What are your essential requirements for a good story?

Interesting subject - and very interesting answers.

I have a slightly different view on what I like to read and on what I like to write.

Two things only are essential for me to enjoy a spanking story:

First, it has to be a well written story. It has to draw you in and leave you that satisfied aftertaste that good wine leaves in your mouth. And for me doesn't matter sex or age of the characters or even the internal logic, as long as the words shine.

Second, I like a spanking story to ignite my libido or at least add strong taste to what I'm reading. Spanking - for me - is sexual. I differentiate a spanking story from a story with spanking in it. The aim of the first one is to excite the reader and if you take the spanking away very little remains. The aim of the second is to add spice to a story which could live on its own without the spanking. I like both - if the first condition is met.

Do I follow it in the stories I write? Probably not. I'm very poor at describing pages of spankings - or sexual encounters by the way. So, as I can't write spanking stories, I try to write stories with spankings in them.

At times I succeed, at times not. Do my stories have 'internal logic' in them? I try to either keep certain realistic tie with our world, or in completely loony stories like 'Of Dinosaurs and Round Bottoms' with no ties to reality, there's certain logic in the writing.

Thanks to all for interesting insights.

CK: You should totally post a question on this board asking exactly that! I'd respond. (And the only reason I'm not responding right now is that I tried to answer your question in my head, and it was really difficult. I still don't have a coherent set a reasons that I feel actually answers the question besides "I just like it, ok?")

Erdling: And you scored another point that I hadn't thought of before; I also don't like 'stereotypical' dom/sub talk. ("Get on the floor, slave, and address me as Mistress!" Ack, no...)

KJM: Thanks for your interesting insight: that you felt you had to qualify that spankings are sexual for you. Aren't they for all of us here? I had assumed that, but now I am forced to contemplate the disturbing possibility that I was wrong...

I hope to avoid blowing my own horn, but the things that make me like a story are, for better or worse, the kinds of things I try to include in my own stories.

1) The characters have to feel like "real" people, and they should "look" like real people. I've mentioned before that I was very young when I started writing our kind of story. I was a teenager in the 1980s, when the available options for erotica/pornography (the kind that I was able to sneak peeks at) featured models and "porn stars" who were, frankly, unrealistic. So I've attempted, in my writing, to make my characters "real", in that they don't have "perfect" bodies with exaggerated proportions. One of the best compliments I've ever gotten on my writing was a review of "The House in the Woods" on another site. The reviewer said, "It was refreshing to read character descriptions that weren't just a set of measurements." I want characters who, beyond their physical descriptions, think and act like "real people".

2) I want the story to have punishments that don't make me feel like I've wasted my time. If there's such a thing as a "vanilla spanking", I've read it (and seen it in videos), and I've been completely bored. This might sound like it's at odds with my "real people" insistence in Point #1. But, face it. You and I read these types of stories for sexual gratification, to one degree or another. Do any of us honestly fantasize about giving or receiving three or six or twelve smacks to a bottom? Okay, I'm sure some of you do. I don't. I recognize that I am writing fiction, and I'm reading fiction. And, in fiction, nobody gets hurt. So I want to read (or watch, if it's a video with consensual spankees), a completely outrageous spanking.

3) If the story contains sexual elements, I want the writer to own it and not compromise. If the story includes "underage" characters having sex (and I write such stories; having been a teenager myself (and having started writing these stories when I was "underage"), I recognize that teenagers are sexual creatures, and they have sex, write the story and leave it "as is". If that isn't acceptable to the site you want to post to, then don't post it. Keep it to yourself and maintain your integrity as a writer. I have one story I submitted here, and it was rejected because the main character, a 15-year-old girl, has sex with an 18-year-old boy. The sex in the story happens entirely "off screen" and isn't described at all; the story just mentions that it happened. This wasn't the first site to reject the story. The rejections I got all said that they would publish the story if the girl was 16 or 18 (depending on the home country of the site), or if the 18YO boy was 17 (to avoid "sex between minors and adults"). In every instance, I elected to simply withdraw the story rather than rewrite. Why? The entire story hinged upon the legal definition of "statutory rape", at least as it is defined in the laws of my home state (in the USA). The story was ultimately about the relationship between a divorced but custodial father and his teenaged daughter. The father, after gaining custody in the divorce court battle, had elected to not use corporal punishment on his daughter. He had divorced his wife because she was a drug addict, and had sued for custody of his daughter because he didn't want his child to be raised with drug addicts. He, logically, figured that it was best to not use corporal punishment, given that he was under the eye of the (sexist) court. Unfortunately, he had always told his daughter that he was spanking her because he loved her, and when he stopped spanking her amidst the divorce proceedings, she came to think that her dad didn't love her, and so she went to extreme measures to get him to spank her, right up to manipulating the state law to convince and older boy to have sex with her, and arranging to get "caught in the act". All to get her daddy to spank her because he loved her.

One thing I absolutely hate reading, and I can recognize it when I see it, is an "adult having sex with at teenager" story where the "teenager" is, conveniently, 18 (or sometimes 19) years old. Many of these stories were obviously written with underaged characters, but those character magically became 18 or 19 years old just to get published. And they suck, storywise.

Interesting point, but I think you are needlessly (and inaccurately) linking low number spankings with reality and high number ones with fantasy. The "50 Shades" punishment spanking of SIX whacks ......because she wanted to see how BAD it could be.............made Rosa and I howl with laughter until tears dripped from our eyes.

The last spanking I got from Rosa was last Sunday for part fun and part serious reasons......and it totaled 950 smacks. I got one installment of 500, then a break and the remaining 450 with an even nastier implement. Granted not every swat was a full impact two-handed scorcher. In a spanking they don't all need to be.....but every one stung.

Now typically I get more in the range of 250 in an average punishment, sometimes more, sometimes less, but never less than 50. 950 was an unusual amount, but we have toyed with the 1000-range before......more than once.

And we are real living breathing people......with one of us sometimes having difficulty sitting. So don't feel like a long spanking description is the stuff of fantasy. It may be for some, but for others it's a mark of reality.

I think this is a point where people really differ. Personally, I'm much more likely to be turned off my a too severe spanking than by a too lenient one, but it depends on the context. 950 smacks may be OK for consulting adults who know each other well and who do the spanking in a fetish setting, but it would be ridiculous for, say, a parental spanking or a school punishment, and it would definitely destroy the internal logic of any such story (unless it was an obvious parody).

These are all such awesome responses which have made me aware of and think about so many things that hadn't occurred to me before, because I'm new to writing fiction (Not new to doing, and not new to writing sopoforic non-fiction, but totally new to fiction.)

Rik and KD: yep, agree with both points. Make it real people, and make it hurt. Can't stand those faux-kink scenes in mainstream movies with vanilla spankings ("Oh yes, baby, hurt me, give me another one...") Though I can't claim to ever have either given or gotten 900, holy shit.

Alef: and another difficulty is that people also differ on what is lenient and what is severe. And further, severe for a child might be lenient for an adult. It's an infinite fractal, eller hur?

Severe or lenient always has to be seen relative to the person who is being spanked. Of course, in the present discussion we are dealing with fictional characters and thus have a certain freedom, but there are still limits. If you are writing a story about a timid girl of 18 who are getting spanked (for punishment) for the first time, and you decide on giving her 950 licks, you really have to work hard on your internal logic even if your story is set on a fractal!

The differences we are discussing are probably to some extent due to different views on what is important in a spanking. For a sadist or a masochist, the pain may be the most important ingredient, but for others (like me) the pain in itself is not that important - it just serves as a guarantee that real punishment has taken place and that the spankee has the right to consider herself/himself redeemed and forgiven. As it seems legitimate to cite onself in this discussion, I'll just refer to the article "Let us compare spankologies" in issue 6 of the Wellred Weekly. It's even inspired by a Canadian ...

Alef, wow, what a fascinating essay - thank you (Yes, of course it's legit to cite yourself here, at least I think so. Och dessutom så är jag inte riktigt kanadensare, inte född i alla fall.) I have also often thought of spanking, or kink in general, as a parallel sexuality; the things I want to get out of a 'play' session are very dissimilar to what I want to get out of a plain vanilla session.
Personally, I'm into pain, but I know not everyone who likes spanking is, maybe not even the majority. It would be an interesting poll. Hmm, my next topic maybe...

Ah, a Swede in disguise! Jeg får sitere Bellmann eller Taube neste gang!

ALL aspects of a story need to align with the setting, not just the spanking, so of course one must apply the internal logic consistent with the environment of the piece for any of it to make sense. But the amount of the spanking is not an automatic qualifier or disqualifier for whether it can be realistic or not...... and that was my only point in referencing my recent experience.

I tell a true story on my blog where I had accidentally ruined some plastic plates belonging to our "neighbor-in-the-know". Rosa thought it would be appropriate for this person to actually come up with a spanking number for me since the plates ruined were hers. Our neighbor is not shy and liked the idea but her ENTIRE experience with punishment was what she read in "50 Shades". As a result, with a hesitant smile, she suggested "8" (because that was two swats worse than the "6" in the book.)

Rosa had a nice talk with her and explained the reality of a punishment spanking that is supposed to teach a lesson. Eventually ......with a lot of coaching from Rosa, my neighbor settled on "300".

Now my point again in telling this is that without Rosa to assure her that 300 smacks were a much more "realistic" and appropriate punishment than the inexperienced E.L. James' ridiculous 6 or 8, this person would never had dreamed that such a thing was the case. And to your point.....both Rosa & I and the couple in 50 Shades are "adults" engaged in a consensual D/s relationship so it is 'apples to apples'. And if you talk with DD couples or either dynamic......unless you are using a cane or some other nasty implement, no one is punished with anything as ludicrous as 6 swats.