Looking to the next challenge. I have a few ideas, but would value some feedback on what might be of interest. Ideas as follows:
- Therapy - a cross dressing husband is caught by his wife and given the ultimatum: seek help or have his habits exposed to his friends and colleagues. What follows is his sessions with a psychiatrist explaining his thoughts and feelings leading, well what's the point of a journey like this if you know where you're going?.
- Be careful what you wish for (title still under revision - Body swap story where a youngish man who desperately wants to be a woman accepts a deal with a shady character and wakes up in the body of a young mother past her first bloom and not that good looking to start with. Is life as a less than attractive woman with a not particularly attentive husband and a couple of wild kids better than what he had?
- All in the mind - University student with TG tendencies goes to a performance by a hypnotist and wakes from a trance to find himself wearing a dress. Fools the hypnotist into thinking that his suggestion didn't work, then wakes up the next morning with the effects of the hypnosis still in place. This is about three quarters written but in bad need of revision/editing
- Gender wars - Shortish story, possibly standalone. People start disappearing in very bright flashes of light. When it becomes public knowledge that those disappearing are from the TG community, violent prejudice breaks out towards them resulting in beatings and even killings. Growing polarisation between the sexes is also causing problems and the world is going to hell in a hand-basket when the MC, a very closeted and somewhat trollish cross-dresser is discovered and on the verge of being mobbed when he also is enveloped by a bright light. Don't want to give away too much of the story away so I'll leave it there
Every story is an investment of time and effort which I'm glad to make, but only if it is of interest, so please let me know which of the above tickles the imagination and which might sound like short, uninteresting dead ends.
Well let's see
We really need to learn more of the exact suggestion by a hypnotist, in the third story.
And, in the foutth one, it's really a little more than unlikely. I can't bridge how seeing the TG people vanish in bright light is supposed to heighten the degree of hatred for them. I mean, the not-so-active haters will say good riddance to bad rubbish, and the active ones will simply loudmouth that someone in he... Oh, they will say that Earth itself is getting rid of 'those unnatural freaks' and all kinds of bozos will see it as a carte blanche for attacking. Now I see it.
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Oops
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that the disappearances were in any way related to the gender polarisation. Society and the media seem to be doing a pretty good job of that without any help from marginalised groups. I'll admit this one will require some suspension of rational thought, but it's still an idea with maybe a bot of merit. Maybe it needs a bit more thought.
As for the other, "I want you to bring to mind a time when your breath was taken away by the beauty of a woman. When you wake up, you will believe you are wearing the the same clothes as that woman."
Re: New Ideas
Therapy: The wife is a blackmailing bitch. To threaten exposure that way is cruel torment and does nothing to address the problem.
Be Careful ... : A valuable experience. It strikes to the core of the problem. Frankly, I'd go for it in a heart beat.
All in the mind: This has a lot of potential. Like they say, one cannot be hypnotized into doing something they didn't really desire to do under real conditions.
Gender Wars: I don't have a clue, and that won't surprise a lot of people here.
Portia
Portia
The wife is a blackmailing bitch but...
...that's just the context that gets the MC into the psychiatrist's office. The interest (I hope and intend) is in what follows.
I think this could be interesting
I don't think it would work out the way the wife thinks-and that could be just the start of the fun! A good one that could be funny or even scary depending on how it was presented.
Wren
My thoughts...
Therapy - well, the wife evidently believes the therapist will try to "cure" him of his cross-dressing habit. From the way the synopsis is phrased, it sounds as though the husband's in charge of finding the therapist, so it's perfectly logical the therapist he chooses doesn't see anything untoward about crossdressing. So you've definitely got the makings of an interesting story there - the wife, whom he loves, but doesn't accept his crossdressing at all, the therapist, who probably thinks there's nothing wrong with it and possibly detects hints that the desire may run deeper than 'just' crossdressing, and the poor husband, caught in the middle!
Be Careful What You Wish For - definitely an interesting tale. Given many girls probably find themselves in similar situations, once he's got to grips with his new life it'll be interesting to see how well he copes. If he's reasonably intelligent he may even devise unconventional solutions to the rowdy children and the unattentive husband.
All In The Mind - interesting synopsis. Given the hypnotic suggestion, when he awakens from the trance, is he still in male clothes but believes he's wearing a dress, or is he actually in a dress? :)
Gender Wars - there's a potentially good story hiding in there... somewhere! It would be interesting to see how you combine the three separate strands to the backstory: TG people disappearing in bright flashes of light, the extreme prejudice to TG people, and the gender polarisation.
Read our comments by all means, but I'd say go with whatever you feel motivated to write about at the time you're next in the writing mood... :)
There are 10 kinds of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't...
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Nice thoughts, mittfh!
Adding more to the thoughts I layed out earlier, I would like to add the following, going with mittfh's ideas:
The first story, with the husband, the wife and the therapist, can go in many different ways, including husband willingly telling everyone about this hobby of his... eventually. Also, it may evolve, separately or simultaneously, in a sort of a plot thread where the wife is also going through the therapy. While the chances of her being accepting seem slim... Hmmm a thing to ponder are the children of the couple or the possible lack of those.
The second story. It is sometimes said that the marriage is the burial coffin for love, because dating is done at our best, while marriage may show us at our worst, appearance-wise at least. It will be interesting to see how any methods of rectification will be applied. And, if there was some kind of additional clause in the offer.
The third story - yes, it is indeed a question of substantiality of the dress. I really don't have a lot to comment on this one.
As for the last one - if the three plot threads were unrelated, it may all appear like some kind of alternate world where the sexual revolution of sixties has never happened. The fashion of 50s, that IIRC emphasized the difference and the roles of the men and women in life, and the attitude that followed, were all connected, and snowballed eventually. The extreme prejudice to TG may have easily come from this polarisation, because they would have been seen as contradicting the entire culture. Hmmm, considering some older cultures actually revered the twin-spirited, it may come to prejudice aganist these as well.
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Faraway
Big Closet Top Shelf
Where you can fool around like you want to and most you get is some bemused good ribbing!
Stories
I'm currently struggling with a block over trying to force myself to work on my serial rather than other ideas clamoring for attention, so I'd say write the story that most wants to be written.
But if you really want opinions:
"Therapy" seems like it could end up suffering from "too much tell, not enough show" unless the reader can make the framing device fade into the background. I like narrative experiments, but I'm not sure how many others do.
"Be careful what you wish for" could be interesting if it's played as a comedy that spins into a romance. I'm reminded of the movie "Overboard," where amnesiac rich bitch Goldie Hawn is brainwashed by rugged Kurt Russel into believing she's a housewife with three rowdy kids, and everyone ends up better for it.
"All in the Mind" is intriguing. I can't tell from your description what role the hypnosis plays. Is the student using the excuse of being hypnotized as a way to dress and act as the girl she always knew she was? I'm not sure how much tension there is in the struggle to keep people from guessing that she's not hypnotized.
"Gender Wars" seems a little too complicated. But it makes me want to write a story where the End Times are upon us. Jesus comes back, only this time he prefers to be called Jessica Christi and she's only giving the Rapture to the transgendered, so a bunch of small-minded fundies try dressing up to sneak in.
New ideas
Why not a body sap where two people get the body they want?
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Ideas
They all sound pretty good to me why not write a stories for each Idea I would love that HUGS& KISSES RICHIE2
"All in the mind"-sounds interesting!
But what was the suggestion? And how does it affect his life? I find the premise fascinating, and I'd REALLY like to read this story. I'd be willing to help you in any way I can-proofreading, suggestions, whatever. If nothing else, I will anxiously await the posting of this. It just sounds interesting!
Wren