I kind of have this idea for a story but I don't know how to write one and lack the medical expertise. The idea is about a ranch boy that because of his gentle nature and lack of masculine developement never having to shave, still having smooth skin etc. finally get's sent to the 'Women's Ranch'. He starts noticing something a little strange about the women there. They all talk about their 'surgery' (genital surgery) with the use of livestock antibiotics and painkillers. They take the hormones too.

I myself have many story ideas that I never ever ever will write down, because I feel this total block anytime I come to a point where I would have to write about things I don't really know about.

I had an idea that involved an abduction and forced slavery situation in Brazil... unfortunately, I have never been to Brazil and the story does not work anywhere that I have lived... So another great litterary work will never be written.

I have wanted to write a story about a sole surviving illegal immigrant child whose family dies just as he is rescued somewhere in the Southern Arizona/Northern Mexico border area... unfortunately, I have never lived in that area either... Yet another great best-selling novel never written.

I have wanted to write a story about a Mexican criminal gang in the Juarez/El Paso area, I have actually lived there, unfortunately, I have no real experience with the Mexican criminal organizations there, and any real research in that area is almost universally fatal for the the researcher. Once again, the litterary world must go on without the amazing story I could and should have given them.... Alas!

I have had an idea to write... well, I am sure you get the picture. Tons of good ideas, but not the required tons of money to do any proper research for the story. I guess it is actually an unjustified phobia, that someone who might read my work will read it and think to themselves something like "HAH! The writer of this worthless trash does not know anything about the beaches on the Brazilian coastline! Nothing like the rental bungalow he is describing ever existed there! HAH! What worthless garbage!" So, I sit and do NOTHING because of fear from what someone MIGHT say.... I am pathetic!

In fact, I believe that MOST readers will forgive or "gloss over" some errors in a story, so long as the story is interesting. You know, like what Mark Twain said: "War talk from men who have been in war is almost always juicy, moon talk from a poet who has never been to the moon is likely to be dry." In spite of Mark Twain's observation, H.G. Wells wrote some things about the moon, none of it factual, none of it based on any real research, and yet, we STILL to this day read his work, watch movies based on his work. NOTHING he wrote was based on facts, yet even today, when a viewer KNOWS that there is no advanced civilization or life on Mars, we watch "War of the Worlds." Millions of "Trekies" are still obsessed with Gene Roddenbury's work, despite a multitude of scientific inaccuracies, "Star Wars" movies are blockbusters, but OH MY GOD they are off target! Does ANYONE in a movie theater stop watching and storm out because of the scientific inaccuracies? Do they shout out "There is no noise to be heard in the vacume of space!" and not enjoy wacthing Darth Vader shoot at Han Solo with his very "noisy" plasma guns? No, we enjoy the interesting and very entertaining (though quite impossible) story.

So, I think you have a great idea for a story Devi! Please, be braver than I myself am, and write the story, and tell it from the heart so that it will be interesting. Forget about possible factual errers and gramathical mesteaks! The whiners who critizise your work are just to stupid too use there imaginashen and understand the storie, so they harp on silly assed grammer and speling erors instead of enjoying a good story. If it really means all that much to you to be factual and correct and all that, maybe you should start a thread, this very thread would do, to post some of your questions about ranching and such and get the information you might need to prevent your story from having some glaring inaccuracy e.g. "He took the sow to the vet to be castrated." <- quite impossible since a "sow" is female. You have to know, that even if the story does have impossibilities such as castrating a sow contained in it, provided that the story itself is interesting, any reader will "fill in the blanks" when they come to the mistakes you might make.

How about abducted and forced slavery in Pahrump? It is not so far away and I am sure the desert can be as weird as the jungle.

OK Arab Nights, to answer your queston, a long long time ago (August of 2008), I decided to start a little bit of research on the Brazilian abduction story in this thread:

- http://www.eunuch.org/forums/showthread ... highlight=

A request for background informantion on Brazil

Has anyone here any REAL experience in Brazil?

I would like to write a story to post here. Maybe I am just being too anal and worried, but I just hate to think I would write anything that was completely impossible or unrealistic. So.... I want to be the next grait writer, like Klavel, Mitshnre, with a dash of Stephen King.... yeah, right!

Anyway, my story like goes something like this... An American college student is down in Brazil on spring break, or maybe summer vacation. Like many people, he is abducted (even I know that kidnapping is common in Brazil) but he is NOT held for ransom. Instead, he was abducted by the owner of a whorehouse and is forced to work as a gay, then TS prostitute.

I hope this idea has not already been done. Now that I think about it, I hope nobody else steals my idea... Oh well, I will have to risk it because I NEED a little bit of help here. I have NEVER been to Brazil, and would have chosen a different setting for my story but the places I have lived are not dangerous and wild (with lots of kidnappings) like Brazil.

So I need anyone who has been there to give me a little bit of information. I do not even yet know if the events will take place around Rio, Sao Pauolo, or anywhere. Where do most college students go for spring break if they go to Brazil? Where are the whorehouses? How good or bad are the conditions there?

I have already watched the movie "City of God" and loved it. Also, a bit older flick "Black Orpheus" was good for some information, but not the real sort of stuff I would like to know about.

I got no responses at all within the thread, but I did get two discouraging messages from "Dagoberto Mota," who lives in Brazil.

First he wrote this:

Why Brazil?

Brazil, the country where I was born and live, has a population of 190.000.000 people. Rio and São Paulo, the biggest cities, have more than 6 million inhabitants each. Unfortunatelly we still have kidnaping crimes (5 or 6 per year), like many other countries, but these type of crime is done by organized groups looking the amount of the rescue. The gangs study in advance the financial condition of the families of their future victims, because they need to make an investment to pay the expenses of the abduction, the rent of a house to hide the victim, to buy food, etc. Forget about kidnapings of tourists, because the story will be totally unreal. From tourists, the street thiefs like to take cameras if unattended. I suggest you to come and visit the country or, at least, to talk with people who lived here. I, personally, don't know whorehouses where young men are forced to the prostitution. Brazilian people in big cities are very liberal about sex and you cand find places, bars, saunas and even spots on the beaches where gays socialize freely. Why to pay for a dangerous and forbidden form of sex if it is possible to do it free and with no risk? I suggest you to choose another matter or, at least, another country (Lybia, Haiti, Iran, Liberia). Sorry for my english mistakes. In Brazil we talk and write in portuguese. Best wishes. Dag

I responded, basically I think there are a lot of good looking transsexuals in Brazil, and wanted to write a story set in a sexy paradise like what I imangine the "Beach at Ipanema" must be. Dag sent me this second message:

Another idea

It's a good idea to use the brazilian TVs living in Europe (Italy, Spain or, perhaps, Russia) to become slaves in brothels. Makes sense. There are criminal organizations that atract brazilian TVs and women to work as "artists" in Spain and, in reallity, used theirs sevices as sexual slaves. The human traders confiscate their passports avoidind the possibility of them going away. Sorry for my intromission, but if you want to put a handsome young american in the story, he could visit one of these brothels and falling in love with one of these brazilian transvestites. It's a good beginning, no? Dag

So I threw out the Brazilian abduction idea.... Maybe this story can go forward set in Iran, Haiti, Liberia, etc.

On second thought... I see that I am "hijacking" this thread (SORRY DEVI!) and I do believe that this thread should be a place where we provide Devi with any information about ranches and veteranary medicine that might be needed for the "Women's Ranch" story. SO, Devi, I am sure that here at the EA, we do have people who can answer just about any question you might have involving ranching and verternary medicine, and we are all eagerly awaiting your story, so do please post your questions here and I am sure someone here will be able to answer them.

If not Pahrump, how about another equally odd place such as Cote d'Ivoire?

If you like, I can give you some hints about the tepuy country in South America. If it is strange enough for Lost World, it is strange enough other stories. The name translates as house of the gods, but one tepuy's name translates as mountain of evil. Take a wrong turn in the jungle and instead of climbing to the house of the gods, you climb the mountain of evil. How is that for a story start?

Seriously, if you like a few pointers on that area, I'd be glad to help.

DeaconBlues (imported) wrote: Fri Dec 02, 2011 1:39 pm Forget about possible factual errers and gramathical mesteaks! The whiners who critizise your work are just to stupid too use there imaginashen and understand the storie, so they harp on silly assed grammer and speling erors instead of enjoying a good story.

I agree with you about the factual errors to a degree - so long as you tell it plausibly it can be easy to let it slide - just as in many sci-fi tales, sound can't travel in a vacuum, but space explosions do add dramatic effect and excitement and can be overlooked, but done scientifically correct, as was done in Firefly/Serenity and even Babylon 5, accuracy can be ever more dramatic.

A way around technical accuracy issue is to establish the reality of your fictional world somewhere in the beginning. If you start your story off as though if were present day and present reality then out of nowhere people can fly and flowers can talk you'll likely put off a lot of readers. If those bizarre occurrences are to be part of the reality of your universe you should somehow introduce the idea, at least subtly. Sometimes the title can do it – “Castrated by Britney Spears” already establishes an unlikely event so you’re ready for a wild ride. If I saw a story called “Franky the Finger” I’m expecting a mob story, but if it turns out that Franky lost his wiener and replaced it with one of his fingers (or was born with a finger for a dick) it’ll make sense and not strain my brain. I actually have an idea for such a story so I’m claiming that title.

One of my favourite examples of this is to use James Bond films. He always seems to have the exactly perfect tool or gadget. When he just happens to whip out an exploding pen, triggered by a specific # of clicks, to give to the bad guy with a nervous tendency of feverishly clicking pens, and saves the day, most viewers/readers would find it hard to gloss over and chalk it up to “suspension of disbelief” – after all, it would have been just a pen for all we knew until BOOM. Even if he had whispered to his “bond girl” that it was an exploding pen as he took it out viewers would still cry shenanigans. It would be just too contrived. So what they did with most of his gadgets (that weren’t a generally useful all in one standard issue spy watch/radio/tracking device) was to have Q or some lab-boy demonstrate it at the beginning. Still a bit too contrived for my taste, but it is so classic/cliché James Bond it’s almost charming – I’ll still watch any Bond flick, whether he be dark haired or not – just as long as the Americans don’t hijack and butcher the franchise.

An example of how this is done badly is to look at the Batman TV series and its “movie”. While the show was meant to be campy, some of the items in Batman’s arsenal are just a bit too over the top – shark repellent spray in a helicopter anyone? OK, so that actually works in that scenario considering the overall cheesiness of that incarnation, but as I recall the more serious comics, his tools were a bit more generally practical – grappling hooks, grenades, cuffs, smoke bombs, etc. They all kind of make sense and one can easily imagine how they can be used in almost any scenario. Clicking his heals and having ice skate blades pop out of his boots for his very first encounter with Mr. Freeze (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in that celluloid abomination) was really out of place. I’m pretty sure it was their first encounter, story wise that is, as well as the opening scene of the “movie”. I’ve only seen it that one time and don’t think I could bear another viewing. If they had retractable cleats in their boots instead it would have been far more believable – after all, how many buildings do he and Robin scale? Skates could have worked had they portrayed Batman listening to some radio or police broadcast indicating that Mr. Freeze was back in Gotham or hitting Gotham for the first time after a string of other cities with his trademark ice gun – that way it would make sense that Batman might be prepared with skates – hell, I’d have even settled for Batman and Robin being special guests in the Ice Capades as Mr. Freeze struck.

Anyway, if you’re going to be off the wall you should try to find some way to hint at that early on, or start off with an off the wall scene to set the tone/reality of the story. If some chick is going to perform oral sex with a guy and inflate his genitals till they explode while everything else depicts real-world physics, and it wasn’t some acid trip or dream the guy was having, I think you’ll disappoint more than a few readers.

When it comes to style and technique I can overlook that because I’m definitely no expert and I certainly won’t hold others up to a higher standard than I know I’m not capable of myself. We’re mostly novice and amateur writers here, if even that. If, however, I bought a Stephen King novel and it was as poorly written as some of the stories here, I’d run him over.

When it comes to spelling and grammar I have to say that can spoil a story quicker than bad science. Considering that most people use some kind of word processor to write, there really is no excuse for not doing a spell check – most check grammar as well. Now that won’t catch everything – there their they’re or not instead of no for example (or as I had mistyped – before submitting this reply “No what won’t catch…” – good thing I proof read this) – it will catch hiz when you mean his. If such spelling is to represent an accent or mannerism, such as “Si senior, I wheel cuts out heez ballz.” or “I hav vayz ov making zyou tok.” then that is totally acceptable. When a whole story is written that way (and not supposed to be an accent), or by UTS (using text speak – an example of how people can just make up any an acronym with no context for the reader) I just stop. If I have to concentrate more than I did studying calculus, chemistry, and French then forget it! I read for enjoyment, not headaches. I’ve even come across stories where practically every other word was spelled wrong – very wrong – and not phonetically, and not even consistently. The author had spelled “his” as hiz hiiz haz hes for example and considering other words were dissimilarly misspelled it was very hard to get any context to figure out what was written – may as well have been trying to read original Latin using Egyptian hieroglyphs to translate. At least be consistent when you misspell so it’s easier to get your meaning and enjoy your story.

I understand that there may be dyslexic members here and that they tend to read words by their shape more so than the actual letters and an ‘S’ can look like a ‘Z’ which could explain the “hiz” example above, I see so many stories with those kinds of errors that I doubt there’s that many dyslexics here.

Another issue is translated stories - but that is something that is usually pretty self evident, though sometimes hard on the brain too - can't really complain about that since we're not paying anyone to properly, and contextually, translate. Babel Fish technology will just have to be the acceptable standard for now...

When it comes to formatting, it’s likely an upload glitch can cause some of the stories to become one big paragraph, and maybe the odd one ALL IN CAPS, but please, avoid such obvious literary faux pas and, more importantly:

Please, use your word processor’s spell check (and grammar if it has that) and proof read it at least once! If you're going to put effort into writing a story, but a little extra into making sure others can actually read it.

Sorry to go off on a bit of a tangent/rant, but getting back to the original thread, I might have an idea for a “Women’s Ranch” story.

Perhaps we can start a chain of themed stories? Someone suggests a tag-line, basic idea, or even just a title for a story and see what people come up with. Authors post a link to their story and see that variations we get – or perhaps even see how like-minded some us are.

Very helpful. Thanks!

"General Turgidson! Can you please stick to the point?" <-A quote from one of my favorite movies, "Dr. Stranelove"

So, this thread started out as a place where Devi said she had an idea for a "Women's Ranch" story, but did not know how to write it, and lacked the medical expertise...

OK, so now I am waiting, like an impatient brat, to get at that story. I sort of thought Devi might want to know something or other about verterinary medicine, what sorts of medicine and medical tools you might find on a ranch, etc. etc. And eventually we would all get to see her story, the idea she has put forth sounds like it has a LOT of potential, could end up being really good if it is written.

Now, I am getting an idea... I wonder, could I, should I?

The Archive isn't taking new stories yet, is it?

I just write what I already know and don't worry. I confess I'm only in it for the sex, so I tend to write one-handed (wink wink). But I guess other authors have other motivations.

Not yet, no.