Story Approaches

[Horndog]

Woo! First post in this section!

I've been reading a TON of AB/DL stories lately. Most of them immediately jump into a fantasy scenario, but provide very little plot or character development. I'm writing a story that has a plot and character development, but I don't know if it's a good idea to start with sexual details at the beginning of the story (and explain the plot later) or work on the plot first and then add the sexual details. I don't know which setup would attract more readers.

[BoTox]

I think it all depends (a pun?) on what you like. Try it the way you think you would get the most enjoyment out of it and see what happens. Personally, with this forum, you can try it one way and then see what the "group" thinks of it. If it doesn't work like you want, rehash it into a different approach.

I've scrapped whole stories because they don't go the way I want after I'm a dozen pages into it.

[Horndog]

See, that's the thing, though. It's not a matter of what I personally enjoy (I like the story and sex aspects equally), but which way would be best to hook the reader into reading beyond the first couple of sentences. I think I'm going to go ahead and seek a consensus from participants in this forum before I release my next story series (yes, I've been working on two at the same time).

[BoTox]

See, that's the thing, though. It's not a matter of what I personally enjoy (I like the story and sex aspects equally), but which way would be best to hook the reader into reading beyond the first couple of sentences. I think I'm going to go ahead and seek a consensus from participants in this forum before I release my next story series (yes, I've been working on two at the same time).

Are they related stories? I find that once I find a comfortable vein, I like to explore a theme in different ways, tweak it and write another story with a similar thread.

As to your original question, I would like to have some background but I hate reading 10 pages just to find the first reference to what I'm looking for. I don't mind a page or two but then I want to discover things about the character like I would if I was around them. Initially, you know a person's size, hair color, style of dress and how they talk. It takes a bit longer to discover they are allergic to peanuts or they dye their hair. Over a few beers you might discover they have a crush on the neighbor or they once were arrested.

In other words, don't spill all the details at once. Make the reader work for some of it but don't make it so hard you have to connect the dots yourself.

Flashbacks are a nice tool to use when you want to pepper an experience with a hint of what has happened prior to now. For instance, if you want to have a scene, let a scent or a sound trigger a flashback to the first time they beheld that aroma or heard a song.

I hope that helps.

[dprtodd]

I think you should do it how you feel it would work best, as you the author know your story better than anyone, however there are a couple of things I feel are worth considering. Please take this with a grain of salt (If I reference my own stories it is only to show why I went in certain directions - not because I think my stories are particularly well written, it is simply a good way for me to illustrate my point).

Too often it seems like a story opens with someone wetting the bed, wetting their pants, missing the bathroom, etc. How many stories have someone who spent a large portion of their life out of diapers being diaperd on the first page? I think this is the type of thing where you say they just go straight into fantasy without so much as an introduction or a nice to meet you with the characters. I agree that this can be a tired way of approaching things, and far too often these stories seem particularly cliched and derivative. Just be careful that you don't go too far in the opposite direction and overcompensate and leave your readers wishing you'd simply hurry up and get to the 'good parts'. Chances are they came to read a diaper story and thus they expect a story about diapers.

In Diapers, Sunshine and the Great State of Alabama I went most of the first chapter and introduced most every major character and had a fair ammount of interaction between the majors before the first mention of a diaper. I felt I did a good job of establishing setting and developing characters over the course of the story - although I think it was expositionally weak and my secondary characters are often obvious single dimension foils.

Ultimately we are writing diaper stories, which if nothing else are highly specialized and by their nature 'about diapers or related subjects'. You can write a diaper story with good story elements or you can write a good story with some diaper content, but these two things are subtly different. For instance you could go to a Star Trek fan fiction site and proclaim that you were going to write a great story that might mention Star Trek, and you might do so, but I would imagine that most of the folks going to the site are there to read stories ABOUT Star Trek - so teasing the reader will probably not endear them.

Do what will let you shape and present the story you WANT to tell - if you need to build a lot of tension or drama, or characterization and setting before getting to the meat of the story then by all means do so - if it serves to make your story story better. I think of it as similar to the way an appetizer can enhance the coming meal. Unfortunatly if you have too much appetizer then no matter how good the meal is if you are stuffed from over eating on the first course then overall meal is not as good.

I think the other thing to realize is that practice will help too, and you probably won't do what you set out to do the first few times you try. With Alabama I set out to write a diaper story that was unconventional, had a real story arc and a well developed plot that could exists without diapers, that had a fabric to it that was not just an excuse to have one diaper scene after another. Pretty much everything I set out to do I pretty much failed at, and not for lack of trying. Don't get me wrong I love the overall story and the characters (I still read it, get caught up in the story and then get a little thrill when I realize I wrote it) - but I think I did not do as well as I hoped because I am inexperienced - I can tell a much bigger difference between Alabama and The Middle (Posted here in the story forum) I feel The Middle is miles ahead of Alabama in terms of execution and technique but I have written a bunch in between the two stories.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you write.

PS as a hoot try and write something deliberatly bad - it is harder than it sounds and helped me become very aware of some of the things I did when I thought I was writing well.

[Horndog]

I've written some really bad stuff on ABY.com. That was me when I was writing what my hormones wanted me to write -- and it came out really weird.

Thank you, gentlemen, for the tips.

One of my favorite story structures is the TV show, Scrubs, which revolves around the medical profession. Some characters are much more one-dimensional than others, but they all play their part but when the story calls for the characters to react to a serious situation that involves patients and real-life tragedies, you see more character depth. In my stories, you'll notice that a character's interaction with diapers will show depth that wasn't there before -- so I often go with plot first and then I set the catalyst for change.

My new short story series will be up on Friday.

[BoTox]

Good luck with it and I look forward to checking it out.

[hidden]

Just write what you want. I made up Sue's Dilemma as I went along without outlining it. Got over 4000 views with 4 chapters.