[QUOTE]Originally posted by slave ruthie
[B]it is very difficult to put together a credible story without stretching reality at times - i haveto agree that soemtimes the suggested tortures or sexual actions would be so damaging or impossible physically that the plot sort of becomes too far-fetched and loses the reader

I think that a certain amount of reality-stretching is good and necessary in this genre. If our reality was all that hot, how many of us would be here, right? ;-)

Just as Hollywood films allow their action heroes (Stallone, Willis, Schwarzenegger et al) to escape armies of nefarious villains, some of us subject our (almost impossibly) beautiful heroines to a series of torments, predicaments, and humiliations that would soon reduce 99% of the women in the world to the brink of unconsciousness or madness.

I think the key for me is that if the characters, both heroines and villains, seem credible and interesting in and of themselves, we are willing, even anxious, to see them in reality-stretching circumstances. As we are with James Bond, Luke Skywalker, or Spiderman.

Boccaccio