The Discreet Charm of Crowbarring

I thought that was well known.

That's ridiculous! Everyone knows it's Carol Kirkwood.

As far as I can remember, I only once resorted to crowbarring - in my story New Life. It was more of a science fiction story, but I had to force in a couple of spankings so my publisher (ie KLSF) would accept it. I've since de-crowbarred it as I would like to use it in a collection of more mainstream short stories I am slowly assembling. I think I prefer the new version. I actually decided to leave one of the spankings in. The difference was that instead of having the narrator observe it and describe it in lurid detail, he just overhears it taking place in another room.

Congratulations! On the other hand, it may come down to what one considers crowbarring as there are degrees from the gentle to the brutal. I mentioned somewhere above that I once was caught in a Hawaiian rainstorm so ridiculous that I felt a strong urge to write about it. As a description of the rain and how people and nature reacted to it hardly would have got Flopsy’s approval, I had to smuggle a spanking into the story, and by combining the Hawaiian rain with another idea I had at the time, I think I managed to write a rather seamless spanking story. Was this crowbarring? Perhaps to some extent, but if I hadn’t crowbarred a spanking into the story, I would probably have had to inject something else as I’m not a sufficiently good writer to survive on Hawaiian rain alone.

The crowbarring is less gentle when I start from something that is more of a full-fledged story and then try to find room for a spanking. Some characters simply refuse to get spanked unless I come up with something really clever (or which at least seems really clever at the time). I often start from something I have observed or experienced, and if the original situation doesn’t involve a spanking (it almost never does), it sometimes feels almost immoral to crowbar one into the story.

Does crowbarring ever work in reverse? Does anyone ever observe, experience, or otherwise conjure up a spanking, then have to crowbar a story around that? I think of the many times I’ve seen a spanking picture or drawing without any real context around it. Alluring, yes, but I find myself wanting more. Maybe it’s the creative part of me, but I want to know the story behind what’s going on. In lieu of that, I create the story myself.

Is this still a case of crowbarring in a spanking, or would you say this a different animal altogether?

To me that would just be the normal and better way of going about it. Crowbarring is doing it in reverse which may not be so successful.

One of my stories - 'Spicy Food' - resisted all attempts to crowbar in an actual spanking. I eventually decided to write it up and send it in as it was - and it got a surprisingly good reception for a 'non-spanking' spanking story!

(I think the term 'crowbarring' is a useful addition to our vocabulary of writing terms. I wonder whether it will outlast this thread - I suspect it will!)

Sir Cambornek