FWIW: my least favorite spanking theme

There are a some noticeable "niche markets" here--that is people who gravitate to one sort of fantasy or another. I'd say schoolgirl CP, especially the English public school variety, is a big one. Also childhood domestic discipline is very big. That is followed by adult DD I would think.

Now I'm going to do something I rarely do, and that is the "shameless plug" for two stories that are none of the above. I do this for two reasons. 1) people asked me to write more of these, so I did; 2) due to the volume of submissions or whatever they both vanished from the front page within hours. So here they are and if this is your thing, you might be interested.

"Kingsbridge 1337"-- slice of life description of what judicial punishment might have looked like in the 14th century;

"Masters Thesis"---an F/M tale about a curious grad student who meets up with a former teacher.

I believe you mean
http://www.nopaddle.com/
which looks to be a real, anti-spanker website.

Goodgulf

I have my "least favorites" within the spanking genre, but I think its a matter of personal taste. Stories about parents or older siblings spanking their charges (with a few exceptions) do nothing for me. Stories that involve life-destroying abuse also leave me cold. I have no problem with other people liking these subgenres, but they're just not for me.

Now, to throw in my $0.02 on the realism discussion...

If you're writing a "serious" story, realism is a top concern. Suspension of disbelief is a fickle thing, and one wrong move on the author's part can bring it all crashing down, leaving the reader unable to take the story seriously. But when it comes to this particular genre, I would ask; why would you ever want to take a spanking story seriously?

For me, ridiculousness is part of the point. My favorite spanking stories are the ones that know they are ridiculous, laugh at themselves, and encourage the reader to laugh along with them. If you know that your audience is going to go into the story knowing from the start that its just a fantasy of yours, why not play that for all its worth? If the situation that you want to write about is unlikely, call it out on that unlikelihood. Make the absurdity part of the appeal.

Its been said that the emotions of fear and sexual arousal are closely linked. Maybe I'm an exception, but I find this to be more true of humor than of fear.

A VERY good point. Although I'd been striving for realism for most of my stories (with greater or lesser degrees of success), of late I'm much more prone to take the approach advocated by SNM.

I don't think I'm a fan of school punishments in stories, or of the childish, immature woman who gets a huge spanking for making a mistake like forgetting her raincoat. But then, I haven't read a huge variety of spanking authors yet. I've read a bunch from a few favored authors and a scattering of stories written by others. And one school story I read was very sweet, to me. A schoolgirl got accused of cheating on a test, which she didn't. She was directed to her punishment by a very nice, warm type of lady, and got a brief caning. The next day, her innocence was proven. She had cried herself to sleep. The headmaster apologized, cuddled and comforted her till she fell asleep.
Ahhhhhhh *warm fuzzy sighs*

I agree with this. I don't personally care much for stories with supposedly adult spankee who has the maturity of a bratty five year old, or who is so flighty as to be incapable of any responsibility.

Here's a theme I do like, which actually less common than you might think: stories about discipline, where the spankee (reluctantly) accepts the necessity for their punishment. Not because they are eager for it, nor because it is therapeutic, nor because they feel excessive guilt (though they may feel remorse). Rather, because she believes it's the right thing to do. The spankee fully supports the disciplinary regime, and so with resignation gracefully submits to her own punishment when it becomes necessary. (An example is Susan Thomas's "When in Rome".)

I think the reason the school story is interesting is that it is all about power balances within an enclosed community where the rules and relationships are prescribed rigidly and the participants can't escape. This applies whether it is a cp story or otherwise.

School stories are popular with children because it's easy for them to imagine themselves in the place of the participants, perhaps wishing their own school was like the one they are reading about or experiencing pleasure that the dreadful things which are happening are safe in the world of fiction.

Exactly the same reasoning applies to our appreciation of the cp school story, because we do recall our own school days so that we can overlay the fiction on that base, and the element of being trapped in a fixed community requires less imagination in a school setting than in a desert island/monastery/prison/space station which fewer of us have experienced.

Any spanking story in which blood is drawn immediately loses my interest.

ridiculously over-the-top spankings for trivial offenses. I once read one where some high school aged girl was spanked then hairbrush spanked then paddled then birched for a single swear word. one. It was so ridiculous but the tone was serious. Bah!

Have to agree, otk and Rachel.
I read one F/F story where, as a punishment for keeping a doctor's diagnosis secret and not going to the doctor, a woman was spanked with a number of implements, for several minutes per implement. Some people might say its a serious enough offence, but. . .I don't know, it made me pretty mad.