Ever Get A Story Idea . . .

[slyc_willie]

. . . then think, "How can I adapt that for Literotica?"

One of the cable stations has been playing the movie Hook back-to-back tonight. While watching it, I could not help but imagine other stories along a similar theme, and given that I've been doing so much writing for Lit lately, my brain naturally drifted in that direction.

Obviously, I would not want to write any sort of Literotica-type stories centered around Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, but some of the basic "feel" could be used. At its heart, the story of Peter Pan is, at least to me, a morality tale about the transition between indestructible youth and cynical adulthood. It seems a very innocent story on the surface, but there are some decidedly mature and mortal themes and scenes involved.

For instance, while depicted as comical and inept, the pirates are nothing if not brutal. They take one of their own and lock him in a chest along with several deadly scorpions. And then there's Captain Hook's rather casual murdering of a few of his followers and his general contempt for them.

Then there is the scene in which Rufio declares "All grown-ups are pirates. We kill pirates." And, of course, there is the scene in which Hook kills Rufio. So the story matter is not all fun and games. There are consequences.

Still, to write a story using the same basic theme, and include graphic adult material, would be tricky. A writer would have to balance the razor's edge between artful crafting and age-play. It would be a difficult task to portray characters as being of basically innocent mind and experience, and then have them engage in a tag-team orgy, as an example.

The mere idea to write such a story could be construed as an attempt to find a loophole in Lit's age requirement policy. But that's not what I would want to do. I'm not looking for a way around the 18+ rule. Sure, I could state that the Lost Boys, while appearing to be pre-adolescent to adolescent in age, are all chronologically older, but that would be a cheap runaround and not at all in the spirit of the stories I would want to write.

So, how can a writer evoke a sense of almost childlike wonder, adventure, and playfulness, yet still keep a mortal/mature theme, and keep all characters obviously of the appropriate age? Can it be done?

 

[sr71plt]

Go thinking like that about Hook, and it won't be long to see the "repressed writer of the Victorian age" euphonistic writing of a double-layered story with an underage and even gay male undercurrent in it for the enjoyment of other writers of like mind.

 

[slyc_willie]

Go thinking like that about Hook, and it won't be long to see the "repressed writer of the Victorian age" euphonistic writing of a double-layered story with an underage and even gay male undercurrent in it for the enjoyment of other writers of like mind.

But that is precisely what I don't want to do. No thinly-veiled double entendre here. Just a story that finds and adequately walks that fine line between adolescent wonder and mature sensibility.

If it can be done well, it would be a great . . . *ahem* . . . hook. If not, then it's bound to be interpreted as age play.

 

[steve44uk]

Have you read Stephen King's It? Despite the often graphic horror and violence, it's the best attempt I've ever read at capturing that childhood innocence and the never-to-be-repeated bonds of friendship.
Likewise his novella, The Body, and Dan Simmons' Summer of Night.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Henry James did it with THE TURNING OF THE SCREW. There's no evident incest but the kids are possessed by ghosts, and pinch hit for the ghosts.

Nearly every important author has done it, and so the embargo puzzles me. Kids are sexual, and in the 19th Century it was taken for granted.

The local mental health center has problems with its clients hooking up for sex. Theyre all young adults (over 18), low IQ, and making babies. Tjeyre chaperoned but not diligently.

Suggestion: Try something with youthful soldiers in combat when discipline breaks down due to death of the platoon leader.

 

[MSTarot]

I think if I was going to give this a try I would start the characters young and bring them to age (18- cue the porn music) as the story went. That way you would get that innocence you're looking for in the early part of the story but stay in the rules. Kind of a coming of age story.

Stephen King got mentioned, that brought Dream Catchers to mind and how the character start as kids and there are flashbacks to when they were.

Hook...

Group of young boys tired of being bullied, sick of being scared by the local gang trouble decide to form their own gang. It's kind of a joke at first least ways that how their parents see it. Just a kid thing.

Maybe the pirates are the local cops, Hook their hardliner. Sees a gang as a gang no matter what.

No idea about Tick Tock.

 

[slyc_willie]

Good ideas, but not what I was aiming for. All the suggestions don't leave a lot of room for maintaining that (false?) sense of innocence once certain things happen.

Maybe "innocence" isn't quite what I'm looking for, but a case of mass naivete. Still mulling this one around.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I LOVE this idea.

What about if you simply write it, no explanations of why these adults act this way? people are incredibly good at 'the benefit of the doubt' when they want to be.

They could be not-quite-human, with just one feature that defines them that way-- little vestigal wings, maybe, that lift for expressiveness but don't fly.

Or you could write it as SciFi and have them be the human descendants of the survivors of a colony ship?

 

[glynndah]

Perhaps the setting could help. An earlier time when "life" is perceived to be more innocent, even if it really wasn't.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

http://pratie.blogspot.com/2005/09/why-dont-you-yes-but.html

Reminded me of the YES, BUT game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAGyENr3_44

 

[slyc_willie]

I LOVE this idea.

What about if you simply write it, no explanations of why these adults act this way? people are incredibly good at 'the benefit of the doubt' when they want to be.

That's true. Through setting and dialogue, I could just make it apparent that these people are the way they are without explaining it.

They could be not-quite-human, with just one feature that defines them that way-- little vestigal wings, maybe, that lift for expressiveness but don't fly.

I think if I go this route at all, I would probably go all the way. Pun fully intended.

Or you could write it as SciFi and have them be the human descendants of the survivors of a colony ship?

There was an Arthur C. Clarke novel like this. Songs From a Dying Earth, I believe. There were two groups of colonists, one which had arrived many years before the other and had been raised on the new planet, and those from Earth who had left just before Earth's sun went nova. The "native" colonists were, I think, portrayed as simpler, almost naive, in relation to the others.

Perhaps the setting could help. An earlier time when "life" is perceived to be more innocent, even if it really wasn't.

As in the setting for the movie Legend? I've been considering something like that, too.

The main hurdle is going to be describe the innocence or naivete of the characters without making them appear to be children in temperament. Inexperience only goes so far; it has to be something to do with the way they think and behave.

 

[slyc_willie]

It also occurs to me that a large part of maintaining a sense of "fairy tale wonder" lies within the naming conventions of a story. Part of what makes Peter Pan feel like an adolescent story of wonder and adventure are the names. Peter Pan. Never-Neverland. Captain Hook. Smee. These are names someone with an innocent frame of mind would come up with.

Lewis Carroll did the same with Wonderland and the names therein. I mean, if the story was not supposed to be so utterly fantastic that it could only have been envisioned through the mind of a child, then names such as Jabberwocky, Bandersnatch, Cheshire Cat and Mock Turtle would have been ridiculous. But they worked, partly due to the time frame in which the book was originally published, and partly because those were gibberish or simplistic names.

So a careful, simplistic view toward the names of people, places, monsters and other things in such a story would be necessary. I would have to imagine myself with a mind much less cluttered by all the references and knowledge of our current era. If I was simple-minded, or with a limited frame of reference, how would I describe a mountain with a waterfall? I'd probably call it Waterfall Mountain. A forest believed to be haunted would be called something like the Ghostwood, or Haunted Oaks.

The KISS principle comes in mighty handy when thinking up a story like this. But at the same time, going crazy with the names would also work, as Carroll illustrated. Maybe a particularly nasty henchman of the main bad guy has a thing for birds of prey. I could call him Valkenhauk ("falcon-hawk").

Hmm. I kind'a like that. I'm claiming that name here and now.

 

[RustedBeef]

How about if you write a story about two separate planets. One planet's inhabitants live simple lives and are generally care-free and removed from the burdens that are troubling the galaxy. The other planet is not so lucky and begins to raid the other one for resources that are becoming scarce.

Maybe someone from the first planet was characteristically ambitious and left years ago to live on the other (Think of the movie Big Fish to where the main character said something about he was like a goldfish and need a bigger pond to live in) and that same person returned later and discovered the state his home planet is in after being raided by the space pirates. And so on.

You got the innocence/naivety, the cynical "more mature" people of the other planet, pirates, and a Peter Pan type character.