Amnesia

[MeekMe]

Meek,
I take it you like your stories to be at least close to real life. I'm pretty much the same. That's why I marked the plot I penned as hokey. Unless I were in the mood to try and write some kind of comedy, I probably wouldn't take on a story like this.

Far from it. I love stories that reach far from reality. In this case, I thought something less cliché would be nice for a change.

All too often we see plots of virginal girls who fall into a life of debauchery in one way of another just to at the end of it become sluts. The message reads like this: "I sucked X amount of dicks, I can never unsuck those dicks, so I'm going to keep sucking dicks because now I'm tainted."

Why can't she lose her memory, forget about all her hang ups and attempt to be more open with sex as just a person? I haven't seen many plots like that and added my two cents to see what would come of it.

 

[StrayKat]

and my point is that one person's bland is another person's curry.

Yes, I see readers as wanting to get away from (their) real life. They want to experience something different. they want to read about what someone dares to do that the reader didn't dare to do. Or take a different turn that they avoided in life. Some people are willing to open their mind to reading what they have done, but portrayed in a different light.

I think readers want real life opposed to wild fantasy (not meaning "wild" as in heart thumping "wild", but as in vampires and dragons "wild"). Then they can relate more to the story and put themselves in place of one of the characters and feel like they are living it.

Yeah, probably, I see when I tell some things that are for me normal every day stuff how some people go into wide eyed panting mode.
But nevertheless, even when I am reading about dragons and vampires (actually my favorite genre), I want it to be, not real, but convincing.
I have passed on on otherwise not badly written stories because they sounded just false. Kills the immersion.

And quite frankly, in this day of internet porn being available to everyone, I cant imagine a guy desperate enough to put up with a clumsy amateur stripper. Though I agree some guys do seem unbelievably desperate, wouldnt have to go much further than this board to find examples, but then is that the kind of the audience the OP is aiming at?

Or maybe I am just assuming everyone has as high criteria as I have when going for a story.

 

[MeekMe]

For the record I never did stripping. I wasn't suggesting that I had professional experience. I was suggesting that moving around in heels and "dancing" is physically exerting and I have done that. Watching someone dance/move is easier than doing it and we often look at someone who makes it look easy and assume that it is.

I don't really know what someone who has amnesia thinks. I can assume that it's different from person to person.

As for me, and I hope others, reading erotica is a nice way to deviate from typical porn plots (if you can call those plots). I like to mix it up and amnesia is interesting enough that if done well could be enjoyable. Maybe I just ask for too much.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but the way you are talking, it doesn't sound like you did it for very long. Maybe you tried it, your self-prescribed feelings for perfection seem to have outweighed your desire to do it, and they won out. Maybe you didn't have enough 'liquid courage?' IDK.

Note, I didn't mean to suggest that there aren't talented strippers out there. Pole dancing is arguably the penultimate talent a stripper could attain in that venue. I just meant, on average, most strippers don't require high or even medium amounts of talent to be a stripper. Then again, while I attended most strip bars, I didn't associate too much with any virgin strippers.

I remember one stripper who was probably on her first day. I felt bad for her so I tried to be encouraging in a non-lecherous way, but she desired to be the scaredy-cat who stuck to the dressing room between sets (the dressing room, such as it was, had a window, so I could see her back there nearly cowering when she wasn't on stage. Eventually, I decided that the best thing I could do for her was to ignore her).
I avoided all virgin strippers thereafter.

Now to bring it back to the subject at large, given a person has amnesia, their desire to try to get back into the swing of their former life, I think, would outweigh any feelings of inadequacy or insecurity they might feel.

My point being that something most people don't readily grasp is the desperation in the mind of the amnesiac to reconnect with their former life. Would the amnesiac feel some sense of insecurity about going up on stage in a strip bar? Yes, of course, but if they felt their normal life was doing just that, then they would try to get by on guts alone.

IF an amensiac thought part of their real life was stripping, then they would force themself to do what they never would have dared in real life, unknowingly. To me, this plot is conceivable IF enough prep is done to display that aside from bookmarks on her computer for strip bars, that her life (and/or apartment) was dismally devoid of any character. No tennis rackets, no ticket stubs from a play she really liked. No posters on the wall of actors or boy bands she liked (I know it's juvenile, but some do). Lacking all of that, it's possible that something small could be a wild hope at reconnecting.

Would a strip bar manager say someone was a stripper, that they didn't know? No.

I imagine that scene would play out something like this:
"...So, I have amnesia and I found a bookmark on my computer for this strip club. Do I look familiar and was I a regular stripper here???"
"No, that I remember but everybody starts to look the same after a while." Sees her abject misery at finding a dead end and tries to be encouraging, "...But we have an amateur night every Wednesday night. An amateur stripper who wins takes home $200, plus any table dances she feels like trying thereafter. Maybe you used to do amateur nights at all the clubs?"

blah. Enough expanding and time to put this beaten, dead horse to sleep.

 

[LWulf]

...And quite frankly, in this day of internet porn being available to everyone, I cant imagine a guy desperate enough to put up with a clumsy amateur stripper. Though I agree some guys do seem unbelievably desperate, wouldnt have to go much further than this board to find examples, but then is that the kind of the audience the OP is aiming at?

Or maybe I am just assuming everyone has as high criteria as I have when going for a story.

Even for me back when I was 20, though I didn't have the internet like today, we DID have porn magazines and you could rent pornos by the dozens to fap to. That doesn't mean I didn't want to see a real life woman in front of me.

In other words, even in today's readily accessible, smut-filled internet, I think young guys still get jaded from seeing or reading about women and eventually want to see the real thing.

Statistically speaking, women outnumber men by almost 100% yet guys still can't find a woman to get freaky with. More probably because of the lack of social skills or because they watch too much porn and think that's how real life works, but that's besides the point.
Eventually, some guys go to strip bars.

****​

I'm not adverse to vampires and dragons myself (and still want a certain plausibility to it too boot), but I'll take realistic stories any day, over fantasy. Someone who can completely submerge me into the woven realistic thread of their yarn, draws me in like a moth to flame, but one misstep and it completes blows the illusion to hell.

To tie this back into the thread, the problem I see with people that stop in to give advice on how to make a story seem "better" is to completely rearrange the idea. Not that that is wrong, as sometimes I do the same thing.

The difference that I see, is that when I see something is unoriginal or the like, I just go in and say "unoriginal" and leave it at that. When I see an idea I like, I don't try to change it and rearrange it to suit my concept. The only time I say something to suggest changing it is when I see an unavoidable plot hole. I try to work within the idea.

Too many people come in and change things around so much that you can't even see the original idea anymore. It's like "why did you even bother saying you like an idea if you go into changing it so much?"


I don't expect people to live how I do, it just confuses me something awful.

 

[StrayKat]

"why did you even bother saying you like an idea if you go into changing it so much?"

Why did my first husband ever bother marrying me when all he did after that was complain and want me to change, heh. Its how people are, projecting and trying to mold everything to their detailed desires.

 

[LWulf]

Why did my first husband ever bother marrying me when all he did after that was complain and want me to change, heh. Its how people are, projecting and trying to mold everything to their detailed desires.

When people do that in a marriage, it's wrong. Normally I hear about women who do this more than men; trying to change their husbands into something they are not. It's unrealistic expecting people to change because you want them to.

Just accept the story idea as is, or if there is something wrong with it, discuss that, but "'boring" isn't "wrong" it's just boring.

One of my faults is sometimes I'm too honest.

 

[FantasyXY]

Far from it. I love stories that reach far from reality. In this case, I thought something less cliché would be nice for a change.

All too often we see plots of virginal girls who fall into a life of debauchery in one way of another just to at the end of it become sluts. The message reads like this: "I sucked X amount of dicks, I can never unsuck those dicks, so I'm going to keep sucking dicks because now I'm tainted."

Why can't she lose her memory, forget about all her hang ups and attempt to be more open with sex as just a person? I haven't seen many plots like that and added my two cents to see what would come of it.

I see... Your idea is to have her mentally open up because of the amnesia, then she actually does the things that she repressed before because her identity is marred by the amnesia.

That works...

 

[MeekMe]

I see... Your idea is to have her mentally open up because of the amnesia, then she actually does the things that she repressed before because her identity is marred by the amnesia.

That works...

Just my take. I figure, if the plot is that she is innocent, loses her memory, and at the end becomes a "slut," then we've covered the bases. I think the mistaken identity part would be the hardest to write.

 

[subwannabe]

The stripper part confuses me. For the most part one needs quite a bit of skill. I assume the physical skill needed to be a stripper wouldn't be something this virginal girl naturally has.

If she suddenly got her memory back in the middle of sex with the guy that lied to her... (>_<) sounds like lots of therapy would be needed. I'd probably murder the guy if it were me.

Think about this, she has amnesia and wakes up to have friends and family around. They tell her who she is and nobody lies to her or mistakes her identity. Instead, she goes home and attempting to learn about herself goes through her own things. In a search through her own computer she finds links to some of her repressed desires.

From there she begins to explore a part of herself she was repressing simply because she didn't remember being so ashamed of it.

Maybe in the process of opening up sexually she learns it's not shameful and she can actually enjoy sex in a healthy way. Perhaps she won't be a complete nutjob by the end if her journey.

This is the best idea I've heard this century. Truly fantastic. I would love to read this one. If I had the time I would write it but I don't.

 

[Mello_SixtyNine]

This vaguely reminds of a movie on Lifetime I saw years ago (based on a true story) about this cute blonde teen that had some kind of head injury that turned her into a raging nymphomaniac.

If I remember right, I think the father from the Wonder Years was the girl's father in this tv movie.