Making scenes

Stories without any scene setting abound among spanking authors:  we are drilled into the standard plot (there is going to be a spanking, there is a spanking, there was a spanking) that using up valuable white space with petty descriptions of where it all happened seems, to many of us, to have a very low return on investment.

So we get sloppy:  she is caught smoking, gets sent to the headmistress's office, has her backside caned, and rues the sad adventure.   There is no need to spend time and effort describing what a school looks like, what a musty dank corridor leading to the office looks like, or what impact the oak panels have in casting a solemn countenance to the tragic events.

And - full disclosure - I have done the same.   Admittedly, in the torrid little pot boiler "Atonement", the leaving out a scene setting paragraph was one of the deliberate mistakes you were supposed to spot.   But in other would-be "masterpieces", the omission was just careless idleness.

Now, you do not need a huge wad of material to set up a scene,   Tolkien spent over a whole page describing a hole in the ground - an exceptional whole in the ground mind - but some of our tales take less than a whole page in total.   We need to cut our dress according to our cloth, to coin a phrase, for it would be a tad peculiar to spend the whole narrative in setting up a scene and not going anywhere with it..

A scene setter needs to give the reader enough background material for the rest of the tale to have substance.   And we need not go to lengths.   For instance, suppose you want to describe a beating in the manner of the way one might be dished out in the  Royal Navy - back in the days of George III.   You don't have to overdo it.

Eight days out of Portsmouth, HMS Banshee, a 120-gun ship of the line, was in full sail as she ploughed South through light swell en-route to join the sixth flotilla in the Indian Ocean.   Her sails were a brilliant white in the morning sun, and her pennants told the world at large that she carried a Commodore as officer in command.   Two frigates and one supply ship maintained station to her rear.

And that is quite enough to show that the action is aboard a military war ship, far out at sea, on a bright sunny morning.   Even so, some rather dreary research was necessary to avoid making a huge error in the set up. 

But it does not take many words to set out the store of what is to follow.   If you are working on a school girl gets the cane for smoking tale, I really think it behooves a few opening lines to lay out the red brick stones of your old all-female academy, shiny from a light rain shower.   And those oak panels in the Headmistress's study are surely worthy of a mention - they have been there for years and years waiting for you to acknowledge how solemn they make the scene.   But the best thing, your readers will be more comfy in understanding where your narrative takes them.

Warming up the bottom

Mainly from the influence of spanking videos, and a long established practice among consenting adults, the "warm up" is a standard part of the spanking scene.

And so it should.   When two consenting adults decide to liven up their bedroom romp with a slap or two to the rump, a full blooded whack with a riding crop - as the opening slap - might not lead to the marital bliss initially hoped for.   A set of light slaps inures the buttocks from later harder smacks, and one cane move slowly up the scale, at all times keeping on the "right" side of the partner's pain threshold.   Erotic spankings never really hurt, even if the final few swipes would bring a nod of acknowledgement from a Royal Navy bosun of years gone by.

On the other hand, if some wrong doer is being punished, warming up goes completely against the intent of physical discipline.   The aim is to instantly and significantly cross the victim's threshold of pain to try to ensure there is no repetition of the behavior that caused the punishment to be imposed in the first place.   The whacks do not have to be excessive - they simply have to be effective.   It is not absolutely necessary to use a fearsome weapon to impose the necessary degree of compliance - a bare hand may smack with enough force to make the resultant yelp of annoyed pain to be genuine, and to cause contriteness.

There are two complications you might need to deal with as a spanking fiction writer.

The first is the "willing victim" syndrome.    The young lady (or young man in today's egalitarian society) may want to enjoy all the sensations of being an unwilling victim, but only because they want to feel those emotions.   And in real life, as in fiction, the wielder of the cane walks a very tricky line of wanting each stroke to be just a tiny little over the pain threshold, but not too far as to invoke a safe word.   The beating has to be painful, but not overly so.    In this situation, it is not a genuine warm up that takes place, but as the victim's bottom gets sorer, the pain threshold moves, and the strokes need to become firmer so as to keep the same small degree ahead of the pain threshold.   In real life, it can take partners years to get this exactly right - but the characters in your story can rejoice in the fact you will always be right on the money for the intensity they need for every single stroke you describe.

The second complication comes from watching too many spanking videos.   There are some that depict real good hidings, but they usually last less than five minutes/    So for longer videos different dynamics apply.   Partly from the fact that a lot of discipline actresses in longer videos need warming up before the real action begins, and partly from the director's need to fill a lot of time with some sort of relevant action.   Either way, a penitent is likely get a hand spanking on her skirt, followed by a paddle or brush on the seat of the panties and finally a strap or cane across the bare backside.   For those who want pure discipline, when watching such a video, the fast forward button quickly gets the viewer to the action they want to watch.   However, when reading a tale, skimming forward is not so precise.

In sum - if you write about consensual spankings, a warm up sequence is virtually mandatory.   And when waxing lyrical about punishment spankings, a warm up should rarely if ever be part of the narrative.   

But as always, cater for you readers above any other consideration - if they happen to be avid advocates of warm up activity come what may, their need completely trumps any advice of mine of a more general nature.

The new Political Correctness

Nowhere in the United States is it illegal for a parent to spank his or her offspring.   It is illegal in all jurisdictions to hit a child hard enough for it to be considered abusive.   But reasonable force as a reasonable measure of discipline, while not officially condoned, is accepted as part of the American way of rearing children.

Now here's some curious statistics.   Nearly half of Americans polled on the topic state that they are opposed to spanking of kids.   If those Americans happen to be spankos, those polls give a nearly 75% vote against kids getting spanked.

Yet if you poll kids, and adults, with the question "Did you get spanked by either of your parents/Did you spank any of your kids/ in the last twelve months?" the "Yes" answer is north of 90%.

That is, over 40% of us tell one poll we are anti-spanking, and admit to another we are do spank as a form of child discipline.   Why do we go to such lengths to lie to pollsters?

In my opinion, it is the new "politically correct" attitude we are expected to display when this topic comes up.   The anti-spanking brigade, using the tactics employed by all single issue fanatics, have convinced just about all of us that society does not approve of spanking, and if you do approve, then society will hate you.

Don Cobble, former pastor of a church, found out how this works in practice.   He gave his son a belting, and two years later his conviction for child abuse was thrown out by the Massachusetts Supreme Court as being baseless.   But by then he had lost his job and most of his friends.   And is on record as saying some approached him secretively to say that they also walloped their kids, so, while sympathizing, felt it best if they kept apart for a while.

We are letting the anti-spanking fanatics dictate this debate on their terms.   We need to find some way of bringing truth back to bear on the matter.   Almost all single issue campaigns fail in the face of hard facts:  just look at how badly the "No Vaccinations for Kids" protesters are reeling as reality about this matter comes to light.

The sound of silence

Silence?   In a spanking tale?   You have got to be joking.   And I am - the title of a classic Simon and Garfunkel platter has only the tiniest inkling towards today's topic:  which is more accurately entitled "The Sound of Spanking."

When a hand, implement or toy makes a sudden halt by coming into contact with a bottom, one effect of the impact is that a sound is made.   And in describing the sound, we can often imply what is simultaneously happening to the flesh side of the equation of the strike.  There is a group of words known as onomatopoeic words - they try to describe the sound made.   "Whoosh" is such a word, trying to impersonate the sound of something moving quickly through the air so as to cause a rushing sound.

Some people opine that "spank" itself is one of these words - not a full onomatopoeia, but a subset known as "imitative" words.    The word is not completely unlike the sound made by an actual spank.   Which is why newbies to the spanking genre often have the "There is a spanking" part of the plot reduced to repeating the word 'spank' over and over.   Sometimes, to show how hard the spanking is, the word is capitalized and exclamation points added as in "SPANK!!  SPANK!!  SPANK!!"

Now, while you and I might smile at the ineptitude of such a way of describing a spanking, there is an important lesson to be learned.   We may be more verbose, we may add all manner of explanatory text, and we may use more evocative onomatopoeic words - but we are, in essence, doing the exact same thing.   We are trying to describe a spanking by the sounds that the spanks make.

For instance, words like "Swissssh", and "cra-aa-aack" can be used try to add the impression of a long swoosh of implement moving rapidly through the air prior to landing.   

Even so, you should note that this area is one of those where "more is less".    In the way that repeating the word "spank" over and over quickly loses any element of narrative tension, the same is true of any onomatopoeic word.   You get far more bang for the buck by saying something like "Six times the cane swished and cracked into her defenseless bottom" than by writing "Swish - Crack!!" six times.    Letting the reader fill in the gaps sometimes is far better - for the reader may add extra color that enhances the personal reading experience (and give you all the credit for setting up the scene).

And - something you might like to try as homework - it is a very interesting exercise to create your own onomatopoeic word to describe the sound heard during a spanking.   "Ssw-i-i-itt!" is one I once came up with when the disciplinarian was using a crop.   I am sure you can do much better.

Masechuesetts takes on "Considered Spankings"

Have a guess:  as a group, where will you find the largest number of people who hit children in an abusive way?    The chances are that you got it wrong.   The answer is Sweden.   Not among adults, mind you - for Sweden totally outlawed all forms of physical discipline some 20 years ago.    And they now have 500 times the number of cases - of older kids beating younger kids to pulp - than any neighboring country.   20 years of indiscipline has created a whole class of adolescents who have never been spanked once, and, for reasons yet to be determined, have no measurable degree of self discipline.

That is why we should give kudos to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which expressly ruled for the first time that parents may not be held criminally liable for the use of “reasonable” force in disciplining their children.   Very wisely they did not define "reasonable" nor its counterpart "abuse" relying on lower courts to recognize when unreasonable or abusive force had been used, by way of common sense and not a check list of indicators.

The latest research into spankings all point to the same conclusion.   A considered spanking - one that is sane and reasonably safe even if totally non-consensual - is the most effective tool for instilling the longest lasting change in improving behavior of young ones.

I would be very, very surprised if it turns out that in 20 years from now Massachusetts has the same wide-spread behavioral problems in its young adolescents that Sweden now faces.

A Sort of 'startle' on "So You Think You Can Dance"

In the reality TV show, "So You Think You Can Dance", presenter British-born Cat Deeley acts as a sort of link between contestants and judges.  She stands alongside them on stage, after the dance as ended, to sympathize if reviews are less than stellar, and give high fives for high praise.

This week, a group of 10 dancers put on a Broadway routine in which top hats and canes were used as props.   After the performance was over, the ten crowded around Cat to await to hear the judges comments on how well they had performed.

Cat took one of the canes, and asked the group "Now - who has been naughty?"

No actual mayhem followed, but most viewers would have been startled by Cat's open invitation of action well suited to our way of thinking.

Getting to the bottom

As authors of spanking fiction, sooner or later our tale has a spanking (or more) in it, and we have to decided what to do about the recipient's bottom.   Apart from whacking it, I mean.

Our reader might like to know something about the size, shape and quality of the bottom about to get beaten, and we, as the author, have to decide how much to detail to give.   And whether to be detail oriented, let fly with simile and/or metaphor or leave it pretty much to the reader's imagination.

Leaving it pretty much to the reader's imagination has a lot to be said for it.   All bottoms worthy of smacking consist of two roughly equally sized hemispheres and, since everyone has one, it is not as the position and shape of it will come as a complete surprise to the reader.   Furthermore, our readers will have their own preferences as to size, weight and wobbliness of the ideal bottom.   We authors will have an inclination to make the victim's butt be of a size, weight and wobbliness that meets our own ideal, and the more we add to the description, the more we are turning off one or more of our readers.  I have a preference to trim, neat and fairly lithe buttocks - and have incurred the wrath of readers who like bottoms to be big and quite gelatinous - so large that spanks cause fleshy tremors to roll back and forth.

Furthermore, if our POV is first person singular, the act of describing our "own" bottom in a detail oriented manner is not only awkward, it might seem a tad strained.   Starting a sentence "My bottom is ..." gives an impression that we have an unhealthy interest in the size and shape of it, and that impression will only be strengthened by the amount of detail we add to the narrative.

So, the problematic case is when our POV is third person singular and we have decided to spend some time giving our reader a glowing picture or a butt that will soon be glowing.  Back in Victorian times, underground publications that gratified the spankos back then just had to have detailed descriptions of bottoms, or fail to live up to expectations.    Here is a typical passage:

At last the bottom of the Bellasis was really exposed to view. It was a real perfect posterior. It swelled out grandly, properly, and gradually from a sloping small of the back that would have satisfied a Grecian sculptor. There were two lovely dimples just above the top and below a couple of sharply-defined creases, caused by the over powering swelling of the hemispheres, now that the thighs were tightly pressed together. They showed health by their hardness, and terror by the goose-flesh look they had.  It was a regal bum, yet tough withal. One that would take a fair amount of punishment.

Well, it is a description.

In my book "The Gleam in Her Eye" I trapped myself into one of those holes we spanking authors usually go to great lengths to avoid - I had clearly implied that the heroine had the most beautiful bottom known to mankind - and had set myself up to describe it immediately prior to its first spanking.   The most beautiful?    What had I done?   Using one of the standard "chicken out" techniques, this is what I wrote:

She flipped up her skirt;,placed both placed both arms ahead of her, thumbs and fingers linked, and her legs straight back to make a perfect arch over my knees.   She was not wearing any underwear or stockings.   Her bare pink butt lay at my hands, waiting for whatever I wanted to dish out on its perfect form.

It would take a great deal of time to detail the absolute perfection that ass represented.   Metaphors of strawberries and cream would abound.   Similes about Fourth of July fireworks would be included as well, no doubt.   For now, to say it was absolutely breath-taking, jaw-dropping, teeth-sinking, heart-stopping, eye-popping perfect will have to be sufficient.   I had far better ways of passing the next five minutes than composing odes to beauty.

And what is more incredible, I swear to you, it was as if that bottom was on bended knees pleading with me to give it some good, tenderizing, spanks.

Well, mine was somewhat light on description.   But mine was supposed to be a comedic piece, so I used my poetic license to fill the promise with having to have a butt that swelled out grandly and properly.  I guess my readers were grateful for that.

Back to the tread mill

My vacation was very restful and we wined and dined well, if not wisely.

Not much to report on the spanking front.   "Astronaut's wives club" ( a newish prime time soap on ABC) seems to think that in the 1960's, American alpha-males would greet females by giving them a hearty swat on the butt.    I am not sure that was the case, but the actresses in the series give suitably startled squeaks when they are on the receiving end of a "Hello - pleased to meet you" wallop,

The Women's World Cup soccer games posed interesting questions for those of us who like to watch such competitions without necessarily bringing an interest in all things spanking to the fore.   For example, was it a matter of fashion design or genetics that gave the French team more smackable bottoms than their collective rivals?    And what precisely did the Colombian players do to make them seem to be the players most in need of a salutatory trip across a knee or two?   Perhaps some amateur psychologist will one day unravel those and similar questions that come to mind when we watch sports events.

Anyway, normal service is now resumed.    And you have been given fair warning that that is the case ...

Vacation Break

I shall be out of town for the next week, taking a break from work and, alas, from blogging.

My next post will be on Monday, July 13th and I hope to have a stack of new topics to intrigue and entertain you.

If you are in the USA, have a wonderful July 4th.   And if not, I do hope you can find some good excuse to have a family gathering in order to drink beer, have a barbecue and set off some fireworks.    (These activities do make a weekend more enjoyable and, perhaps, should be done more often).

Spanking by Remote Control

I shall return to the general aspects of automated spankings in a later post.   I thought today you might to want to share in one aspect of spanking machines: operating one from a long distance.

As far as I know, four different spanking machines have been constructed in modern times - three for commercial sale for private use, and one as a prop by a company that produces spanking videos: under various production names including the famed "Pain4Fem"..

Of the three that are available for sale to the general public, today we shall just look at how one of them gets turned into a long distance disciple machine:  the Spank-O-Matic II and its close twin, the Lite version of it.   For now, I shall refer to either interchangeably as the "SOM"

With a SOM, the machine that actually the delivers the spanks can be controlled by using a hand held remote controller, or by plugging it into a PC or laptop.   And when plugged in to a PC, the whacks can be issued from a control screen on the computer, or from a pre-set set of instructions.   Let us call the PC or laptop attached to the spanking machine by a USB cable the "local" computer.

Here's the trick - a second computer (the "remote" computer) can be connected to the local computer over the internet, and a person sitting at the remote computer can deliver instructions to the local computer as if the remote computer had access to the local computer's control screen,

That is, if your partner is in a position to get spanked from a machine attached to a local computer, you at the remote computer can decide how many, how quickly and how strongly the spanking machine will deliver its strokes.   And that is true if you are sitting in the next room, or if half way across the globe,

Even if you do not have a spanking partner with a local machine, you can try out the software to visualize how it would work in practice.   Free of charge.

You go to the SOM site where you can dowload two pieces of software needed to make remote controlled spankings a reality,   The first delivers a library of drivers and software under the generic title of Phidgets:  they give your computer the ability to send data to a second computer, provided that both have some compatible computer transmission software as well.

And the second download gets you a functioning copy of the SOM control panel.   Unless you are the local machine, most of the screens are academic.   But one screen is the actual SOM II manual control panel.   When it is on your screen, you can enter the IP address, and the local machine password to be sent over the internet to the local version of the same software.   If both id and password are correct, then your (remote) computer now has the control of the spanking machine attached to the other (local) computer.

Both downloads are free, so you can set the system up and play with it to get used to how it works, and what it is doing to your pretend partner.   Until some day you connect with an online user who actually has a SOM attached to their local machine.    And your role play will have taken on a whole new dimension.