Impositions you can actually set tonight

The other pages here explain how impositions work, with a line or two by way of example. This is the full worked set: seventeen lines, with the paper, the numbers and the deadlines attached. Take the shape and adapt them to your own situation.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

Everything here is for consenting adults over eighteen. What follows is the worked set the other pages only sample: impositions written in full, with numbers and deadlines on them. Why a dull imposition beats a spanking is argued at lines, corner time and impositions, and the evening itself is at running a lines scene.

A line has to be about something done

One rule decides whether a line is usable. The sentence has to describe something the person did or will do, with a verb in it that belongs to them.

"I will put my phone on the charger before I come to bed" is a line. It can be complied with tomorrow, and in a month either of you can say whether it happened.

"I am stupid" fails all of that. It makes a claim about who somebody is, so there is nothing in it to comply with. An hour of copying drives the claim in and leaves nothing on the other side to take it back out again. It is the commonest way this gets done badly.

The rule underneath is at choosing the words for humiliation: nothing that touches what a person cannot change by tomorrow. A sentence said once fades by the weekend, and two hundred in your own handwriting do not.

Lines, in four registers

Grouped by voice, since a household that says "I must not" is not the same household as one that says "I will". Use a real name and a real hour where you can.

Domestic, attached to a standing rule

• "I will put my phone on the charger in the hall before I come to bed."
• "I will send my check-in before eleven, and if I cannot, I will say so first."
• "I will tell him I am running late while I am still running late."
• "I will say when something is wrong on the day it happens."
• "I keep my word about times."

Formal and old-fashioned

• "I must not speak to Kate the way I spoke to her on Saturday."
• "I must give a straight answer to a straight question."
• "I shall not decide on my own that a rule has lapsed."
• "I must not say it is fine when it is not fine."
• "I shall be ready when the taxi arrives and not still looking for my shoes."

Tied to one agreed failure

• "I will move the money on the first of the month, and the first is not the fourth."
• "I left the dentist for nine months. I will ring on Monday morning."
• "I told him it was done when it was not done."
• "I will not cancel a booking I have already paid for."
• "I will put the permit in the windscreen before I walk away from the car."

Lines that are embarrassing to write

Some lines work through what they make you put on paper. Writing out, a hundred times and in your own hand, what happens if you break the rule again is a small humiliation of its own, and for some people the word "smacked" in their own handwriting is harder than the strokes. Agree the wording in advance like any other: see the words you share, and for saying it out loud rather than writing it, being made to ask.

• "If I break the rules again, I will have my bottom smacked."
• "When I am late without telling him, I will be spanked, and I will ask for it."

Paper, ink and how many

A cheap notebook rather than loose sheets, because it still exists in a drawer six months later. Ink, since pencil rubs out and looks provisional. Numbered down the margin, dated at the top, signed at the bottom, and the signature is the part people leave off. Handed over rather than left on the side.

Fifty is more than it sounds: ten to fifteen minutes at a table with nothing else allowed, on an evening somebody had plans for. A hundred is twenty to thirty minutes. Two hundred runs to about an hour and the hand starts to complain. Five hundred is a whole evening, more than most people can write well, and I have never seen it come back at the standard it was set at. What I set falls between forty and two hundred.

Written impositions that are not lines

These work by thought rather than repetition. Give each a title, a length and an hour.

The set essay. Four hundred words, title given by me, due by nine on Thursday. One I have used: "What I was worried would happen if I told you on Sunday." I once set eight hundred words on "Why I lied about it" when the breach had been forgetting, and got back a miserable apology for a dishonesty that never happened. The title is the part to write slowly.

The apology read aloud. A hundred and fifty words, handwritten, read out standing on Saturday morning. Short on purpose: four hundred words read aloud in your own kitchen is unbearable and no better an apology. See the apology.

The list of things that will be done differently. Six items, one line each, no explanations, by Sunday night. The ban on explanation is what makes it usable. Produce it again at the next review.

The letter opened in a month. Three hundred words, sealed, handed over tonight, opened on a stated date. Title: "What I want to be different by the time you read this."

The nightly entry. Four sentences a night for seven nights, sent by eleven, the same prompts each time. Seven rather than thirty. The version that runs indefinitely is the punishment book.

Impositions with no writing in them

Each belongs to another page, so this is only what to set.

• Ten minutes facing the wall, timer running, phone in another room: corner time.
• The phone handed over from seven until ten, agreed beforehand as a tariff, and only while it stays a handing over rather than a confiscation.
• A privilege withdrawn for a stated period. No scene until the essay is in, with the end date said out loud: the impositions page.
• Two minutes with a paperback on her head, standard and clock stated first: balancing books and set tasks.
• A message at nine every night for five nights, same format, answered by me every time. That last clause is the whole of it: accountability.

The rules that stop these going wrong

Set something finite, with the end stated at the start. "Until I say otherwise" is not a length.

Set something you can check, then check it. Here is where I have failed worst. I set a journal entry every night for a fortnight, read the first four properly, skimmed the fifth and stopped opening them. She wrote until night eleven, then asked what I had made of Tuesday's, and I had nothing to say about Tuesday. If you are not going to read it, do not ask for it.

Never set a household chore that had to happen anyway. Make the ironing a punishment once and it is a punishment for the rest of your life together.

Never set anything that lands on somebody else in the house, such as an imposition that means a flatmate eats at ten.

And never set anything in temper that you will have to enforce on Wednesday, when the heat has gone. Every imposition I have quietly let drop was set on the same evening as the offence.