Hi, just found out you can interact with authors here! Erotic vs nonerotic content question

[JadaVersailles]

Hi everyone. I have a question about the expectation for sexual content. Obviously, most of my stories on here have a lot of sex scenes. Should I edit down the nonsexual parts? omit entirely? The world building, plot, character development all take time and make the hot sex hotter IMO but I also know this is an erotica site.

What ratio or # of sex scenes per post should i be going for?
Thanks in advance
Valucia

 

[SamScribble]

Forget all about ratios and the price of fish; write what you want to write. There are many, many different kinds of readers come to Lit. It might take a moment or two for the ones who enjoy what you write to find you, but they will find you.

Good luck.

 

[KeithD]

Write the story you want to write and then decide where it fits for publishing. Chances are that there will be a large enough audience for it to have made the effort to write it.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Whatever works for you and your story and characters. Helpful, I know...

I would say, use your title, tagline, possibly category and any notes you put at the start of your story to manage expectations - Romance expects longer before getting to the sex; a story entitled Filthy Cum Slut Takes It! will generate expectations of sex very quickly.

There are readers who want more balance to the sex, maybe not as many as those who want quick stroke pieces, but they're there.

Editing work until *you're* happy there's no wasted words or sentences is always advisable, but it's up to you if you want to write short or more expansive stories.

 

[8letters]

Hi everyone. I have a question about the expectation for sexual content. Obviously, most of my stories on here have a lot of sex scenes. Should I edit down the nonsexual parts? omit entirely? The world building, plot, character development all take time and make the hot sex hotter IMO but I also know this is an erotica site.

What ratio or # of sex scenes per post should i be going for?
Thanks in advance
Valucia

Looking at your submissions, I'd say the biggest issue you have is your stories are too short. The more pages your story has, the better its statistics in general, plateauing around six pages. That's true for chapters and stand-alone stories. It's my belief that readers want the world building, plot and character development before the sex happens. So, if anything, I'd suggest significantly increasing the nonsexual parts of your stories.

 

[Voboy]

Everyone else is right: write what you’d want to read.

DO NOT shy away from exposition on its own account. My stories generally run to around 20-30k words. If each full-fledged sex scene averages maybe 3.5-4k words, and many of my stories have just one such scene, you do the math.

BUT!

This is an erotica site. So even the non-sexual parts of my stories usually contain innuendo, inside jokes, sexual similes, etc. and, of course, plenty of physical contact short of full-fledged sex scenes.

The genre in which you’re writing plays a role, too.

 

[SimonDoom]

There's no such thing as a correct ratio. It depends on the needs of the story.

A common mistake newbies make is having a false idea of what a "long" story is in Literotica terms. They post chapters of stories where the chapters are under 3000 words.

If you care about the number of views you get and how well your story will be scored, this is a mistake. The data is very clear: stories of over 10,000 words will do better. So if you have, for example, a 30,000 word story, it's much better to publish it as a standalone story, or perhaps as a 2 or 3 chapter story, than as a 6 chapter story.

Lit readers are very tolerant of long stretches without sex, as long as they are well written. It helps if you eventually get to a good sex scene, but it depends on the category you post it in. Romance is a category that tolerates relatively little sex. So is Sci Fi/Fantasy. But if you publish in incest, you better get to the incest.

 

[PennameWombat]

What ratio or # of sex scenes per post should i be going for?
Thanks in advance
Valucia

To echo, whatever you want. One of my highest rated stories (my 2020 Winter Holidays entry) is 35,000 words and has plenty of eroticism but only two sex scenes, and both are very short and not all that explicit.

Each story in my You Promised Me Geeks series tends to have one or at most two explicit sex scenes, in stories of 15,000-20,000 words. They are also amongst my higher rated stories.

And I also have some highly rated stories that are almost wall to wall sex.

Other stories of mine with high ratings have higher mixes of sex scenes, but all of my longer stories have lots of ‘story’ to them. I have some lower rated stories where I didn’t get the mix right, or the story wasn’t engaging enough.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I have several stories that don't have but one sex scene at the end of 40,000 words. No complaints from readers. I also have a bunch of stories in Sci-Fi with no sex at all. No complaints.

 

[MsNatalie99]

For me the build up is often more rewarding than the action. I'm not turned off reading 20,000 words in order to get to the stories one and only three paragraph sex scene. Especially if the story is engauging, and the charaters interesting. Anyone can get scene after scene of mindless sex from a porn site. So don't worry about ratios and ratings, just write what you want to write.

 

[JadaVersailles]

Looking at your submissions, I'd say the biggest issue you have is your stories are too short. The more pages your story has, the better its statistics in general, plateauing around six pages. That's true for chapters and stand-alone stories. It's my belief that readers want the world building, plot and character development before the sex happens. So, if anything, I'd suggest significantly increasing the nonsexual parts of your stories.

wow, that is feedback i like that i haven't gotten before. I just submitted something where I edited out several pages of non-sexual plotline. I thought that publishing my chapters one at a time in like 2000-4000 entries (small bites) would be better than a giant 20 Chapters long post. No?

 

[JadaVersailles]

For me the build up is often more rewarding than the action. I'm not turned off reading 20,000 words in order to get to the stories one and only three paragraph sex scene. Especially if the story is engauging, and the charaters interesting. Anyone can get scene after scene of mindless sex from a porn site. So don't worry about ratios and ratings, just write what you want to write.

Thanks, this is giving more confidence. I'm alone a lot so sometimes my head makes up imaginary people who are like "get to the good stuff!" and I'm sure there are some, but it's reassuring to hear that there are readers who will stick around for world building and extended plot lines!

 

[JadaVersailles]

Forget all about ratios and the price of fish; write what you want to write. There are many, many different kinds of readers come to Lit. It might take a moment or two for the ones who enjoy what you write to find you, but they will find you.

Good luck.

thanks for this feedback. I have 800 pages of stuff I want to post, but wasn't sure if anyone cared about the whole story!

 

[JadaVersailles]

To echo, whatever you want. One of my highest rated stories (my 2020 Winter Holidays entry) is 35,000 words and has plenty of eroticism but only two sex scenes, and both are very short and not all that explicit.

Each story in my You Promised Me Geeks series tends to have one or at most two explicit sex scenes, in stories of 15,000-20,000 words. They are also amongst my higher rated stories.

And I also have some highly rated stories that are almost wall to wall sex.

Other stories of mine with high ratings have higher mixes of sex scenes, but all of my longer stories have lots of ‘story’ to them. I have some lower rated stories where I didn’t get the mix right, or the story wasn’t engaging enough.

wow, thank you for showing me this. I had no idea you could publish a chunk like that! I also have some patience issues, like it takes 3 weeks to get 2000 word stories approved, won't it take like 3 months to get a 35k word story up?

 

[JadaVersailles]

There's no such thing as a correct ratio. It depends on the needs of the story.

A common mistake newbies make is having a false idea of what a "long" story is in Literotica terms. They post chapters of stories where the chapters are under 3000 words.

If you care about the number of views you get and how well your story will be scored, this is a mistake. The data is very clear: stories of over 10,000 words will do better. So if you have, for example, a 30,000 word story, it's much better to publish it as a standalone story, or perhaps as a 2 or 3 chapter story, than as a 6 chapter story.

Lit readers are very tolerant of long stretches without sex, as long as they are well written. It helps if you eventually get to a good sex scene, but it depends on the category you post it in. Romance is a category that tolerates relatively little sex. So is Sci Fi/Fantasy. But if you publish in incest, you better get to the incest.

So do you think I should submit a long version that includes all the chapters I've posted?

 

[Magineer]

There's an elephant in the room here, namely that there's a difference between an erotic story and what you might call 'text porn'.

All too often on here you see the latter, i.e 'can't-wait-to-get-to-the-hot-bit-itis', trying to masquerade as the former, i.e. genuine story crafting. It depends on which camp you're in. Personally, I crave the element of credibility... so, NO shallow characters, NO unbelievable plot twists or deus ex machina AND rooting as closely as possible in the everyday which is familar to me, the reader, rather than, say, Captainkirkland or Elfgnomeorkcentral...

 

[Voboy]

thanks for this feedback. I have 800 pages of stuff I want to post, but wasn't sure if anyone cared about the whole story!

Someone cares about the whole story.

That's the person you want following you, hanging on your every word. And if your stuff is good, there will be several such someones.

Post it all! It's the only way you'll know.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

wow, thank you for showing me this. I had no idea you could publish a chunk like that! I also have some patience issues, like it takes 3 weeks to get 2000 word stories approved, won't it take like 3 months to get a 35k word story up?

No - especially once you've had your first story or two approved, the limiting factor is getting to the top of the queue (generally within 1-4 days), then passing the filters, which no-one knows the workings of for sure, but appear to be bots checking for various things that would trigger either rejection or a look by a person. Length is irrelevant.

If you think a bot might jump to a wrong conclusion, a Note in the notes field is helpful - I have previously warned that all references to 12-year-olds and 15yos etc are to bottles of whisky, or putting one sentence that might be considered too much 'sex' for an underage character to have thought - not had a rejection yet, except that Lit hates any file I've ever sent so I just copy and paste entire docs into the website.

 

[JadaVersailles]

There's an elephant in the room here, namely that there's a difference between an erotic story and what you might call 'text porn'.

All too often on here you see the latter, i.e 'can't-wait-to-get-to-the-hot-bit-itis', trying to masquerade as the former, i.e. genuine story crafting. It depends on which camp you're in. Personally, I crave the element of credibility... so, NO shallow characters, NO unbelievable plot twists or deus ex machina AND rooting as closely as possible in the everyday which is familar to me, the reader, rather than, say, Captainkirkland or Elfgnomeorkcentral...

yup, I've read those on this site. my stuff is definitely not text porn. I've been developing these characters and plots since 2017. I just had no idea how many readers are thoughtful consumers of erotica. and still hope to find more of them!

 

[ElectricBlue]

yup, I've read those on this site. my stuff is definitely not text porn. I've been developing these characters and plots since 2017. I just had no idea how many readers are thoughtful consumers of erotica. and still hope to find more of them!

There are many consumers of thoughtful erotica, too.

Get your content out there and they'll find you. Don't over think "strategies for getting readers" - the best strategy is regular, well-written content, written with your own voice.

You can find plenty of "how to" advice on this site, but I think the best approach is to be yourself, and don't try to please the "average reader" - that person does not exist.

 

[PennameWombat]

wow, thank you for showing me this. I had no idea you could publish a chunk like that! I also have some patience issues, like it takes 3 weeks to get 2000 word stories approved, won't it take like 3 months to get a 35k word story up?

My longest stories are around 70,000 words each, and I have a couple of others around 40,000. I didn't highlight those because they have more sex in them, and your question was around how little actual sex you can have.

All but one of my stories, including these long ones, have taken 2 to 4 days to be approved. Only my most recent submission, which I submitted at the end of February, took 11 days. It seems that with the website update that took place about that same time, many stories keep falling into some sort of weird delay for approval hole. Prior to the update, it was very rare for a story to take even a week. I haven't submitted since that story, so don't have additional data for myself.

yup, I've read those on this site. my stuff is definitely not text porn. I've been developing these characters and plots since 2017. I just had no idea how many readers are thoughtful consumers of erotica. and still hope to find more of them!

It's been discussed here, but the site has two personalities: "Lit" as in literature, and "Erotica" as in, uh, erotica. The site has 2.3 million named accounts and no one knows how many anonymous readers (since an account is not necessary to read, just to post on the Forums or submit stories). Some readers here just want the sex, but there is plenty of appreciation for actual 'storytelling'. Of course, it's a balancing act, and you should use some care in choosing what Category you submit to, but the only generality about the readers is there are no generalities.

 

[Handley_Page]

Hi everyone. I have a question about the expectation for sexual content. Obviously, most of my stories on here have a lot of sex scenes. Should I edit down the nonsexual parts? omit entirely? The world building, plot, character development all take time and make the hot sex hotter IMO but I also know this is an erotica site.

What ratio or # of sex scenes per post should i be going for?
Thanks in advance
Valucia

There's some good writing in the 'non-erotic'.

 

[SimonDoom]

So do you think I should submit a long version that includes all the chapters I've posted?

8Letters has done some analysis of this issue and posted a few threads a few years ago on optimal story length, in terms of reader response.

If you care about getting more views and higher scores, then it makes sense to publish longer stories than many new authors think is correct. Your story will do better if it is over 8000 words. That's over 2 Literotica pages, a Literotica page being about 3750 words.

Every reader is different, of course. There's no "correct" reader and there's no "correct" story. But if you want to maximize your response, wait until your story is done and post it as a single standalone story rather than as a bunch of short separate chapters.

 

[Wark2002]

I have an equal mix of erotic and nonerotic and both seem to have done well.


https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=5430653&page=submissions

 

[8letters]

So do you think I should submit a long version that includes all the chapters I've posted?

A chapter series on average has a third less views than a stand-alone story.

Back in 2018, I posted "A Week At The Lake With My Sister" as a five-chapter series. I made some poor plot choices in chapter 4 and got a steady stream of negative comments on the last two chapters because of it. Two weeks ago, I posted "A Week At The Lake With My Sister" as one big story (17 pages), with the last two chapters rewritten. In two weeks, the new version has more views than chapter 4 of the old series has. It's sitting #2 in the Last 30 Days Most Read list.