My own category problem

I'm good at dishing-out advice. Now let's see if I can take it, too.

My BOOK OF RUTH stories started with a couple of incest-heavy, fairly standalone episodes, posted in INCEST-TABOO. I envisaged my current two-part episode as a LOVING WIVES tale, with several cheating wives (not the narrator's) and a little more incest in #1, and payback (non-violent BTB, both M&F) along with more cheating and some incest in #2.

I want this episode to be READ, and LW and I-T tend to get the most views. (I'll eschew EROTIC COUPLINGS, alas.) But I'd also like to avoid death threats and 1-bombing. My problem is that the incest in this 2-parter is definitely secondary -- the emphasis is on other fucks, and cheating, and consequences.

I haven't been paying attention to the comments and votes on newer LW tales. My only LW story was purged after posting. Is it really a toxic snake-pit there now? Will I survive if I burn both the bitch and the bastard in #2? If I skip LW and post on I-T, will I risk readers' displeasure for providing insufficient incest?

I'm ready to post #1 now. WHERE it's posted may determine how #2 ends re: life, death, prison, etc. If LW/BTB then almost everybody dies or is jailed. End of story. If I-T then the narrator goes back to bedding his sister and mother; or his soon-to-be ex-wife's mother and sister; or his late girlfriend's step-mother -- and another episode will follow.

Should I just stay the fuck away from LW?

I wish I could help, but my last two LW stories I turned off not only voting but comments.

Although...I have had extensive experience in the LW category. I have written stories from pure wife cheats, husband knows wife cheats and if all for it, to wife cheats and husband blows her away.

My most commented on store was one where the husband sold his wife to someone else. Most were complimentary, some not so much.

The one that brought the most complimentary comments was where the husband not only killed the wife, but the lover and his wife too.

Of course I never crossed into incest with any of my LW stories.

But from what has been discussed here on the forums before you were around incest trumps all. If a story has any incest in it, it goes to incest/taboo category. Where a LW story can be posted to EC or Fetish without being redirected to LW.

Just what I remember of discussion on the board here.

Hope this helps...probably not though, huh?

Thanks, Zeb. I'm doubtful of the incest-trumps-everything rule because I've had stories with notable (but not overwhelming) incest go nicely into Group Sex, as well as Satire and Novellas.

I'm more concerned that my preferred plot doesn't include murdering the bastard and bitch. Ah, but I just got an idea. I'll post #1 to Incest in a few minutes. I'll finish #2 for Incest also -- and I'll do an LW variant version of it, full-on BTB. Yeah, that should work. I hope.

Hypoxia said:

I haven't been paying attention to the comments and votes on newer LW tales. My only LW story was purged after posting. Is it really a toxic snake-pit there now? Will I survive if I burn both the bitch and the bastard in #2? If I skip LW and post on I-T, will I risk readers' displeasure for providing insufficient incest? . . .

Should I just stay the fuck away from LW?

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I'm pretty new here, Hypoxia, and I posted in LW a month or so ago not knowing its reputation. And I can say that, yes, it's really a toxic snake-pit there. I don't know how the BTB mob that hangs out in LW thinks about incest tales: maybe others can speak to that. I'd guess that if you at least hint in Pt. 1 at a BTB ending-to-come, you might survive to post Pt. 2.

If you care about scores, they seem to run lower there across-the-board, because everything posted there is controversial.

Don't know about I-T.

Honestly, this is a case where sacrificing it to the low readership of Novels and Novellas may be the better course, IMO. The incest and LW readerships are so incompatible that the actual people who read the whole story probably won't be much more than N&N.

Regardless of the number of hits it could get in Incest, most of those people aren't actually going to read the second, incest-lite chapter, or are going to be disappointed by it, resulting in low votes, and at least a few negative comments. Overall, Incest has few negative commenters, unless you venture into non-con. Most vote with their feet by back-clicking, but enough will zap the incest-lite to drag you down.

The incest readers will as likely as not ignore it, but the LW readers are prone to not only attacking the story in their category, but following the story to other categories to trash it, and then continuing on to attack every story in your list, and even going after people who leave signed, positive comments.

When Obi-Wan said you'd never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy, he did so without having experienced the LW category on Literotica.

Assuming the chapters are long enough to merit N&N, of course.

Darkniciad said:

Honestly, this is a case where sacrificing it to the low readership of Novels and Novellas may be the better course, IMO. The incest and LW readerships are so incompatible that the actual people who read the whole story probably won't be much more than N&N.

Regardless of the number of hits it could get in Incest, most of those people aren't actually going to read the second, incest-lite chapter, or are going to be disappointed by it, resulting in low votes, and at least a few negative comments. Overall, Incest has few negative commenters, unless you venture into non-con. Most vote with their feet by back-clicking, but enough will zap the incest-lite to drag you down.

The incest readers will as likely as not ignore it, but the LW readers are prone to not only attacking the story in their category, but following the story to other categories to trash it, and then continuing on to attack every story in your list, and even going after people who leave signed, positive comments.

When Obi-Wan said you'd never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy, he did so without having experienced the LW category on Literotica.

Assuming the chapters are long enough to merit N&N, of course.

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And then the LW crowd will go after your friends and family. My cat hasn't been the same since I posted in LW!

So, your writing an incest story where there is a lot of cheating... okay, so you're writing Game of Thrones.

I can't help much here as my only Loving Wives story got fairly good comments.

The incest crowd and the LW crowd both want the same thing. A good story. That trumps all category biases.

So long as you are carrying the story well, incest readers will be turning pages to see what's going to happen next, not bitching cause "Mommy isn't in heat"

Remember also that if you post it and it's not doing well you can change the category afterwords. You can delete all the vile comments and shift it somewhere else.

I have one incest story that I got so much negative feedback about that I had it moved to Non-consent. To me it was not a Non/Con story but that is what the incest readers believed it should be.

In Non/Con it's not liked because it's a incest story.

Shameless plug.

http://www.literotica.com/s/a-grimm-tribute


Sometimes there is no winning except writing the story the way you want it to be written.

MST

I don't see why Erotic Couplings wouldn't work. I get a pretty good volume of reads, votes and comments on anything I post there. I probably have more stories in EC than anywhere else.

But . . .

Hypoxia said:

I'm ready to post #1 now. WHERE it's posted may determine how #2 ends re: life, death, prison, etc. If LW/BTB then almost everybody dies or is jailed. End of story. If I-T then the narrator goes back to bedding his sister and mother; or his soon-to-be ex-wife's mother and sister; or his late girlfriend's step-mother -- and another episode will follow.

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With the right kind of spin, you could put the whole thing in Erotic Horror. That might mean some tweaking on your part that you might not want to do, though.

MSTarot said:

The incest crowd and the LW crowd both want the same thing. A good story. That trumps all category biases.

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They want a good story that fits their kink. Lit is categorized, and the readerships polarize.

When you write outside of the boundaries, the natives rebel. That drags down your score and fills your comment board with negative reviews. Once that happens, you lose visibility, and the readers who are willing to read a broader range of stories are less likely to find it.

I don't let it determine what I want to write, but I do make careful choices about what category I put it in when it's done, and whether it's even appropriate for Lit at all. That's part of the reason why I have stories that only appear on this site, or that one, or some combination, or only on my own site.

Good luck, Hypoxia!


Remember that Laurel may change the category of the story to one she thinks fits better. She knows a lot about the readership and different categories, of course.

My stories never get near the dizzy heights of 126 comments I saw on one BTB Loving Wife tale. But honestly, I prefer 3 or 4 good comments to what was going on in the comments there! A lot of it was the commentators fighting with each other. In some categories, the readers have let me know what they would prefer me to be writing, and I've been able to improve my future stories, as opposed to telling me that they are right behind me with a spare can of petrol to put on the fire, and that what I have written is not legal so I should not do it, (uh, this is a story, guys!)

It's great when there are lots of votes, too. However when I get much fewer, I can keep track and figure them out, and work out if I am getting 5s and 1s, or some 4s and 3s. That actually tells me more than the final score does.

Interesting discussion! What is BTB, by the way?

I put a story in Incest/Taboo because the central conflict was between a father and his daughter, but he never actually has sex with his daughter. He ends up inadvertently helping her become a porn star. I thought, "Well, this is taboo." But I got a few complaints about the lack of incest. It really has to have incest. Taboo is not enough, which I guess that makes a certain amount of sense. On some level all the categories are taboo. Live an learn.

Some of the categories aren't really clear. Like Loving Wives? I know what the words mean, but what is that about? Is it all cheating wives? Maybe a little cuckolding? What else?

Well, BTB means Burn The Bitch.

Does that help you understand what Loving Wives is about?

Eap! Oh, my.

The Loving Wives category is something of a misnomer. I posted my very first story there, which was about a businessman who discovers his wife is cheating on him, so he gets revenge by making her watch him have sex with his secretary (whom he eventually marries after divorcing his first wife; the "loving wife" in that tale is the secretary/second wife). I inadvertently played to at least some part of the LW readership with that story without consciously deciding to do so. I just figured LW was the best place for it.

Loving Wives, as I have come to understand, is a haven for either cheating wife stories, or stories in which a husband encourages his wife to have sex with other men. In this sense, the term "loving" harkens back to a late-60s/70s-esque term indicating free sex. So don't think "loving" in the romantic sense, but rather in the carnal sense.

The readership of LW is an incredibly polarized, righteous, dim-witted and narrow-minded bunch. While some effort has been made to differentiate the stories in the category, the central theme of a LW story is that the wife in some way steps out to have sex with other men. This can be done with or without the husband's knowledge; without, the husband usually exacts revenge. With, the husband is usually depicted as wimpy with a small penis who is too enamored with his wife to condemn her for her indiscretions.

In a rare case, a LW story can actually depict a semi-realistic scenario in which a voyeuristic husband wants to watch his wife have sex with other men for the reasons of shared arousal. But these are often passed over as being, ironically enough, "unrealistic" because they insult one or more of the polarized LW camp readers.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I think I have a strategy now.

MSTarot said:

So, your writing an incest story where there is a lot of cheating... okay, so you're writing Game of Thrones.

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Ha! Well, THE BOOK OF RUTH is told from the POV of a guy who's regularly taken to bed by his sister and mother, but who sexes many other women, married or not, and eventually marries a woman who cheats (hence Loving Wives). The incestuous action continues but decreases over the story's span -- unless I finish the series with it, y'know, guy takes refuge with loving family.

The incest crowd and the LW crowd both want the same thing. A good story. That trumps all category biases.

So long as you are carrying the story well, incest readers will be turning pages to see what's going to happen next, not bitching cause "Mommy isn't in heat"

Remember also that if you post it and it's not doing well you can change the category afterwords. You can delete all the vile comments and shift it somewhere else.
<...>
Sometimes there is no winning except writing the story the way you want it to be written.

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Well, I *think* it's an overall entertaining storyline. And I think I avoided many category stereotypes. But does changing cats improve viewership? Yeah, I write the stories as I want them written, which often includes elements from many cats. I'll be happy when the tags system evolves into usefulness.

slyc_willie said:

I don't see why Erotic Couplings wouldn't work. I get a pretty good volume of reads, votes and comments on anything I post there. I probably have more stories in EC than anywhere else.

But . . .

With the right kind of spin, you could put the whole thing in Erotic Horror. That might mean some tweaking on your part that you might not want to do, though.

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Erotic Horror doesn't really fit at all. But Erotic Couplings... I haven't posted to EC before. But this BOOK OF RUTH 2-parter might fit best there. I guess it's time to experiment. I submitted #1 to Incest but I just now switched that to EC (done!) and I'll finish #2 for EC also. And then I'll think about writing a BTB variant of #2 for LW, just to see what happens. Spreading my bets, as it were.

If it were mine, I'd go ahead and post it in LW. I never shy away from a bad comment, and I've gotten plenty from both my LW posted stories and stories posted elsewhere.

One thing about getting bad comments in LW is that you will get lots of them. To me this just means the work is being read. My best guess is the more vile a comment is from a LW reader, the more your story made the commenter have feelings they didn't want. You will also be surprised at how many comments you get that absolutely blast the characters as if they are real. Take this as an indication of your good writing skills.

Here is a comment I got from one of my LW stories that says it all:

Well Done
07/16/13 By: Anonymous
The mark of good creative writing in LV is how seriously the trolls take the story as fact! LOL

Thanks!

Also, I mentally add a full point to all of my LW stories to make up for the compulsory 1 bombers in LW that think bombing stories will get their wife back somehow. And as for the death threats... What are they going to do, kill you online pseudonym? Good luck with that!

I like posting in LW every once in a while. Some of the comments are campy hilarious.