Help please, need a good 'blackmail' reason

[loose_chippings_uk]

Hello

Hoping to write down my first story soon, but stuck with one aspect.
Please, can some of you nice people help me work out a good reason for blackmail.

The person who will being doing the blackmail will be a coloured female in her mid 30's. She will have some hold over the heroine of the story, who is a goody twoshoes plain redhead mum of two who works in the same department. Sex can not be the initial reason for the blackmail.

Thanks, loose...

 

[bisexplicit]

"Colored"?

Who even uses that term anymore?

 

[3113]

"Colored"?

Who even uses that term anymore?

Hey, my dad still calls Asian folk "Oriental."

 

[3113]

Hoping to write down my first story soon, but stuck with one aspect. Please, can some of you nice people help me work out a good reason for blackmail.

The situation is harder if the story is modern day--but anything that undermines the standing of the woman in question in the commuity would suffice.

Say, she's stealing money from the charity organization she works at--not a lot just enough to buy a pretty pair of shoes or something....
OR
She has a gambling problem that she doesn't want her husband to know about....

How about either of those or something similar?

 

[THE_TRUE_GOD]

T
Say, she's stealing money from the charity organization she works at--not a lot just enough to buy a pretty pair of shoes or something....

Maybe she isn't stealing, just bending the rules for her close friends, or even relations, so they get money to which they are not truly entitled.

Or maybe she works for the IRS and is bending the rules ... etc.

 

[gamer9643]

gambling debt, former alcholoic and shes dricking again, stealing from the company/klepto, evidence she was a former porn star/prostitute, vandalism, she murdered somebody.

thats all i got right now. whatever you do dont say she has evidence shes cheating on her spouse i hate that.

 

[FinnMacCool555]

Maybe the blackmailer went to school with the blackmailee, was publically humiliated in some way, and now wants payback.

P.S. I actually think the term Oriental should be used more often. Afterall, the region encompassing China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia is known as the Orient, plus only using the word Asian to apply to people from that region seems disrespectful towards the Russians, Indians, and Arabs.

 

[CopyCarver]

Hello

Hoping to write down my first story soon, but stuck with one aspect.
Please, can some of you nice people help me work out a good reason for blackmail.

The person who will being doing the blackmail will be a coloured female in her mid 30's. She will have some hold over the heroine of the story, who is a goody twoshoes plain redhead mum of two who works in the same department. Sex can not be the initial reason for the blackmail.

Thanks, loose...

Seems to me that the reason is largely dependent on whether the blackmail is your villain or your heroine--ar at least whether or not she'd a sympathetic character. If she's the "heavy," you should probably make her guilty of something rotten (whether or not illegal); if she's a sympathetic character, she should simply be protecting someone else, or concealing a health condition, or something where she is innocent of wrongdoing but would nevertheless be harmed by exposure of her secret.

I'm not going to touch the ethnic reference issue. There is no way to refer to any demographic group without offending someone--a fact I learned after getting mail from several furious "fans" after I referred to Floridians as "southerners."

 

[THE_TRUE_GOD]

--a fact I learned after getting mail from several furious "fans" after I referred to Floridians as "southerners."

Funny, my Mexican friend refers to all US Citizens as "Northerners". It just depends where you live, I suppose.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Having some experience with blackmail stories, I would suggest that you make the MILF get caught embezzling from the company. The amount of risk involved there would be enough to shut her up about having to service her colleague. Ooops, someone else suggested that first. How about industrial espionage or the fact that one of her kids is NOT hubby's (turn the tables on a cheating bitch, now that sounds nice).

 

[3113]

How about industrial espionage or the fact that one of her kids is NOT hubby's

But the original post says that "sex cannot be the initial reason for the blackmail." So wouldn't that include kids by another man--or porn in the past, as well as any current adultry?

I think murder is a bit iffy if only because if the woman murdered someone once, she might again if blackmailed

HOWEVER, a hit-and-run is possible. She was in a accident, responsible, and fled the scene. Makes the story much darker especially if the person she hit was hurt.

Edited: Actually, if she'd gotten the kids by donated sperm, then they could be by another man sans sex. But that seems a little complicated for the purposes of this story.

 

[zephrbabe]

Another device would be "false" blackmail: the blackmailer makes the blackmailee think she has some tidbit, when she really doesn't. The redhead flips about every little wrong thing she's done, and how the other woman found out about it. I think that would work especially well for someone who is a "goody-two-shoes" because she's probably prone to finding fault with herself and others.

A few blackmail ideas taken from "Runaway Jury:" the blackmailee had an abortion (whether or not the baby was her husband's) a long time ago, and thought no one knew; she is being blackmailed for her husband's/teenager's sins; the secret illness was already mentioned.

A couple taken from "Clue:" she's secretly a lesbian (and hey, she could be married anyway, and she doesn't have to be having sex to be a lesbian), business espionage was mentioned, she was fired/disbarred/had a liscence revoked for comitting a crime that was sealed afterwards.

It could even be something innocuous that would cause ridicule; maybe she was a goth as a teen, or she was a heavy partier in college, or she beat other kids up, or she plagiarized a prize-winning recipe from a previous competition, or she's a closet anorexic (though that could fall under the "secret illness" category).

 

[snooper]

A goody-goody is easy to blackmail. They sometimes do things they think are "naughty" and yet other people wouldn't really agonise over, like putting $1 in the collection at church by mistake for $10.

If you need something more serious, maybe she cheated in an exam,
or kept a book lent to her (which should carry the death penalty IMHO),
or spilt beetroot juice on a girl's white wedding dress and didn't own up to it,
or ...