Is Mature a difficult audience?

[SimonDoom]

Based on no more than the single data points of my 750 word stories. Mature is an obvious outlier. I don’t think I wrote a bad Mature story (though it has no sex, perhaps the issue).

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Emily

You have too little data to form a conclusion. One of my two recent 750-word stories was a Mature story, and its score is only 3.9, which is .3 lower than the Exhibitionist 750-word story I published four days later. I don't know what to make of it.

I will hazard this very tentative hypothesis: Mature story readers tend to like longer, more character-based stories. So a 750-word story probably is ill-suited to appeal to this readership, even if it's good.

 

[lovecraft68]

Mature is a category that prefers a slow burn story over smut. They have little interest in 750 word 'stories'

My latest is Mature 4.86 on 600+ votes.

Also 8 pages of character and story build up.

 

[Rustyoznail]

On one of my mature stories, I covered all bases. A 70ish yo Aussie guy, his 50ish son, and his early 20s grandson having some fun with a 30ish Indian lady.

At one point, all at the same time. That was 5 pages/17k words. Currently 4.74.

 

[lc69hunter]

Mature is an interesting category, the only driver being an age difference. Other than that, almost anything flies. There is a strong at times smattering of Loving Wives, Romance, and even sometimes a bit of Femdom. It should be an easy category to fit almost anything in, as long as you respect the age difference

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Um, Emily, hon, think it through. A baker’s dozen of stories in a dozen categories - one of them has to be at the bottom.

Would you have been asking the same question had it been a story in Sci-Fi? Toys?

I’ve always found Mature to be a friendly place, one with good scores and few obsessive critics.

 

[Voboy]

@EmilyMiller I've found Mature to be the best category - communicative readers, no stupid "category rules", high vote/view ratios. But then, my content suits them, older man, younger woman, older man, older woman. It's my turf.

Don't use 750 Word stories as a measure, though - it's the story form that's the outlier, not the audience.

This.

I've written many successful stories in Mature, and they clearly don't mind longer tales. I wouldn't write a 750-worder and expect it to do well in that category.

But then, I'm not writing 750-worders at all anymore. So what do I know?

 

[M_K_Babalon]

750W's are wild cards in your controlled experiment. Them getting H's are another outlier. Your data will be askewed on the matter that you'd need a general idea on the catagory readers, then factor in that most readers don't like 750W's, probably because they can't get into or get off, then your's has no sex in it.

Write a "full length" story for there for better results. I don't know much about the fanbase to know if it's an outlier or not. I'll be dropping my first one ever in there, whenever I finish it. A 750W might struggle in the most popular of cats with the most easy to please readers.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

Mature is a category that prefers a slow burn story over smut. They have little interest in 750 word 'stories'

My latest is Mature 4.86 on 600+ votes.

Also 8 pages of character and story build up.

Whew. Mine isn't a slow burn, I hope they like it. I guess I could wait a while before I have them drop the "L" word, but they fucking already in chapter... 4...? I don't wanna put real long stuff on here, no more than ten chapters, excluding my two incest stories on my other account.

 

[MrPixel]

My last one for the year went up this morning in Mature, an autumn-spring fling: Bassoon Lesson with Benefits. The haters are hammering the score, while the comments are very nice.

 

[thanagar]

The first story I ever wrote for Lit was in the Mature category. I got a great reception and tons of encouragement to keep writing. I'm still proud of the story, even if there are more mistakes in than I would like.

https://literotica.com/s/little-packages

I ended up writing 13 stories in that series, and the lowest rated is 4.82. It's a dd/lg story.

The only Mature story that didn't land as well was Mayura, which was honestly more a Loving Wives story I tried to hide in Mature, because they can be....aggressive, in the LW category. The found it anyway and slammed me with a bunch of 1s. I watched that story drop 20 points in less than an hour.

Anyway, I think Mature is a solid category to post in. I wouldn't still be writing if it wasn't for the positive response I got to that first story.

 

[MyBareTorso]

On one of my mature stories, I covered all bases. A 70ish yo Aussie guy, his 50ish son, and his early 20s grandson having some fun with a 30ish Indian lady.

At one point, all at the same time. That was 5 pages/17k words. Currently 4.74.

I'm off to read that NOW!

 

[Rustyoznail]

Thanks! If you'd like to read the series, start here.

https://literotica.com/s/cricket-anyone-india-vs-australia

 

[geronimo_appleby]

You youngsters don't seem to realise that sex doesn't stop after 30. Just because we're saggy and wrinkly, and need to stop to catch our breath every few minutes, and we're actually mostly interested in the post-sex nap, doesn't mean we don't do it.

like a goddam sexual tyrannosaur!

 

[ElectricBlue]

like a goddam sexual tyrannosaur!

Which reminds me - why is the Tyrannosaurus Rex always so angry?

Coz its forearms are too short to masturbate. Boom-tish... sigh.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Um, Emily, hon, think it through. A baker’s dozen of stories in a dozen categories - one of them has to be at the bottom.

Of course. It’s the gap between the bottom one’s rating and the rest that is striking.

Would you have been asking the same question had it been a story in Sci-Fi? Toys?

The graveyard categories?

Emily

 

[Voboy]

like a goddam sexual tyrannosaur!

Yeah, strap this on your sore ass, Blaine.

 

[Britva415]

why is the Tyrannosaurus Rex always so angry?

George Carlin, circa 1973: "If God meant for us not to masturbate, he would have made our arms shorter."

 

[lovecraft68]

Whew. Mine isn't a slow burn, I hope they like it. I guess I could wait a while before I have them drop the "L" word, but they fucking already in chapter... 4...? I don't wanna put real long stuff on here, no more than ten chapters, excluding my two incest stories on my other account.

The crowd there is okay with smut, and you'll get a good number of views/votes/comments, but the score will be lower.

Mature mirrors I/T in its readership, it will accept both the stroker and the slow burn, both get good numbers, but the high scores come with some substance to the stroke.

There's also the crossover effect of older women with younger men difference being in I/T its "your mom" in mature she's someone else's mom.

 

[Lifestyle66]

One of my best rated stories was posted in Mature two years ago, "Her Bucket List: Strip Club." It's at 4.46. And it isn't about an age difference between sex partners.

The story is the husband and wife married for 30-years visiting their son away at college. The three of them end up in a strip club, and the wife/mother gets on the amateur stage when the father gets a stripper to distract their son.

And in looking at other 750-word stories in mature this year, there are several rated over 4.0.

So, Mature is far more welcoming than my usual Loving Wives ventures. IMO, if a story isn't rating up to the author's expectations in Mature, then it's due to the story, not the audience.

 

[lovecraft68]

One of my best rated stories was posted in Mature two years ago, "Her Bucket List: Strip Club." It's at 4.46. And it isn't about an age difference between sex partners.

The story is the husband and wife married for 30-years visiting their son away at college. The three of them end up in a strip club, and the wife/mother gets on the amateur stage when the father gets a stripper to distract their son.

And in looking at other 750-word stories in mature this year, there are several rated over 4.0.

So, Mature is far more welcoming than my usual Loving Wives ventures. IMO, if a story isn't rating up to the author's expectations in Mature, then it's due to the story, not the audience.

Mom and Dad taking the son to a strip club.

I'd say only on an erotica site, but....there was the seventies...

 

[Lifestyle66]

Mom and Dad taking the son to a strip club.

I'd say only on an erotica site, but....there was the seventies...

IRL, it happened ten years ago. (But there was no shower scene sex.)

 

[lovecraft68]

(But there was no shower scene sex.)

Well, I am glad there was some discretion provided.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Would you have been asking the same question had it been a story in Sci-Fi? Toys?

The graveyard categories?

Emily

+++++++++++

'Graveyard categories?' Emily, I've had very solid scores and comments in T&M and some of my very best scores came from Sci-Fi. There were some dogs, of course, but I think that any category (less LW, granted) can work. Don't let one misstep (in a touchy 750-word format to boot) put you off.

 

[ronde]

Mature is an interesting category, the only driver being an age difference. Other than that, almost anything flies. There is a strong at times smattering of Loving Wives, Romance, and even sometimes a bit of Femdom. It should be an easy category to fit almost anything in, as long as you respect the age difference

I have several stories in the mature genre, and all have done pretty well. As some have already said, it appears as if my readers are older, and maybe that's the issue with some mature stories. Just like writing about anything, to make the story believable, you have to sound like you know what you're talking about. The best way to understand how mature people think and act is to be one of those mature people and those thoughts and actions change as a person ages.

It's not hard for me to write about people in their 20's or 30's because I've been there and I remember what being that age was like. Being of a "very experienced" generation myself, it's also not hard for me to write how older people react to situations and other people. I would think it would be difficult to put yourself in the mind of a character who is 50 when you're just 30 unless you have some personal experience with people that age.

 

[femmeappeal]

I will not pretend to be some expert, but having been in erotica spaces for decades I find that anything which delves strongly into a character's sexuality without accompanying sex scenes gets less attention. I'm not saying they should, they just do. Some people really do imagine that erotica without sex is a pointless exercise, and a waste of their time. And considering there are times when I go looking for a story just for a quick masturbatory assistant, I can see the beef some people have, when a story that intrigues them fails to 'finish'. It's almost as if such stories would benefit from a warning header - "tw: This story contains nothing approximating a climax."

This perspective is reinforced by the fact that I get a lot of compliments on how intense and hot some of my non-sex scenes are, but those are often the foreplay to a full-on sex scene later in the story.