First Time category experience?

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

Speaking with some experience in the category (6 of the Top 20 Hall of Fame right now), the readership do not insist, altho tender deflowering does, obviously, do well.

Lets see, I have a 1930's tearjerker (Tales from Old Shanghai), historical blood, guts and violence along with chinese princess and Vikings (Huginn's Yule), schoolgirl and teacher romance (F is for Fail), tentacles and a virgin (I Married a Heptapod), another historical with a lot of blood and death as well as hot sex (One Night in Xanadu), and of course, Biker + sweet Chinese girl (Chinese Takeout).

NONE of those are Summer of 42, or tender deflowering, altho I guess I Married a Heptapod might be, just, with tentacles. F is for Fail and Fingerprints on my Heart would be about the closest, but really, First Time can be stretched pretty broadly and the readership are very tolerant - I mean, "I Married a Heptapod" in the Top 20 in the First Time Hall of Fame. I snorted my coffee when it popped up there. That was me having fun when I put it in First Time.... but it does show how accepting First Time readers are.

Thanks! I don't think I can write in a heptapod into my story, but this tells me I can't blame the readership if what I do submit fails utterly.

 

[BuckyDuckman]

He gets my Stamp of Doomproval, for sure.

Writing a tagline is no time for nuance and subtlety.

True but my 1 of only 2 First Time stories includes

Whitney Learns to Suck. Good title, I think, but a much weaker tagline that deserves little praise: "Mason finds himself an unexpected teacher."

Its performance has been lackluster, too:
54 hearts, 107.3k views, 4.51 / 1.1k rating, and 22 comments.

It was originally published 09/12/2012. At least most of the comments were encouraging.