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.