Apprehension and surprise in a scene

One feature of a scene is the fine art of balance between sly planning and joyful improvisation.

Another question is how much the person at the bottom is told, or guesses, of what is going to happen.

The expected: build anticipation. :SHOCKED:
The unexpected: surprise party. :vampbat:

For those of you with experience on the top...
How do you build apprehension or anticipation in a scene?
When do you prefer to keep your submissive in ignorance until the moment arrives?
Have you laid out a selection of tools 'Eenie, meenie, minie, mo...' ?
Have you told them to choose between Scylla (flogger) and Charybdis (crop) ?
Do you keep him/her waiting... naked, blindfolded, kneeling on the floor?
Have you secured your submissive spread open and helpless, to open a mysterious box before their eyes 'Here's my new torture device...'

For those of you who have bottoming experience...
Have you been told in grim detail what 'horrors' awaited you?
Have you experienced scenes where you had a vague idea what was going to happen to you, but not how?
Have you been kept in limbo dreading the unknown?
Has your Dom/Domme sprung 'nasty' surprises on you?
What do you like about hearing of your imminent 'ordeal'?
What do you like about being kept in the dark?

For those of you with not much experience (like me)...
Your clever ideas for apprehension buildup & surprise engineering?

Anticipation can be one of the most delightful amplifiers of erotic play. I must say I has a negative experience with it yesterday, waiting in a doctor's examination room for 50 minutes, clothed in a sheet, intently listenting for banjo music to break out.

Poor Aeneas!

Well, personally, I prefer absolute suspense. Unfortunately, my Master , although he doesn't tell me before hand, is quite the talker, and tells me everything along the way. I would rather not know. It helps me to maintain a proper mind set, not having to think about anything, just sink into the feeling of it all.

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Originally Posted by Ranai

For those of you with not much experience (like me)...
Your clever ideas for apprehension buildup & surprise engineering?

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My play partner Carolyn, it would be wrong to call her partner fullstop, at the moment works in my studio with me as I am teaching her print techniques. She makes erotic prints and saw my work and came to my studio and introduced herself. This is basically how she waltzed into my life out of nowhere. That being said....

Carolyn said she gets excited everytime she arrives at my studio because she doesn't know if she is going to be doing a day's artwork or be taken on a sexual and psychological adventure of humiliation and lust. She says the uncertainty builds up an anticipation in her that makes her feel as though she is going to explode. Somedays I am so into my art and busy working that I hardly notice her or I actually do teach her new printing techniques which she contacted me for in the first place. While on other days, the moment she breezes through the door my lusty brain suddenly kicks into gear and I immediately start to make fiendish plans. This works well as I don't feel under pressure to suddenly perform and it keeps Carolyn guessing as to what the day entails.

I'm lucky that my bed and all the accutriments of torture are at hand with being in a studio so it is not too difficult to change from an ordinary work situation to one distinctly sexual in nature. Every time I pick up a tool or other piece of apparatus Carolyn doesn't know if I am picking it up for work purposes or whether it's something I'm going to use on her whether directly or indirectly. Also one day when Carolyn emptied the last of the red printing ink because I didn't have the forsight to have a spare tube I sent her to get some more. When she got back I had improvised a rigging where she was to be tied and well...used by me. It was absolutely delicious to see her waltz through the door and see her expression change as she saw the rigging. She immediately knew she was going to be punished for using the last of the ink. Punished in the nicest possible way of course!

Hi, I have changed 'apprehension' to 'anticipation', as this seems to be the more general and appropriate expression. (Though among expressions of anticipation, I find apprehension in particular incredibly erotic to observe.)

Thanks everyone so far! :)

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Originally Posted by Ranai

Hi, I have changed 'apprehension' to 'anticipation', as this seems to be the more general and appropriate expression. (Though among expressions of anticipation, I find apprehension in particular incredibly erotic to observe.)

Thanks everyone so far! :)

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I think apprehension is the appropriate word. To anticipate gives the impression you know something is going to happen. Apprehension has more a feeling of not knowing what is going to happen. My partner might anticipate a scene but if I am up to speed she is going to be apprehensive as she won't know what I have in store for her other than its going to be within her hard boundaries which gives me a lot of leeway.

Thank you PE. The language thing sometimes gets in the way.

Interesting how providing and withholding information is an element of guiding the submissive's experience. Either giving him/her an arousing prospect to think about. Or, as Katmandu mentions, keeping someone in 'absolute suspense'.

There seems to be more than one analogy between erotic dominance and writing a thriller.

I would love to keep lucy in suspense about what is to happen to her but if I have planned something I have GREAT difficulty in keeping quiet about it. On the other hand, as I hardly ever get round to doing what I plan I guess that's not a big problem.

I think that ideally it has to be best for most things to be a total surprise. This works for us because so much is a surprise to me too, in that I have only just thought of it before I do it.

On the other hand sometimes we will talk about what will happen and lucy will state that she will NOT do 'that' (whatever it may be) and then it becomes something which I just HAVE to pursue. She knows I will be doing it and that it will be a small power struggle, but that just adds more spice to the scene.

*thinks* .. this is going back to a previous thread where the question was who initiates a scene ... damn, so THAT'S why she says she won't do these things !!!!

As far as 'apprehension' vs. 'anticipation' goes, that is more along the lines of what I meant.

Anticipation lets me know what is coming up. This, unfortunately, for me, ends up being more of a turn-off. What if I'm not in the mood for it? What if I'm too tired to deal with it? What if my responses aren't sufficient to turn him on?

Apprehension, however, is always a total turn-on! I'm the type that loves horror movies, for example. The sudden surprises in them seem to get my adreneline flowing. I love to be shocked and surprised....the 'newness' of something happening. Without the time to feel or think myself into a negative response. I seem to need the spontaneity in order to get a thrill.

:dunno: Hmmmm, my partner must realize this to some degree, as he almost always makes me wear a blindfold.

Anticipation VS. Apprehention...

This is really quite an interseting subject.
in my young life as a D, I (we) discovered that a combination of the two works quite well.
For example, I'll prepare a "sceleton" of what I would like to do in a scene. Basically I try to put together a rought structure of what I need, what preperation I want my s to do and a rough scheme of what message I feel like conveying.
After that, and this is where the internet is quite helpful, we exchange a few emails in which I divulge one or the other things that I have planned.. never giving away my whole game though.

After all, I am not simply acting out a play... I am in control! since I can only guess when fantasising how exactly she will react, a good deal of improvisation is called for.

I have always found that over preparing is not really benificial for me.... once I "anticipated" only using my newest toy (not tested at that point) on her and ended up horridly screwing up the evening because I did not know the dynamics of this instrument.. turned out that nothin short of an elephant skin could bear more than 2 full blows from this toy.... and before someone asks, its a kind of highbred flogger... half whip half strap... proves to take very little effort for some serious damage, since then I have mastered the device thoug... But I am drifting off here.

Getting back on track, basically I like giving a certain idea that "something heavy" is going to happen, but I enjoy the surprised/horrified expression when I pull the next 'rabbit out of the hat'... this gives ME the control I need , and as long as its within my 'rough plan' the satisfaction she needs....

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Originally Posted by LBoolean

Getting back on track, basically I like giving a certain idea that "something heavy" is going to happen, but I enjoy the surprised/horrified expression when I pull the next 'rabbit out of the hat'...

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i think you sum up what i would consider to be the ideal amount of anticipation perfectly here, well said.

(on an unrelated subject, for some reason i bloody LOVE your sig line, LBoolean! :) )

sl

Suprise and BDSM go together like a hand and glove. Supprise definitly enhances the reactions of the sub. Blindfolds and ear plugs are the best of all the tools.

Ear plugs, good idea. Especially as a remedy for Chatty Dom/me Syndrome. :blahblah:

Somehow, if the purpose is to prevent spoilers... this seems so much more attractive – eeerrrhh, hhrrmph! – I mean more sensible than gagging the chatty Dom/me. :ignore: ;)