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.