She's been detained - now let's KEEP her detained!
(By the way - let me know whether - or not - you like these photo manip thingys I've been creating; personally I prefer the term 'photo montage art')
So… She’s blundered into this. Perhaps lured by easy money – a clinical trial; OK it’s residential; OK, it’ll use up all summer, that long break before moving on, going on to university, perhaps getting a job, going her own way; but SO much money, SO much independence at the end of it, just for sitting around, being looked after, taking a few psychological tests now and then; what could POSSIBLY go wrong?
On the other hand perhaps she has been persuaded by other means, perhaps through a skilfully built scaffold of rapport and trust, allowing herself to be guided by some persuasive individual, superficially on her side or even apparently devoid of any connection whatsoever with the grasping stepmother, overbearing legal guardian or other nemesis she has been so keen to distance herself from…
But appearances can be deceptive!
Or perhaps her independent headstrong spirit has already been slowly eroded over time in a stepwise fashion through psychological manipulation and the sheer power of will of her guardian to the point at which she has just simply been told she is to spend time ‘in care’ in a ‘rest home’ while her guardian takes a short cruise…”…just a few weeks, dear…”.
Either way, she’s been ‘put away’. But she’s committed no crime; there’s no evidence (or little evidence) of reduced mental capacity or her possessing insufficient mental competency to govern her own affairs… She’s temporarily under control, right where you want her - albeit relatively short-term. Now the question becomes one of how to KEEP her that way, over the mid to longer-terms? So - how would YOU go about it? (Come on - let's have some feedback! There used to be MASSIVE discourses on such matters back in the day in the Reader's Letters pages of those old spanking mags)
Well, of course the first of these scenarios was the premise behind the INSTITUTIONALISED trilogy – but it still interests me, despite the fact that my latest opens in an entirely different way.
Actually I’m still struggling with how to put together an opening section for the new book – I’m dedicating the remainder of today to it; after this post I’m doing nothing else.
I want to be able to make clear to the reader at the outset that the direction is going to be VERY different from other author’s tales of domination and corporal punishment and that all manner of different and surprising themes (not to mention twists and turns) will be explored in upcoming parts / chapters (it has always been planned / conceived as a sort of serialised multi-part thing). But at the same time I’m trying to adhere to a more linear storytelling style than my earlier stuff and minimise all that shifting back and forth between the present and the back-story which a few of you have in the past described as ‘Kafkaesque’ (though one or two folk have said THAT is what they liked about the early stuff).
Post Script: Two days ago I finally received a confirmation letter saying I’ve satisfied the criteria to be qualified as a gym instructor and personal trainer. But even THAT has come with a proviso that “it could be several months” before I receive my certificate! Several MONTHS!!! It says the letter itself will suffice in the mean time to satisfy insurers. But what it DOESN’T say, explicitly, is if it will be accepted by REPs (the Register of Exercise Professionals) without the certificate itself having been issued, without inclusion on which one cannot operate officially as a personal trainer here in the UK. So I have issues! But it came with a head office email address – so I’ll be exploring those issues later… but not until I have some sort of opening structure for the new book (it doesn’t help that I have at least four part finished projects going at once, some ideas overlapping…)