The Staredown .. with a question answered

This question comes from Alectra, via Formspring:

How can you describe a person in a cap without turning out overdescriptive?

I searched out for a random caption I posted to Rachel's Haven. This ended up being what popped up. I think this will work in answering Alectra's question nicely.

Since the picture is for a post-transformation, I really didn't need to go into much detail as to what Mark looked like .. other than to describe his face as "stern and cold" which is more of a character trait than a physical appearance. The only other thing I needed to set up was the gun in his pants. If this was a story, I could describe the type of gun and the caliber, then talk about the style, cut, and color of the pants, etc ... however, in captions we need to only supply what is absolutely necessary. What was necessary to the setup was Mark being a rough dude that was packing serious heat.

During the transformation, I focused on the mental part of the transformation first, which made Mark more mellow and feminine, then the physical transformation came next. Once again, I didn't really have to describe anything as the picture conveyed what was transpiring. What you see is what the guard is seeing. To finish off, I described the vibrator and booty shorts (the aforementioned gun and pants) and then tied it all up with the stinger at the end, which references the 1st paragraph.

To tie this into the question .. If you make an outline of what is happening in the caption, you should be able figure out anything that isn't needed. Things that aren't needed are those that are already seen in the picture (unless you want to REALLY highlight something there) and extra plot devices that don't serve the main story.

For instance, the staring is what drives this caption, so the picture is focused on that. If I had a full length picture, I'd have cropped it to what is in the caption, as I don't need her body .. in fact it would probably distract viewers from the look she is giving here. There is also no reason to talk about an accomplice, or a second security guard ...since this is a ONE ON ONE situation. Anything else would keep it from flowing directly from the beginning to the end.

DISCUSSION SUGGESTION: Go back and find a caption that you've created that you'd like to edit down. Do a quick outline of exactly what is going on. Then try to edit out, and tighten up anything that seems like it doesn't get you from the beginning to the end in a timely manner. See how much you can remove and still have it be a complete story. Perhaps you can get the text down to 50 percent of what it was. If you aren't a captioner, find a short piece of TG fiction you enjoy and carve out the extraneous bits. Post in the comment section if you were able to trim it, and how much you could. This is something that anyone can do, so go for it!