Whip Me, Beat Me, Make Me Write Hot Sex: A Writer's Guide to BDSM Basics...and For Those Who Are Curious. (2nd Edition)

By Lesli Richardson and Tymber Dalton

(NON-FICTION. Second Edition. Revised and Expanded -- Over twice as long!)

 

In this how-to guide for writers, USA Today Bestselling Author Tymber Dalton (aka Lesli Richardson) shares information she's learned during her first-hand experience the BDSM lifestyle. This book is also good for people curious about the lifestyle, and who want to learn how to separate the facts from the fantasy. Learn the basics about relationship dynamics, toys, tools, terminology, and more. Includes style guide tips for writers and a handy list of references to start you on your research.

 

Content Warning: Non-fiction, contains subject matter and language of a sexual nature. May offend some readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lesli Richardson
• Release date: Mar 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393884323

Lesli Richardson

Lesli Richardson is the writer behind the curtain of her better-known pen name, Tymber Dalton (her ""wild child"" side). She lives in the Tampa Bay region of Florida with her spouse, writer Jon Dalton, and too many pets. When she's not playing Dungeons and Dragons with her friends or shooting skeet, she's a part-time Viking shield-maiden in training, among other pursuits. The USA Today Bestselling Author (as Tymber) and two-time EPIC award winner is the author of over two hundred books and counting. She lives in her own little world, but it's okay, because they all know her there. She also loves to hear from readers! Please feel free to drop by her website and sign up for updates to keep abreast of the latest news, snarkage, and releases. There you'll also find reading order lists and more information about her different series.

Book preview

1

Warning and Disclaimer

The information provided in this work is meant to be used only for reference, research, and by consenting adults.

The author assumes no liability or responsibility for any results from the use or misuse of information in this work. Undertake any of the activities described herein at your own risk, and only after proper instruction and thorough research. Also, make sure you have all proper safety equipment on hand before attempting anything.

While non-fiction, this work contains information and discussions of an adult nature. Please keep out of the reach of minors.

This book isn’t meant to be a be-all, end-all tome on BDSM. It’s a starting point, and if you practice BDSM, you might find some things in here different than you practice them. And that’s okay! This is meant to help educate people so they can safely explore further, should they decide to. It’s also meant to help keep my fellow writers who might be vanilla from borking their BDSM stories by making boneheaded mistakes about the basics of BDSM.

Also, let me state up front that I am in no way trying to denigrate any demographic, regardless of their gender, orientation, power exchange role or dynamic, or relationship structure or dynamic. I am not trying to exclude anyone but, at some point, for the sake of readability, I cannot include every single possible combination.

Therefore, I mostly default to referring to male Tops and female bottoms. Please make adjustments as necessary to better fit your particular circumstances, be it gender, orientation, power exchange role, relationship structure, or other permutation.

I also tend to use the terms Top and bottom in many instances to refer to power exchange roles. Substitute your own labels to fit your personal power exchange dynamic as necessary.

Whenever I say male or female, I mean male-identified or female-identified, regardless of whether you are AMAB, AFAB, cis, or trans.

(Assigned Male At Birth and Assigned Female At Birth, for those of you who didn’t know.)

For readers who identify as nonbinary or agender or genderfluid, or other gender, I am not trying to exclude you, either, and I apologize. For the purposes of romance writing, the primary character default tends to be MF or MM, or various menage permutations of those. As you read this book, please substitute your personal pronouns as necessary to be applicable to you. I am aware that there are various pronouns beyond they/them that people use, but again, I needed to make an editorial decision somewhere.

And if you just read this disclaimer in the preview feature on a book retailer’s website and had the audacity to roll your fricking eyes that I included this disclaimer in the first place because you have opinions that boil down to limited and outdated views about binary gender constructs being the default?

Then I can pretty much guarantee that you won’t enjoy the rest of this book.

In other words TERFs aren’t welcome here, and neither are bigots and douchebags.

Oh! And while this book isn’t full of F-bombs, I do tend to swear and call out douchebaggery when I see it. If you are the kind of person who writes authors and tells them their message would be so much better if they didn’t swear, you might as well put this book back right now, or delete the preview, because I can also guarantee you probably won’t like the salty and spicy language I sometimes use.

With that all said, let’s begin!

2

Why We’re Here

BDSM is one of the hottest-selling romance and erotica sub-genres in fiction. No surprise, because it’s such a rich and diverse topic to write about and build fictional worlds around. With the explosion of the popularity of books and movies such as the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, and TV series such as Bonding and Billions , Hollywood is now jumping on the bandwagon.

This isn’t a bad thing! In fact, it’s helped lead countless people to exploring topics they might have previously believed only they were interested in. It’s also finally helped strip some of the shame from the honest discussions that can happen on the topic between romantic partners.

For those familiar with the lifestyle, however, much of the popular fiction revolving around BDSM practices is, unfortunately, laughably lacking in accuracy.

Because I am active in the lifestyle, when I wrote the very first edition of this book, it was to help my fellow authors—and my readers—answer the most common questions I received. Not that I minded answering questions, but when you get the same one twenty times in a week, it’s easier to point people to a guide and say, Here.

I wanted the information to be easily accessible. I also wanted a guide that my fellow authors could point their editors to and educate them as well, thus helping ensure more contemporary BDSM books—meaning ones set in a realistic time and place and supposedly based on some thread of reality—were, in fact, realistic.

Obviously, we’re not talking about paranormal, sci-fi, or books that are deliberately classified as dark, dub-con/non-con, or other non-contemporary romance genres, like mafia or motorcycle club books.

I wanted to write a guide to help counteract the frequently negative depictions of BDSM in TV shows like Law and Order, where the kinkster was obviously a bad guy at worst, or at best who was some perverted freak who was made fun of and the butt of jokes.

That’s infuriating bullshit that has no place in this day and age.

I wrote the first version of this book all the way back in 2010, updated it in 2012, and again in the fall of 2017. This latest update, heavily revised and expanded to nearly twice its length in March 2021, includes even more information.

I created this guide for my fellow writers who want to dip their toe into the world of writing BDSM fiction, but who have little or no real-world experience in the topic. To help them avoid common errors you won’t catch if you do your research only on Wikipedia, or by reading other works of fiction, or by watching Bonding on Netflix.

I also created this book as a primer for readers who are curious about the BDSM lifestyle, or who maybe want to know what the reality is. With this guide in hand, you can figure out how to separate fact from fiction.

It’s literally impossible for me to cover all aspects of the lifestyle in one book, but if you email me with questions, I’ll update this guide every so often and include those questions as covered topics.

While this guide likely won’t answer all of your questions about BDSM and kin, and might in fact leave you with more question than you started, it is also meant to help destigmatize the topic and clarify it in a way so that it makes sense. It’s also meant to be a starting point for people who are curious, so if they do decide they want to learn more, they can—hopefully—do so safely and make common-sense decisions to protect themselves on their journey through the sometimes confusing realm of BDSM and kink.

Ready?

Let’s begin.

Remember to substitute the appropriate and applicable gender, orientation, and power dynamic for your situation when reading about relationships. I’m not trying to leave out non-binary or transfolx, either. Please use whatever pronouns or relationship roles and dynamics apply to your particular situation.

First of all, let me tell you who I am and why I’m qualified to write on this topic in the first place. I do not claim to be an expert on all things kinky. No one can seriously claim that, unless they’re a self-aggrandizing asshat, due to the richly diverse ways people go about practicing BDSM and kink.

It’s been my experience that people who claim they are BDSM experts are almost always assholes at best, or predators at worst. Certainly you can specialize in an aspect of BDSM, like a cook or a doctor or a mechanic specializes in certain fields, but it’s impossible to be an overall expert on all of BDSM in general.

That means anyone claiming they are a BDSM expert is someone you should exercise a great amount of care around, because there’s a good chance they don’t have your best interests at heart. Considering there are no advanced university degrees and globally recognized professional or certification agencies to categorically state a person has a doctorate in BDSM, or that they have met or exceeded a set of standards to declare they have, I would suggest using some common fricking sense.

After all, do you go to a podiatrist for problems with your heart? Do you expect a baker to be an expert in sushi preparation? Do you take your boat to the car dealership where you bought your new truck for repairs?

No, of course not.

Can people be experts in certain aspects of BDSM?

Absolutely! Specialization is a thing. I know people who are experts in power exchange dynamic structures, or fire cupping, or shibari, or (fill in the blank). But they don’t claim to be experts in all areas of BDSM.

Critical difference, that.

Also, there are some who claim to be experts in aspects of BDSM where there is no one objective way of doing something. Where it can be a choice of how you want to do it, or adapt it, and there is no standard right or wrong way of doing the thing, whatever the thing happens to be. Meaning those people are also full of shit if they try to belittle you for how you do something, should it differ from their way of doing things.

What do I mean?

There is an objectively safe way to perform fire cupping. There is an objectively correct way to go about boot-blacking, with some variations in technique, obviously. There are safe ways of rigging a suspension harness, and there are objectively unsafe ways. And so forth.

There is no one true way to create daily rituals for your dynamic, or of performing slave positions, or anything like that. There are ways that have worked for some people, and different ways that have worked for others, but for someone to tell you that you are doing it wrong when it truly boils down to nothing more than your personal choice is just bullshit.

Understand?

While I do not claim to be a BDSM expert, I have done my research on the topics I’ve written about in my fiction. Not to mention my husband and I are active in the BDSM lifestyle in real life, and have been for over twelve years, as of this writing. While I primarily identify as a Dominant, I am also a switch, meaning I’m comfortable on either end of the flogger, so to speak. I only switch with one person, however, and that is my poly partner, aka the Viking. He is not my husband—he’s my boyfriend and my collared submissive.

The Viking is also a switch, and he only switches with me. In our default dynamic, we’re Ma’am and My boy. But when I switch with him, we tend to fall into Daddy and the kitten mode.

Some of you are likely familiar with my Tymber Dalton books, such as my Suncoast Society series (which is based upon the real-life Tampa Bay Phoenix Club), and Love Slave for Two: Beginnings, where I use BDSM as an integral part of the storyline. Some of my books, like Fierce Radiance, Love Slave for Two, and Contractual Obligation, only touch on certain aspects of power exchange dynamics and kink in a milder way.

Writing as Lesli Richardson, I have several trilogies built upon my Governor Trilogy series, which revolves around politics and power exchange structures. Those books focus more on the relationship dynamics rather than spanking. They’re still realistic in terms of the kinky stuff, although they focus on the rich and powerful instead of everyday people you may know in real life.

Or everyday people who could easily be you in real life.

My Suncoast Society books are a contemporary BDSM series and are written in a realistic way, portraying people who could easily exist in real life, and who I put into real-life situations. Many of these books were written in response to events I personally witnessed, or was told about first-hand, or are a result of questions I received from people trying to find their own way through BDSM.

For example, an empty-nest couple faced with redefining their marriage, romantic and sexual relationships, and individual identities now that their child has left for college. Or how someone with chronic health issues manages their pain and physical limitations around their desire to participate in BDSM.

Or how a woman who is a 24/7 slave to her Master husband copes with his impending death.

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of research about various aspects of BDSM as part of my own personal journey through it. Years ago, when my husband and I first entered the lifestyle, we started by going to munches and play parties and talking to others involved in the lifestyle. Now, twelve years later, I help manage the Tampa Bay Phoenix Club (ever since 2014) and I teach classes on various lifestyle-related topics. In the past, I have judged leather title contests, run the registration desk for fetish conventions, and helped run convention dungeons. I’ve presented classes on kink at both BDSM conventions and at book conventions. Most of our friends are now either in the lifestyle, or are lifestyle-adjacent.

As a result, I have tried my hand at a more than a few things as a Top and as a bottom. Trust me, you cannot write about trying to throw a singletail unless you have actually tried to throw a singletail. I’ve also witnessed and studied far more scenes and techniques than I’ve tried, talked in-depth to people who are experts in their particular corners of BDSM, and attended many classes, discussions, and demonstrations.

The next two points I’m about to share with you will sound very contradictory, but you’ll soon see that they, in fact, are not.

No two people practice BDSM the same way.

Most writers who aren’t in the lifestyle inaccurately portray BDSM.

How can the second point be true if the first point is true?

The problem is, as with any other activities, there are one true wayers. Or, as you might see it written on FetLife.com, won twue wayers. (WTWs) There are people who will insist that, no matter how much research you do, no matter how right you get it, that you still got it wrong because you didn’t write it their way.

Ignore them.

Unless they’re pointing out a safety issue! If that’s the case, then please, fix your shit quickly so some dumbass doesn’t try it your way and get themselves hurt and get you sued.

Early in my writing career, my book The Reluctant Dom was ripped apart by one reviewer for, according to them, not being an accurate portrayal of BDSM, because no one they knew practiced it like that. Despite the fact that, when I wrote it, not only did a Dom friend of mine with over twenty years of experience in the lifestyle vet the manuscript for me (I was still a baby kinkster at that point) but he also told me that he knew a couple who went through a similar situation as Kaden and Leah in my story. Even though I wrote that book early in my BDSM journey, it still holds up today.

After The Reluctant Dom’s initial publication, I had a lifestyle slave contact me and tell me that she used to be a cutter and her sister slave used to burn herself. That they do, in fact, use BDSM as a healthier outlet for them, and that their two Masters have a pact that if one dies, the other