Girly Girl

A long one

Well I didn't intend to have one of my shortest caps followed up by my longest cap.... but it did turn out that way.  I don't have specific word counts of all my caps, but at over 4800 words I know this is my longest cap to date!  Saving just the words as a txt file, this story is 26k!!!

So I have been wanting to make a cap for Jennifer over at the Haven for quite awhile.  I have always loved her caps, and she seemed to have a similar preference set to me.  Recently she re-introduced me to IMing and we've been chatting on and off.  These chats really helped me hone in on what she likes, and what she doesn't like.  It wasn't obvious by any means, but just the subjects we would talk about and her reactions to them all helped me get into her psyche a bit deeper.

For instance, before even thinking about a specific story, I knew it would be a cross dressing story.  It would involve humiliation, but that would come on only later in the story.  It would utilize a picture of a woman without large breasts to help with the 'illusion' of it being a guy.  It would utilize hypnosis.  Little details like this

So after I caught up my cap debt, and had a few hours to sit down and cap, I started.  I started by looking for images (I also knew she enjoyed the longer caps, so I needed a series of images to work with), but none of my normal series sources turned up anything that spoke to me.  So I went into an older collection on my hard drive.  Many of these sets that I had saved years ago came from the then unspoken desire to write stories and/or caps involving forced fiminization.  Once this series came up, I knew I had a winner.

Looking at the images (and especially the look on the subjects face) I figured she was coming to these people for help.  Hmm... help because some hypnosis tapes she had used, were changing her more feminine, instead of more masculine.  The 'other' girl would know about this, but the guy wouldn't.  I really liked the aspect of the woman knowing that she was humiliating our hero, while the guy didn't know anything about it.

O.k... so I have the basic outline for the story.  With so many images to chose from, I didn't decide on an ending, figuring I would let my imagination roam through the words and a suitable ending would come up.  So I opened up word and started wrtiing.  Now the first images were of course of Jennifer AS Jennifer, and not Jeremy, so I wanted to write about a half page of setup.  Maybe how he got the tapes and went through the initial changes without noticing them.  I tried a few times, but couldn't get far.  Going through the changes without noticing them seemed a little odd, and I couldn't come up with enough distractions that made sense.

So I deleted all I had written and started over.  This time I added in a girlfriend.  On the first girlfriend swing I had her just being a bystander that liked the changes.  She liked the femme changes to Jeremy and encourage it.  But even this didn't seem to work for me.  I did like the other character to bounce things off, but needed something more.  Then it hit me....she was in the hypnosis as well!  They had two sets of tapes;  one to make him more of a Man's Man, and one to make her more of a Girly Girl.  And with that mere change, we were off to the races.

I started writing and didn't stop.  As I said I intended this to be just a few paragraphs of introduction, but now it was turning into its own story (and one that didn't match the images I had already selected!).  But each time I would mention a change, I added more and more details to the change.  And then I would think of another change, and put it in. Then add more details about it.  Soon I was up to about 2000 words, and hadn't even got to my original beginning.  At this point I hadn't even reached the 'breakfast' scene.  I knew I wanted to add that, and the shopping scene, and then should be able to transition into the 'beginning' of the story at Eddie's  house.

I figured I would have to cut some.  It was just to long.  So I did something that I normally don't do.  I stopped writing all together and read it word for word from the beginning.  Man.... I really liked it.  I thought about taking out the part about the magazines... but that set up the makeup and hair.  I thought about taking out the part about the diet... but that set up the body changes.  The exercise?  That set up Andy's transformation, and reinforced the body changes.  Grr.... I didn't want to take anything out.  And reading it, made me want to continue to write... so I deffered the decision on what to delete untill after I had gotten to Eddie's house.  The breakfast scene went smoothly, then I started the shopping scene.... and it turned out to be 14 paragraphs on its one.

I realized that I needed help.  Since Jennifer introduced me to IM, I figured I would start there.  Unfortunately the only person on was.... Jennifer!  Well that would make this a little more complicated.  I asked her in the most round about way that I could come up with, of how she would handle making a long cap without images.... naturally I couldn't use details.  I offered up my own solution of putting up the 'intro' as a text story that would lead into the cap.  She didn't seem to like that and suggested I get some image ideas from things used in the cap.  I had done that before (most recently "Don't Make Me Over") and knew it could work.  I thanked her and went back to writing.  I was afraid that any more discussion, and I would slip and let out some details.

Luckily another friend came online at that point (Sasha).  I grabbed her ear, and now could be more descriptive of my problem.  I really was afriad that it this introduction was just going to be to long to work even with some random images in it.  So I did something for the first time ever.  I sent the unpolished, unproofread, first draft, unfinished story to Sasha for her appraisal. Before that moment, no one had EVER read any of my caps until I was ready to call it done.

It took her awhile to read it, but she came back saying she liked it.  That was both a load off and on my mind.  She liked it which means the setup was good.  But it also meant that I couldn't just start hacking out big chunks of it.

So I floated the idea to Sasha about splitting it into a txt file and the cap would start at Eddies.   She encouraged me to keep it all in the cap and to just use images from the story (breakfast, vitamins....) to flesh it out.

Well thats two votes for keeping it in (one blind and one after reading it).  So I had my decision.  It would all stay.

Sasha also helped me out quite a bit with the narrative.  She noticed that i had swtiched from talking about Jeremy's transformation, to talking with Jeremy's voice (in his head) during the supermarket scene.  I re-read what she pointed out, and quickly realized she was right.  So I went in and edited that part to be a little more clear.  While doing that bit of re-write I decided that instead of the woman in the pics being a new creation, that I would make it Sasha.  I really liked the idea as both a thank you to Sasha for her help, but also for the idea that came with it.  Eddie  had transformed Sasha years before, and was now doing this to Jeremy ON PURPOSE!  I would reveal that only at the very end and make it a real zinger of a moment.  But at that point I was getting wiped out.  So I had another first.  I saved what I had (which was all story, and no caps!) and called it a night.

I was anxious about doing this, but looking ahead at writing the last scene (which is the last 4 panels), and laying out all of it, I knew it would take hours.  Being tired I would just get sloppy, and I didn't want my first cap for Jennifer to be anything other than my 'A' game.  I say anxious, because every time in the past that I have stopped working on something intending on picking it up later, I never found the ability to continue it.  I would always come back, read what I had written (or look at what I had capped) and all of the original spark would be gone.  I never finished them.  So I always did my best to finish a cap in one sitting.

I figured (hoped!?) that this story resonated enough that I could pick it up and finish it the next day.  At worst, if I couldn't finish it I had a good rough draft that I could share with Jennifer after I made her a new cap.

Well the next day came (bright and early at 3am!).  My first thought (after cursing out the alarm clock) was of finishing the cap.  I wanted to write out the final scene and see how the ending reveal would work.  Sadly I didn't just get up at 3am to cap... I got up to go to work.  So I spent the entire day at work thinking of the cap. I'm sure my productivity was down!

When I got home I went right to the computer and started writing.  I wrote the first panel at Eddies house just to make sure that I could continue on.  Seeing that the spark remained (and if anything was increased!) I went back and edited the first part.  I made it clearer about the transfer of narrative style ('Everything seemed to be progressing fine.  Until Today), added a few more details that would be used during the sex scene, and just cleaned it up.  I then went into Photoshop to lay it out. I started by putting the text in to see what part of the story fit to a single page, looked for something in the story that could act as image, and looked for the appropriate image.   It wasn't fast by any means (have you ever looked for a good photo of a can of Budweiser? There aren't any!), but it went smoothly enough.

Even just editing that first monster introduction took a couple hours.  But I wasn't going to lose this head of steam.  I kept right on right back into writing.  I moved on to the previous first scene at Eddies and edited that as well.  Then went right on writing.  As I now had specific images to work with, I would write a few new pages, then go into Photoshop to lay it out.  I thought it was going quickly when I looked at the clock.

Ouch... I had spent nearly 8 hours on the cap just in that one sitting.  That wasn't counting the hours spent on the previous day!  Another first... I think the longest I've worked on a cap before was about 8 hours total.  This one all told was closer to 15 hours.

But the end result?  Well worth it.  I don't like the look of the cap, but only because it has an obvious split between where I had images to begin with, and where I shoehorned some in.  But after re-reading the cap, I wouldn't change a thing story wise (well obviously I would change the typos and outright misspellings!).