This is not so much a plug as an exercise in how a good idea can be turned into a story that works, or into one that doesn't.
The basic plot of The Gleam in Her Eye is identical to that in The Filifeldia Experiment.
The Filifeldia Experiment is a cold and hard account relating how a new improved version of eroticobots confounded the manufacturing company by acquiring a spanking fetish without it being programmed. (neat -eh?). But the tale came out as a tech-fest of detail, with no other plot development than: "Hey - this is neat, don't you think?"
Islandcarol sent me a pop up to suggest how a couple of simple changes in POV and plotting might work better.
And she was right. We collaborated to breathe life into a technical discourse and turn it into personal accounts of how individuals reacted to a robot with self taught spanking urges. In the process, it was relatively easy to come up with the classic three parts of a sound tale: set-up, development, denouement.
Then, throwing on a loose tag line at the end, we started what is turning out to be a real fun series for us. (Plug alert - you will never guess what is going to happen in the final episode of this serial.
).
So - if you ever want a case study in how not to write a tale, The Filefeldia Experiment is the before side of the equation. And Episode 1 of The Gleam in her Eyes is the afterwards.
Should you ever feel one of your own stories really does not work, then you might want to consider changing the whole point of view so that it takes on new dimensions.
