How essential is first hand experience?

How essential do you think it is to writing a story for you have had first hand experience of the spankings you describe?

This can be either having received or administered one, or even witnessed one. Many famous mainstream authors tend to weave their novels around their personal experiences, even though they will embellish them for effect. Also many well published authors will often write one novel that is semi-autobiographical.

All I can say is that I have written many stories that are F/f. Since I'm not a woman I have no first hand experience of F/f spankings.

As for using life experiences, you write what you know. It's hard to write a story if you don't know anything about the characters or setting. For example, I don't write stories set in Victorian settings - but I do write stories set in faux Victorian settings where anyone with a bit of power can cane a maid and magistrates sentence countless women to bare bottom canings. I just don't know enough about the real Victorian Era to write a realistic story set there.

I hear what you are saying Goodgulf and I agree.

What I am getting at is that I have been on the receiving end of sound paddlings and canings and so know how they feel. I have also spanked my wife and long ago when I was single a few girlfriends also. Therefore I can draw on those experiences when I write or read spanking stories. Also whilst working outside of Europe I have heard credible stories from friends who were spanked at a time when CP was banned or discouraged in Europe.

As an example, do you believe someone who has never received 10 hard paddle swats on the bare can authentically describe the experience in print?

I absolutely think that is is possible.
I was spanked with a cane or stick a couple of times when at school. That is many, many years ago. The memories of the pain is long gone and there is no way I could conjure it up again. What lives with me is the feeling of shame and humiliation.

Anyone with a sound imagination should be able to dream up those feelings and commit them to text. That, coupled with the ability to create believable characters and a compelling storyline have the recipe for a great read.

Almost all my stories were written long before I'd had any experience. I relied on descriptions in other people's writing and my own imagination. Writing stories was the only outlet I had for TTWD!

Oddly, when I have been able to have spankings, I've found the compulsion to write isn't there anymore; I wish it were! But when I look back at the descriptions of how it felt compared to what I now know from personal experience, I find I wasn't too far off the mark, although the sting seems to last longer in fiction. Wishful thinking...

Fiction! Where the sting lasts longer!

It's a great advert for the Library, isn't it?

I realise 50 Shades is not exactly a spanking story, but its author had as far as she admits, zero realtime experience as either Dom or sub, so i would say first hand experience is not essential, and of course if 'facts' are not correct one has the answer of "but it is fiction".

Personally, I think it's pretty important for the types of stories I enjoy. However, it seems I'm in a minority when it comes to this view......however, that may also explain why I have such a hard time finding a story I really like among so many stories

Rosie: I think your 50 Shades example speaks for itself. I know of very few (if any) real life devotees of BDSM/DD/ D/s, etc. who have any positive regard for the series. I read a few excerpts and found the writing abysmal, and the rendering of a D/s relationship, laughable.

I will say that a person's experience need not be extensive nor even specific, but some experience that translates into revelations that ring true to someone who actually does this stuff, does seem to be, if not necessary, then at least very helpful.

But other things can work as well. For example, Christopher Priest never performed a magic trick in his life.........BUT, he did a ton of research on magic and magicians and felt a strong link to their technique of misdirection from his own experience with literary misdirection. So when he wrote "The Prestige" he had the personal understanding of a key element of magic (misdirection) and a lot of knowledge of the history of magic..... even though he did not personally ever learn or perform a trick.

From what I've read (admittedly mere excerpts) of Fifty Shades of Gray, and critical commentary on the novel, it's primarily aimed at people who are just as ignorant of the reality of a D/s relationship as its author clearly is. That made it wildly popular with 'vanilla' readers, especially women, who somehow believed that they were being given actual insights into how a dominant male interacts with a submissive female.

So if "it is fiction," does that really justify a novelist writing that six caning licks, even presumably solid ones, across a bare bottom constitutes a severe punishment to someone in a D/s relationship? I don't believe that's necessarily any justification for such a misrepresentation...

--C.K.

But six licks with a cane for someone not in a D/S relationship is pretty severe.
Package that with fear, anticipation,shame, embarrassment etc and you can have a pretty intense story.