Ducking the Spanking

One of the things I love about this house is how the sunset fills every window. I don’t often take photos from inside the house, but I thought I’d try. Can’t get all the windows very well, though.

Hmm. Maybe I need a panorama card for my camera!

Writers tend to have funny conversations. If overheard, they might sound quite alarming. Discussions of how best to kill people, how to dispose of the bodies, argument over what kind of childhood trauma is the most scarring. For writers of the smexy, it can get particularly interesting. Especially when you’ve worked with the same critique partners (CP) long enough to have shorthand references.

The other day, I told one of my CPs that she was ducking the spanking again. No, not like when we were kids and hoped mom and dad would forget about the promised punishment. This referred back to a story she wrote, with BDSM elements, where the prospect of a spanking was held out for most of the story and, when the moment arrived, she glossed it.

Voodoo Bride knows about this. There’s nothing worse (for readers like us, anyway) to be promised a sexually intense situation that never materializes or is glossed over. The whole point of something like a spanking scene is that it’s intense and difficult and puts the characters into an extreme situation. It’s a very human and polite tendency to back away from tremendously fraught situations like that.

However: this is the story gold.

So when I read my CP’s story and felt like she’d created a very tense, difficult scenario and then defused it by making it not so bad after all, I could tell her she was ducking the spanking and she understood right away.

Now, I’m not saying you have to include a spanking scene, metaphorically or literally. If you don’t want to go there, don’t. But, if you include something like that, then follow where it leads, into all the dark, twisty, intense shadows.

If you’re going to have a spanking, make it a good one.

Aaaandd on that note – you all have a great weekend!