Lack of "Shock and Awe"

Very interesting stuff and something special we have embarked upon here. This spanking mystique takes on so many variables and it seems these forms can also take on so many different mindsets as well.

For me, it seems the one thing that really sets me off is the uncertainty and the rumination over what may come. Of course we all have an idea what will happen but it's really the presentation and setup that can make a tale stand out. Of course, a vivid description of the action can only glorify the climax.

For instance, and I don't think this story can be found in this library, there was this boy, a senior in high school, in the principals office for some really dumb stunt. Well, he sat there and considered all the possibilities. He knew she was strict and that he was in trouble but after all, he was a senior and 17 years old. Plus, this was the only time he had ever been in the principals office. This principal, an older lady, was reputed to be very strict. But of course because he was a senior, he couldn't imagine going through what a younger high schooler might face. He imagined all kinds of situations and scenarios and hopefully dismissed this and that, which were all, to him, remote possibilities. Or were they? This story was so intriguing and exploitive that the finality was eye opening because the shocked lad ends up over her lap, sans trousers and shorts and thoroughly spanked with paddle or hairbrush into total submission. Absolutely the worst possibility and one so humiliating and demeaning he hadn't even considered the extent. Well written, great story. Anyone know of it?

At any rate, that's my favorite thing, in this case, the subtle mindplay as he/she deals with imagination, possibility and finally the climactic surprise. I like them both and feel one augments the other. Of course as mentioned in another post, it's a matter of taste, to each his or her own, YMMV.

wooz1111
You may want to try out some of billboard's stories, especially "Friday Afternoon Punishment Parade" and "They Don't Paddle Seniors". Also, "Eighteen" by Susan Thomas may suit your tastes. Neither of these stories is the one you remember, but they are close in theme and treatment.

As evidenced by most of the examples in the OP, there is a considerable limitation to the "shock & awe" approach beyond mere preference: believability.

The shock and awe might make sense with a small, underage child.......but a lot of writers here write about adults. If a decreed spanking directed at a full-grown adult is regarded as utterly shocking to that party, why in the world.....and better yet....HOW in the world will the disciplinarian ever get them to comply? This is especially sticky in an adult F/M story. However, if the soon-to-be recipient is sort of accustomed to the notion, more open to it and less outraged by the idea, their compliance is more believable and for the SS&C crowd, less abusive-sounding. I would think even a child of any appreciable size who is aghast at the prospect of a spanking could make the task of giving them one very challenging and again, the story could come across as very abusive if successful by force.

I agree, but consent is as many-splendored thing. One example is consensual nonconsent agreements between adult couples, another is what might be called "moral consent" where a person (make it a character in a story if you want) strives to avoid a spanking by all means, but still at the bottom of his/her heart feels that the spanking is well-deserved. At the end it may even come as a relief.


This is an astute observation of a phenomenon I often run into when I try to write "realistic" spanking stories. To make the story work, I often feel a need to prepare the ground so that the major spanking doesn't seem to drop from the sky. One way of doing this is to have a minor character spanked (or just threatened with a spanking) earlier in the story, another is to put the story at a time and in an environment where spanking is naturally assumed to be normal (but perhaps not for the protagonist, who, for instance, may think herself/himself too old).

Absolutely. One set-up I particularly like is the characters going on holiday somewhere where spanking is more common and more open. It could be subtle - for example they see spanking implements on sale in the local market, which is just enough to plant the seed of an idea. There's also that general feeling that what happens on holiday stays on holiday - a spanking then doesn't have to mean they switch to regular spankings when they go home.

Recently I read through P.G. Wodehouse's school novels, which I think are quite a faithful depiction of boys' boarding schools in the early 1900s. He makes clear there were four types of punishment: writing lines, detention, caning, and explusion (called "sacking" in Edwardian slang). Writing lines was the one given out all the time, for trivial misdemeanors. Detention (usually preventing a character attending an important sports match) was for more serious breaches like being caught out of bounds. Sacking was for a student deemed incorrigible and a bad influence on others. So caning wasn't used that often, and tended to be for younger students who showed an arrogant or selfish attitude, to bring them down a peg or two. Just another option to consider - spanking stories tend to present spanking as the one and only punishment, but you certainly could write it as one of a range of disciplinary options.

A good example of this is the system found in some American schools where a student is given a choice between detention and paddling.

It's very much a matter of personal preference.
I don't like very severe, but painful.
I do write some judicial type stories but its only fantasy as the reality would appall me
Most of my stories are consensual, or have an alternative.
If you read Kindle you might like the Hilary Chale books.
Very well written but very forties-fifties England.
I suspect it was a pen name for Alec Waugh -one of the Waugh brothers, most famous of whom is Evelyn.
NB Both male despite first names.

Someone once said to me that spanking is 90% above the waist. In other words that the setting, the circumstances, the relationship, the dialogue are much more important than the report of hand or implement on bare flesh.

Once an author has decided on setting, circumstances and relationship he/she needs to decide on reactions--to the knowledge that the victim is to be spanked and the spanking itself (and everything that goes with it). Whether that "victim" is horrified, terrified, interested or just resigned is likely to flow from the setting, circumstances and relationship. By this point the author has lost freedom of choice. Those things dictate the reactions.

There is nothing wrong with a story set in a world where teenaged girls accept bare bottom spankings as a fact of life (Pastor's stories are very good at that) and horrified reactions are also interesting where spankings are not commonplace. I deal extensively with the horrified reaction of a girl to a forthcoming punishment in part 9 of The Boundary Chronicles.

Geoffrey Stirling

Great discussion! I write mostly about fed-up moms delivering bare-bottom spankings to their teenaged children, and I'm definitely in the group that wants there to be "shock and awe." Maybe it isn't news to the boy or girl in trouble that they are still subject to pants-pulled-down spankings, but it's absolutely flabbergasting to everyone else. That greatly increases the teen's embarrassment, which from Mom's perspective enhances the effectiveness of the punishment, and from my perspective, makes the story a whole lot more fun. By the way, thanks, jimisim--I'll definitely have to seek out Hilary Chale.

OP raises a good point. My personal preference is the sort of story where an 18 year old (or thereabouts) thinks they're too old to get spanked, but gradually become worried that they aren't. A lot of story elements can be used to gradually increase their growing doubt in their initial confidence:

1. Place them in a dependent position under an authority figure.
2. Describe them physically as being small for their age, perhaps appearing younger than they really are.
3. Place them in a situation with younger adolescents, and have them realize the adults consider them one of the kids, and treat them like one.
4. Have them witness or hear about a spanking, and have them be visibly embarrassed by it.
5. Increase tension by having them get themselves in escalating trouble, increasing their worry that the authority figure adult might decide they aren't too old to spank.
6. Have a climactic incident where the subject realizes, just too late, that catastrophe has struck and the adult is going to spank them. Focus on that sense of disaster - the shock and awe the OP mentioned.
7. After the inevitable spanking, the (usually brief) denouement concentrates on the embarrasses subject realizing that they definitely aren't too old to get spanked, and it probably won't be long before they're over the adult's knee again.

The key is establishing the scenario, establishing the fact that a spanking *would be* a disaster, they just think they're too old to get a spanking, then start eroding that confidence in various ways and increasing their anxiety. Once the anxiety is high, they make the fatal mistake, there's that moment when they realize disaster has struck and they're gonna get spanked, have the spanking, then afterward start the anxiety all over again as they realize they probably have a lot more spankings coming to them in the near future.

The shock and awe isn't just the spanking itself, it's the gradual increase in anxiety, the arrival of catastrophe, and the post-climactic realization that more catastrophes are in their near future - more and often. Then *Fin.*