Q is for Quirt

Having a limited range of motives for a spanking, and a limited range of aftermaths, we spanko authors often look at the spanking itself, to see if new ideas can be explored in that area.

The first notion that might come to mind is to consider an implement that has not been featured in any of our prior tales.   Such as the quirt.

The quirt is a two thonged whip with a short handle and is about three feet long.   Historically it was used as a riding whip, but ranchers found that by tying the handle to some reigns, the extra length meant it could be used to control cattle - not by slapping them but by making loud cracks close to their ears.   And it was also used as a tool of discipline, for its lash could be aimed accurately to deliver a very sharp sting.

While contemplating punishments dished out in the old Wild West, you might come across the term "larruping" (which, counter-intuitively, has a secondary meaning of "exceptionally good").   A larruping would have been no fun for the victim.  Dad would have taken his trusty Colt 45 out of its holster, held it by the barrel, and walloped his offspring's backside with the flat side of the handle.   A harsh, unyielding implement that would have left extensive bruising.

A third variation on the old Wild West was a buggy whipping.    If a young lady broke curfew by an excessive amount, the usual and customary way of atoning for her indiscretion was a formal buggy whipping in front of the rest of the family.   The back board of a buggy would be dropped, to turn the cart into a whipping frame.  She would go face down across the back, wrists often tied to the top of a wheel exposed on either side of the carriage, skirt up, drawers down.   And then get her bottom striped thoroughly with the buggy whip.   A deterrence to all, and an end to her attempts to share her charms too freely.

Then there is the multi-thonged knout, favorite of the Cossacks, the rhino-hide sjambok inflicting great havoc in South Africa - and so on, around the world, each region having its own variation of implement designed to administer great pain to the nether regions of the naughty.

Well, unless you are writing a full length novel, and have ample room for long and detailed descriptions, you might want to give a miss to the more exotic instruments of spanking.  You have to assume that your average reader has no idea what, say, a quirt is.   Having your disciplinarian simply pick one up, and lay into the penitent's backside with it, has gained nothing over using a cane, but complicated matters unduly.   So, in order to put the scene into proper context, you have to describe in some detail what a quirt is, how it is used, and what the likely outcome is.   Now that might be of great interest in some non-fiction piece you are writing:  but in a spanking romp, I think we should avoid having to go into lecture mode, simply to ensure that the reader knows what is going on.    It is my own experience that when I am reading fiction, the more time an author has to spend on describing the spanking implement, the more impatient I get with him or her.

I rather fancy that the method of inducing a sting to a rump is of far less importance than the why it is was being imparted, and what the effects and after-effects were.   

P is for POV

The very first decision of every author of every genre of fiction is to decide from whose Point of View (POV) the story will be told.

By far, the two most popular POVs are first person, singular ("I picked up the cane and gave it a test swish") and third person, usually singular ("She picked up the cane and gave it a test swish.").    Occasionally I have come across a work in second person singular ("You picked up the cane to give it a test swish.") but, for me, that comes across a bit awkward.   The narrator is telling us what happened by addressing some third party, or is trying to put us into the tale ourselves.   Either way, we the reader may feel disconnected from the action.

First person plural would make little sense, unless we were writing as Queen Victoria over some household incident ("We were not amused at the news from Prussia, so we ordered a cane to be brought to us so that we could give it a test swish.")    Possible, I suppose, but so unlikely a scenario that it is one that I have yet to come across.   Third person plural happens all the time, but is very temporary before we get back to third person singular ("They all shivered at the swish the cane made.")  And second person plural is hard to distinguish from second person singular "You all picked up your canes to give them a swish.")   Drop the "all" and make cane singular and the sentence is identical to second person singular - unless you happen to be writing in Spanish, Texan or some other argot that has a distinct term for plural "you".

Rarely, very rarely, the POV is from some inanimate object that is central to the story,   An account, say, as seen by a paddle used in some school over a period of several years.   This tactic does allow the writer to explore the moment of impact from a fresh angle:  but, I think, the author has paid a very high price for that single moment of novelty.   Furthermore, it has cropped up enough times to make it difficult for you to bring a fresh angle to this particular gimmick.

So - in all normal circumstances, the choice is between "I did it." and "He did it." from the perspective of a human being taking part in the action,   The advantage of "I did it" is that, as the writer, I can sidetrack off all over the place to explain nuances of the plot:  such sidetracks can read awkwardly when simply telling the reader what actually happened.    The advantage of "He did it" is that you can describe scenes not observed by the I in "I did it."   If you are in first person, and your characters go off and do stuff you never saw, it might be difficult for you to describe those activities.

One of the really neat techniques available to the spanking author is that, done properly, you can change the POV from time to time to advance the tale from the perspective of different participants.   A very mundane piece ("Abuse of Power" in the Free Stories section) started as routine pot boiler of the class "Schoolgirl caught smoking gets the paddle".   By switching the POV between the three main protagonists, the tale was lifted from its somewhat dire fate into a tale rated as OK - which is about all you can hope for when using a plot that hackneyed..

But it does have to be done properly.   The different sections should be separated by any filigree you use to show a change in time, place or - in this case - a POV.    (A filigree:  something like ---oo0oo--- stuck in the middle of the page as a section breaker.    If you don't use one, you risk confusing the reader about what is going on if the scene completely changes without warning).

The second thing is to put some very clear verbal clues that the switch has happened.   The trap of having speakers name the listener as a device to tell the reader who is talking to whom has been discussed before.   But a similar device on the switch of POV is fair game.

An example:   I took the cane, gave it a practice swish and put it down on Jack's desk.

 ---oo0oo---   

 I picked up the cane that Jane had placed on my desk, and used thumb and forefinger to feel how sharp and mean it was.

The text prior to that  ---oo0oo--- was from Jane's POV, and that after it was from Jack's.   The switch in POV has been made, and the reader should have accepted the change without pausing in their mad-cap chase to get to the end of your epic.

Finally, a quick segue - in the preceding piece I used the term "pot boiler".   It originally meant a work so good, people got totally enraptured in it, allowing untended pots to boil over.   Over time, the meaning has deteriorated so that today, it is used to describe a mediocre work churned out purely to make some quick cash.    A few years ago, calling 50 Shades a potboiler would have been seen as high praise, but, in the main, nowadays the identical term would be quite derogatory.    (Just another gem from my stockpile of useless trivia).

O is for Older

In my view, ageism is rampant in spanking fiction.   Cheerleaders and girls dubbed as tomboys regularly are subjected to fictional whackings of a long and sometimes excessively severe nature.   It always seems to be a young housewife who abuses a credit card or bends the family vehicle in order to be subjected to domestic discipline that may, or may not, be followed by more erotic sorts of romp around the bedroom.

I have yet to come across a work in which a granny gets her backside whacked with any degree of vigor.   Full disclosure - if I did, I would probably tip toe past it on the other side of the street while pretending to be fascinated by roof tops and distant clouds.   For I admit it - when I write fiction imagining the act taking place on a firm, young pair of buttocks is far easier on the mind and on the typing fingers than if the bottom was old, flabby and - how shall one say? - a bit past its prime.

But in real life?   That is very different.   I have not spanked a schoolgirl since I was a schoolboy - and if one presented herself to me today to get a walloping, I would probably be so embarrassed by the whole thing as to make a right royal mess of it all.    Moreover, the number of more mature backsides that have felt a swat or so from me - in jest, flirt or outright spankings - are suitably numerous.    In real life, all bottoms (regardless of the age of their owners) are made for an occasional, yet thorough, working over of a somewhat disciplinary nature.  There are ladies who are free from the threat of a slippering - but not because of age, but because of some other factor.

In real life spankos are not ageist.   It is in fiction that almost all authors and almost all readers get more out of some nubile teenager having her bottom thrashed than any description of a rotund matron receiving the same treatment.

There are exceptions.   Some of your fellow readers of this blog really do like to see older ladies get their comeuppance, and the bigger and more wobbly the hindquarters, the greater the fun.   But from the number of you who, like me, enjoy the firm white flesh that is the inherent right of the young, the conclusion must be that ageism is rampant in our way when it comes to fiction

But I think that may be part and parcel of spanking fiction.   Spanking fiction is ofter far, far darker than anything we would condone or endure in real life, taking place in situations and settings that would never really happen and with implements that can only result in unbridled abuse.   In a genre where the spankings themselves are distorted from reality, it should be no surprise that the same sort of distortion also happens to the recipient.   I would wage a sizable bet that very, very few of us experience real life spankings of young girls:  but just about all of us have no problem in reading about it happening in a work of fiction.

We can cope with totally unreal spanking situations:  it should be no surprise that the ideal spankee is at the younger and firmer end of the scale.

N is for New Free Tale

I have added a new tale to the Free Stories section.   Not only that, it comes with a competition.

Those readers who have lasted throughout the last year of posts from me will have had dozens of nuggets of wisdom about how to craft good spanking fiction.

For the competition, you have to spot ALL the rules that I broke while composing this story.   If you do get to make out a full list, then you can enter it to win a near totally worthless prize.   Partial lists, and those that contain rules that were not broken, will be eliminated from the drawing.

May the best nit-picker win!

M is for Metaphors

All authors use metaphor, and its twin simile, to enrich the reading experience.   We spanko authors use it, and its partners-in-crime allusion and euphemism to try to describe the same old scene, the same old consequences and the same old reactions in ways that are fresh, and stimulating, to our readers.   Also, if you only use factual - and thereby clinical - descriptions all the time, your readership audience is surely going to dwindle.

So instead of describing in detail each action that tells the reader how he reacted angrily to the news, you might use the metaphor "he flew off the handle.".   But don't.  Most metaphors that have become part of everyday speech are so hackneyed that they should only be used in everyday speech, and not your next masterpiece of spanking docudrama.

The mark of a competent wordsmith is an ability to coin new phrases - particularly when it comes to metaphors, similes and their kin.   If your first thought at the description of her spanked bottom was "her butt was as red as a beet" - well, no, that is the way a word hack would go about it.   You need to come up with something like "as scarlet at a Maiden Aunt's blush" or "as red as sun dried tomatoes sizzling in olive oil in a fry pan."    The choice does not have to be spectacular - just fresh.

You can get away with using well worn phrases if you mix them up in an original manner:  "He plowed into her butt like a rottweiler going at a fresh steak."    OK - not prize winning, but putting two old ones together in this way gives the illusion of crafting something new.   And in writing, as in all other things, perception is 99% of the game.

There is one group of wordsmiths who spend all their lives searching for new ways to say old things.   They are called "poets" and if you have not tried it recently, do read some of their works to pick up inspiration.   If Ronald Reagan could borrow "and touched the face of God" from an aviator's poem to use in an eulogy, then it is fair game for you to be inspired enough by "The fog comes on little cat feet" to pen "she entered his study as light footed as a kitten stealing through a meadow."  I am not suggesting that you plagiarize - but you should see how others do it, and try to copy their techniques (and not their words).

And another technique in your armory is to start off with some old hackneyed cliche and do a rewrite to change it into a factual description.    "He was a bull in a china shop when dealing with her excuses." (Bad)    "When she made any excuse, he would roar with rage and stamp around his desk as he yelled rebuttals, threats and arguments until her eyes filled with tears and her shoulders slumped."  (Better - but needs another rewrite:  an exercise I shall set as your homework for today).

Pithy turns of phrase should be one of your standard targets.   But there is a caveat (there always is with my posts).   Take care you don't overdo it.   You can end up with mixed metaphors that give a hopelessly wrong impression of what is going on:  "He smelt a rat and decided to nip it in the bud" is one famed example.   "He saw it was only a storm in a tea cup so decided to pour oil on troubled waters".   You could get away with those if you were writing a farce, but in serious spankerotica, you should avoid them as much as you can.

L is for Limitations, Responsibilities and Expectations

There is a moment when the flirtation is not enough, and it is time to move on to more satisfactory ways of enjoying each others company.

With a "vanilla" relationship, the time tested method works reasonably well, most of the time.   One partner makes some sort of move that suggests and upping of the ante, and is encouraged or discouraged by the other partner's response.

But for spankos it is not that simple.    The stronger the spanko urge, the less simple it gets.

Which leads us to "The Chat".  A time when all defenses are lowered, in order that a meeting of minds takes place, to avoid unexpected and extremely embarrassing situations farther down the road.

I suspect the BDSM community have it slightly easier than us spankos, for their initial flirtations will have been heavily flavored with dominant and submissive themes.   Should they get to The Chat stage, personal foibles may be so clear as to let them sit down with drafted contracts of behavior already written, as the basis for detailed negotiation.

The first problem we spankos have is that really do not know if our intended new close friend is one of us, or not.   The extremely light pats that can happen during light flirtation may be seen as nothing more than harmless "slap-and-tickle" by those of the vanilla persuasion, and not as an invitation to unleash some hard wallops to an backside quivering in suppressed anticipation.

Which is why The Chat for us often starts by some variation of the simple question "Are you into spanking?"   A negative reply is as eagerly accepted as a positive one by the person asking - on the grounds that such a major disappointment should not ruin what might otherwise prove to be some very enjoyable bedroom romps.   Even to the extent, on hearing a no, to saying "Thank heavens for that - but I really needed to get that one out of the way."   Followed by some lame alibi as to why, if pressed for more information.

But a positive answer means that we are now into a full-blown Limitations, Responsibilities and Expectations negotiation.   Those three can be talked about in any order, but the sequence given indicates the relative importance of each.

The most important is Limitations, for we really, really must establish what is off-limits.  We each hope that the two off limit boundaries are an identical match.   If one party hopes to be able to do some particular act, and the other vetoes it - the disconnect could be fatal to the relationship.   Not necessarily, but it is in the back of our minds.  And two people with identical limits may convince themselves that they are a pair of soul mates.

When it comes to limitations, it is quite common in spanko relationships (less so in BDSM ones I am told) that bodily fluids should be safely kept in the body.   It is extremely rare for blood to be drawn as a result of a safe, sane and consensual spanking - so reinforcing that limit has a side effect of iterating the SSC nature of the budding relationship.

Responsibilities part of The Chat revolve around the active part of spankings themselves - such as whether rules need to be broken prior to a whacking, and if so, what those rules are.   It attempts to answer the questions "When will spankings take place?"   And it is often the case that it is entirely up to the spanker, whether as part of foreplay or part of role-play.

Expectations is the tricky part - for, in essence, it is an attempt to answer "Why do we actually want spankings take place?" :  moreover, how hard should they be and for how long should they last.   Even if this part is skipped over (for a Chat on expectations is entirely optional), it would still be a good idea to establish if any safe words are to come into play.   Perhaps even the "Green, Yellow, Red" conditional safe words to indicate how enjoyable (or not) the buttocks are feeling towards the current onslaught.  

The Chat can be a light-hearted session of banter, or a serious detailed setting out of precisely who does what to whom with which.   Either way, it should always be part and parcel of engaging in activities with an as yet unknown partner.    For it is the only recognized way of ensuring that everything that happens afterwards is safe, sane and consensual.

K is for Kindle Unlimited

If you self publish your works as e-books, then making it available to the public at large is relatively simple.   Download it on or all of many publisher's sites, push the "I agree" button to their terms and conditions, and away it goes.    (Print is slightly more complicated - we shall talk about that anon).

But even with the simplicity of e-publishing, you do have to make tough decisions.   The price you set could possibly kill potential sales if it is set too high, or lose you a lot of missed income if set too low.   And you can never be sure what level is too high, and what is too low.

A further consideration is that if you give Kindle an exclusive contract for each work, you get to keep 70% of the sales income from that source - which is very nice.    For six months, my books were published with every e-book publisher out there.   But virtually all of my sales were through Amazon, and it became a no-brainer to sign up with Kindle to virtually double my income.

Then along came Kindle Unlimited.   This marketing ploy gives the reader unlimited access to everything available in the store, for one flat monthly fee.    If a KU customer reads more that 10% of one of your works. you get a flat fee regardless of your published price.   (The 10% threshold is pretty low - we typically put that amount out as a free preview for all potential customers).

The price you set for a book is irrelevant for a KU customer.   The customer is prepaid and you will get the identical amount per sale, come what may.

So the normal economic rule is reversed.   For a cash customer, the higher the price, the greater the disincentive to buy.   For a KU customer, the higher the price (and therefore the higher the assumed value of the transaction) the greater the incentive to download it.   If someone has paid a fee to get to all books, the the higher the price of those books, the more valuable the purchase of the KU membership will seem to be.

So - for a while - I increased the price of my two slowest selling books from $2.99 each to $15 each - and as a result, they did indeed start to be picked up by KU readers.    Cash sales for them went to zero, but I rationalized that that was OK on the grounds that they were not very big sellers to start off with.

Then came an epiphany - I have not set out my stall to be a niche author writing exclusively for the KU market.   So last month I reduced their prices back to $2.99 each, in line with all my other works.   The KU cash flow has dropped significantly, but cash sales have started again.   And that is OK - I really do want my books to be available to everyone, and not only to those who have a "free" pass to everything that catches their eye.

J is for Just in Time

The thing about motivation is that those self help books are really only any use for putting royalties into the pocket of the author.    Hmm ... Since I actually possess the ultimate secret of self motivation, perhaps I could write a world best seller motivational text and make me richer than my more realistic speculations.

Except that big secret does not seem to be a money winner = at least not to my way of thinking.

What is the secret?    Well, suppose you have promised your editor a final working draft by next Friday.   Now, honestly, which is the first day you will do any real work on it?   Yeah - me too.    Thursday evening when there is really not enough time left to get it finished properly.

The urgency of having to hit a deadline - or face really unpleasant consequences - has a two-fold effect.   First, the distaste at having to actually sit down and get some work done is finally pushed to one side and the fingers fly across the key board like demented little honey bees let loose in the ecstasy of a clover patch grown wild.

And second - even more important - the creative juices bring ideas teeming into play which (this is very important) would never have occurred to you without the pressure of a deadline looming like a guillotine over your future career.    I am truly amazed at some of the plot twists that came my way because my demented muse had left me no time to consider where they were going to take me.   A sort of "stream of consciousness"  writing style, but one, due to avoiding an impending disaster, causes the stream to flow in a coherent and logical manner.

Procrastination comes easy to all of us.    Indeed, I would have been accepted as a member of the Procrastinator's Society, but unfortunately my application arrived just before the final, final dead-line ran out.  Life can be cruel, at times.

I have an on-line acquaintance who has to produce work of an educational content from time to time - and, oh boy, does she cut it fine every time.   Promises of rewards if written earlier?  Hah! - not a chance.    Threats of dire consequences if not written ahead of time?   As she put it, "Don't make me laugh so hard, my ribs cannot take it."   

But the night before the deadline looms?   Easy peasy - no problem in whipping out a couple of thousand words that would satisfy the most pedantic of professors.

So - if you want to write really great spanking fiction, make an irrevocable commitment to deliver it by no later than a set time on a set date.   And then sit back and wait.

(I really do not see how all of this can be turned into a full length book on self motivation.   If you can spot a way, and you write such a tome - that is perfectly OK provided a small portion of your loot is shared with your inspirational source.)

p.s. On my schedule for the AtoZ challenge, I need to publish each piece at 8 a.m. (local) each day of the challenge.   Guess what time it is now, as I finish writing this post.   Gosh - you are clever.

I is for Interview

A problem for all writers is that we need to tell the readers some background material - and we often attempt to do so by subtle reveal, rather than a lengthy, detailed and possibly off-putting explanation of why our characters are acting in the way they are.   If we don't want to have great chunks of explanatory text, then the only real technique is to break it all down into manageable bits.    Not giving the reader any idea of what going on is an alternative, but not one that seems to have any merit.

A trap I think we discussed in a previous post is to put such information into statements made by one or more of  the characters in our tale.   The first problem with this, is that we have one person tell another something that the listener already knows:  "Hello Mister Brown, famed harpsichordist".  And the second is that unless we are careful, they say to each other words that would never get spoken in real life.   An extreme bad example goes along the lines of "Hello my beloved wife of fifteen years of often tumultuous marriage who was recently unexpectedly promoted to office manager at the chagrin of her bitter rival - how are you on this morning, one on which a crucial meeting is planned to take place?"   This is an example of an excessive use of a variation of the too much information syndrome.

So now where do we go?    Having one character "interview" another character might be worthy of your consideration.

Consider:

"Here, I've made you some tea."   He handed her a small tray holding a delicate china cup and saucer, the cup almost overflowing with her favorite Earl Grey.   She sat up in bed to take the proffered cup,  She gave a grimace in the general direction of the sunrise taking outside their bedroom.

"What's wrong, petal?   You look out of sorts."

"I have a meeting this morning.    A planning meeting.   They can be very demanding."   She pulled the bed covers up around her bare shoulders and took a tentative sip at the hot fluid.

"You will have lots of meetings now you are in management.   You've never had a problem with them before you got promoted."   He brushed the fringe from across her forehead so that he could look into her deep blue eyes, almost as if to work out what was wrong simply by staring into them.

"Janet will be there.   She expected to get my job.   She is out to make trouble for me.   Nothing is more certain than that."

"Janet?   I never thought she was cut out to be management.    Is she off her rocker?"

 "Actually, she was favorite to get it.   I was the dark horse.   She was not happy that it was me, of all people."

"She has never liked you, as she?"

 "Not since the petty cash incident.   And that really was not my fault..."

"So - what are you going to do?"

"I shall have my wooden hairbrush in my tote."

"?"   Not so much a question as one eyebrow raised in a quizzical way.

"If I sink her without trace during the meeting, afterwards, in private, I will put her in her place once and for all, for all time.  And if it goes bad for me ..."

 "If?"

"Then vengeance will be wreaked in a way she will never forget."

"You sure are still my feisty hellion..."    He smiled.

 "And I shall always be."   She put the empty cup and saucer on the bedside table.   "And now a shower and then my sharpest business suit.   I've got a battle to fight..."   She swung her long shapely legs out of the bed and set off towards the bathroom.

Now that passage is not presented as a masterpiece of literary excellence, but simply as a case study in how to get your reader set up without a lecture of one sort or another.   All relevant facts were revealed, without once going into anything like lecture mode.

Show rather than tell is the soundest advice that any spanko writer can be given, and dialog is one form of show.   When that dialog is set out as an interrogation, or, more politely, an interview, we can show our reader exactly where our tale is likely to go.   All quite painlessly - and that cannot be a bad thing.

But of course - there is a caveat.   Don't start every tale you write using this technique, or it will become hackneyed from over use.   (I shall talk about the slow reveal, and its usefulness, in some other post).

H is for Heaven Sent Opportunities

We spanko authors have a really hard time coming up with fresh ideas - particularly for the first stage of a story: the "there is going to be a spanking" stage.    There may be thousands and thousands of different combinations that make up the bits and pieces of the spanking itself, but why it is happening has a very finite list of reasons.

So when Heaven sends you a nugget, grab it with both hands and see what hidden treasure it may contain.

For example, there was a short item some years ago in the English newspaper "The Sunday Telegraph" in which it was stated that a trainee at a Royal Navy institution had had her bottom caned for some infraction.   It triggered me to do some research into the reality of corporal punishment in the British military over the years, and several tales ensued.   "Over a Breach of Discipline" is a fictional rendition of what is now thought to be a real life event:  the details all make sense within the traditions of the Royal Navy and the events of World War 2.  And all from a paragraph in a newspaper.


If you chat on-line or in real life with members of the spanking community, you sometimes get a complete tale handed to you on a plate.    A young lady recounted to me the exact events of a school paddling she had endured, and "Abuse of Power" virtually wrote itself.   She regretted having worn jeans instead of a skirt - because in the bathroom afterwards her bottom was too sore to pull her jeans down: and therefore she had no cold water to lessen the sting.   I would never, left to my own musings, dreamed up that sort of detail.   And it was the people involved that turned what could have been a bland "teenager caught smoking" episode into something I think has a life of its own.

I should observe that the things you get told, particularly on line, should be taken with a huge grain of salt.   I once wrote a story about the Maid of Honor at a wedding getting a vigorous whacking after her mother spotted that she was dancing at the reception without wearing any underwear.   The nagging doubt that I was having my leg pulled, resulted in a missive so dire that you are very unlikely to get a chance to read it.    (No - honestly - it really is dire and has little hope of improvement from doing some more re-writes).

And then there are straight forward challenges:   a request to write a spanking story involving a genie led to "Djinn and Flick" - not really what the challenger was hoping for, because I made the Djinn conform to ancient tradition, and not the modern one of a jolly granter of three wishes.  Still, I liked it, and that is over half the battle in finishing a tale that works.

Over on LSF, we were once asked to try to create a spanking tale by looking at a picture of a lime green rowing boat, at anchor, on a small lake.    That led me into combining science fiction with near farce:  a combination really way out of left field.   Which only goes to show where you might end up if you never ignore one of those Heaven Sent Opportunities when they come your way.