I am somewhat concerned, I had a really bad nightmare a few years ago, so began writing it in a feature length storyline.

The story is set around a normal everyday businessman with a wife and child, happily married, but then one day his life is turned upside down after a serious accident leaves him without certain parts of his anatomy.

With the aid of a doctor and a nurse, he decides to start a new life, no longer will he be known at Bryan, as Bryan died from the injuries.

He decides that without his certain parts, perhaps he should go the full hog and have a sex change, and so a series of comical events take place, all of which are like dream sequences.

Now, I am no stranger to researching certain characvters, but this one has caused me some concern, normally I would get into the mood of the character to give me a snese of being that character and try to understand what they are going through.

So how far would anyone else go, I don't want to be labelled a cross dresser or worse as this is clearly not the case, but it would be done for the effect of trying to understand how the character feels as he changes (NO, I am not having a sex change!!!) lol

I welcome your views on the professionalism of this notion and experiences of anyone else having researched such characters for their own writings

Hi, CSF, and welcome to WriteWords

I've written about all sorts of characters and I think a writer needs to wear many 'character hats' to populate a novel - women, men, children, even animals and mythical creatures: dragon, elves, fairies, demons, and the range of characters from nice to the evil Hannibel-like cannibals.
Yes, you need to get into their head to a degree, but, No, I don't think you need to go as far as method actors and get too far under the skin of the character to the point where you 'become' the character - one needs a certain detatchment to be able to see them as you want the reader to see them.


- NaomiM

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just to add, one thing that is often said of writers, is they are the observers, standing on the sidelines of life. I'm sure if you came to write the story - standing on the sidelines and analysing the dream - it would have far less of an emotional impact as experiencing it in the original dream.

There are limitations to what I would do for researching how a character feels obviously, whilst I must admit the effect may certainly not encouraging towards trying to experiencing the charcaters thoughts as to his transformation towards becoming a woman, albeit in a very comical way, it's actually quite hard.

Whereas other characters I have written about, such as fantasy, I have had not problem at all in creating, I can understand their feelings to situations.

The thing is, CSF, the story fails in one crucial aspect - the premiss that a "normal everyday businessman with a wife and child, happily married" would agree to become a woman just because he's lost his manhood. You can't change someone's basic nature by changing a physical part of their body, so a reader will have a hard time believing it.
The character may toy with the idea of a sex change - may even allow themselves to be talked into it by a therapist (although that's stretching credibility somewhat, unless it's one of those daft Hollywood comedies) - with the comical lead up to that, ie, having to dress as a woman for a year and take hormone replacement therapy so he develops breasts and loses his beard - but the reality is 'once a man, always a man', and he is far more likely to be terrified of the idea. Despite the changes on the outside, he will always think of himself as a 100% man on the inside. And these days there is reconstructive surgery which is his far more likely to choose, to attempt to remake his manhood and struggle to keep his old life. To avoid that, you would have to set the story a few decades in the past before the advances in plastic surgery.
Eitherway, in the end, probably having lost his job, wife and family, a man in that situation is far more likely to commit suicide than choose to live as a woman or a eunich.


- NaomiM

How interesting, you've given me more ideas now, whilst it is meant as a comical film, there are certain issues he does have to deal with, one being that after he has changed to a she, he does emmigrate to make his new life complete, only to be followed a few years later by his former wife, don't ask, haven't quite worked this out.

But, now i feel in justifying what I said earlier I have to let out the plot, although not decided quite just yet, but have toyed with the idea, that it is all one big dream he has had, yes, he had the unfortunate accident, but no, his manhood is still very much intact.

Was it the drugs that caused him to dream such an awful dream?

It's not really designed to be tragic comedy as such, but there are certainly a lot of comedy moments thast effectivley make him wake up with cold sweats, such as walking in a motorway service station as a woman in a yellow dress, but as he walks out he ehars 2 workers sniggering, watching him walk back to a car in the yellow dress, but as a man dressed up with hairy legs. Now that is the sequence in brief. Episodes of trying to work out a fashion sense and how to act like a lady, all these things add up to being non-serious.

But please don't go giving me any more ideas though, the storyling does run over a few years and he doesn't have the op straight after the accident anyway, it's s decision not taken lightly and certaina spects I would change, as a father I wouldn't make such a drastic choiuce in my life, so some alterations maybe to the family cycle would be due.

Thank you, I appreciate your feedback, it's actually helped in a positive way

I think it would make a good story - comedic incidents included The only thing I would advise, is not going for a cop-out of making it all a dream at the end. Agents hate that.
I quite like the idea of it being drug induced hallucinations - maybe by a therapist who holds a grudge against the poor man and hypnotises him into thinking he's undergoing a sex change, hence the real-life cross-dressing incidents.

Good luck with it.


- NaomiM

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Maybe he's rescued just as he's going under the knife.

interesting, thanks