Lack of "Shock and Awe"

As a reader, I find this to be one preference to what I like. It fulfills my ultimate desire of finding someone who is interested in receiving as I am in administering. Perhaps this is why others likewise prefer to see less "victims" as participants.
However, when something is as commonplace and expected as drinking water, then there is obviously, less thrill. I'll bring in the analogy of a roller coaster. They are purposefully built to slowly creep up the leeward side; building up anticipation and dread, you might know what is going to happen on the other side of the hill, but you can't see it. Even if you've been on the same ride before, countless times, the wait still seems longer. You have no control over what is about to happen. You might have had control to walk away before, but now you're strapped in, and then...

Shock and awe.

Lonewulf


I think that's what I was getting at. Yes, a case where a full grown adult utterly disbelieved in the possibility of a spanking might make it impossible. I think at least some prefer stories where the concept isn't alien, it's just that the spankee imagined themselves to be immune to getting spanked - usually, that they got too old.

And so, that has to be worked around. Either it's a mistaken identity scenario, or the spankee is still young and just misjudged that they had crossed over into "adult" status when circumstances conspire to place them back into "kid" status - where they know they could still get spanked. That's where the details of the story have to help the reader suspend disbelief.

And of course you're right about the emotional roller coaster. Assuming a common story form where you have a non-familial but non-sexual and non-consensual spanking scenario, one setup would be for the story to start off in the nominal state where the spankee is too old to be spanked, but events keep happening which undermine that, and move them from "adult" to "kid":

- Spankee is young - I'm sure if you graphed the age population of all the spanked characters in the library, there would be a huge spike right at 18.
- Having an older spanker helps sell the story if plausibility is the desired effect.
- Physical details help cement the subordinate status of the spankee - having them be small and young-looking for their age does a lot; having the spanker not only be older but taller does as well; as I said earlier, if you have a story involving an 18 year old guy who's maybe just under 5 feet tall, that people keep mistaking for 15 or so, and a 6'2" tall 35 year old woman, that helps cement in the reader's mind that the story involves an 18 year old boy and a 35 year old woman.
- Having them live in the spanker's house helps place the spankee in a more subordinate position, especially if they don't pay rent, paid rent initially then ran out of money and were allowed to stay, are a sort of guest student living with a host family, were fostered by the adult briefly before turning 18 and are still staying with them, etc.
- Other details help cement their subordinate status by illustrating that the adult views the 18 year old as a kid. Having other, younger kids in the house, and having the 18 year old spend most of their time with them, makes it natural for the reader and the adult characters to consider the (eventual) spankee a kid, and eventually the kid eventually begins to see this, to their embarrassment.
- Other aspects of the living situation can be added: maybe the young person is in school, maybe college. Maybe they're still in high school. If you wanted to say they got held back multiple times over the years you could even have them in junior high or middle school, although there you run the risk of overtaxing the reader's suspension of disbelief. An 18 year old in the 8th or 9th grade is difficult to swallow apart from a mistaken identity or undercover scenario.
- Subtly introducing rules is important, because rules broken bring consequences; the trick is make the rules plausible. Curfews seem popular and plausible for 18 year olds living in their home; "no smoking or drinking allowed" are easy, plausible rules as well. Punishments should similarly be plausible; an earlier curfew is an easy start.
- If you have a spankee who is small and young-looking for his or her age, the very process of having the adult unconsciously view them as a kid (visually and behaviorally) makes it easier for you to write them adding additional rules, rules more appropriate for younger adolescents, while having the reader accept them as well. Maybe the adult expects the 18 year old to be home for dinner at a certain time and they were significantly late; maybe the adult doesn't allow the kids to snack after a certain time before dinner, and includes the 18 year old in that rule.
- Punishments can evolve and escalate as well. Maybe being late for dinner or getting caught with a hand in the proverbial cookie jar means the 18 year old is grounded. Maybe oversleeping and making everybody late for something means being expected to be in bed earlier.

Point is, the gradual accumulation of events cementing the eventual spankee's status as a kid and the adult as an adult, can resolve any plausibility issues by the time the climactic encounter is reached, foreshadowing the course of events without making it seem so normal the spankee just shrugs and sees getting spanked as no bigger a deal than a hangnail.

Or in other words, getting spanked has to be unusual enough for the spankee to start the story assuming of course it can't happen, and even once he begins doubting that premise, to have his confidence in his immunity only gradually eroded over time rather than collapsing all at once. At the same time, spanking has to be normal enough for the spanker to commonly spank her own kids, to establish that she does in fact spank, and once the 18 year old gets spanked, that it seems obviously inevitable from the beginning.

To boil it down even further, the premises of that kind of story have to be, at least in the mind of the eventual spankee:
1. Kids commonly get spanked as discipline.
2. Adolescents get spanked too.
3. 18 year olds are adults and so get to do as they please, and are certainly too old to spank.
4. People don't spank kids that aren't their own even when living under their own roof.

And the trick is to reinforce premises 1 and 2, while eroding premises 3 and 4. Eventually the climax arrives where the adult explains to the 18 year old that he's tragically mistaken about those last two premises - in fact, makes it unmistakably plain that he's disastrously mistaken, and settles the issue with a real-world, practical demonstration in a painful and thoroughly embarrassing manner. Earlier in the story the adult should demonstrate how she handles misbehaving adolescent boys living in her house; events snowball, the 18 year old begins to begin worry that she sees him we just another misbehaving adolescent boy, then at the climax he messes up one too many times, his fears are proven disastrously true, and she demonstrates his adolescent status in an unmistakable fashion. Gradual evolution of the situation provides plausibility, without undermining the shock and awe.