2008-10-06
"Priss" is going to start today (or yesterday or tomorrow wherever you live) and so I thought I'd drop a note. Not only a comment about that story in particular, but in general because I do get asked…
"rache? Why the hell did you…
[in this case] …put a pissing scene in an otherwise perfectly good story like 'Priss'? It squicked me!" So let's talk about…
Squicks!
The first thing you have to know is that I don't really understand how you feel. As much as I'd like to enjoy empathy with my readers, and especially with readers who aren't mine, I simply don't have any squicks. That is to say, nothing I have ever read anywhere has disturbed me with regard to content to the extent that I stop reading. Grammar? Yes. Spelling? Yes. Crappy plots, dialogue, and characters? Oh yes! But not content.
I'm not sure why that is, but believe me when I say it's true. For that reason, I just don't understand how any element in a story can turn people away from it, but I know it happens. With that in mind, I do (all too) often tone down my stories for a general forum like this one. But at the same time, I always feel a little guilty about that. I don't like doing it. I have to balance my desire for a larger audience with my desire to tell the story as I think it should be told. These aren't always compatible, obviously.
The story "Priss" requires a certain element of humiliation and degradation in order to really work. The limits that I'm under make that a little more difficult than you might expect or appreciate. The easy way, the common way, is through public humiliation, but the plot requires a certain level of discretion between Priss and Perry. Adding the water sports element is an easy way to introduce that humiliation aspect without going public. Is it absolutely necessary? No, it's not, but it lends shock and awe and I use it like a hammer.
For that reason, and another that I'll explain in a moment, the pissing scene occurs in chapter one. That way I can start the story and the characters at the bottom and work up, as opposed to starting in the middle and going up and down and all around. This story, being a romance, needs to build. It isn't meant to be the usual sort of cheating/cuckold tale that we're used to. I'm looking for something else here and so I'm playing with the tried and true formula.
The other reason that the pissing happens quickly, in chapter one as I said, is simply to get it out of the way. I want to lose readers before they're invested. Those who are squicked by such things can skip the rest of the story and not feel betrayed or offended that I'm trying to waste their time. That's part of the program with writing Mixed Bag and the format I've chosen for it. I have to pay a little more attention and try not to spring unpleasant surprises if I can help it.
So that's the deal with this story and with some others that I've posted. My goal has never been to squick anyone without some kind of warning. Whether it's in the synopsis or story codes, or however I can make it plain that an element is in a story, I will. In this case I'm putting codes at the beginning of every chapter, as you may have noticed. And those codes are chapter specific where needed and story specific if nothing else. "Tina Vasquez" codes are more story oriented than chapter, because it is a low sexual content story and what there is of it is specific to lesbian romance.
So let's talk about Priss, although not too much since it is in progress. I've written 3 chapters for it as I write this. The genesis of "Priss" is directly descended from writing "Imaginary Man" and I wanted to take another look at cheating and infidelity.
Amber, in "Imaginary Man" was the hero. She was the good character and it was more of a tragedy-romance without much hope of a happy ending. In two of the three endings that I wrote, everybody gets what they want, except Amber. Only in the third version does she actually find true happiness, but it comes at such a high price. Chapter 4 is just brutal, emotionally speaking, and more than she deserved.
In most cheating/cuckold stories the husband is usually the victim and I hate that stereotype of the vilified wife. I really do. And so do readers, apparently. I mean, pick a cuckold story and the scores are generally abysmal. There are a lot of readers who will automatically score the story low, probably without actually reading anything but the codes. Some men just have a hate-on for cheating wives, or something. And they are men, don't try to tell me the feminists are voicing their displeasure. The feminists couldn't care less.
Anyway…tangents, I do go off. Sorry. So I wanted another "victim" female character, but I wanted it more obvious this time around. I wanted a girl who is truly innocent and her heart is in the right place. She's being used and manipulated and she wants to do the right thing, but self-preservation is always a strong motive. I also wanted to demonstrate a different sort of vulnerability. Not only that Priss is guilty of her past and being blackmailed, that's the obvious conflict that provides the plot vehicle. The plot itself, the girl's real vulnerability, is deeper in that Priss is still drawn to what she was and to the sort of man who enjoys her as a whore. I'm taking the old Saint/Whore duality that many men want in their women and applying it to Priss in an obvious way, but hopefully I can make the subtext interesting and fresh.
I won't talk about where the story is going or how it will end, largely because I'm still writing it, but also because I'd hate to spoil it more than I have. But this note should clue interested readers in what I'm doing with it and why. And I'll tell you, these kinds of notes are my real "writing guides" so to speak. If you want to know how I do it, or where my thought processes are in the methodology of story creation, this is it. This is what's going on in my head, for better or worse.
How well it works…We'll find out as the story progresses.
rache
