Posting specs stress?

I can’t be the only one who agonizes over deciding on the best category, writing a logline and choosing tags, right?

Any tips you use to make these choices as well as possible? If your story straddles two categories, how do you decide which to go with?

Why is logline writing so difficult? I am NOT succinct at all haha.

Any tips or commiseration appreciated.

Lemonletters said:

I can’t be the only one who agonizes over deciding on the best category, writing a logline and choosing tags, right?

Any tips you use to make these choices as well as possible? If your story straddles two categories, how do you decide which to go with?

Why is logline writing so difficult? I am NOT succinct at all haha.

Any tips or commiseration appreciated.

Click to expand...

Concerning categories, this article is extremely helpful: https://literotica.com/beta/s/love-your-readers-categories. The 2 key points about categories are these: first, some categories have many more readers than others. Second, readers in some categories are much more tolerant than in others. Think about what the most likely audience for your story is, and where that audience is going to be.

Tags: Once you've chosen a category, go to the tag page for that category. Pick tags that are popular and that also match your story. Tags serve two purposes. They are used in searches, so you want to use tags that people are actually going to use in a search. For instance, let's say your story is about sex at a gas station. It's unlikely that prospective readers are searching for stories using the tag "gas station," so don't bother using that as a tag. Second, people may use them to get a better idea what's in your story once they've clicked on it. You can use tags to try to weed out readers who may dislike your story. If you are submitting to Loving Wives, for example, absolutely use tags to distinguish whether it's a "cheating with consequences" story or a "happily shared wife" story.

Tagline: I try to follow several guidelines in writing taglines. First, it should reveal something about the story, but maybe not too much. It can be suggestive. You might put it in the form of a question that the reader has to read the story to answer. It should be titillating. You might insert a tag that's popular with the category in the tagline. It should complement the title. If the title reveals the subject of the story, then the tagline doesn't have to do the same thing. It can be playful or allusive. If the title is cryptic, then I think it's better for the tagline to reveal more of the story. I try to make sure that between the title and the tagline the reader is going to have some idea what the story is about.


I should add that some authors prefer to take a more creative approach to titles, taglines, etc., and are less concerned with the practical consequences. There's nothing wrong with that, but my approach is mostly practical.

SimonDoom said:

Concerning categories, this article is extremely helpful: https://literotica.com/beta/s/love-your-readers-categories. The 2 key points about categories are these: first, some categories have many more readers than others. Second, readers in some categories are much more tolerant than in others. Think about what the most likely audience for your story is, and where that audience is going to be.

Tags: Once you've chosen a category, go to the tag page for that category. Pick tags that are popular and that also match your story. Tags serve two purposes. They are used in searches, so you want to use tags that people are actually going to use in a search. For instance, let's say your story is about sex at a gas station. It's unlikely that prospective readers are searching for stories using the tag "gas station," so don't bother using that as a tag. Second, people may use them to get a better idea what's in your story once they've clicked on it. You can use tags to try to weed out readers who may dislike your story. If you are submitting to Loving Wives, for example, absolutely use tags to distinguish whether it's a "cheating with consequences" story or a "happily shared wife" story.

Tagline: I try to follow several guidelines in writing taglines. First, it should reveal something about the story, but maybe not too much. It can be suggestive. You might put it in the form of a question that the reader has to read the story to answer. It should be titillating. You might insert a tag that's popular with the category in the tagline. It should complement the title. If the title reveals the subject of the story, then the tagline doesn't have to do the same thing. It can be playful or allusive. If the title is cryptic, then I think it's better for the tagline to reveal more of the story. I try to make sure that between the title and the tagline the reader is going to have some idea what the story is about.


I should add that some authors prefer to take a more creative approach to titles, taglines, etc., and are less concerned with the practical consequences. There's nothing wrong with that, but my approach is mostly practical.

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This is very helpful, thank you.

I tend to lean toward creative/cheeky, so the practicality is sorely needed and very appreciated.

I go with the time tested K.I.S.S.

The stuff I've posted is deliberately simplistic, along the lines of the Penthouse Letters, Variations type submissions. I don't even think about the stuff you mention. Life sucks the giant donkey schlong, so why let it infest what should be a more or less fun place?

Keep Calm and LetItGo.

I think Simon nailed it pretty well.

I’m not however all that convinced tags do much for anybody. Let’s say you have story about a couple ‘making the beast with two backs’ in a motel. It’s a well-written, highly-erotic story, so kudos to the author. But what tags are going to bring readers to that particular tale? ‘Oral’? There are only 750,000 stories here with an ‘oral’ tagline. ‘Motel’? ‘Quickie’? Not much use. Your yarn has to have something pretty special for a tag to provide real horsepower for a search - ‘Jell-O wrestling’ or ‘albino midgets’ might work, for those interested in such. But in most cases, for most normal stories, not so much.

And the tags are, in my experience, at the end of the story, which makes their use in screening stories less than optimal. Whatever.

Call me cynical if you want, but to me tags are like chicken soup for a cold - can’t hurt and might help. I just wouldn’t spend a lot of time fretting over them.

60 characters is not enough for a convincing elevator pitch.

As for tags, I usually use about half of them to categorize the story's genre and the other half detailing kinks. Since sex is not the main focus, I can get away with that.

My taglines are a mess. I've used some of subtitles, but that doesn't work very well because there are places where readers won't see the title and tagline together. I've used some to describe the story, but they are clunky and not very appealing. I've used some as teasers. That seems to work best, but they're hard to devise. My best that way was probably "Sex and lies and parties by the pool."

I think it's good to use popular tags,but if you use only popular tags then (as Penny pointed out) they're not very useful. A reader could search for every tag on your story and still come up with 5,000 results. I think the tags need to include something that is specific to the story. That would be more useful if the tags were at the top of the story.

If Laurel finds your tags inadequate, then she may add and subtract to get tags that are more consistent with the way they want the system to work.

I lean to using creative titles. If the title is merely descriptive, then I expect the story to be merely descriptive, but that is just me.

TarnishedPenny said:

I think Simon nailed it pretty well.

I’m not however all that convinced tags do much for anybody. Let’s say you have story about a couple ‘making the beast with two backs’ in a motel. It’s a well-written, highly-erotic story, so kudos to the author. But what tags are going to bring readers to that particular tale? ‘Oral’? There are only 750,000 stories here with an ‘oral’ tagline. ‘Motel’? ‘Quickie’? Not much use. Your yarn has to have something pretty special for a tag to provide real horsepower for a search - ‘Jell-O wrestling’ or ‘albino midgets’ might work, for those interested in such. But in most cases, for most normal stories, not so much.

And the tags are, in my experience, at the end of the story, which makes their use in screening stories less than optimal. Whatever.

Call me cynical if you want, but to me tags are like chicken soup for a cold - can’t hurt and might help. I just wouldn’t spend a lot of time fretting over them.

Click to expand...

With the new story page design, the tags are now available at the top of the first page of the story. When you click on the tag symbol all the tags become visible.

I'm not sure how useful they are for searching, either. I have done some tag searching that has been helpful. You can filter tag searches in ways that make the story list more useful. Tags for some stories can be useful. For instance, I recently wrote a story based on the "mailgirl" concept. "Mailgirl" is an example of a very useful tag, because it's something for which there's an existing audience that is likely to use the term for searching, and a search yields a discrete list of stories.

You can also search for two tags, separated by a comma, which may yield a more manageable list.

It depends for me. If I'm writing a long fantasy epic, I'll use taglines that give a brief outline of the chapter. They may not be particularly exciting for anyone who isn't already reading the story. I do try to make them interesting, but there's only so much you can do with 64 characters.

If I'm writing incest, I make sure that the relationships involved get called out in the title + tagline. That's the primary concern there. You want to catch those with the kink subset that your story hits straight out of the box.

If I can appropriately use "Mom" in a title or tagline, it goes in there. Single biggest magnet on the site for Incest/Mature.

If it's a one-shot, I'm almost always aiming for something cheeky or pun-laden in both the title and tagline. Seems to work for me to get folks to open them. Actually, I'm leaning more that direction with everything. It amuses the hell out of me, and when you get joy out of something that works, why not run with it?

Unless I'm just absolutely in love with the title I have for something, the first thing I do is see if it has already been used on Lit. I try to avoid repeating the exact same title someone else has already used.

My rule of avoiding "A" or "The" as the start of a title helps tremendously with that.

Get the beginning of the URL loaded up ( all the way to the /s/ ) and then just type your title out hyphenated, eliminating any apostrophes, dashes, etc. If it comes up 404, you're golden. I usually do a second search adding a -1 to see if it's been removed by the first author to use it, and later versions are still on the site.

I don't know how much unique helps, but I haven't seen any evidence of it hurting.

I probably put as much thought into the title and tagline as I do the story. As often as not nowadays, the title and tagline are the genesis of the story idea. Those two things are the only thing that's consistently displayed everywhere your story is listed. The title is the only thing on contest pages. You have to make those fuckers count if you want the story to attract readership.

Of course, you can also go blatantly obvious. Many of silkstockinglovers titles and taglines are matter-of-fact, and look where she is, light years ahead of most people on the favorite author list. Part of that is consistent production, but telling those looking for a quick wank exactly what's inside is part of it as well.

Tag lines... need to be longer. Difficult to pitch the story in 60 char.

Tags... Most of the time I don't use any, there are tag that default, depending on category.

Categories... I write mainly in 3 categories, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Loving Wives, and Incest/Taboo. If a story I write belongs somewhere else that's the reason I wrote it.

I typically write specifically to categories as well, so it's not a huge issue determining where it goes. That's not always categories here, though. I get my fill of kink hopping in Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Non-Human, where the umbrella of fantasy gives me leeway for sexual exploration, and the readership doesn't balk at most things.

When an idea does straddle categories, I start with a very similar hierarchy to the one linked above, which I provided input for. Lean toward the most triggering thing in the work. If there's nothing particularly triggering, I lean toward the category with the largest readership. When there's nothing particularly kinky at all, and it's 1 on 1, off to the grab bag of Erotic Couplings it goes.

If there's absolutely no home for it here on Lit ( Bisexual Male stories, and in my opinion, pretty much anything that falls under LW ) then it doesn't go here. Having other venues with different rules and readerships means that whatever I come up with has a home somewhere. I see no point in throwing something to the sharks when I can get positive feedback from it elsewhere.

For some special cases, such as more-or-less grounded historical fiction, the Sci-Fi & Fantasy readership is fine with those, even without any fantastical elements. It's a different world from anything we experience today, and that's what they're looking for. Ancient Egypt. Mesoamerica. Ancient Greece. Ancient Rome. That will all fly without wizards and the like. The main categories just aren't used to that sort of stuff, so you'll get a lot of WTF back clicks.

Unless you felt like writing a specific kink/genre, and it stays that way once the characters come to life and start making their own decisions, then where to put it should be the last decision you make. If you think about that too much while you're still working on it, you can stifle your creativity. If something is going to range out, wait until you finish it and make the decision then.

One useful function of the Tags search is in making the decision as to which category my new story best fits. By combining key tags with different categories, the category with the highest number of stories that use that tag can be seen. I don't always need to do this, but if it's a story with content I'm not very familiar with it can help place it with at least some attempt to get it right.

You've already gotten some solid advice, especially from SimonDoom and RejectReality, but I'll add in my own two cents.

The titles I eventually settle on are meant to give my story character and to make me happy, nothing more. I also find story titles crammed with buzzwords to be crude (though I understand their usefulness), so I tend to avoid those. Luckily, the sci-fi/fantasy crowd doesn't seem to mind artsy, non-specific titles, regardless of whether or not they're posted specifically to the sci-fi/fantasy subsection of the site.

The taglines, however, I craft with my readers in mind. I prefer to write multi-part stories and I always make sure that the tagline of the first chapter clearly conveys the overall premise of the story. The taglines for future chapters are more focused on intriguing the established readership and encouraging new readers to start from the beginning, so they'll often be a lot more vague in nature, but I'll also include more buzzwords, too.

As for tags, I spend about half of my tags alerting readers to the overarching erotic themes of the story and the second half detailing the kinks within that particular story/chapter. On the one hand, you don't want tags that are too popular, because then your story ends up being a needle in a haystack of similarly tagged stories. But on the other hand, if you use tags that are too unique, no one will search for them.

One thing I consider with tags is outside search engines, too.

True on tags and search engines. That does work.

I've got something of an unintentional experiment running right now. My new story that just came out has both a title and tagline that don't really say anything about what's inside. It has something of a sweet bent to it, rather than pure bump and grind, so "Banging his 18-year-old neighbor" just didn't feel right.

It's just "A Belated Gift" ( Yes, breaking my own no "A" or "The" rule ) and "Even late, a mere thanks isn't enough for some gifts."

Now, if anybody looks at the tags, there's zero doubt what's going on inside.

This one sort of blew up unexpectedly in other places, and those places have the tags prominently displayed. I used the same sort of tagline on one, and a synopsis on the other that likewise says nothing about the naughty bits. That's all in the tags or the reading in all three places.

We'll see if it under-performs here due to the tags not being right up front, compared to the over-performance on the other two sites where the touch of sweetness was actually what was most commented on — immediately followed by compliments on the details in the heat.