Need advice but don't want to spoil the entire concept I have planned

[HHHawkeye]

So I'm in a bit of a bind. I've got a character who's in a bit of a complicated and elaborate situation for the purposes of my story, and no matter what way I look at it, I can't find a way to characterize this guy without contradicting some other mental state the story needs him to be in. I'm hoping to find a way to get advice, but I can't give proper details in a thread like this without publicly revealing a lot of what I have planned for my story before I can write it.

Does anyone have any advice on how I can... get advice? Without basically just outright putting it out there in public what I have planned?

 

[NotWise]

Does anyone have any advice on how I can... get advice? Without basically just outright putting it out there in public what I have planned?

Maybe you can PM people you know and/or writers you respect, give them the information, and ask for input.

 

[HHHawkeye]

Maybe you can PM people you know and/or writers you respect, give them the information, and ask for input.

Anyone you'd recommend who you think would be open to it? I'm new here.

As for general subject matter, the story itself is a BDSM story focused on an island where women are slaves and that has a continuous supply of submissive and masochistic women eager to go there.

 

[Voboy]

Let me guess: you need him to be compassionate toward the masochistic women and offended at their lack of dignity and self-respect, while at the same time getting off on forcing them to drink his urine. Something like that? It's been done scads of times. Browse through the BDSM stories and you'll find some ideas, I'm sure.

You're the writer, brother-man. Anything goes. Make it happen. I'd give better advice, only I'm mystified why I'd know more about your characters, in your setting, than you know yourself.

 

[NotWise]

Anyone you'd recommend who you think would be open to it? I'm new here.

As for general subject matter, the story itself is a BDSM story focused on an island where women are slaves and that has a continuous supply of submissive and masochistic women eager to go there.

BDSM is outside my range. It's fairly common for people to talk about story ideas here, and if not here then there's the Story Ideas forum.

My initial reaction to this:

no matter what way I look at it, I can't find a way to characterize this guy without contradicting some other mental state the story needs him to be in.

was that your guy could be insane, or in some kind of altered mental state. Otherwise, maybe you need to rethink your character.

 

[Hypoxia]

You're the writer, brother-man. Anything goes. Make it happen.

Quite. We create our own realities.

And to rewire a character, just whack his head, give him a mild concussion. Or maybe some slight electrocution, just enough to singe his brain, not fry it. Prest-o change-o, he's a new guy! Or try hypnosis, drugs, or an epiphany.

 

[HHHawkeye]

Let me guess: you need him to be compassionate toward the masochistic women and offended at their lack of dignity and self-respect, while at the same time getting off on forcing them to drink his urine. Something like that? It's been done scads of times. Browse through the BDSM stories and you'll find some ideas, I'm sure.

Well I suppose I'm at least happy to say it's a bit more complicated and original than that.

 

[Voboy]

Well I suppose I'm at least happy to say it's a bit more complicated and original than that.

Good!

But still, these are the moments that separate the women from the girls, in terms of how well they can write. Can you create a character convincingly complex enough that he can sustain the many disparate things you need him to do to serve your plot?

For me, that's the fun of this whole thing. You build a character multidimensional enough that these "elaborate situation" aren't problems or dilemmas. They're simply story events. And your stud, if you've created him properly, ought to be able to shake it all off with a blase comment, some embarrassment, a crying fit, or a burst of anger, whichever reaction is truest to the character you've created.

You really are the god of this little universe. If it's unconvincing, it's because you haven't made it convincing enough. BUILD your characters. Nothing is less interesting than an archetype.

 

[Hypoxia]

Can you create a character convincingly complex enough that he can sustain the many disparate things you need him to do to serve your plot?

Give a hot Freudian and/or biological excuse for his multiple personality disorder. He was a bottle-fed baby bouncing on his folks' marriage bed with them but the Nestlé formula was tainted so he's nutz in odd ways at varied space-time points.

Or his alien implant triggers drastic mood changes. Or his unborn embryo demonic twin lies in his brain; they share control of their body. Or he smoked too much datura in his youth so this is how he is, wandering between alternate mental universes, smirking.

 

[ThisNameIsntTakenYet]

Good advice, so far. One option that I don't think I've seen mentioned is that you could always force him in a situation you can't possibly seem to justify. Maybe he is really soft and gentle in nature but is threatened or forced into the position of the dominant guy. Maybe this is his punishment for something he did, maybe it's the only way to pay the bills, maybe some sick guy has his family hostage and will do horrible things to them if he doesn't perform well enough in his role. If you go down this route, it will also open up an interesting emotional aspect of the story, where he tries to come to terms with the things he's doing. Maybe he wants to give up but can't. Maybe he finds out that he's secretly enjoying hitting women with whips and whatnot but denies it, telling himself he's just doing what he's being paid/forced to do.

 

[HHHawkeye]

Since my situation is a bit unique and a lot of the advice I've gotten doesn't quite apply, I suppose I can at least reveal enough to what will be clear in the next part I post, if not the further details that make things even more interesting.

As the prologue you can read here explains, the women who go to this island of slavery are the women of its native people raised in freedom overseas, who come back because they seem to be born with an incredible instinctual longing to submit to men. I'm not worried about making them realistic in their behavior (consistent, yes, but not realistic), because there's a good amount of sci-fi going on with their brain chemistry causing them to desire a permanent, legally codified position at men's feet. It's the men around them who are normal humans I'm trying to characterize properly. But the point is that these women get to choose what kind of slave they become, from the standard slavery of mere sexualized unpaid labor, all the way down to things like human furniture, and there are plenty of eager volunteers for every position on the spectrum.

One of the women, a very wealthy one, has decided she wants to be human livestock, who are legally animals and aren't allowed to talk or wear clothes. She also has a husband, who would have known that this was her intention from the day they met a few years ago, and that by marrying her he would legally inherit all of her property and become her owner.

Essentially I need to characterize this husband so that he isn't the sort of person who would mind the disruption in their relationship caused by never getting to have a conversation with her again, without completely eliminating any affection he'd have for her and turning their relationship into a purely sexual temporary marriage of convenience. And to me these two things seem so contradictory that it would be really jarring to try and mash the two goals together.

 

[SimonDoom]

Essentially I need to characterize this husband so that he isn't the sort of person who would mind the disruption in their relationship caused by never getting to have a conversation with her again, without completely eliminating any affection he'd have for her and turning their relationship into a purely sexual temporary marriage of convenience. And to me these two things seem so contradictory that it would be really jarring to try and mash the two goals together.

My question is whether these two conflicting impulses exist at the beginning, or does he go through a process of reconciling them over the course of the story. If the story is told from the man's point of view, then the latter would be more interesting. The story could be about how he comes to reconcile these impulses and comes to accept his wife's slave status despite misgivings at the beginning of the story. That could be an interesting story. Some form of internal conflict will make the story more interesting. If the woman is wired to accept her fate, then she won't have any internal conflict, so the man is the character to focus on.

 

[Voboy]

There’s a lot of literature about men willingly falling in love and staying in love with inanimate objects, like guitars and cars. Visualize and develop that kind of male character.

 

[8letters]

One of the women, a very wealthy one, has decided she wants to be human livestock, who are legally animals and aren't allowed to talk or wear clothes. She also has a husband, who would have known that this was her intention from the day they met a few years ago, and that by marrying her he would legally inherit all of her property and become her owner.

Essentially I need to characterize this husband so that he isn't the sort of person who would mind the disruption in their relationship caused by never getting to have a conversation with her again, without completely eliminating any affection he'd have for her and turning their relationship into a purely sexual temporary marriage of convenience. And to me these two things seem so contradictory that it would be really jarring to try and mash the two goals together.

Spend more time with the story. What's the ending of the story going to be? How are they going to live their lives after the story ends? What is it about the man and the woman that make their unusual relationship work? Now, walk through your story from the beginning, stopping at various points to review if everything makes sense and see if there are changes you need to make.

 

[yukonnights]

My question is whether these two conflicting impulses exist at the beginning, or does he go through a process of reconciling them over the course of the story. If the story is told from the man's point of view, then the latter would be more interesting. The story could be about how he comes to reconcile these impulses and comes to accept his wife's slave status despite misgivings at the beginning of the story. That could be an interesting story. Some form of internal conflict will make the story more interesting. If the woman is wired to accept her fate, then she won't have any internal conflict, so the man is the character to focus on.

The bottom line of what Simon said above; The husband, out of sincere love for her, agrees to go forward. Thus, it becomes a sacrifice of love and not something he would necessarily choose. The loss of any verbal communication could be foreshadowed earlier with one or both of them being naturally less verbal than normal...yet quite communicative with eyes and touch...almost as if they could read the other person's mind, etc.

 

[SimonDoom]

Spend more time with the story. What's the ending of the story going to be? How are they going to live their lives after the story ends? What is it about the man and the woman that make their unusual relationship work? Now, walk through your story from the beginning, stopping at various points to review if everything makes sense and see if there are changes you need to make.

This tracks how I do things (although many authors do not), in that not long after I've got my story idea down and have started I usually figure out and write the ending. So then I can figure out how I want to get from point A to point B, both of which are established.

You don't necessarily have to map it out to the same extent, but I think it helps to know what your lead character's arc will be, and how they will have changed by the end of the story.

 

[HHHawkeye]

Does anyone know anyone I could ask about this directly?

 

[Hypoxia]

Good advice, so far. One option that I don't think I've seen mentioned is that you could always force him in a situation you can't possibly seem to justify.

That's a good problem for authors. Create a terrible quandary, then choose the least likely escape.

There’s a lot of literature about men willingly falling in love and staying in love with inanimate objects, like guitars and cars. Visualize and develop that kind of male character.

I don't think most guys fuck mufflers or guitar sound holes, but this is LIT fantasyland...

Does anyone know anyone I could ask about this directly?

No. So just wing it.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

My step dad who was a member if the greatest generation lived to tell a story abiut an old movie serial when he was young.

The hero was in a multilayer predicament at the end of an episode. No way to escape. If he climbed out if the volcano, the lion would eat him.

If he shot the lion the recoil from his gun would make him fall into the lava. If he used the vine to swing across to the other side he would land in a pile of cobras.

There writers left no way for the hero to escape.

The following week every mivie theater in Brooklyn sold out because everyone wanted to know hiw the hero would escape.

The lights fade, the music starts playing tgen text appears on the screen...

Having escaped the volcano unscathed, our hero finds himself at the enterance to the diamond mine where his lady love is imprisioned​

There's always a way out for a good or not so good writer.

 

[Hypoxia]

There's always a way out for a good or not so good writer.

Cliffhangers are salvation. It's also fun to postfix a note like, Next: The Pope's Daughter and maybe work that into it.

 

[Jada59]

Anyone you'd recommend who you think would be open to it? I'm new here.

As for general subject matter, the story itself is a BDSM story focused on an island where women are slaves and that has a continuous supply of submissive and masochistic women eager to go there.

This sounds a bit like Gor.

 

[ThisNameIsntTakenYet]

This tracks how I do things (although many authors do not), in that not long after I've got my story idea down and have started I usually figure out and write the ending. So then I can figure out how I want to get from point A to point B, both of which are established.

You don't necessarily have to map it out to the same extent, but I think it helps to know what your lead character's arc will be, and how they will have changed by the end of the story.

While I don't write the ending ahead of time, I do like to have it nailed down at least in a general sense before I start writing. I know winging it works for some writers, but for me it's an excuse to get side-tracked and risks writing an ending that feels either random or something that could have happened pages ago. You can't really foreshadow or work towards something you haven't figured out yet.

 

[Bramblethorn]

My step dad who was a member if the greatest generation lived to tell a story abiut an old movie serial when he was young.

The hero was in a multilayer predicament at the end of an episode. No way to escape. If he climbed out if the volcano, the lion would eat him.

If he shot the lion the recoil from his gun would make him fall into the lava. If he used the vine to swing across to the other side he would land in a pile of cobras.

There writers left no way for the hero to escape.

The following week every mivie theater in Brooklyn sold out because everyone wanted to know hiw the hero would escape.

The lights fade, the music starts playing tgen text appears on the screen...

Having escaped the volcano unscathed, our hero finds himself at the enterance to the diamond mine where his lady love is imprisioned​

There's always a way out for a good or not so good writer.

If I recall, King's "Misery" talks about something very much like this - one episode ends with the car flying over a cliff with the hero inside, then next episode he escapes from it before it goes over the cliff. Annie Wilkes had strong views about that kind of writing.

 

[HHHawkeye]

This sounds a bit like Gor.

A bit I suppose, though from what I understand, the situation in Gor very much is not opt-in.

 

[Voboy]

If I recall, King's "Misery" talks about something very much like this - one episode ends with the car flying over a cliff with the hero inside, then next episode he escapes from it before it goes over the cliff. Annie Wilkes had strong views about that kind of writing.

Exactly.

"Not fair," is I think how she put it.