Notes on TG Fiction and the APFS Stories
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So, what exactly is the deal with the APFS stories? Where did the idea come from and are there any interesting facts about the writing of the stories themselves?
Well, what astute and pertinent questions. I commend myself for asking them. In order to answer them, however, I'll need to talk a bit about the nature of TG fiction as I see it.
A lot of TG seems to me to be written just to push people's buttons - if you get my drift - first and foremost the writer's and then, with luck, those of the readers. In some cases that's the beginning and the end of the story development process: just think of a scenario that makes you all pleasantly throbby and write it down, and you're done.
If, on the other hand, you want to put a bit of craft and narrative merit into your story, things can be a bit trickier, particularly when it comes to the credibility of your story. TG fiction revolves around gender change, and while this is possible in the real world it's a tremendously demanding and lengthy process and doesn't lend itself well to many types of story. Realistic gender-change isn't very fantasy-friendly.
However, any other kind of gender-change isn't very credibility-friendly, no matter what method you opt for. There is the 'miracle pill/injection' subgenre, the 'exposed to toxic waste', the 'weird alien radiation' subgenre, many different varieties of magic, body-exchanges, and so on and so on. Using any of these catapults your story into SF and fantasy realms.
That said, SF and fantasy are harsh mistresses and most people just seem interested in writing about one specific change rather than building a whole world where TG is a routine fact of life (a shame, and a gap in the market I may explore myself one day). Fair enough, but the result is a succession of stories where incredible scientific discoveries are made by college students by accident, or mad scientists build incredible machines in their basement, or sorceresses with awesome world-changing powers spent their time hanging around in bars being hit on by jerks... I can never quite take these stories seriously, simply because they're so pulpy and melodramatic.
For me there is the added element that I'm most interested in following the physical and psychological transformation of an individual. The exact reason for the change isn't that big a deal for me, as became apparent as soon as I started writing TG of my own. The very first TG story I wrote, long since lost to history (thank God), was entitled The Companion and concerned an amateur demonologist who got into a deal with a demon whereby he'd get enormous power in exchange for becoming the demon's companion on a part-time basis. This seemed like a good deal to our man until he found himself swelling up in odd places... you know the drill. However the character's psychological reaction and adaptation to the transformation fascinated me much more than the 'how does she stop the demon from raping her' element. In the end I just had her think 'well, if I don't actually claim my enormous power, he can't claim his side of the deal either (and I'm quite enjoying being a girl anyway)'. Thankfully my plotting has improved a bit since then.
Given that I wasn't interested in spending half the story explaining exactly the reasons behind the change, or writing convoluted pulpy melodrama plots, I found myself gravitating towards a style of story where the change just happened with minimum explanation given and the characters just struggling to adapt. In the end I decided to dress this transparent plot-device up by inventing APFS. The first proto-APFS story was begun in 2002, I think, with a couple of others following in the next year or so. None of them were finished. I was now at the point, after writing dozens of TF stories which all got thrown out, of thinking that it was just possible other people might enjoy them, so the next time the mood was on me I wrote the story using a computer rather than in longhand. I finished it, it got put up on FictionMania, it got what seemed to me to be an amazingly good response, and the rest was history.
That first story was Stripped Away which sort of set the template for the rest, in terms of setting and characterisation. It still seems to me to be rather crude and obvious, and the 'I'm going to become a stripper!' plotline is just one of my personal quirks intruding into the narrative, but... it's okay, I suppose.
I didn't intend to just write APFS stories and the next couple I attempted used different plot triggers. One of them was going to be the story of a trio of guys sharing a flat who all used (I cringe to reveal this) some kind of dodgy shampoo which wound up turning them into girls. It was going to be a sort of portmanteau story with the three of them having their own different experiences in tandem. The only one I plotted out in detail was between a big rough blokey guy who found himself getting a bit giggly and soft, to the bemusement of his slightly dopey best mate. These two were based on guys I knew slightly from my local wargames group.
In the end this story fascinated me so much I ditched the rest of the idea and reused APFS. The resulting story was A Different Kind of Love which I'm still really happy with, for the most part. Most TG (and TF) stories are told from the POV of the person going through the change, and I thought it would be interesting to see it through the eyes of the people closest to the transformee - so we only see the story from Tony's perspective in the first and last scenes. I think it works quite well.
(Several years later I got a hell of a shock when I met the RL Tony and Lance in the street after a long period of not seeing them. Real-life Lance was dressed as a woman and had started going by the name of Louise. I couldn't help feeling somehow responsible.)
A Woman Within was an attempt to broaden out the APFS world a bit and also really dig into the psychological aspects of the story. I think it's okay - I had a hell of a time writing an ending that a) wasn't utterly depressing and b) actually felt like a proper ending at all. Deciding what to call it when it was finished gave me a few headaches as well.
I've no idea why there was a two-year gap between A Woman Within and Inbetweener; although in that time I started a couple of APFS stories but never finished them. They were both set rather further into the future than the ones that have seen the light of day, though I've no idea why that should have put the jinx on them.
Anyway, Inbetweener started life under the title The Road to Heaven and was ultimately inspired by Pawel Pawlikowski's wonderful movie My Summer of Love, although virtually nothing from the movie survived into the story-as-written. It ended up as a sort-of memoir of my university days - nearly all the places in the story are real, and once again some of the characters are based on old friends of mine. Some people thought there were too many pop culture references and political views in the story - I agree with the former but not the latter.
I wrote Inbetweener in early 2006 and spent most of the next three years travelling around the world. I spent nearly a year in a desperately poor Asian Third World country, which had a bit of an impact on me, and that fed into The Realm of Flesh when I started writing-for-publication again. The key thing with this story was the idea of a person who didn't want to change and under other circumstances wouldn't have had to; I suppose it's arguably a sort of metaphor for the unfairness of life.
Partly because it needed the character to be in a very specific set of circumstances, the plot of Realm of Flesh ended up sort-of swallowing the story of the main character's change - including a whole raft of non-TG characters didn't help. It has been criticised for being only marginally about the TG element, which I wouldn't necessarily disagree with, but I think some of the writing is quite good. No-one seems to have noticed the fact that nearly everyone in it is named after a character from stories by a very famous English writer of the 20th century!
(I did keep writing while I was travelling, including a lot of TG stories, some of them not bad. Unfortunately all my notebooks are elsewhere and I hate retyping stories. Maybe one day...)
Given that Realm of Flesh got criticised for being only marginally TG, not to mention a bit dour - I myself was starting to see a vein of misery stretching through all the stories from A Woman Within onwards - I decided the next APFS story would have to be properly about the transformation, and that the characters involved would - as far as was plausible - have some fun. The ultimate result of this was Ordinary Moments.
On top of my basic aims, it also seemed to me that most TG characters seemed to have no social lives to speak of, and the only people who seemed to be affected by their change were their significant others. This seemed to me to be worth exploring, which is why Ordinary Moments is sort of an ensemble piece. Luckily the characters who turned up when I started writing all seemed decent sorts and the story skipped along cheerfully. I enjoyed writing it, and most of the feedback on it has been very positive. So that's everyone pleased!
As far as the future is concerned, I'm not sure. There will probably be more APFS stories, once they've finished cooking in my subconscious, but I've no idea what they will specifically be about. In terms of the internal chronology of the universe, I know what the first and the final stories will be - Pebbles and The Use of Man sound like good titles, don't they? - but I've no idea when they will put in an appearance. Keep 'em peeled.