Do writers on here realize....

[Kingplaya4]

That many start their character's weights off at highly unusual numbers? I have dated thinner girls, and I just read a story where the characters husband was upset because she had plumped up to 122 pounds at 5'7! That kind of weight at that height is going to look like heading towards anorexia, unless she's very small boned, and that will be still look unusually thin and bony.

A healthy woman of that heigh on the thin side is more likely going to be about 135-145 pounds depending on her frame. Most women would not look even "thick" at this weight.

Not to knock any stories, heck I've yet to put one up here, but its a common error I see in a lot of stories.

[Observer]

Some cheerleaders and professional models DO look positively anorexic from all the dieting they do, which is probably why some writers start at such artificially low levels. The author's idea for some is to liberate the character from their distorted view of life.

Another element to consider is that some writer's are deliberately unrealistic in their eating and gaining descriptions. That is why their work ultimately winds up (as they fully expect and anticipate) in the Fantasy/Magic or Fetish forums. Erotic and Fine Arts related contributions have their distinct forums as well. Only basically realistic stories are placed in the General Archives forum.

All five of our archival forums have a following, and there is obviously some overlap. In editing for all of them I generally keep hands off weight figures, but on occasion I will change numbers that just don't make sense - such as one recently which just didn't compute. I might have upgraded the tale you cited. 122 at 5-7 doesn't sound right for someone to be critiqued for from having gained. That said, it is my impression that generally most writers know when they're being unrealistic and that is their prerogative.

[Butterbelly]

I couldn't agree more with both of the comments made about the stories. I used to be a big fan of reading most of the stories on Dim. Some, obviously, were more well written than others. However, I started to notice that a lot of the stories contained characters that gained massive amounts of weight that seemed very unrealistic. For example, a female character that gains from around 200lbs to 5,000lbs in less than three years :huh: Reminds me of the South Park episode where Cartman wants to beef up and takes the "Weight Gain 4,000" powder.

Unfortunately, the unrealistic side to a lot of the stories made me stop reading the vast majority of them. :(

[JP.]

To each his own. I'm definitely one of the writers that makes stories with both fast and huge weight gains. I love the imagery, and when it's done well it can be quite good. However, I do see plenty of stories where huge weight gain happens but then it's more about numbers than a decent description. It's about how much is eaten at once, how many inches around, how much the subject weighs. I include all of that but I also try to make sure there are plenty of vivid description to go with it. IMO it needs both in order to be effective.

The smaller weight gains are just not what some people look for though. I get inspired by the works of The Studio, Biggie, Beaker and such, which have huge gains and I think they look great. It's definitely not realistic, which is why my work should always be classified as sci-fi/fantasy, but to me that's the point; it is a fantasy.

[crazystef]

I'm totally whit you. When i'm writing i try to focus on discribe how the subject looks and tell how much he/she weight. this it how i like to read a story as well so i always try my best on it. Your doing great on discripsion JP. that's one reason i love your story'd so much ^^

[Observer]

This is a good discussion to have periodically. It illustrates why we have multiple forums for different audiences - just like traditional libraries, broadcast networks and bookstores.

We now have realistic authors, BHM authors, erotic authors, fantasy authors and special interest authors - along with audiences for each type. We even have a more serious Fine Arts forum whose philosophical tracts on weight and size acceptance are in my view exceptional and I personally wish attracted more interest.

If you look at the reader counts you will see that stories in all the forums attract readers - and at any given time we have a substantial percentage of those visiting the Dimensions site reading stories. The library collectively is generally second only to the paysite board in participation - far more than was true or possible in the pre-v bulletin days.

I think it is important in critiquing authors to realize - as has been said before - that every writer follows his muse with a target audience in mind.

My own stated objective is known and has been stated before: to show those (and their significant others) who are heavier or in the process of becoming larger that their situation is not bad or abnormal; it is an experience others have had and will continue to. This is meant to be esteem and acceptance building.

Why restate this here? Because MY purpose and target audience is NOT that of everyone -and as a curator I have to respect and honor the purpose and audiences of others. I think this approach is also embraced by most of our authors and readers.

[Swordfish]

This is a fascinating discussion! Every writer, as The Observer says, has his/her own muse, target audience, and reason for writing. And so it should be. Dimensions readers of all readers should want a "broad" approach! Sometimes the approach is plain fantasy, with rapid weight gain. Others go for realism, wrapped around with wishfulfilment.

That I think is the more difficult way, but for me more satisfying. It's easier to be realistic about the height/rate/build business if the heroine you create is based directly on someone you know, when you can estimate the height quite accurately and might even have the weight gain numbers, even the waist measurements if you're lucky. Although you can't always go by what you're told (I've been told a 14 pound gain when my eyes told me 20).

When the heroine you create is a total fiction, though, there's much more room for accidental error or just confusion. One reader told me that from my descriptions my last heroine, Samira, must have been heavier than the poundage I gave her; and I think he was right. Maybe there my mind was pulling in two ways. The part of me that is suspicious of big weight leaps wanted to restrain the numbers; but the part of me that likes to luxuriate in a heroine's extra fat made sure that in words at least she had plenty of fat to spread around. It's a complicated business.

[JP.]

First off, Kudos for a civil and engaging discussion.

For me, when I write, the imagery just flows, even the surreal stuff. I don't know where it comes from, sometimes I get a vivid image ahead of time, but for the most I don't know what's coming til it's on the screen. For me it's the plot that I'm most concerned about. I like to come up with reasonable or perhaps plausible reasons why someone is making someone else so fat. I also like to try different methods. The fattening itself might be the payoff, but I don't really care too much for a story that just involves fattening, even if it's well described, without decent reasons for it to be happening, or a decent method.

That's one of the reasons that my stories are almost always sci-fi rather than fantasy. Magic is not predictible or qunatifiable in a fictional setting without a great deal of back story. Anyone that watches Star Trek though knows that there are new particles introduced every episode that will cause disaster or save the day. Thus it's easy to accept what happens from them. With magic...anything can happen and seems to me a very unstable plot device. You can just blame it on the spell working perfectly or disastrously. With sci-fi there is some methodology you need to explain, even if briefly. My stories are known to be 'casual' with its explanation of the super high tech. A recent example. Joyce in my current story has mini-hearts in her to help circulation, a pretty impressive feat, but brushed off like nothing, but here you have the reason why she'll be able to get huge safely.

For awhile I was pretty dry on ideas and only wrote a few stories because I was concerned they were all becoming the same story. That's when I started concentrating more on the plot. I make the occasional 'light snack' like "Would you like to be Supersized?" which was completely unrealistic and had no real plot other than the fattening. I went heavy on imagery and it came out decent, but over all I was disappointed in that it had virtually no plot. It was kind of an homage to Pigs is Pigs.

My current story I'm pretty proud of in that it's longer than most I've written, and the protagonist is still rather light, and it's well received judging by the number of hits. I'll be adding more to it today also.

[Scx]

For me, it's almost entirely escapist fantasy. The idea being that it's better the more fantastic it gets, because the whole point is escaping our humdrum world. As is written in cement on the walkway into the USC Cinema School's 'Post-Production Building', "Reality Ends Here". There begins fiction.

However, there is that typical literary problem of the suspension of disbelief. When it gets silly, I just don't buy it, and so I get nothing further out of it.

That, JP, is why I follow your stories with a feeling akin to that of a bloodhound's salivary glands (sorry for that image). In some stories (noticeably yours) I can suspend my disbelief through a character gaining 5,000 lbs or more because you've constructed a world in which this, while extreme, is believeable; while in other less soundly based worlds it's just ridiculous.

Somewhat disjointedly,
Scx

PS - And this is just me speaking here of a pet peeve, but I absolutely cannot stand stories written in the 2nd person. Two sentences after being told "You do ..." I practically fling my trackball at the screen to make it stop telling me what I'd do. Scx

[TH3_GH0$T]

I try not to include weight at all in my stories because, 1: everyone is different, and you really have no idea how a girl would look at whatever number you choose, and 2: it sets a specific image in the reader's mind, and that might be totally different than what your story describes.

*shrug* I just preffer not to be restrained by numbers.

[fatgirl33]

I try not to include weight at all in my stories ... I just preffer not to be restrained by numbers.

The description of size is more interesting than the weight, isn't it?

I find when people get the numbers WRONG it is more distracting than anything. Like when the story reads, "She cradled her bulging belly, could barley stand out, cradling the globe of her stomach..." and then read that the weight has gone from 120-125 lbs. Hello? At that weight you wouldn't even have a stomach unless you were, like, 3'4".

Just a pet peeve of mine. I prefer Ghost's idea of disregarding the number on the scale altogether.

Brenda

[TH3_GH0$T]

The description of size is more interesting than the weight, isn't it?

I find when people get the numbers WRONG it is more distracting than anything. Like when the story reads, "She cradled her bulging belly, could barley stand out, cradling the globe of her stomach..." and then read that the weight has gone from 120-125 lbs. Hello? At that weight you wouldn't even have a stomach unless you were, like, 3'4".

Just a pet peeve of mine. I prefer Ghost's idea of disregarding the number on the scale altogether.

Brenda
Exactly.

And from a different perspective; if the author is somewhat of a perfectionist when it comes to these things, like me, he/she will end up getting paranoid over all that and create a lot of uneeded work.

[TheSadeianLinguist]

That many start their character's weights off at highly unusual numbers? I have dated thinner girls, and I just read a story where the characters husband was upset because she had plumped up to 122 pounds at 5'7! That kind of weight at that height is going to look like heading towards anorexia, unless she's very small boned, and that will be still look unusually thin and bony.

A healthy woman of that heigh on the thin side is more likely going to be about 135-145 pounds depending on her frame. Most women would not look even "thick" at this weight.

Not to knock any stories, heck I've yet to put one up here, but its a common error I see in a lot of stories.

There are women who are such anomalies though. I'm 5' 7" and if I ate everything I wanted under the sun, I'd weigh 125 to 130. I normally weigh 110-116 these days. Given, at my fattest, I've been 158 due to medical stuff, but I am in the 15th percentile for my age and weight. It's uncommon, but not rare.

[fatlane]

... and after eating 100 million pizzas, Gwen went to weigh herself: 167 pounds.
"Damn. I guess those were small pizzas!" Still, it was a gain of a pound from her starting weight of a month ago, 166 pounds.

How's that? Or do I still need to work on my realism?

[Scx]

Some helpful(?) information, excerpted from 'Pocket Ref', Thomas J. Glover (compiler)3rd. ed., Sept. 2003 pg. 325:

Women's weight by "frame size"
Height:....small...medium...large
5'0"......104-115..113-126..122-137
5'6"......120-133..127-141..140-159
6'0"......138-151..148-162..158-179

And from page 327:

Girls 18 years old, height and weight by percentile:
Height (in inches):
5th%...50th%...95th%
60.4"..64.4"...68.2"

Weight (in pounds):
5th%...50th%...95th%
100....125.....182

More fun(?) is available on the net along these lines at, eg.

BMI calculator (http://www.nhlbisupport.com/bmi/)
(I got 18.0 for you, TheSadeianLinguist, which it said was 'Underweight', although not by much. :)

and:
Lots of listed percentile height/weights (http://www.halls.md/chart/height-weight.htm)

Or many many many other places that a quick trip through Google with some reasonably scientific-sounding search terms will turn up.

Scx

[TheSadeianLinguist]

... and after eating 100 million pizzas, Gwen went to weigh herself: 167 pounds.
"Damn. I guess those were small pizzas!" Still, it was a gain of a pound from her starting weight of a month ago, 166 pounds.

How's that? Or do I still need to work on my realism?

Fatlane, I adore you. Much.

That is all.

[fatlane]

Fatlane, I adore you. Much.

That is all.

That's the feedback I was looking for. Thanks again, TSL!

[crazystef]

Everyone has his/her own way to write story's. My english suck. I know that. and because of this I still wanne do this because i wanne improve. I always try to discribe lot's. Like: Her belly was as big as a pumpkin. Maybe a bad example.

[Zoom]

Back in my FA fiction days, I was working on a story where a girl desperately wanted to gain weight, and had a tremendous feast, chomping doughnuts, fried chicken, and so on and so on, getting a distended belly, and finally weighing herself... at 99 lbs!

And there are plenty of women at that size.

[Forgotten_Futures]

I tend (when I do write, which hasn't happened in a while) to write semi-realistic gain amounts in sci-fi or fantasy styles.

In terms of reading, I have my cadre of authors I follow and my cadre of authors I ignore, because my tastes are rather picky =P.

Unfortunately, I had an idea for something the other day, but didn't get it written in time and have since lost the will to do so...

[Big Beautiful Dreamer]

One of my favorites from the old story board was "The Omega Moos," about a weight-gain sorority. It was fun ... but it was a big detraction for me to read the descriptions of the girls bursting out of their clothes, bellies jiggling, thighs chafing ... and to have them get on the scale and find that they'd gone from 125 to 136.

I admit that part of it is my own personal blinders. I weigh 187 and am pretty short, but I agree with an earlier poster that you'd have to be 3'4" to have a pumpkin belly at 125.

[Philled Up]

I agree that if the numbers don't make sense (height, weight, dress size, other measurements) it is very difficult to enjoy the story. I also don't like it when the weight gain is difficult to follow or simply wrong (for example, someone gains 5 pounds and now weighs 160, but several paragraphs earlier that person was already 168).

Although I'm definitely no expert, but I do believe that every good weight gain story should have 2 paths: the plot and the weight gain. Ideally, these to paths will be interwoven. My strategy on keeping the weight gain path believable is to track the weight and time in a spreadsheet, which helps keep things realistic and disbelief suspended.

[crazystef]

That's something i try to do whit my writing. But i'm also a fan of fantasy writing. It's about weightgain in a unrealistic way.

[Snorri Sturluson]

Well since no one else has said it, I thought I ought to thank Scx (did I get the style right?) for the wonderful reference.

There is also the problem of how a writer will translate the images in his or her head to the paper (or screen, as you may). I recall that the story "Larger Every Day" had very few images, weight gains that didn't sync up (gaining 25 lb per day equaling only a 300 lb gain after a month, for example), but I still liked it (as indicated by my re-write of it, Every Glance You take). Just throwing numbers out there seems to serve a sort of "weight-gain-shorthand" for some. It is a rather difficult thing to transfer the image in one's head into words on a screen; but a number can act as a quick reference for people. That is: I image a 300lb woman not as a number but as a person. Let us assume I can't describe her, however (and no mind for now if that assumption is correct) I can say "300lb" and the read could (in theory) supply his or her own mental image that fits the criteria. Consider it more of a reference number than a description, and it assumes a common reference library. It is a means to bridge the gap between mind and page, a no small feat to accomplish. The attempt, at least, is admirable, even if the end result isn't always the most visually appealing sort of thing.

[Forgotten_Futures]

I'll be honest, for my part, I absolutely suck at guessing such things as age, height, and weight of a given woman. But I still think I manage to ballpark most of my height and weight figures from specifics I do know of people I do know. I also tend to avoid sci-fi gains. Aside from tending to leave me unfulfilled, which will inevitably make for a poor and/or unfinished story, I get a lot of my gain appeal from the subtle changes a woman has the opportunities to go through as she gains. So I would never skip them.

[crazystef]

I'm still learning enlish language. I need to practise more on english weight marks because i'm not so good at it :S but this whole forum helps me well ^^