Inspiration

A question to all the wonderful authors on here: what inspires you when plotting your stories?

I'm personally having a very 'dry' spell at the moment with my writing; not because I have a block on writing the words, but I have a block on dreaming up decent characters and situations.

I really want to get back into writing spanking stories, but at the moment all my plots fizzle out and I can't get my imagination working beyond the most basic schoolgirl caning.

Has this happened to anyone else?

Would love to know any ideas or suggestions!

Immy x

It will return never fear. Just keep writing down the ideas and use them as a bank when the muse speaks to you again.

I had a similar blank period the past two months. I was cured partly by Flopsy persuading me to write a Christmas story, which also persuaded me to finish another story I'd got stuck on.

At the moment I'm reading Stephen King's book "On Writing." What he says is to look around. Stories are everywhere. In casual conversations. In the news. On TV shows. In the spanking story genre it's a matter of asking "what if?" I'll give you an example. Years ago an item appeared in the paper about a girl who protested the second rate locker room facilities for female athletes at her high school. She did this by walking nude into the boys shower to take her own shower. I saw that and said, "ok, what if they had a big flap about it with the girl being stripped of all honors etc., threatened lawsuits in retaliation, and they agreed to settle it if she would agree to be paddled? How would that work out?" The result was a novelette. Another example was as a result of watching Downton Abbey. What if the estate went to a clueless American who travels to a remote British island where the manor is located, the island still has the birch for some crimes, and finds out he's expected to dispense discipline? Another novelette.

So inspiration is all around you. You just have to be alert to it, see curious or interesting situations and let that lizard spanko sub brain keep asking 'what if?'

I find it a little elitist that you're only asking the wonderful authors this question. We bad authors are people too.

I'll largely second what was said by Rollin (and, by proxy, Stephen King). Inspiration is all around you. For a spanking story, you can look at any mundane situation around you and think of how to kink it up. For instance, some years ago a date told me she was on the college paddling team. It took me about 0.02 seconds for me to figure out she meant rowing, but in that fraction of a second I got the idea of paddling as a school sport, and it became my most popular story on the LSF thus far.

For characters, look for interesting personality traits on TV or in people you know and work them together to make new characters. That goes for physical appearances too; sometimes, I just need to see an attractive woman for my mind to start building a story around her doppleganger. For instance, one of the main characters from my aforementioned "Paddling Team" is a physical and personality hybrid of several peppy, athletic girls I went to high school with.

As with any genre of writing, an important part of inspiration is to read other people's stories. I'm not saying to steal outright, but inspiration from an existing story can lead to something very different. For instance, I read a story on another site in which a sorority housemother spanks one of the girls to help her get the attention of a boy. I took that germ (girl spanks other girl to help her attract a specific male audience), but changed the personalities and threw in a couple of twists that turned the story on its head. The result was my "Backfire" story, which ended up having several sequels that took it away completely from the source material.

In short; look around for details, mix and match them, and throw in your personal kinky tastes.

Go to the green bar above to Sites. You'll see WellRed Weekly. The Admins have some great interviews with authors at the LSF.

When I write, I try to put a little something different in my stories. Spanking stories (I've said this a few times in my posts), are like watching porn movies. I mean, how many different ways are there to have sexual intercourse? It becomes all the same with spanking stories. "If You Let It."

Anything goes in the LSF with the exception of Adult sex with Children. You can also go to Submissions at the top green bar and highlight BROWSE and then BOOKCASES. You'll find quite a few categories to choose from and read. To answer your question on has it happened to me. Yes. I relax for a while and read rather than write. I see movies that inspire me. I agree with rollin on Stephen King's "On Writing." I've read it and enjoyed it.

Relax... It will all come back. Don't rush it.

I find that what Rollin and Stephen King say is true of my own work. my current series was inspired by a 3-part series on another site. I thought to myself "I can do better than this!" In fact "I can do better / just as well as this" has inspired many of my stories. Some of my stories have been inspired by past experiences either of a spanky or non spanky sort. "senior girl" was inspired by a spanking photo of a girl walking down a hallway with her skirt hitched wayy up revealing her panties and walking down a hallway from one room to another in above-the-knee socks. Sometimes they are inspired by others' real life experiences. That sort of thing.

Writing prompts/challenges also help spur the imagination at times, especially if you can't find inspiration elsewhere. We all go through dry spells (some moreso than others!), but I often find that reading other stories can get me in the right mindset and then my imagination takes over from there.

Ideas for new stories seem to come to me quite easily. It's finding the time to get the damn things written that's the problem....

I'm going to second Phil, the ideas are there, but the time to write them is another matter...
I get ideas from pretty much everywhere. I think we're all different, but I find that there is very little that you can't twist into a spanking story some way or another. News, especially celebrity news, can be a great source of inspiration, plus it's often current.

Maybe what we need is a 'Kama Sutra' of spanking!

I've had the same problem recently: a bad case of writer's block. Like Lincoln, I was trying to write a Christmas story for flopsy also. But it wouldn't flow. I tried to force it but couldn't make it work. When I got near the conclusion, I couldn't come up with a good ending that fit the characters, and went I went back and read through it, the scenario felt contrived and clichéd. I decided it was better to give up and scrap it than submit a poor quality story.
I really feel for professional writers who are expected to regularly come up with good quality work on a deadline.