Going Over 'The Line'

[LastLostIdols]

This site is fairly heavy when it comes to fetishes, yet obviously there are rules, and with good reason; No under 18's, no necrophilia, no animals, etc.

But is there a line that shouldn't be crossed? I'm currently re-writing my original erotica, I started writing it out of the blue when I had a massive hangover and honestly felt like death writing it. I was taking regular breaks from writing to go and throw up.

Anyway the story in question was fairly heavy in my opinion of being quite foul and disgusting. So I'm just wondering what things/fetishes are too much? My story has these things in particular;
-Transexuals
-periods/blood
-Dwarves
-Pregnancy
-Fisting
-Golden Shower/pissing
-non-consent/rape
-character deaths/murder/vague torture
-drugs/booze, general crime
-Anal
-threesomes
-Prostitutes
-nuns/priests
-Demons/magic/witches etc.
-And possibly an alien.

I likely won't do scat as that does disgust even me. But just wondering where the line is? I have a few scenes were a body gets buried, the protagonist gets tortured, people get murdered. People doing drugs etc. And maybe a few actual rape scenes.

It could also help as well if I would know what genre to put this level of variety under? As it's grown so much in content, I'm thinking Novella with a heavy duty warning label in the author notes?

Would really like some help on this one, and if it is too much and we can't show murder, torture or real rape in a story then I won't post it here or likely anywhere. But I will still write it as I can't keep the characters out of my head. =P

 

[sr71plt]

Would have to see what exactly you did with these to see if they went over any lines. The obvious ones to look at carefully deal with rape and gratuitous, sexually arousing murder.

 

[LastLostIdols]

Well one of the characters, the villain, is a serial killer and is a psychopath so that's where the rape comes into play. He would kill a few characters but eventually be taken out of the picture fairly soon I hope, he's not in it for long. There are other killers, but I wouldn't go around describing murder dexter style, killing for fun and what not.

Try not to anyway, I'll have to see where it goes.

What genre do you think it would be best under if not novella?

 

[SamScribble]

What genre do you think it would be best under if not novella?

Well, there's a readership for most things here on Lit. And if your work is going to be long, the novella category makes sense. But, while the category might get you good reviews, you might have to sacrifice some readership. I suspect that most readers arrive here looking for a 'short story' with an erotic theme or content.

Good luck.

 

[LastLostIdols]

Okay thank you Sam & Pilot! You helped clear that up. Now I just need to decide which way to take the story, so many options.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Hi there
the main rule is that if there is murder, it should not be depicted in a sexually exciting way - no snuff. So you can have a murder as part of your story. However if you describe the killing in a way that is clearly designed to be titillating, your story will be rejected. Similar with non-com and rape, although I get the impression that line is a lot more blurry.

One thing you can do, is post the different chapters in different categories. I did that intentionally with one story series I had, as I was trying to create a real e-story - one with a lot of variety and where you could skip chapters that had a kind of sex which wasn't something you liked. If you were not into lesbian, you could read the hetero sex segments and the gay sex while still keeping abreast of the story.

You do lose some readership by doing this. I also have a novel which has nearly finished posting in Novels and Novellas. It has low readership and exceptionally low votes - although I don't think that is typical, I've seen other novels in Novels and Novellas which have lots more votes. What I have got is fantastic feedback. It was a little slow and I had to threaten to pull the story, because I felt there wasn't really any interest in it. Slowly, though, people started giving me serious dedicated comments on how I could develop the novel better.

It may help if you cruise through all the categories and get a stronger sense of what kind of thing is being posted in them. This is not always immediately obvious. E.g., I genuinely thought Erotic Couplings was for casual sex encounters. However now I realise it is a spillover for Loving Wives, and stories in Erotic Couplings can get heavily trolled.

How you post the story depends a bit on what you would like to achieve. High votes? Go for romance (LOL - joke! with a story like yours). Good feedback - Novels and Novellas seems to have that in my experience as you will find dedicated readers in it for the long term there. Spread yourself about a bit - post the stories in different categories depending on what is in them. Lots of comments - post in Loving Wives , sorry - that was a joke. Loving Wives has some nutter readers who seem to find it hard to understand that a story is fictional and never really happened. They have big fights with each other in the Comments sections of stories.

Another factor is that although you select a category, Laurel may change this if she thinks your story fits in a different category. She is usually right as she has a lot of experience posting the stories for us. If you want it to go in a particular category put a note in the Notes box explaining to her why you have chosen that one.

Good luck!