As we’re on the subject of writing spanking fiction, I’d like to return to my favourite topic: making sure that the spanking scene doesn’t dwarf all the other dramatic elements of your story, and conversely, that you don’t get so excited by writing the drama that you forget about the erotica.
This problem comes up more often in spanking novels and serial stories than in short fiction: a short story can get away with being about the spanking alone, while a series or a novel really does need character development and a thread of plot. I faced this issue most recently when I was writing for Lowewood: every week something needed to happen to my character to carry their arc ahead, and also, somebody had to get spanked or have sex, in 1500 words or fewer. Some weeks combining the two felt like an insurmountable task, so you got long epic entries, or entries with all plot and no hotness.
I was reminded of this issue when I listened to one of my favourite podcasts, “Writing Excuses”. Episode 3:27 focussed on “mixing humour with drama and horror” – the problem of blending the funny and the dramatic. It occurred to me that if you swapped “humour” for “erotica”, you get the same problem: you’re writing in a sexy way, then you try to mix in some drama, and all the sexiness goes away. So I thought that the tips and tricks mentioned in the podcast could be useful for a spanking writer as well.
So here’s what we can do:
1. Even though you are writing for the turn-on (and I’m including the spanking thrill in this), when you’re planning out the story, focus first on what inherently dramatic elements you need to include. Character points, plot points, and so on. Then layer the turn-ons on top of that. Moving from spanking to spanking can get stale and boring. When a reader puts down the virtual book, it’s the characters she’s going to take away with her and want to return to, not at what angle the cane swung.
2. It’s OK to let the turn-ons back away for a while when you need to entertain, but make sure it comes back before you get tangled in all the plot. If you have beta-readers, ask them to mark places where they stopped being turned on, and then the places where they got turned on again.
3. Stay true to the character: don’t let your erotica undermine it, no matter how sexy the result may seem. Your teenage prefect had better not be lecturing with flair of an Oxford don. Your kindly friend/mentor really shouldn’t become a demon of strictness as soon as a girl is over his knee, unless there were previous hints that he has a particularly stern streak. Neither should you let your baddie mellow and grow lovey-dovey just because you think a girl must have some aftercare. (Bring in somebody else to comfort her, if you must.)
4. There are lots of ways to be sexy/thrilling: make it appropriate for your characters and plot.
5. My own tip: If your plot is going to contain moments of unhappiness, you’d better write like an angel, because misery isn’t sexy. If you must hurt them, lay on the comfort, but make the transition subtle enough that it’s still believable. I often face this myself, because I like to make characters suffer before they can be happy. If you want an example of my brain gymnastics in this regard, I refer you to the “fight club” storyline on the Lowewood blog. The lowest point for Ned comes when he is bullied into fighting his best friend. Then Lydia arrives to comfort him. In order for a reader to be able to make a switch over from the misery to the sex without being jolted out of the narrative, the bullying part has to have a subtle sexy undertone, which would prepare you to get turned on when the love interest appears on the scene.
Hope some of these tips improve the spanking lives for you and your characters! (Also, if you have more writing tips, I’d love to hear them.)
You definitely have some good advice here. I write a lot of different stories and mixing elements is a necessity to keep stories entertaining. I can’t say I always follow this advice, but when I don’t it’s because my primary intention with a story is not necessarily to arouse. Those elements remain an important part of the story, but I keep them to specific scenes in which they make sense in the overall scheme of my story. I think the erotic elements come out better when they are secondary to plot and character development, but this is of course personal opinion.
I loved the fight club storyline. One of the things I liked about it was it reminded me of how closely violence and sex are linked for guys and how the transition from one to the other is easy. But I aagree with other parts. One of my problems is I get so carried away with plot that I forget the rudery!