What are your essential requirements for a good story?

When you read a spanking story, what elements of it do you require to be present or absent for you to enjoy it? In other words:

1. what must every story have for you to feel it was a good story?
2. what can it absolutely not have, and if it does, you won't like it?

For me:

1. It must have privacy for the characters, most of all. If it doesn't have that, I can't read it. I know a lot of people enjoy stories which feature public spankings or humiliation, or group spankings and such, but that's not for me. I prefer 'enclosed' stories, with just the two important characters (spanker, spankee), maybe some cameos if necessary, but not too much.

2. It absolutely cannot have 'bad literary logistics', such as, for example, people who behave age-inappropriately (children talk and reason like adults), women are stronger than men (uh, no), or everyone in the story is incongruously young and gorgeous (which is why, for instance, in my own stories, the professor is "sort of pretty" and has "nice tits for her age". She can't be 23 years old and look like Jennifer Lawrence, because no such professors exist, profs can't be 23 and their work hours prevent them from having the time to look like Jennifer Lawrence.)
I am willing to put up with any sort of plot at all (aliens, weird-ass boarding school, virtual reality, whatever, why not), but I can't take ill-fitting logistics.

But these are just my own quirks What are your quirks?

(Also, feel free to tear into me with examples of bad logistics in my own stories, if you've read them; I won't be offended and we'll have a lively debate! Or to tell me how wrong I am and why, or even to recommend good stories that might change my mind about my requirements...)

The author of any fiction story can make any character do anything that is wanted or needed for the story. If the writer wants a character to be this way or that way, I really don't care as long as it makes a good story. Is it physically impossible for women to be stronger than a man? If that is true then there are a few women I know who are men, and damn they sure had me fooled when they went and had those babies. By the way many of my college profs were ladies and many were smart as hell and very good looking at the same time. I don't know about being 23, but two years here or there made no difference to those particular profs.

Maybe I should pay more attention to logistics but I chose not, because if I did that it would likely make a vast number of stories on this site not acceptable and that is never going to happen. There are extremes in logistics that if used (eg: a 6 year old spanking a 18 year old) but those stories are very rare indeed and would likely turn me off reading it, but no story has done it yet.

I find many stories leave the physical description of characters, besides the identification of gender up to the reader and to me that is what most readers do anyway. I could say one is tall, but if the reader is 4'10" or 6'5" what does tall mean to them? Same goes to weight and other physical attributes. Actually I pay very little attention to these type of details if they are provided, because I find most are boring to read and rarely matches the character's image in my imagination. I prefer my imagination rather then trying to visualize a person after many sentences that could be interpreted many different ways.

More important than how many characters, what they look like, how they do certain things. Some things that may be almost impossible in real life situations is not important. Much more important is that the story makes me react in some way. Makes me feel something for one or more of the characters. Anger, sympathy, laughter etc, anything is better than worrying about whether the logistics fit or the number of people in the story doing whatever they are doing.

The story, unless identified as a fairy tale or science fiction should have a base that could make it possible in real life, but a lot of times I push aside real life for the sake of a good story. Get me to feel something about the story and I can forgive a lot of other things that would be needed for a real life situation. In many parts of the world parents of children and teens are not allowed to spank them, what would happen to many stories if we stuck to real life.

I find myself reading many stories, and a few I quit reading because in my mind the abuse of one or more persons is more than my emotions can take. Perhaps the story makes me think of what happened in my life and if it hurts I quit reading. I do not come here to want to feel emotional pain. There are writers I choose never to read because I know how they write and I disagree, but on the rare occasion I have gone back on a few and saw a change in writing style and now read some of those stories on occasion.

In conclusion, if one digs too deep into any story one can find reasons not to read it, For example Snow White shacked up with 7 men in the bush, but that does not stop many parents from reading the story to their young children. I take what I like from a story on site and if there are parts I do not like I throw those parts away and enjoy what I do like.

They are sometimes stronger than men. The PE mistress's in my stories could certainly deal satisfactorily with most males. Few things worse than a wimpy clingy female in my opinion! I too like privacy in a story. One schoolmistress/stepmother/ aunt with one misbehaving boy/youth works best. I like a little humour too if possible.

My essentials are background, a sense of development, roundness of character, and a sense that the story has its place in a continuum external to the story (this continuum is not necessarily our reality). Yet in a recent series which has mightily impressed me these things have been pared down to the minimum and almost takes place in a bubble. All my 'requirements' have been replaced by a keen psychological analysis and a detailed report of two characters interacting and it succeeds. Do you know the one I mean, Burgundy?

As for bad literary logistics, I think I know what you mean but I also think that in some of your examples you are mixing up logistics with your own preferences. CS & Blimp have mentioned male/female strength & I agree. If I were to write a 'realistic' spanking story featuring, say, one of the Williams sisters and myself, there would only be one red bottom at the end and it wouldn't be black and those girls are 100% female and I like to think that the same thing could be said for my maleness.

More important to me is that the story is true to itself, that it is consistent to it's own logic. Here I disagree with CS when he says that an author can do exactly as he pleases with a character & make it do whatever he wants it to do for the sake of a good story. He can't if he wants to sustain believability in his story, We have all read stories ( and I dare say inadvertently written) where a character does one, perfectly acceptable, thing at the beginning of the story only to do something, completely incompatible later on with no internal justification or explanation just for the sake of a plot twist and we've been disappointed by it,

I can accept a talking dog telling a teddy bear to spank its owner if the story's internal logic demands it: but if, in a 'realistic' story, a normal loving mother under no stress other than her 20 year old daughter has eaten the last Wheatabix, beats the daughter in front of the rest of the family with a three inch thick paddle that has appeared from nowhere, then I can't believe it no matter how good the story is otherwise.

Finally, to agree with Blimp, whilst humour isn't an essential for me, it is much appreciated.

I think I am first and foremost looking for characters I can believe in and relate to - perhaps even more in spanking stories than in other kinds of fiction. This doesn't necessarily mean round characters in the sense that I know a lot about their everyday life, just that I can identify with them in the situation they're in (often across a lap or a desk). To be honest, I feel that many stories in here contain a lot of information that I'm not really interested in and which doesn't help me get inside the head of the characters.

There is a strong link between believable characters and internal logic. I hate stories where the loving husband or father changes into an ogre and then back again without anybody noticing. Of course, characters can change through the story, but there must be a reason for it, and the change should be noticed by the author and/or the characters. Also, I often find that more is less in the sense that a story with many spankings is less efficient than a story with only one. I have no problems with stories where there is a logical reason for multiple spankings, but if I get the feeling that the author is just throwing in one more, I tend to lose interest.

My literary self and my fetish self do not always agree on what is a good story. My fetish self has its own requirements related to how my kink works; it likes the spankings to be just and loving - and to have an emotional impact on both the spanker and the spankee. It also has preferences about positions and implements that my literary self finds totally irrelevant. I also think my literary self has more sense of humor than its fetish companion. My fetish self enjoys a funny comment, but is usually not turned on by a story that is mainly humorous.

I probably am not the right person to answer this because in general you could say I don't like "spanking stories" at all. What I do enjoy (reading and writing) are stories with spankings in them or even just with spanking as a theme within them.......even if one never takes place in the story itself. Even in my own pieces, very few words are ever devoted to the spanking itself. However, I do not think that is typical of desires of most people here. I believe the majority.....though not all.........of the readers who come here WANT to read about the spanking itself................even at the expense of anything else.

Now to your specific questions: My essential ingredient is a sense of "yeah, that's it. That's exactly how that feels emotionally or physically". I don't care how well written everything is, if the story has no other purpose than to be a vehicle for a spanking, I won't even finish it. I want to see something else. And I want to see it in some depth. If an author writes that a prospective spanking victim is 'worried' over how their ordeal will go, thinking that is sufficient insight into their thoughts, for me, it's not. A long paragraph on their concerns over handing over power, or their concern over how their less-than-perfect bare bottom will be evaluated, or how they can't believe they are going to be spanked by this particular character due to their pasts and personalities......IS. And as others have said, a little humor doesn't hurt.

The one thing I don't want in a story......even if it's very well done, is a male Top. And deep down I know this isn't fair. I know real life male Tops who are great guys, but in a story, they all seem like bullies and jerks to me. And I know that's just me. But I am being honest.

To Burgundy: you asked for feedback on your own thoughts so I will say that I have been accused on several occasions of having my youthful characters act older than they are. This might be true but that does not mean that is unrealistic. I write ALL of my youthful submissive characters based on my own recollections of my feelings growing up. And as complicated as those thoughts might seem.....they are precisely what I was thinking then. To be fair I was always accused, even by my own father, of being "born old". But I'm sure I'm not the only one. So some kids can act like miniature adults and that behavior can still be very true to who that character is.

And you've already been sufficiently taken to task on your comment that a woman cannot be stronger than a man..............so enough said on that.

For me, your other comments are your preferences.............and everyone is entitled to their preferences.

Wow, I got essays, yay!

First of all, of course these are all my own personal preferences, and nobody else has to agree or like them! Obviously it's great that people like different things and want to read different things. If this site was made up only of stories written by me (or any one person), as much as I like my own set-ups, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting of a site. I don't like horror novels, myself, but I absolutely want my local library to stock horror novels for people who like them.

About women being stronger than men, yes, a few of them are, but statistically speaking, not so. I find it a challenge to find some other way for a female top to stay on top. Whereas with male tops, him being stronger is desirable.

And about the logistics, I now prefer Alef's term "internal logic" to my own initial choice of words. I think internal logic is more what I meant; the plotline has to make sense in terms of its own parameters, so like you said, a loving father turning into a sadistic monster on a dime is a no-go.

Thanks for the detailed answers, I'm still reading them and thinking about them

Oh yes, and I meant to add, to canadianspankee, it's funny that you say you don't like to read about emotional pain, which goes to show how different readers are and look for totally different things. Personally, emotional pain in a story is another requirement of mine, though lower on the list than my 'must-have' of privacy. Gimme all that delicious mental torture...

I believe this is a very telling opinion that reveals how you like your dominance to be established. You want command to be backed up by physical strength. Conversely, I find that to be exactly what I don't want to see. Regardless of who is 'physically stronger', I don't want to see that fact determine the dynamic or achievement of the punishment. For me it's all about submission.

That's how a female stays on top: a sense of dominance and authority that brings the submissive obediently to his knees. In that sense she is stronger than him......or at least each party is unabashedly aware of where each belong in an imbalanced power dynamic. For me the internal discovery and awareness of each party learning or knowing....or admitting....to where they need to be is key to the appeal and believability of a spanking story.

Of course compliance can come about in other ways too: school settings, correctional settings, or blackmail situations. But none of these are as powerful to me as the person who bares and bends because they know they need to.

I think that's why I prefer M/F stories that rely heavily on the desire of the woman to submit rather than the strength of the male to control. I wrote only one M/F piece and that was the entire point of the piece.

Hi kdpierre Well, we were discussing physical strength, so I wrote about that. Of course there have to be other elements to it too, otherwise, like you say, it would be no fun.
I also like age gaps and power imbalances of some kind (life experience, resources, brains, levels of authority, etc.)
Thanks for replying!

Oh wait, I see what you meant now, and I realize I worded my own sentence badly. When I said I find it a challenge to find some other way for the female top to stay on top, I didn't mean I find it too difficult. I meant I find that I enjoy the challenge of finding some other way. My bad!

I find it hard to believe you worded a sentence badly after reading your latest piece. (I left you a comment). I also found it ironic that your latest piece is called "The Experiment" and mine, "Milgram 2016" is about an experiment as well. But not only more literally but in a very different style as well. LOL