On Genres, Themes, Categories, Tags, ChatRooms, and building an audience in Literotica

[AndreaJLabia]

Dear fellow Writers (& Readers)

Building an audience is The Challenge for any author.

Your stories are excellent, your plots compelling, your characters relatable, but your beloved (future) readers don’t know that. Not yet.

Thank God, they can find you.

How do they do so?

In Literotica, through Categories and Tags. Genres and Themes are also terms used for the same task (connecting authors and readers) in the Publishing industry, but not in Literotica, and since their meaning overlaps with that of Categories and Tags, the confusion for new users increases.

I apologize for the longish premise: I would like to get some pieces of advice from you fellow authors: there are so many excellent authors here in Lit, and I want to learn from them.

The question is: how to select the right combo Category/Tags, get an outstanding rating, and build an audience in Literotica?

I believe my own experience with ratings is pretty common to most of you fellow writers. All my stories are rated over four stars, but only a handful got into the HOT area. The timed pattern of my rating is a sequence of five stars, a few four stars, and the occasional one-star rating to bring the average under 4.5.

Disappointing, but I don’t blame the readers who give me one-star ratings. The reader is always right, and I don’t think all the readers who rate a story one star are Trolls. I believe some of them are just disgruntled readers who didn’t find what they wanted. I chose the wrong category/tags.

So, my specific questions for you fellow writers are:

• How do you choose the Category from the closed list, especially when your story is cross-genre and doesn’t fit into any category?
• How do you choose the Tags mix? Half popular tags for the specific category (for example: Lesbian in Romance) and half personal, unusual tags specific to my writing (for example: Academic Erotica) is my current recipe. Which is yours?
• Do you ask the readers through the Chat? It looks like most authors discuss here in the Forum, but readers are more likely to be found in Chat.

Thank you in advance for your feedback, fellow writers!

Best from the sunny Mediterranean.

Andrea J. Labia – Venice

PS I checked for other answers to my questions, and I found many contributions, but I didn’t find a recent discussion encompassing the whole theme. I apologize if I have missed something already discussed, and hope this post is useful for the Lit community!

 

[ElectricBlue]

The question is: how to select the right combo Category/Tags, get an outstanding rating, and build an audience in Literotica?

Write more stories, write them well, and your audience will follow. It takes a couple of years, so don't expect it immediately. Unless you write in Loving Wives or Incest, in which case, there's a short cut, if you want it.

I believe my own experience with ratings is pretty common to most of you fellow writers. All my stories are rated over four stars, but only a handful got into the HOT area. The timed pattern of my rating is a sequence of five stars, a few four stars, and the occasional one-star rating to bring the average under 4.5.

Yes, the "straight out of the gate" pattern is predictable, but the first sweep will remove some of the junk.

To push your scores higher, I think it's the little things that matter. Get the technical stuff right: grammar, punctuation, paragraph length and so on. Edit, edit, edit. Get your copy into the best possible shape you can.

Disappointing, but I don’t blame the readers who give me one-star ratings. The reader is always right, and I don’t think all the readers who rate a story one star are Trolls. I believe some of them are just disgruntled readers who didn’t find what they wanted. I chose the wrong category/tags.

Yes, this.

• How do you choose the Category from the closed list, especially when your story is cross-genre and doesn’t fit into any category?

Identify the leading erotic kink, and put it into whichever category best suits.

• How do you choose the Tags mix? Half popular tags for the specific category (for example: Lesbian in Romance) and half personal, unusual tags specific to my writing (for example: Academic Erotica) is my current recipe. Which is yours?

Use the Category Tag pages to identify those which are used most. Use them, not unusual tags. They might define your story perfectly, but if they're unusual, who else is going to use them? Not many.

• Do you ask the readers through the Chat? It looks like most authors discuss here in the Forum, but readers are more likely to be found in Chat.

From what I've see from the last decade, the Chat Forums and story side don't know much about each other. There's not much crossover. Two quite different audiences, I think.

Thank you in advance for your feedback, fellow writers!

Best from the sunny Mediterranean.

Andrea J. Labia – Venice

EB looks at AJL. Nah, that's not your real name!

PS I checked for other answers to my questions, and I found many contributions, but I didn’t find a recent discussion encompassing the whole theme. I apologize if I have missed something already discussed, and hope this post is useful for the Lit community!

There are regular threads on "How do I choose the best category first my story?" Use the Forum search, you'll find them.

 

[AndreaJLabia]

Dear Colleague
Your feedback includes reinforcements for ideas I was already elaborating, and new insights, perhaps obvious to you with your extensive experience, but new and very useful to me. In a nutshell, exactly the feedback I was hoping for.
Thank you!

1. Write more stories, write them well, and...
I couldn't agree more. I also write research papers and stories in other genres, e.g. Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction, and Romance (but Erotica is so fun!) There, maniac refining and strong copyediting are paramount. But it is not enough: there are many good writers around these times, so if you want to have a chance to break through, something outstanding is necessary. Moreover, you find notable exceptions to the rewrite rewrite rewrite rule, in that badly written stories break through anyway. Look at the first version of Fifty Shades (it was improved later). So, some of my stories here in Lit are less refined than they should be, because I was in a hurry and wanted to check the feedback. Shame on me! But I'll revise them as soon as I can, or delete them. But I agree with you, defintely.

2...Chat Forums and story side don't know much about each other...
You are right, most people in Chat 'don't know much' about writing and don't read, but some of them do know.. There are a lot of people in Chat, and among them attentive readers and some good writers, especially in certain communities (notably, the Lez/Bi community), and interesting persons. Worth and fun to explore.

3. ...Nah, that's not your real name!
Don't you tell!
But there is more truth in it than it seems.
I write research papers under my true name, but in creative writing, pseudonyms are my way! A meaningful pseudonym is part of the fun of writing, Erotica in particular.

Again, thank you so much for your contribution. I can't write in Incest, but I think I'll try Loving Wives, the category looks fun!

Best from the Serenissima Repubblica

AJL

Write more stories, write them well, and your audience will follow. It takes a couple of years, so don't expect it immediately. Unless you write in Loving Wives or Incest, in which case, there's a short cut, if you want it.

Yes, the "straight out of the gate" pattern is predictable, but the first sweep will remove some of the junk.

To push your scores higher, I think it's the little things that matter. Get the technical stuff right: grammar, punctuation, paragraph length and so on. Edit, edit, edit. Get your copy into the best possible shape you can.

Yes, this.

Identify the leading erotic kink, and put it into whichever category best suits.

Use the Category Tag pages to identify those which are used most. Use them, not unusual tags. They might define your story perfectly, but if they're unusual, who else is going to use them? Not many.

From what I've see from the last decade, the Chat Forums and story side don't know much about each other. There's not much crossover. Two quite different audiences, I think.

EB looks at AJL. Nah, that's not your real name!

There are regular threads on "How do I choose the best category first my story?" Use the Forum search, you'll find them.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Again, thank you so much for your contribution. I can't write in Incest, but I think I'll try Loving Wives, the category looks fun!

Look well before you cross that bridge. It's the second great divide within Lit (story side and forum side being the other) - the behaviour both within stories and within the cohort of readers is like no other category in Lit.

You either choose to cross the bridge willingly, or you never cross it at all. Whatever you do, don't do it accidentally!

 

[AndreaJLabia]

Look well before you cross that bridge. It's the second great divide within Lit (story side and forum side being the other) - the behaviour both within stories and within the cohort of readers is like no other category in Lit.

You either choose to cross the bridge willingly, or you never cross it at all. Whatever you do, don't do it accidentally!

Dear Colleague

Thank you so much for this caveat. I didn't realize it was a bridge; I am still naïve to the Lit community.

The category looks unharmful enough, less than--say--the deliciously oxymoronic Consensual non-consent. I can't understand why there is a dramatic divide.

Example: I have a new story, titled Pokerface, not published yet. It narrates the case of a cheating wife who gets caught by the deceptively dumb husband. It is the first of a small anthology of stories I shall call 'Dahlian Husbands', modeled on Roald Dahl's 'The Colonel's Coat' short story, but heightening the level of heat to Lit levels (4 to 5), of course.
A Loving Wives reader in Chat told me it qualifies as Loving Wives, and he shall read it.

Therefore, I feel a bit confused on your caveat.

Thank you again for this post, and more thanks in advance if you could elaborate.

Cheers from the Mediterranean!

AJL

 

[ElectricBlue]

Dear Colleague

Thank you so much for this caveat. I didn't realize it was a bridge; I am still naïve to the Lit community.

The category looks unharmful enough, less than--say--the deliciously oxymoronic Consensual non-consent. I can't understand why there is a dramatic divide.

Read a few stories, read the comments. It's not what it says on the tin!