Does your readership influence your concepts, genres, or choices?

[Euphony]

Of course, feedback and the like does and of course they do. I wonder though do they ever influence your choices in concepts or genres? Ive seen some authors hint at multiple accounts which I assume is to have a squeaky clean account for their more modest audience and another to experiment with.

I thought it odd at the time but then caught myself the other day seeing one of my fav authors a little differently after I read something very off genre for him/her.

So, hypothetically so as not to out any one, if you were to write something out of your usual readerships preferences would you:

Keep it to yourself as just another writing exercise

Release it with numerous warnings in the authors notes

Consider another account to sandbox with

F'em. You'll take what I give and you'll like it.

Some other permutation Ive not thought of

Anyway, I though it interesting to hear from authors who have a way more invested in the works than the readership. I can't imagine limiting myself to a preferred genre but I can't see myself swimming upstream on a regular basis either.

 

[sr71plt]

I write separate genres under separate pen names, with some overlap. This account is mainly used for GM (although I have stories in 22 separate Lit. catagories under this account).

I don't let readers influence what I write and post to Literotica.

I do, however, let buyers influence what I write and publish in the marketplace--and even there I keep separate genres under separate account names.

 

[Euphony]

I write separate genres under separate pen names, with some overlap. This account is mainly used for GM (although I have stories in 22 separate Lit. catagories under this account).

I don't let readers influence what I write and post to Literotica.

I do, however, let buyers influence what I write and publish in the marketplace--and even there I keep separate genres under separate account names.

Fascinating. A few questions if I may.

Do you find GM to be a more tolerant crowd than most so you can venture a little more w/this account?

Ive read before that you write for you and post for you. Commendable even if its just you being you. But while the works DO get crafted, there is a certain organizing to them for you? (to different accounts and the like). Is there a certain challenging your readership w/new genres but a certain line of variation you dont cross?

Re: publishing. Makes all the sense in the world. You are your genre in a lot of cases. No sense freaking out hard fought for readers.

I have this vibe that the readership is far more fractured than the authors. Id love to write stores that challenge a bit rather than cliched themes done up in a prettier bow. It seems it may be a death wish though depending on who your main readers are and their tolerance levels for thinking outside their own box.

And if LW were my main occupation Id dare say I wouldnt write anything else on that account. The trolls can follow you everywhere and it seems some would.

 

[lovecraft68]

I have a couple pf pen names on amazon. One is exclusively "step-incest" and I have one for other stuff.

here everything is under this name.

I did a very sappy romance for V-day contest that was as different for me as I could get.

I got a great response from it, from both new readers and the people who knew me from incest and bdsm.

The only drawback was comments from people saying how sweet it was and said they couldn't wait to read the rest of my work.

Yeah, good luck with that.

 

[sr71plt]

Fascinating. A few questions if I may.

Do you find GM to be a more tolerant crowd than most so you can venture a little more w/this account?

My nonerotic and Romance get the best Literotica ratings. They get good comments too--the GM gets the best comments, though. I get very few negative comments on the GM--either on the technicals or the gay content--just a lot of zap votes.

As I noted, though, I don't gauge what I write for Literotica on any reader response. The only exception is that I can't post much bi to Literotica, because it has no category for it and therefore all comments about it being misplaced just don't understand that there's no good category offered to put it in.

Ive read before that you write for you and post for you. Commendable even if its just you being you. But while the works DO get crafted, there is a certain organizing to them for you? (to different accounts and the like). Is there a certain challenging your readership w/new genres but a certain line of variation you dont cross?

Not sure I understand the full intent of the question. Again, I mostly write what I want--without any influence of Literotica at all--and that's that. I decide what to write first. Then I decide what to post to Literotica. Most of the erotica I'm writing now isn't posted to Literotica at all. It's solely for sale (I now only make short stories available for free after they've been in the marketplace).

I suppose I'd do something with underage (down to 15 in age) if I didn't find constrained not to. But I don't do that for the marketplace either, so the constraint isn't just Literotica's rules.

There are some genres I find idiotic (water works being one I could mention here without this thread being hijacked), so I don't write them.

And I need to be turned on by what I write. So, while I'd like to be able to post bi here, it would be MMF, not MFF. The latter one does not for my arousal, so I'd be hardpressed to get into steamy when I was writing. And if I can't do that, why write at all? I only write lesbian here if the storyline first arising demands it.

Much of my nonerotic is in Christmas stories. I don't normally think of Christmas as a erotic setup. (But I do have some Christmas erotica too.)

Re: publishing. Makes all the sense in the world. You are your genre in a lot of cases. No sense freaking out hard fought for readers.

I'm not my genre, really, no. My best-selling erotica pen name--by far--is soft-core cozy mysteries lesbian. Other than the "mysteries," that isn't me. I'm writing directly to a buying market with those.

I have this vibe that the readership is far more fractured than the authors. Id love to write stores that challenge a bit rather than cliched themes done up in a prettier bow. It seems it may be a death wish though depending on who your main readers are and their tolerance levels for thinking outside their own box.

Go ahead and write the edgy stuff and post it here, then. And don't pay much attention to the comments that don't go to improving the writing techniques and presentation. This isn't the New Yorker, and there are no paychecks to authors here (despite what Scouries claims).

This is exactly the place to experiment and write what you want (as long as the Web site will accept it).

And if LW were my main occupation Id dare say I wouldnt write anything else on that account. The trolls can follow you everywhere and it seems some would.

If you're serious about experimenting with what you want and you can't ignore the trolls just turn your voting and comments off. If you can't do that, you're not really interested in your writing more than you are in strokes.

 

[MatthewVett]

I like to keep all my Literotica stories in one place. I don't let readership bar me from writing about anything, though. If I want to write about something, I will, and so far I haven't had any old readers complaining about me going in new directions. It probably helps that I never had a category that I specialized in.

An especially enthusiastic reader response, though, can make me more willing to continue writing in that genre for a while longer. That's pretty much what happened with She Has a What?! It would have been a one-shot if not for how amazing the TS/CD audience is.

 

[PennLady]

I write what I get ideas for. I have toyed with the idea of an alt for a couple of those stories, but have so far not done it. Mostly because I have other accounts at other sites and do not want to maintain multiple accounts at multiple sites. I have found that my romances and my nonhuman romances (none of them here at the moment) got the best reactions and ratings. When I stray too far out of those boxes, I get lower ratings (although not bad ratings; just lower).

However, as sr says, this is a place to experiment. If people like it great, if they don't, I'll deal.

 

[nicecthulhu]

Yeah, I'm usually in the category of writers that write what has to come out. Some stories just burn a hole in my subconscious and have to be released, while others happily sit in the queue until it's their turn and then, wham!
However, Holly's Winter was meant to be a one-shot story with no sequels. Very nice reader comments stirred up some ideas and I've had five sequels plotted, three of which were written and submitted to Literotica (The Goblin Queen is now an ebook). The Doctor's Daughter was the same and has a sequel on the way, and another waiting in the subconscious queue. In The Dog House also falls into that category.
So sometimes reader's comments and feedback do result in sequels to my stories.
I'm assuming I haven't broken any Lit rules by mentioning story names...

 

[YDB95]

I just go with whatever inspires me, and I keep it all in one place. The one exception is LW...if I end up with a story that would fit there, I figure out someplace else to put it.

My Romance stories are the most fun for me to write, but the best-rated so far have been in Exhibitionist & Voyeur and Novels (Speaking of which, anyone waiting for Chapter 3 of "Decades," it's coming. I'm just working through a nasty case of writer's block!)

 

[soflabbwlvr]

I write my stories the way I want to write them. I start out with a story idea independent of any category considerations, and then work it until I am satisfied with the final product. At that point I try to determine which category is the best fit. I don't let reader expectations influence my story, but I do take them into account when choosing a category. For example, one of the most romantic stories I wrote involved two cheating lovers. I knew it would get toasted in Romance, so I put most of it in EC.

Due to my past experiences, I will not submit future stories to the LW category under this identity. I haven't created the alt. yet due to the fact that those stories are further back in my queue, but once they are ready to go I will create a second identity. All other stories in all other categories will continue to be submitted with this pen name.

 

[topace]

Occasionally they give me an idea or two that I run with.

One reader in particular has been very good at giving me ideas for a particular story.

 

[sr71plt]

Along with everyone else (I presume) I get quite a few "please continue this story" requests in the comments section. Although I generally think of these as just the reader liking a story enough to want it to continue--and I don't usually definitively close stories (because that's not life)--on occasion this has given me pause to look at a story again and then expanding on it for a book for the marketplace.

As I've noted elsewhere, my entry for the Halloween contest (different from the one I'd already written) popped into my head on the basis of a reader wanting to discuss shared experiences. That sort of e-mail discussion sets off a story occasionally too. So, I guess that's an influence on the writing.

I'll also admit to being influenced a bit by my editor, who started off as a vociferous fan. I write in some areas that he doesn't offer praise in. I imagine that wanting him to be enthusiastic about my writing trims down what I write in some areas he doesn't like. Unfortunately, those are areas that get the most attention from readers.

 

[oggbashan]

My 'erotic' writing started for Yahoo Adult Groups, specifically some for particular fetishes. I was searching (when you could) the Adult groups and found several that were for specific fetishes.

I read the few stories posted in the groups' files and thought 'I can do better than that' - and did. When I started getting posts appreciating my stories and asking for more, I wrote more.

It became self-perpetuating. I wrote fetish stories because it was the fetish groups that responded. Therefore I wrote more fetish stories, got more responses, wrote more...

In 2002 I discovered Literotica and posted the better stories I had already written. The feedback encouraged me to write more, and because what I had posted was fetish, I wrote more fetish.

Since 2002 I have experimented with more normal stories and some experimental ones. I created jeanne_d_artois to write from a female point of view. Some of Jeanne's are stinkers. Unatit and Jeanne's Laundry Tales seem to have worked well.

So my answer to the OP is not that readership influenced me, but their responses certainly did. Sometimes I find that slightly confining. I want to write more normal erotic stories but those who like my fetish stories are disappointed.

The problem with writing fetish is that the audience is very limited. Those who like a particular fetish are totally uninterested in another. For example Mummification fans wouldn't want Facesitting, and Facesitting fans don't want Unbirth and so on...

 

[Karenas]

I'm much newer to this than most of you, so I was very much tempted to be overly concerned with ratings and comments and such. I pretty quickly decided I was just going to write what I wanted to write.
I would kindof like to take advantage of the readership in the more widely read categories, like incest. But while I read those stories I have not had any urge (yet, anyway) to write any.
I do write here under another name as well, but that is because of the people IRL who know I write under this name, not any desire to avoid confusing or crossing my readers.