A question for fellow authors.

When I posted this yeaterday my contribution was truncated, so here goes.

Story first or spanking first?

As has been described already there appear to be three variants in this genre: the story which happens to have a spanking in it, the story about spanking which may or may not have smacked bottoms, and the story where the spanking is the framework of the tale.

Likewise the reader approaches a spanking story for a number of reasons, sometimes just pure sexual imagination fodder, sometimes to enjoy the schadenfreude, sometimes to enjoy watching the way the characters develop or negotiate their way through the plot, to feel the tension as the tension as it's built up or just to have a good laugh. The point is that the spanking story (in whatever variant) is a proper genre in its own right, a valid part of the realm of fiction, and it can achieve those things which any good fiction can.

Fiction is useful, and spanking fiction no less just because we sometimes use it for gratification. There's also things to consider, things perhaps to learn. Just because we enjoy some fictional bum getting smacked doesn't lessen the genre.

Why do we use fiction at all? from the cave dwellers to the age of hte internet fiction has been used to help us understand our world, our part in it and what it's like to be human

When Shakespeare tells the story of Macbeth, because we know the real Macbeth didn't kill the real Duncan we can put ourselves in it, safe in the realm of fiction asking ourselves all sorts of questions like should I listen to dodgy looking women out in the wilds or would I really have encouraged my husband to break the bonds of fealty and hospitality for such a great advancement, or can good Fleance really fly?

On the original question my experience is that crowbarring a spanking into a story which was originally envisioned without one, or indeed the other way round, bowdlering away the smacked bum usually results in a less satisfying story/ I've done both and always been less than happy with the result. To be fair, I've written so few non-spanking stories that I'm probably not a good exemplar.

And I do agree with Alef above, ther does seem to be a value judgement around between the variants of the spanking story. I'd say that just because we like one more than the other it doesn''t make it any better a story.

A fascinating thread, Hotspur, to which my previous contribution was off topic so I'll try to remedy that here.

My head is somewhat spinning with all the different suggestions for defining the types of stories we write, and I've been struggling to fully understand the categories put forward, although Opb's recent 'spankings with crowbars' is pretty clear.

Here's how I see them, and please forgive any repetition of previous post ideas:

A 'Spanking story' is focused solely on the events surrounding a spanking - setting, characterisation of participants, lead-up, action scene, aftermath. Original LSF at its purest - no messing around with fancy ideas or extraneous themes, though if it comes with a twist, that's a bonus. It's what we all came in search of when we stumbled through the door.

In a "Story with a spanking", a majority of the narrative is not about, and doesn't involve, spanking, even if the spanking itself still plays a significant part in the plot (because if it didn't, the story would be rejected, like a too-fat Bird's Eye pea, by the Admins). Whether this type of story is 'superior' is entirely subjective, but for the apathetic or jaded LSF reader it may provide relief from the more relentlessly focused fetishist fare. For some reason, many of the stories I wrote long ago for Challenges fit this category, perhaps because the stimulus provided (theme or picture) led me that way.

kdpierre and Alef's suggestion for a third category is the "Story about spanking", which I'm guessing usually involves elements of the first two, but whose focus is on a character's actual fetish - its evolution, perhaps, and its application and relevance to their life. This could, in my view, be described as the deepest kind of spanking fiction, getting to the heart of the matter.

And if that hasn't killed the thread, then I'm losing my touch.

Hotspur. A thread is like a story. Once it's out there, it has a life of it's own. I hope you can take some consolation in your ability to start a thread that survived in spite of the many efforts to kill it.

I am only mildly interested in how to categorize spanking stories. Or even in the necessity to categorize them. But this thread does/(did?) more than that. I enjoyed reading insights into the thought processes of so many authors. The thread actually became a discussion of how and why we write. EnglishMaster, your excellent summary may have killed this thread. You realize that you now have the obligation to create a new, equally thought provoking thread.

Noah is only mildly interested in how to categorize spanking stories. That probably goes for most of us too, but we are clearly interested in spanking stories, or we wouldn't be here.

Anyone who studied literature at school will probably remember thinking "why are we analysing this book/play/poem like this? Can't we just read it and enjoy it?" I'm afraid that is just what thinking humans do, because we actually want to do more than just read and enjoy.

It's not just literature. We do the same with music, with alcohol and (decreasingly) with tobacco. Its just a way of getting more enjoyment out of what we do, or, in some cases, a way of fooling ourselves that we are analysts, or connoisseurs, rather than addicts.

Geoffrey.

I agree with Noah that classifying stories is of limited interest, and especially when one has tried it in practice and seen how impossible it is! Still labels such "spanking story", "story with a spanking", and "story about spanking" may help us distinguish not only between different kinds of stories, but also between different kinds of motivations authors may have. One of the first stories to really make an impression on me when I started visiting this site, was Kephren's "I am waiting to get caned". It's definitely not a "story with a spanking" as the only story content is a schoolgirl waiting to get caned after having been caught smoking (it doesn't get much more hackneyed than that!), and it's definitely a "spanking story" as the focus is solely on her upcoming caning. To me, it's also a "story about spanking" (not as a fetish, but as a phenomenon) as the whole point of the story is to convey as fully and forcefully as possible the typical emotions and reactions of somebody waiting for a spanking. It's this perspective that for me makes it much more than just a run-of-the-mill spanking story.

I wasn't trying to denigrate the topic when I wrote, I'm only "mildly interested in categorizing spanking stories." It's because I only write one category. I write "Stories about spanking." Usually, I'm writing for me and about me. If I do post a story, I may have to resort to, what opb calls, "crowbarring a spanking into the story."

Some writing is merely pleasurable. Nothing wrong with that. To be clear, analyzing, and hopefully understanding, what others have written is important. I appreciate stories, comments and articles. (I'm thinking of the apparently no longer read, "Wellred".)

Some topics, like this one, seem to stimulate comments that are worth thinking about. For example:


For me, there is an awful lot to unpack there. Comments like this are what I'm looking for.

I don’t really think I have that much to add, but here are a few observations I have made, mainly as a reader of spanking stories. If you want the short version, it may probably be summed up by the old slogan "kill your darlings", although this isn’t something I always agree with; some darlings are worth keeping.

As we have discussed before, a spanking story may have more than one goal or one purpose, but in this context, I’ll concentrate on spanking stories as erotic stories, i.e., stories that first and foremost aim to create an erotic reaction in the reader. As such they are close to sexual fantasies, but there is a huge difference; fantasies are for your own pleasure while a story tries to reach out to others. One of the differences is that most fantasies come with a lot of back history; if they aren’t actually about somebody you know, they are about somebody you have made up based on your experiences, real or imagined. To create the right reaction in the reader, some of the back history has to go into the story, but there is hardly interest in all of it, so what do you put in and what do you leave out? There’s a distinction here between what you need to get your fantasy working (we know towards what goal!) and what the average reader may want. It may be important to you that the protagonist is 19 years old, has blue eyes and blond hair, is 5’4’’ tall and weighs 105 pounds, because that’s what you need to get your mind set on the right person, but it will not necessarily work with the reader who prefers to imagine somebody who has hazel eyes and brown hair and is 5’10’’. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t describe your characters, but I have never understood the need to describe for the sake of describing; isn’t it better to describe just what is needed to make sense of the story and the characters?

We all know what is the purpose of a sexual fantasy and where we want it to take us, and for many of us there are some rather special things that help us get there, things that may be thought of as fetishes or kinks. Should they also go into your stories? It obviously depends; if you’re writing a spanking story for a spanking audience, it’s obviously ok to include a little bit of spanking. With spanking comes other, related themes that may not appeal to every spanko (corner time, mouth soaping, etc), but they are still natural parts of a spanking story. On the other hand, I have seen stories that have been ruined (for me at least) by the inclusion of fetish elements that seem irrelevant to the main theme of the story. There is nothing wrong with an intense interest in the anatomy of the human reproductive organs, or in lingerie, or in panty lines, or in the pleasures of urination, but when the natural story line has to stop for a paragraph or two while the author indulges in long and detailed descriptions of things that seem at best irrelevant, the reader’s interest wanes. When I come across such paragraphs, I often feel sympathy with the writer ("ah, this is what makes it for you"), but that doesn’t save the story for me.

Does this mean that one should always keep other fetishes out of one’s spanking stories? Not at all; I think the meeting of different kinks may be the starting point for some really interesting stories, but it’s important to know what one is doing: Indulging in your own private peculiarities may reduce your potential readership much more than you would really like.

You do have much to add, and I, for one, am grateful for it.

You are one of the authors I continue to enjoy reading because every spanking in your story "serves the story."

Generally speaking, I believe the premise of the story should plausibly allow someone to spank and someone to get spanked. Suppose the author's description and dialogue convey this with novelty, a developing plot, and an unexpected ending whose confluence creates an arousing experience. In that case, that is a fantastic spanking story and a terrific story with spanking. My challenge when writing so far is that I tend to write about only the particular spanking fantasies I enjoy, which, upon reading them in the aggregate, are essentially the same spanking fantasy in a different setting. I read from the Library but had not yet written back to when the Spanking Story Challenges were offered as a Library Competition. Perhaps it can be used again to stretch us junior authors out and motivate us to try something new.

With fond regards, I remain,

The Spanking Agent (Author)

As far as I can remember, only a few of my stories are based on actual fantasies, and precisely for this reason. I simply cannot get the fantasies to work as stories - they are too private, too repetitive, or simply too dumb. What I can do, is steal fragments from them - ideas and scenes that still make sense when transported to a more sensible context. Perhaps it would have been different if I were younger; my fantasy life is not quite what it used to be!

Thank you for this excellent bit of writing advice!

The Spanking Agent