LittleFenny

I agree with Taki, this is a fun story. I have to wonder how long Kay can keep that 2 from becoming a 1. Does it only go one direction? If she manages to stay dry long enough could the 2 become a three again? And is it three strikes and out or three strikes a you're out of warnings? I mean, Panties->Training Pants->Diapers or Panties->Training Pants->Something->Diapers, where that something might just be a training pant that has a 1 in the circle and the flower patterns closer to something you'd expect on a training pant instead of panties, or maybe now the drawer is full of pocket training pants and sets of pads to fit in the pocket. You had my curiosity with part one now you've got my interest ?

Aww, such good students at this college to be doing nice things for the puppies. But yes, Sam had better head back to the dorm and get changed before it counts as a naughty mark on the actual Santa's list.

You really should be careful with what you get yourself into. Certainly becoming part of a community of foxes is a good thing, although if Janet have been more careful she might have managed without losing the use of her mind. But, I'm sure if Janet still had full use of her mind she'd be able to describe far worse fates.

I want to see more. I like that she has a supportive roommate as well as one who is teasing but at least so far looks like she will just be teasing and not cruel.

I meant to mention it above, but I love how you made use of fictional non-fiction when you came up with Supersoft Fluffies. It is a kind of storytelling that I don't think is done enough and I hope we see more. In the ABDL world it seems to almost only be done through the use of pasty style fake ads where an actual diaper package is photo edited with new models or a full page add has the original text edited. If I was better at visual design I'd try my hand at making an actual magazine ad for Soggies instead of just writing up the text. Maybe I'll try it anyway sometime, even if it ends up looking really amateur it isn't like there's much of it that's been done. Oh, and Not So BigKid™ Untraining Pants™ were not actually the first product to come to mind, I actually thought of another but when I made the post above I decided to write up the second one that came to mind since it had just come to mind that day and I didn't remember seeing the idea of training pants designed for sneakily un-potty training before (I wouldn't be surprised if something similar hasn't come up in a Diaper Dimension story though, if anyone has seen this please let me know, and if anyone wants to make use of Not So BigKid™ Untraining Pants™ in a Diaper Dimension story just let me know). The original idea was a product for which Soggies was simply part of the product identity and not the company's name. Once upon a time Soggies was just another adult disposable incontinence garment manufacturer with a similarly stodgy name to the rest of the institutional incontinence market. Then they saw a marketing niche and instead of asking why they asked why not and turned their product designers loose to meet that marketing niche. Why believe it or not the history of the company goes all the way back to 1999... A copy of a full page ad in the May 1999 issue of The Dominant Digest: The Newsletter For Those On The Dominant Side Of Life Later in the year CeluloPolyFiber Health Products of Idaho™ dipped further into the new market by offering a special New Millennium New Years Soggies Feelwet™ Party Kit (which was available for $20 with a Soggies Feelwet™ box barcode or $30 without barcode) that included a package of a special New Years 2000 Soggies Feelwet™ Maximum Absorbancy Adult Diapers with a holiday print of a Champaign bottle with a baby bottle nipple on top and a Champaign flute on the left and sippy cup on the right, a test marketing package of disposable absorbent adult bibs with a pastel Happy 2000 printed on them, an "I'm Baby New Year!" sash, a pastel pink and blue bonnet, and a choice of either a matching sash reading "Proud Parent of Baby 2000" or a purely decorative "Behaving in 2000" cardboard paddle to put up on the wall. In 2002 the owners of CeluloPolyFiber Health Products of Idaho™ changed the name of the company to Soggies Adult Diapers International as Soggies Feelwet™ diapers had by then become their strongest product line and the ABDL age player market their most exciting area of innovation. Their old name is now used only for their legacy institutional line of medical incontinence briefs where they have continued to advocate for the health and well being of patients through the use of more absorbent and quicker drying adult briefs and marketing aimed at removing the stigmas around the use of absorbent products by those who need them.

Blame @BabyAnna, thinking about the SuperSoft product line posts brought this idea into my mind... Copied from page 22 and 23 of the November 2022 issue of Caregiver Dom magazine:

I'll second the advice to look at the CapCon panel slides, Personalis did a great job filling those with good advice. It isn't one of those one slide for every quarter hour of talk slide decks but almost a hundred slides. There isn't much I remember in it on the specific issue you mention however. For that, try writing something them setting it aside for at least 24 hours then coming back and looking at it again. We are really good at reading what we expect to see which is only even more true when it is our own writing. Setting the document aside for at least a day, preferably more like a really active weekend or a while week or month, allows you to look at it with fresher eyes. A tip I have sometimes used on things written for work is to work through it backwards. If you are using a printed copy, cover the page with another piece of paper and slowly slide it upwards going a line or two at a time. Or for a document on computer scroll all the way down, add some blank lines, and then slowly scroll up so a line or two appear at a time. This way you won't get caught up as much in the story or meaning of the document and can concentrate on just to newly exposed lines. The advice in the presentation to get someone else to do an editing pass is good, but be willing to switch to someone else if the person you ask isn't a good fit. Like if you ask for help with how you do dialog but all they give you is spelling & grammar markup. That said, if someone is volunteering to do editing you probably want to be patient since if done well it's something that actually collects decent pay when done professionally (I just did a google search and it suggested the low thousands of dollars to do the spelling & grammar type of editing on a novel and $5-10K to do the more structural editing work, for short stories drop a zero and you're probably in the ballpark). What I've read about learning says that the mere fact that you have something specific you are trying to improve is actually a very good thing. If you look up the concept known as deliberate practice is says to pick something specific to improve, find a way to measure it, practice it, get feedback from someone more skilled (the quicker the better), and repeat. You might try writing a scene or two and post them asking for feedback. While I don't see it in the last few months of posts I'm sure I remember someone starting a thread where they said they planned to just write short bits when they felt like it and I don't remember seeing a negative reaction. If you're really wanting to workshop them, asking for feedback then rewriting and asking if it's better, then you probably want to post it here in the critiques and writers discussion forum. But say a scene a week, just asking for feedback, then writing new scene maybe connected and maybe not, I expect that would do fine in the main story and art forum.

Just as a note, the only one of these for which that is true (at least in the United States) is trademark. And it doesn't require sending a room of rabid out for blood lawyers after someone. If you have a trademark and someone uses it in a manner which isn't legally protected but which also doesn't upset you, you could send them a letter saying, "So long as you add, '[trademark] is a registered trademark of [trademark owner] and is used with permission,' feel free to continue what you are doing." Or if you aren't happy about it but but they have deep enough pockets that you don't like the idea of going bankrupt trying to take them to court, you can publicly scold them for the misuse. Copyright, at least in the US, has a complication of there being two levels. Unregistered, which everyone gets the instant the put something with creative effort into a fixed form (so for example, once I hit the Submit Reply button I'll have an unregistered copyright on my reply to your post). With an unregistered copyright you're pretty much restricted to getting a court to say, "Stop that! And hand over any profit you made from it and any remaining copies of the work." The real risk comes from registered copyrights, where someone registered the work (or a collection containing the work). Then the penalty is the above, plus up to $250,000 per violation. And they don't count violations by overall events but by every instance of a violation. So if I plagiarized someone's book and sold twenty copies on Amazon before being caught? That's not one violation but twenty. If you're old enough to remember Napster that is why there were articles talking about how the potential penalties if they were hit with the maximum would amount to not merely more dollars than all the dollars ever printed but more money than has probably existed in all of history combined. The question then becomes, what about fair use? The problem here is that while some countries have laws that spell out exactly what is permissible with whatever their version of fair use is, the United States does not. Also, fair use is not in fact a right but a nebulous ill defined defense that basically comes down to whether or not the judge or jury approves of what you did. There's no, "Whoa! Hold on Copyright Cop, this here was Fair Use!" Followed by the Copyright Cop looking and turning to the other guy to say, "He's right. This is textbook fair use. Nothing I can do." Instead it's something your lawyer brings out after you have been pulled into court. Anything you've heard about, "Fewer than # pages," or, "Less than # minutes of a movie," or, "No more than # seconds of a song," are just guidelines that people have come up with out of nothing but their own thoughts on what they wouldn't be upset by. Even the standard four factor fair use test you may have heard of isn't law, it's just a set of rules that's evolved within courtrooms to try and figure out how to apply this undefined part of copyright law. A judge could decide not to use it and instead come up with their own test and all that would happen is that either the ruling would be slightly more likely to be overturned on appeal or other courtrooms look at it and decide they like it better and start using it too, or everyone ignores that this one trial used a different standard and keep the status quo. Disclaimers, I'm not a lawyer, I'm especially not an intellectual property lawyer. I'm just someone who has read about this and even gone through a behind-a-paywall copyright law tutorial for photographers some years ago when I had some thoughts of trying to make money through photography. Also, as noted what I said has to do with law in the United States of America, not only should you not be quoting me in court you shouldn't be using what I say here to guide your actions if you aren't in the US. Also-also, watch out for trademark, it's possibly the slipperiest of the intellectual property provisions. There's a reason why books you see which went through one of the big publishers will likely either avoid using trademarks or do the, "Kleenex™ brand facial tissue," thing. Don't read about one type of IP and assume the same rules apply to the others. Again, not a lawyer, and if you're going to ask a lawyer for an opinion make sure you're going to an Intellectual Property lawyer, preferably one who specializes in the kind of IP you're interested in. Your cousin who handles divorce cases is essentially no more qualified to give a legal opinion on IP matters than I am, a random person on this forum who isn't a lawyer. This is already off topic enough for the forum, so I'll save you all a few screens of my opinion on the morality of IP law and violations of IP law and just say it's a mess that could use some common sense reform if only that different groups involved didn't become worse than a box of rabid wolverines on meth whenever reform is brought up. (For example, look at the screaming and assumptions of bad faith that come up when dealing with orphan works is brought up, something that is only going to get worse as more and more works pile up that are covered under multi-century copyright durations) But now I'm going to go and maybe actually write some productive words.

Wow, I turned on my laptop right as you posted this. I'm giving my thought process as I give some of the plotting and structuring things I've been reading about a try. So, illustrating but with an open mind towards any questions or feedback on both the process and results. I'm not going to insist I have all the answers, I've just been reading up and watching quite a few videos over the last few years and now I'm trying to put what I've been studying into action. Partly I'm posting this because I haven't seen threads on structure and plotting and also to put some pressure on myself by starting it publicly. Oh! I don't think I've mentioned it before but your user icon is awesome.

So, having some free time and not feeling sleepy yet despite the late hour, I'm returning to add to this thread. In the previous post I looked at some basics of plot structure. But a story is more than just a series of actions. Those actions need to make sense for the character. In my long delayed Finding New Things even if I was pantsing it the two viewpoint characters still have reasons for the decisions they make. But here we are looking at a different story. Let's look again at what we know so far about our protagonist: They're a kid in the first or second year of high school. The idea of a summer camp where you're age regressed is attractive to them as an escape from stress. This stress is from the pressure they feel to achieve the best grades they can. They are also, despite still being early in high school, feeling pressure to prepare for college. They have possibly felt jealous of a younger relative that they felt was having a much more carefree life. There are a number of methods for building on your first impressions of a character. Character sheets where you put everything from their full name, birthplace, birth order, favorite color, favorite book, worst argument they had with their first grade best friend, and enough other things to fill both sides of several sheets of paper. You can ask who you would have play the character if a movie was made of the story and put a few pictures of that actor in your notes. There is a whole thing of zodiac signs and different personality systems and archetype lists. I'm not going to bother with any of those in this post. Instead I'm going to say we should reach inside and let our inner toddler out for a bit and ask, "Why?" You know the trope. The little kid who keeps asking, "why?" over and over again. "Why can't we go swimming?" "Because the pool is iced over." "Why?" "Because it's been snowing all week." "Why?" "Because it's winter." "Why?" "Because the Earth is... Because... Let's make hot chocolate and have some cookies." For this we'll ask a question about the character, answer it, and then respond to that answer with a why: Why is our protagonist so stressed out about grades and college? Because their parents and older brother and sister are all really successful and they feel average. Why do they feel average? Dad is a respected engineer, mom is a doctor and medical researcher, sister isn't working on a PhD. but only because she's working on her third master's degree, and brother who is only three years older than the protagonist has finished a masters and is working on a doctorate. Wow, okay, but why does he feel average, is he getting bad grades, held back a year? No, he gets As and Bs and is taking advantage of a program where some of his classes are simultaneously high school classes and classes with the local state university. Okay, but that doesn't sound average, why does he feel less than the rest of his family? He feels that his siblings already knew what they wanted to be by his age and he doesn't, he's getting college English and Mathematics credits already and he's picked electives he thinks are ones a smart person would take but he's picking at random among the ones he thinks smart people would take. Why does he think he ought to be sure of what he will do with his life already? Sure his brother and sister are impressive but did they really have it all figured out at his age? Sister announced when she was ten that she wanted to be an astronaut, at eleven she changed that to rocket scientist-astronaut. What she's studied for her degrees? Mechanical engineering, biophysics, and fluid dynamics. His brother? He's turned down job offers from pretty much every major company that designs cpus and when he tried describing his dissertation it sounded like magic and all the protagonist really caught was that it was that it involved trying things with cpu designs that had never been done before or maybe never successfully done before. Oh. I that is impressive, I can see why following in those footsteps would be intimidating. Why hasn't his family done anything to help him feel better? They have tried, but when his brother told him he still had time to decide what he wanted to do he felt like he was being talked down to. Especially because his brother told him that after realizing our protagonist hadn't understood a word he'd said in the last five minutes. His sister has tried too. The last time she was home she spent some time getting him to open up about his current interests, but he doesn't see how dance video games which he tried to pass off at first as just exercise, all the design stuff of being part of the school year book, or any of the stuff from shop class which he really, really, super wanted to take a second time if that wouldn't surely be such a waste of his time... He doesn't see how any of those could lead to anything worthy of comparison to what the rest of the family has done. That's some nasty self inflicted feelings of inferiority. But I have to ask why he would see the age regression summer camp and actually pick that if he feels he needs to achieve at all costs. He first planned to just take some of his required classes in summer school to free up time for the combined high school and college classes. All those summer camps offered was frivolous play. Fine, some of them allowed you to study things, but most of those were things that could be fun like modern dance or even learning more about computers but they were either frivolous or things here he would never catch up to his brother or sister. But this one grabbed him with two things. The flier mentioned that they could include adaptive educational classes that let you move forward at the pace of your learning. Which was how he also allowed himself to give into some of the jealousy he felt for his eight year old cousin whose family lives only a few blocks away. Even he can't insist an eight year old should have a life planned out yet and his cousin is doing all sorts of fun things both in school and after school activities and no one is pressuring them to work so hard. Never mind that his family hasn't been telling him he needs to work harder, he feels it's just understood no matter what they say. I think those two paragraphs give us more than answering eye color, hair color, and favorite item of clothing. You can use the endless why for world building too. I actually first ran across that use as a kid. I got a copy of the complete Logan's Run trilogy in one volume and took it along when we went on our summer camping trip. In the forward it told of how the idea for the book and setting was developed as an exercise at a convention panel. The future coauthors of the book asked those attending the panel to call out one sentence ideas. Being the 1960s someone called out, "Don't trust anyone over twenty-one!" Which they picked, but said wasn't quite enough so they changed it if I'm remembering correctly to, "Don't let anyone live past twenty-one!" and wrote that on a chalk board. Then they asked everyone, "Why isn't anyone in the story allowed to live past twenty-one?" Picking an answer they liked they wrote that underneath, and once again asked, "Why?" Doing so until they had twenty things written on the board. And they pointed out that the twenty things combined drew a picture of a world that you wouldn't get from just, "No one lives past twenty-one," alone. So if something in your story has you stumped you might want to ask why, and then ask why again. One of the less common ideas I have also run across, at least less common for people writing prose, is to give a character a verb to describe them. This is apparently something that comes up in theater and acting classes as a way to help get into character. On one web page an example is given that Snape's verb in the Potter stories could be to vex. Sure he is broody, but that doesn't really describe his actions towards the characters. But whenever the characters are in the same room with him? He vexes them. The first class? Asks Harry advanced potions questions that you wouldn't expect a first year to know on the first day. When Hermione knows the answers? Docks her house points for showing off. Even when he's helpful he does so in an annoying way that causes distress. He vexes. If you were needing to play the role being able to just remind yourself, "My character vexes others," would help you figure out how to deliver your lines and act on stage. So what is our protagonist's verb? To prepare? Maybe. A preparing instinct could be going haywire because he doesn't know what to prepare for. And later when he comes to some self realization he could act on that verb in a non self-destructive way. To challenge? Perhaps the problem is he's challenging himself to answer questions he's not yet prepared to answer? To idolize? He certainly seems to have put his family up on pedestals. But could we use it as the story progresses? To worry? He does seem to worry. Or maybe to yearn? I'm not picking one now, but I'll be thinking about it. For all I'm down on the idea of filling out a five page questionnaire about everything from a characters name to shoe size, it's a good idea to have notes as you come up with details. There are programs specifically for writers that let you plot, take notes, and write all in the same place. I don't know that I'd pay for Scrivener just to write stories that will get posted for free. Sixty dollars isn't exorbitant but it's still a tank and a half of gas or two packs of Little Paws. There's a few web based ones, but writing something like these stories on one of those feels risky. But whether you use Office, LibreOffice, or your operating system's default built in text editor you can either use its built in note or comment feature or keep a second text file where you jot down, "Decided older Sister's name is Seras after watching too much anime again." Or an eye color or home address or anything else where it might be embarrassing to give two different details in different parts of the story. If all else fails Control-F is your friend when you write and post on computers. Do you have ways you like to find out about your characters? Do you like those five page character questionnaires? What the heck should the age regression summer camp be named? Just how young is our protagonist regressed to? Next post is probably asking about the world and figuring out the most basic sign posts of the plot, the beginning and ending.

NaNoWriMo has rolled around for this year so in the habit of writers across time I am reacting to the thought of sitting down and actually writing by finding other things to do, including completely different writing projects. I looked around the critiques and discussion forum here and there are a lot of good threads. But I haven't seen much on plotting or structure, something I've been reading about after realizing I've been stuck. So (instead of writing and editing more Finding New Things) I'm making this thread where I plan to take one of my ideas for a story and give all this plotting stuff a try and do so in public. Plotting and Pantsing You can't read a book, website, or watch a youtube video on plotting without Plotters versus Pantsers being brought up. Since it's apparently the law and I don't want to have to stand in the corner after a spanking by the Writing Police I'll put a few sentences here. Plotters are kind of like the really prepared Bigs you'll see in stories here. They've made a plan. They don't just get up in the morning and start playing with their Little, they know that first they'll be changing that Little's overnight diaper, then breakfast at 8:00am. Cartoons for the Little after that while the Big gathers supplies. A trip to the park at 9:30am. Lunch is a bottle of juice and a cut up peanut butter sandwich at 11:00am. A trip to the zoo at 1:00pm to see the new baby gazelle that was on the news a few days before. Home at 3:00pm when Big and Little will both take a nap. Etc. Etc. Etc. Meanwhile we have our Pantser. A big kid who gets up in the morning, gets into a dry pair of training pants, grabs a couple of strawberry PopTarts and is out the door to see what fun they can find. Will they be playing with Johnny in the park? Joining Becky on the swings? Looking for frogs by the stream with Stevie? Depends on who they run into first. They're just heading out to play and have fun and that's all the plan they've got. Finding New Things, which I last posted an update to five years ago, has been entirely pantsed. The start of it come to me in a dream or maybe just daydreaming while half awake in bed and then I thought about it for a few weeks and then with a general idea of how it would start and how it would end I sat down and started writing. When this works it can be great. When it doesn't work, well my last post to Finding New Things was November of 2017. Which is part of why I got interested in reading and learning more about this plotting stuff. My opinion? Plotter versus Pantser is just two ends of a spectrum. Very few people seem to sit down and start writing with absolutely no plan. Pantsers usually still seem to have some plan even if it's just, "Wouldn't a Diaper Dimension Story about an Amazon kid trying to find some way to be mistaken for a Little be fun?" Just the same I've heard of very few people who do the stereotype extreme plotter thing where they fill multiple binders with notes and research and write a two hundred page super detailed outline before they even start writing a single line of the actual story. I will not be doing that super outline in this thread. The Story Idea If I am going to do some planning then I need something to plan. I'd go with that idea up above, but it's living next door to an idea I've already been looking at and I don't want to get them confused in my head. So I'll go to one of the old ABDL story tropes, the kid who ends up getting babied by a sitter. The fun thing with tropes is they give a piece of a pattern but they still let you scribble all over them with your crayons to make them your own. I've seen a few variations of this one: the older sister who tricked her younger brother into diapers to keep him too embarrassed to get in the way of her fun while their parents were on vacation; the younger brother who changed the note left by the parents for a sitter so that she'd think the brother a year or two older was a bed wetter with a habit of lying to sitters about it; even one where the sitter wasn't actually hired by the parents but showed up and told the kid, "Your parents changed their minds and decided you weren't quite old enough to stay on your own for as long as they'll be gone. But don't think of me as a babysitter, think of me as a friend who is staying over." Who then proceeded to gaslight the kid back into diapers and being treated like a little kid. Let's give this one a science fiction twist, who here has seen Reva The Scarf's Rejuvacations? It's some furry comics with the idea of a company that offers vacation packages where you are temporarily rejuvenated to a younger age to enjoy childhood experiences like attending a summer camp or class trips to aquariums and museums. Let's have a high school kid, a sophomore or junior (grades 9 & 10 or the US twelve grade year primary education system, somewhere around 14-15 depending on when their birthday is and the local system's rules). For whatever reason the parents are going on a trip that the protagonist won't be going along on but they aren't ready to leave him alone for as long as the trip will be. Given choices ranging from staying with relatives to a few 'babysitter' services the protagonist sees one that has as a pitch, "Enjoy being a kid again!" and is curious. Curiosity soon giving way to determination that this is the choice they want. I'll finish up this first post with a summary of the story idea so far, what we know about any characters, questions to ponder for both and a teeny bit about story structure. Story Idea: A high school kid's parents decide they aren't ready to leave them alone for the week or so they will be out of town. When given a choice of options they are quickly enticed by a flyer for a child minding service that promises to allow them to, "Enjoy being a kid again." For reasons yet to be decided this service that includes a temporary rejuvenation was available to the family at a quite reasonable rate. Maybe a perk of an employer discount program, maybe they have discounts for good grades at school, or it was just a discount voucher sent out as part of an advertising program. How much control is there over what age you're rejuvenated to? Will our protagonist remember they still sometimes wet the bed at age X? Just which rejuvenation package is selected? How young are they getting rejuvenated to and for how long? How does the rejuvenation end: suddenly or over time? Might they get stuck with this partially overlapping summer school classes or something else where they will be around others they know? Protagonist: Probably a boy? They've been feeling stressed out by school and the pressure to get good grades and prepare for college. Maybe they've been feeling jealous of a younger sibling or cousin and thinking they don't know how good they have it at their age. Do they have any existing regressive/little tendencies? Parents: Mr. and Mrs. Barely Appearing In This Story, or at least I suspect so. Around for the setup and at the resolution. We'll need at least names and a general idea of their personalities. Any siblings: Perhaps the protagonist is the youngest and the others are now all either in college or working outside the area. If so staying with one who has a room was probably one of the options presented, but not so obvious and easy an option that the parents sent the protagonist there instead of the rejuvenation service. If there are younger siblings where are they? The world: Clearly not the present day of our world, but near future? A similar science-fantasy or everyday mad-science world? Not a dystopia. Repeat, not a dystopia. Story Structure You probably already know the basic first level detail of story structure from school: A story has a beginning, middle, and end. Also known as Act I, Act II, and Act III. The good news is that absolutely everyone agrees on all the additional details (this is what's known as a fib, and might get me a visit by the Story Police). In truth if you look around some people break stories into four acts (by splitting Act II in half), five acts, and I've even run across people saying seven acts. I'll keep it simple and old school and go with three. The three acts are each roughly 25%, 50%, and 25% of the story. Act II being a double length act that usually has some sort of major turning point in the middle is how you get the four act structure by calling them IIA and IIB. Act I is the beginning and generally has an introduction to the protagonist's everyday pre-story world, an inciting incident, and the First Plot Point. The inciting incident is something that changes in the protagonists world, in our story this is almost certainly the parents announcing their trip. The First Plot Point is when the protagonist makes a choice that pushes them into Act II, which here would be when they actually go to the rejuvenation service. Even that morning they probably could have said, "I changed my mind, this sounds too scary, I'll stay with your coworker Mrs X!" and while his parents would likely have grumbled at needing to try and get a refund they might well still have called up Mrs X. But now he's walked through the doors and is about to get zapped or given a shot or however the process works. Act II is divided into two parts. In the first half the character is still getting used to things. Our protagonist has shrunk down to a preschooler or maybe a first grader, suddenly remembered they still wet the bed at this age, and isn't sure what's going on. Around the middle there is what James Scott Bell calls the Mirror Moment where the protagonist has a realization or two and makes some decisions (Bell says he named it that because he noticed a number of movies where this in part happens while the protagonist is looking at themselves in a mirror). Often the first half and second half of Act II are mirror like in that if IIA is generally upbeat IIB will be downbeat or if the protagonist was struggling in IIA they start having victories in IIB. Some people also invoke a Rule Of Threes and suggest there should be three challenges over the course of Act II (Perhaps why the guy who wrote Save The Cat calls part of Act II "Fun and Games"). This all leads to the Second Plot Point, where the protagonist once again makes a choice that pushes them into the next act (one example I ran across is that in Star Wars the First Plot Point is when Luke returns to the farm to find his Aunt and Uncle dead and decides he will follow Obi Wan to rescue the princess and the Second Plot Point is when after the princess has been rescued and Han says he was just in it for the money and once he has his reward he's leaving, Luke decides to volunteer as an X-Wing pilot for the attack on the Death Star). Act III has the climax, resolution, and denouement. Minds out of the gutter, there's no sex in this story. The climax isn't that sort, but simply the protagonist facing whatever the rest of the story has been leading up to. In Star Wars it's the actual attack on the Death Star, in BabySophia's In-Between I'd say it's when Cameron is able to serve as part of the plaintiff's counsel in the case brought against SafeFoods and Aubry Harris. The resolution is quite simply the resolution of the climax. The destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars and the end of the trial in In-Between. The denouement is pretty much what you might call an epilogue. It's a taste of the post-story life of the protagonist. The medal ceremony at the end of Star Wars or at the end of In-Between when we get to see that Cameron goes on to have a successful career as a lawyer and then judge, as well as the events of his personal life. Just as everyone (doesn't) agree that there are three acts, everyone (doesn't) agree that: into, inciting incident, first plot point, fun & games, mid-point, second plot-point, climax, resolution, and denouement are the major sign posts. Some list fewer and some list several more (Save The Cat has fifteen, Campbell has seventeen in the Hero's Journey). Bonus: The guy behind Community and Rick & Morty, Dan Harmon, has a related thing called The Story Circle which instead of dividing the action into acts with sign posts along the way has a list of eight steps a character goes through arranged in a circle. Summarized a bit too these steps are: You, need, go, search, find, take, return, changed. You introduces the character, who has a need, causing them to go forth, searching to a solution, which the find, and take while paying a price, returning home, only they've changed. Although in episodic TV that change is likely to either be fleeting or or truly minor as having the characters change complicates writing episodic TV (how many times now have the characters in The Simpsons or other long running shows learned the same lessons over and over again?). At least one person I read suggested using both three-act and the story circle together with the three act structure covering more of the events that happen and the story circle covering how the character is changing from beginning to end. A last bit: I recall some years ago complaining to someone that while I could come up with ideas, and endings to go with the ideas, that it was filling in the middle that was the daunting part. "Okay, so we have a pair of star crossed lovers from feuding families, who stop fighting after their strife tragically causes the death of the lovers... Um. Okay, a beginning and an end. How the heck do we get from the beginning to the end?" These sign posts help a little by giving you more than, "1. Steal Underpants, 2. ???, 3. Money!" to work with. But is, "1. Steal Underpants, 2. 'Coincidentally' have a supply of adult diapers that are the only underthings left in the state, 3. Which wonderfully have to be bought again and again, 4. Money!" better? Well, yes, but there are still some big gaps in there. Someone who is more of a Pantser may well prefer that and not care if they have three failed attempts each to get from step one to two, two to three, and three to four before they get to a complete story. But others may get dismayed deleting so many failed attempts. This is where scene lists and beat sheets can come in. But given that I am now at one and a half days word count were this writing for a nanowrimo story, I'll stop for now. Anyway, I hope this wasn't too dense a wall of text for people. As I said up at the top I welcome any comments people may have. Whether it is discussion of plotting versus pantsing, structure, or thoughts on the story idea. Just keep in mind the forum rules: constructive criticism is good. Likes and subscribes feed the ego, or at least that's what the youtubers say. ?

Wow, that's heavier than the worst crunch time I've had, which was mostly having a week and a half last year where I had to drive three or so times further out than normal to one of our satellite buildings. Although there was the single day where I was "lucky" enough to be the only one of my team who hadn't gone home when our supervisor called with an emergency, "Drop everything, this needs to be done today, I'll be approving any overtime that's needed to do this." Take care of yourself and make sure to hug Rings a lot! "YourFNF, are you using an unlicensed medical device outside of a college approved test program? I'm afraid I'll need to confiscate that and see you later this evening at my office to discuss just how much trouble you are in."

Woo! I reached the current story! Just finished chapter 2. I kinda knew it was inevitable he'd shrink, but part of me was thinking, "Ha! @BabySofia is going to surprise us and have him grow just barely over the Amazon height requirement." It wouldn't have to mean the story ends. There's all the other exchange students who he might suddenly be asked to keep watch over. Or depending on just what the issues are you could have awkward, "But Amazons aren't supposed to behave like that!" moments. Back to binge reading now.

Oh Sam, you've gone and stepped on a land mine. What will you do now? And Zoey's attention has been grabbed. I think your next decisions are going to affect her next decisions. Will she see you as a pup with a well directed bite or a pup with a bite that needs a gentle tap or two with a rolled up newspaper? I suppose Josie's reaction will in part depend on the reason Joonie's so thickly padded. I know I've got my own idea about that but I'll try to be patient and wait. (A lie, I'll be hitting refresh and bouncing in place looking for more) Wait. I'm seriously the first reply to this part? Feed your writers! Comments are an important part of their daily nutritional needs!

I mean it would only be responsible. Clearly there are scary people and maybe scary things and it would be a shame if Sam were to start leaving puddles around like a little pup. He might get sent back to his room and not get to enjoy all the fun stuff. Oh! I'm sure you'd get extra Good Kitten points on Santa's list if there was more Naughty Christmas. What? What's that? No, no I definitely wasn't slipping chocolate to your muse and promising more if they were good. I have no idea how that chocolate got there and it most certainly isn't mine.

Well now, things are becoming even more interesting. Sadly I'm out of likes to give for the day. Right as I was thinking, "Wow, doesn't it normally cut me off by now?" too. Zoey seems like she could be trouble. Not the greasy and queasy trouble of someone like Harry. More the, drag you along doing things you've thought about but never quite had the nerve to do. I'm guessing that one way or another she's going to end up realizing Sam's brought a skirt and maybe some dresses along. But what will happen when she notices the rest... Hope she doesn't tease poor Sam. Edit: Yay! My like pile regenerated so I came back to add a like.

I have to agree with loving the little hints. No page full of info dumping, just lots of little details that reveal something is going on withing revealing everything right away. I'm really curious to see where it all leads.

Oooh, there's taking risks and then there is taking risks. All the harder on the protagonist as they did it to themselves. I think it will be some time before they diaper up without thoroughly making use of barrier creams and powder and anything else to keep rashes away.

Whoa! I'm pretty sure I remember the start of this one from earlier. I share many of the questions Kerry gave and I too am sitting here impressed at someone picking back up a story that's been sitting unfinished. I'm guessing his mother is from the town originally, but how word of the place and its technology hasn't spread... Is this a Eureka? Like with the TV show, a town started specifically as a place to invite some of the best and brightest to move to and serve as a hidden center of research. A place the government knows about and realizes has become decidedly non-mainsteam but has a blind eye turned to that because of the success in raising generations of above average learners who have developed wonderful new technology. I'm wondering how quickly Tommy might start to catch up. Even if he was well behind his local age-peers, he may still be able to catch up scholastically faster than he might expect. But, he seems to be adapting to the regression enough that I expect that there are shenanigans of some kind (possibly the lumigro thing is encouraging the loss of continence and acceptance along with the subliminal learning). I wonder if he'll be ready to give up the new closeness to his mother even if he's ready to go back to grade school in the new school year. If this town so readily embraces this, I wonder if they might be much more willing to have a student still be in diapers or training pants.

Oh, wow! I'm pretty sure I caught the opening when it was first posted, but the ending. Wow. Knocked that ending right out of the park. And having run into mention of Yuki Onna elsewhere all I can say is Wayne is one lucky little boy. If she'd decided he was likely at all to take after his brother or simply had still held enough of a grudge over her sister's death then this would have gone to a bad ending. Thank you for reposting this!

You'd think that one of these days people would learn to very, very carefully word such contracts. Then again the people who make the mistakes don't often seem to get the chance to try again or pass on their hard earned lessons.

Keep in mind that an entire book is not necessarily written in only a single choice of person. When I started writing Finding New Things (incomplete, but it will eventually be getting more!) it was an intentional choice to write James in 1st Person and Andrea in 3rd Person, 3rd Person Limited but I don't recall that I thought that deeply on 3PL vs 3PO but you only ever get comments on what's going on in her head not other characters or things outside her perception. Having James in 1st and Andrea in 3rd provides another level of separation between the two characters beyond the header when the viewpoint changes. To my mind the main story there is James' reaction to ending up in a new world and finding himself in a situation where he's not in diapers by choice and as I figure he's the character most readers will identify with he's the one who gets 1st Person. The other half of the story is Andrea's, but I figured even any women reading were more likely to be identifying with the ABDL James than the non-human, graduate student, research scientist who accidentally yoinked a guy off another Earth, and so she got 3rd Person. That said, I suppose any Mommy/Daddy/Caretaker types on the site who read might identify more with her. This is a decision that's also coming up in the stories I'm currently doing prep work for. One, that I'm currently calling 'Tweener Blues, I am expecting to entirely or almost entirely tell from one character's perspective so my expectation is that it will be in 1st person. Another, which is also set in my own version of the Diaper Dimension that I'm developing, I'm thinking may well be a split viewpoint between an Amazon and Little, but I'm thinking here it will probably be 3rd Person Limited for both of them. Visited By The Continence Fairy (which at this very moment I have finally come up with a working title for) will likely be another split 1st/3rd. It's about a boy living in an Earth in which tooth fairies are is is visited in the opening by a young tooth fairy who notices he wet the bed when she's swapping his lost tooth for some coins and decides that this is the perfect time to set in motion her plan to start a new branch of fairies, the Continence Fairies and will at this point I'm expecting scenes from both their viewpoints. Some scenes from her as she tries to get recognition for the new Continence Fairies (and recruit others so it isn't just her) and other scenes from the boy after he wakes up to discover his bed is now an oversized toddler bed, his dresser converted into a dresser/changing table, and all his underwear traded for diapers. That might change however as I'm thinking there may be additional viewpoints from family and others in the community as the fairy finds other opportunities to unleash the magic potential she's been saving up for this. If I do expand the number of viewpoint characters, even if most remain the fairy and boy, then I might well go 3rd Person Limited or Omniscient for everyone.

After a number of false starts trying to pick up my incomplete story I last updated a few years ago or trying to start something new I started looking at writing books to see if there was anything that would help and there are a few I like. I recently picked up Plot Gardening by Chris Fox (https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Gardening-Write-Faster-Smarter-ebook/dp/B07BH8VZDV/), which I like because it covers both the traditional Three Act Structure which is focused more on the events that happen as well as the Dan Harmon Story Circle which is a simpler version of The Heroes Journey and is focused on a character. Another is Novel Writing Prep: A 30-Day Planner That Prepares You To Write 50,000 Words in One Month by Monica Leonelle (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07G9Z7Q9M ). You might guess from the title it's aimed at preparing for NaNoWriMo and it is. But it covers a little bit of everything from coming up with characters to theme and plotting. Probably the first book I picked up was Take Off Your Pants! Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing by Libbie Hawker (https://www.amazon.com/Take-Off-Your-Pants-Outline-ebook/dp/B00UKC0GHA/) which pitches itself as a plotting book for seat of your pants writers. It talks a bit about character arcs and gives more detail to the classic three act structure than: Things start happening, a big muddy middle you get lost in, and explosions as everything comes to a close. I'm actually now in a bind where I have about five different stories I want to start on and I keep changing my mind on which to do. I also think the Story Circle has played a role in that since I was pretty easy to just start taking brief seeds of an idea like, "Workplace makes diapers part of the company dress code," and run through the eight steps of the circle to see if I can grow it from a story seed to a story without sitting down and trying to write out the whole story. Which you could do with the old traditional three-act-X-beats plot structure but that never quite clicked with me like the circle. So now I've got a couple different story ideas in my own version of the Diaper Dimension (one with a grade school aged character who wants to wear diapers but has to deal with issues even if they are in a pretty progressive country in a milder Diaper Dimension, another with an In Betweener character born into an Amazon family that finds his bedwetting embarrassing, and another Inbetweener story in which a college student starts wetting the bed from school stress and runs into his old Amazonian babysitter), and a few non-DD stories too.

I'm hoping to see more too! I hope Sam finds a store of confidence. I kind of want to reach into the story and offer him a hug even if I suspect that might startle him more than help at the moment.

I'm not too small, I'm perfectly lap sized! An if I can't run fast enough I can just climb on a nice woof's back. *sticks his tongue out an giggles too!* Just have to keep a blanket to toss over the laptop when I read the next chapter so no one will see.