Hollywood HEA ending. It doesn’t matter what your story is about, what your theme is, what message you want to convey, you better wrap it all up neatly and tidily at the end. There is a formula to follow and the readers are counting on it! No matter how well written and edited your manuscript is, if you don’t have that sweet ending, you better plan on getting a whole lot of one-star reviews.
4. 4. No chicks with dicks. Men are men and women are women. These clear gender roles must be adhered to. God forbid you portray a gay male character who is emotive. Certainly in real life, none of the gay men we know are flamboyant. None of them show any emotion. If they did, their sensitivity would just be way too irritating. After all, the reason we are reading romance with all male characters is because we don’t want to be reading about women! If you write your gay men with emotions like women, you may as well just write a het romance, for God’s sake.
5. 5. Never use 3rd Person Omniscient POV. MM romance is the one genre of literature where third person omniscient point of view is absolutely forbidden. If you do so, even though throughout history many classic and prominent fiction authors have done so, you will be guilty of the evil “head hopping”. Let me spell this rule out for you so that we are crystal clear. When writing in third person, you must stick to one character’s point of view throughout a scene. You can never describe what another character is seeing, feeling, or thinking. In other words, write like you’re using first person only in a narrator’s voice.
6. 6. Heterosexual sex and intimacy are strictly forbidden. Now this one is very important, so listen carefully. Do not mention, allude to, imply, suggest, or even hint about the possibility that heterosexuals have sex. Even if your protag is bisexual, you better just kind of ignore that other side of him. Even if he is a closet case who is in the process of coming out, don’t mention anything about him being intimate with his girlfriend, wife, female companion, or whatever. This is MM romance, and don’t you forget it!
7. 7.Safe sex only. Condoms and lube are to be used at all times. I don’t care where you are, when you’re doing it or with whom you’re doing it—you better be safe! Even if you are a shape shifter on another planet, you’d better fucking use a goddamn condom! What kind of message are you trying to send anyway? People get diseases. Haven’t you ever heard of HIV? So wrap that baby up nice and tight before you slide it in, or you’re in big trouble.
8. 8. No sad covers. If you’re smart, you won’t ever place a sad looking character on the cover of your mm novel. No way, Jose. One look at it, and the readers are going to turn tail and run as fast as they can. Of course they’ll assume that the book’s theme is way too heavy. They don’t read this sort of literature to be depressed. So no matter what the book is about, put a bare chested hot looking model on the cover. Trust me, you’ll appreciate the increased sales.
9. 9.No young adult books! We want smut. Got it? Don’t insult the mm romance audience by trying to sell them touching love stories about young characters. If your characters aren’t old enough to get down and dirty, go peddle your books somewhere else. In fact, if you are even planning on writing a YA novel to be marketed as such, you better use a pseudonym. Once readers discover that you write YA, they will assume everything you write is YA and avoid you like the plague.
1 10.No incest. The following forms of sexual intimacy are allowed: homosexuality, ménage, bisexuality as long as there is no actual sex with women (see rule 6), rape, bestiality (check out the shifter books), extreme BDSM (torture, fisting, cock and ball torture, spanking, flogging, etc), blood play, smegla (nasty and rank smells incorporated into sex), foot fetishism, and even phone sex. But NO INCEST! Sorry, I can’t really explain that one, but I do know it is a rule.
11.No info-dumping. It doesn’t matter if you are telling a story in a fantasy world or in a particular period of history where the reader may need to know some very important background information, you are NEVER to actually give this information to the reader. You are instead to weave it into the story naturally and let the reader sort it all out on her own. No hints, either! That’d be cheating.
12.Show but do not tell. Be very careful with this one. Never explain what is going on to the reader. Instead, show them with action. If you ever accidently write a sentence in passive voice, hopefully you have a good editor who will correct it for you.
1 13.NO children! These books are about sex, and we don’t want kids walking around when we’re trying to get down and dirty every few pages. If you do include a minor aged character, just mention them and keep em in the background like they do on the soap operas. Everyone will be more comfortable that way.
Just a few simple rules to guide you. Think of them as the cardinal sins of mm romance. Other than that, have fun.
Oh... and one more thing. No lectury meta-bits. Not sure what that means, but it was something someone told me once.
Posted by Jeff Erno.
