First Story, A Couple of Questions

[SevenSquared]

Okay, I'm just finishing off my first story and have a couple of questions.

1. Can you use standard html formatting when submitting a story, like can you use the [ i] tag to create italics etc?

2. What is the usual procedure if the story is borderline between two categories? For example if it was a story about losing your virginity and with a member of another race, would you put it in First Time or Interracial? (Note, my story isn't of this type, it's a different two categories, just giving an example).

Thanks in advance for your help

 

[PennLady]

Okay, I'm just finishing off my first story and have a couple of questions.

1. Can you use standard html formatting when submitting a story, like can you use the [ i] tag to create italics etc?

Yes, you can use standard formatting -- I do this all the time -- but you should use the standard bracket tags. <i> and </i> for italics, for example. This works best, in my experience, if you paste the story into the block provided, as opposed to submitting a .doc file.

2. What is the usual procedure if the story is borderline between two categories? For example if it was a story about losing your virginity and with a member of another race, would you put it in First Time or Interracial? (Note, my story isn't of this type, it's a different two categories, just giving an example).

Thanks in advance for your help

I'm not sure there's a usual or standard procedure for this one. I'd say pick the one that represents it best to you. If a person looks at it, it may get put into a different one, but I'm not sure how often that happens. Also, it's hard to answer without knowing which categories you're talking about.

Some people have said that certain categories seem to trump others -- like if there's sex between family members, it should fall into incest, no matter what else might go on. So, for example, a story about a girl who loses her virginity to her brother would go under incest and not first time.

Again, though, without knowing the your specific categories, it's hard to answer.

 

[SevenSquared]

Yeah, that's why I asked the question really. I figured there might be categories that people consider to be be 'trumping' or 'recessive'. For example, I imagine that 'Erotic Couplings' (and maybe to a lesser extent 'Loving Wives') are used for stories that don't really fit anywhere else. I understand why Incest would be a trumping category, because it is considered gross by many people and they wouldn't want to accidently stumble upon it when they thought the story was about something else. I guess the same could apply to Non-Consent, Celebrity, Non-Human, Gay Male and maybe BDSM too.

To fill you in on the details, my story is stuck between Fetish and Toys/Masturbation. I guess reading it you would say masturbation is the more prominant theme, but the story is more about a fetish which is explored through masturbation rather than about masturbation itself. But the fetish section is so cluttered with all kinds of stuff that maybe it would be better off in T/M anyway.

*shrug*

As a bonus question, the story is about 13,000 words, is this considered okay, or too long? I didn't really intend it to be that length, that's just the amount of words it took to tell the story.

 

[PennLady]

To fill you in on the details, my story is stuck between Fetish and Toys/Masturbation. ...

*shrug*

As a bonus question, the story is about 13,000 words, is this considered okay, or too long? I didn't really intend it to be that length, that's just the amount of words it took to tell the story.

Without reading it, sounds like T/M might be the best choice. Length is kind of irrelevant -- there's no limit on length of stories, only a minimum. My stories in various genres have ranged from 2500 words to over 100k. I'd say 13k is fine for a stand alone to be posted in one shot. More than that and I'd probably recommend breaking it up into smaller piece, but again, there's no limit on length of submissions.

 

[Darkniciad]

The call between those two categories is too difficult to make without having a lot more details. You'll get more clicks in Fetish, but as you mentioned, there are a lot of fetishes in the category. If yours isn't one of their kinks, clicks don't necessarily translate into anything else.

As PennLady suggested, you're probably better off leaning toward T&M. Even if it is a fetish, the expression of it in masturbation targets a category with a specific focus that matches the story content. You're more likely to have everyone who clicks looking for your type of story there, thus getting more value per click in votes and feedback.

 

[SevenSquared]

Cool, thanks for the advice both of you. I'll go with T&M