taking the metaphor too far: a unifying theory of my BDSM scenes

This post has jumped the shark.

As kinksters when we aren't conducting a scene we are thinking about scenes.  As an engineer I find myself looking for patterns.

The pattern that I have found most useful for a scene is a story arc in three acts.  There is a beginning, a middle, and an end.  In other forms of storytelling, these are traditionally called exposition, development, and climax. 

For me exposition varies depending on the type of scene.  For more bondage oriented scenes, the exposition is about creating a slowly increasing level of confinement.  For dominance scenes I will make the answering of the three questions into an act of submission, and this submission the basis for the exposition of the scene.

While exposition is mostly passive, for the development phase of the scene I try to bring the bottom to some form of active participation.  This can be as simple as grunts during a flogging.  It can be the shudder of an edging.  In rare cases it will involve sexual acts.


For me to wrap my head around it, the scene has to have an identifiable climax.  This can be the obvious sexual climax complete with bodily fluids.  Or it can be a strike with a stun gun.  Or it can be the completion of an announced number of hard strokes with a flogger counted down verbally by the bottom. 

While I don't normally spend much time planning this section, an important piece is what happens after the climax, after the falling action: the denoument.  In the BDSM world we call this aftercare.  I find aftercare particularly necessary and rewarding after a hit with a stun gun.

But this storytelling isn't just about a single person, or a pair of people.  I have found this most satisfying if I work to create fully developed characters of the various tools and toys.  I will recount the history and structure of my floggers.  I will explain how I relate to them and what they mean to me.  I will work to make sure that bottom understands the nuances of their individuality.  I do similar things with my electrical toys.

And now I take a step back.  The narrative structure and the character development that I describe is familliar to us all.  It's the structure of the American sitcom.