What category, please?

[GrushaVashnadze]

I hesitate to ask this question, as the last time I brought up the subject of racism in a story the discussion got rather unpleasant. So, before I start, please may I stress that I agree that racism is a very bad thing. I am a person of colour, and have been on the receiving end of racist abuse and behaviour all my life. I don't like it. But that is part of the reason I am writing a story in which racism, racist language, "outsider consciousness", and the damage to self-esteem (including sexual self-esteem) resulting from racial attitudes feature - in a darkly satirical manner. This story aims to excoriate racism and its effects upon people, as well as explore the strange way in which race can get tied up with dominance/submission, and various types of physical attraction/dislike. However, if you really don't like the idea of racism in a story, please be kind to yourself and ignore (rather than derail) this thread. Thank you so much!

My question is a very practical one: What category or categories should I put these five chapters in?

ch. 1 - black female / white male, "reverse raceplay" (i.e. black woman feigns submission on racial grounds as a way of passive-aggressively undermining/ridiculing the way she and her race are treated by white males)

ch. 2 - sibling incest between black sister and brother, both wounded by the racist oppression they have experienced, seeking solace in each other

ch. 3 - similar to ch. 2 (sibling incest); intercut with hardcore anal sex scene between black male and white female, the latter naively racist both in social and sexual attitude to the male, using racist language in a raceplay manner to imply her own dominance

ch. 4 - includes both interracial (black female / white male) sex, as well as white-on-white, and group sex

ch. 5 - attempted (and failed) sexual assault by white male on black female; consensual, but racially-charged, sex between black female and white male, who gradually fall in love; intercut with black male masturbating while fantasising about white female from ch. 3

I know that multi-chapter stories tend to do better if they stick to a single category, but in this case the coherence of the story builds through its characters, setting and plot, rather than through its sexual kinks. While all the chapters include interracial sex, there is none of the traditional big black cock fucking submissive white girl stuff which seems to be the mainstay of the IR category. There is sibling incest, but only in 2 of the chapters. The racial dominance/submission thing is never far from the surface, so perhaps BDSM? Or fetish, as raceplay perhaps falls under that category?

Happy to send anyone a draft, if anyone is sufficiently interested? But either way, I do hope some of you can give me some practical suggestions for solving my categorisation conundrum (rather than telling me I shouldn't write a story with racism in it...)

Thank you!

 

[BobbyBrandt]

My advice is always to finish the story in its entirety before worrying about the category(ies).

You might end up with a tale best suited for Novels/Novellas, in which case that is where you would want to publish all your chapters. Although, if so, I would submitted it as a single story rather than by chapter. That solves all your category concerns.

 

[Bamagan]

My advice would be to bundle them, assuming they tell a complete story, and put it in Novels and Novellas. Most of the chapters sound like they involve a blend of kinks that are potential draws/triggers individually, so offering them as a package to readers looking for mostly one kind of kink can be somewhat fraught, depending on how you feel about negative feedback.
Fetish sometimes hosts raceplay stories, as well as BDSM-adjacent ones, so it's not necessarily a terrible fit. The incest chapters might be allowed to fly there as well. My impression is that many of the category's readers mostly skim the offerings for their fetish(es) of choice, so it can be challenging to attract them unless there's a clear (sexual) theme.

 

[crookedletter]

I guess the idea behind keeping it to one category would be that fans of one chapter, generally sticking to their preferred category/ies in their browsing, would be less likely to see subsequent chapters as they come around? It seems to me that you cover a lot of territory here, and as such only relatively open-minded readers will stick with you to the end no matter what category you put it in.

I'm hardly an expert on readership and categories, but logically it makes the most sense to me to either put the whole thing in Novels/Novellas as @BobbyBrandt mentioned, or, if you're publishing serially, then put each chapter in its most appropriate category. Readers who find incest abhorrent, for example, are likely going to bail at chapter 2 no matter where they find it. Likewise with any other category loyalists who don't care for whatever new dynamic you explore as it develops.

 

[TheLobster]

I second (third?) the suggestion to put it in Novels and Novellas, be it as a single submission or as separate chapters.

If you do the latter, you probably want a warning upfront, in the very first chapter, that later parts involve sibling incest. Indeed, it'd probably be best to list all the sexual themes in the beginning, esp. incest, raceplay, and anal.

On the other hand, I imagine the advantage of posting it as a multiple entries would be lesser risk of Laurel punting the whole thing into I/T based on the second and third chapter. Once part of a work has been posted to N&N, it seems that subsequent chapters tend to stay in N&N regardless of content, as this is basically the whole point of that category.

 

[GrushaVashnadze]

@TheLobster, @BobbyBrandt, @Bamagan, @crookedletter - thanks so much for your helpful and non-judgmental advice. The consensus seems to be to put it in novels/novellas (and yes, @BobbyBrandt, the story is complete at 5 chapters), which a content warning at the beginning. My experience is that the readership for novellas is appreciative but small - but I don't think this story will every attract a wide readership anyway. It is a written as one of several prequels to my big novel Alison Goes to London, so I suspect that most of my potential readers will come from the Alison fandom anyway.

When you say "bundle them", do you mean to submit the whole thing in one go, rather than a chapter at a time?

Thanks!

 

[Bamagan]

@TheLobster, @BobbyBrandt, @Bamagan, @crookedletter - thanks so much for your helpful and non-judgmental advice. The consensus seems to be to put it in novels/novellas (and yes, @BobbyBrandt, the story is complete at 5 chapters), which a content warning at the beginning. My experience is that the readership for novellas is appreciative but small - but I don't think this story will every attract a wide readership anyway. It is a written as one of several prequels to my big novel Alison Goes to London, so I suspect that most of my potential readers will come from the Alison fandom anyway.

When you say "bundle them", do you mean to submit the whole thing in one go, rather than a chapter at a time?

Thanks!

Yes. There are individual chapters in the N&N category, so it's not like you'd be breaking any rules, but my impression is that the people perusing the category are generally looking for something long (by the standards of the site, anyway). It might be prudent, if posting them one at a time, to be clear in the title or description that it is chapter 1 of 5, 2 of 5, and so forth, since there are some readers who are reluctant to read something that isn't (and might never be) completed.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

@TheLobster, @BobbyBrandt, @Bamagan, @crookedletter - thanks so much for your helpful and non-judgmental advice. The consensus seems to be to put it in novels/novellas (and yes, @BobbyBrandt, the story is complete at 5 chapters), which a content warning at the beginning. My experience is that the readership for novellas is appreciative but small - but I don't think this story will every attract a wide readership anyway. It is a written as one of several prequels to my big novel Alison Goes to London, so I suspect that most of my potential readers will come from the Alison fandom anyway.

When you say "bundle them", do you mean to submit the whole thing in one go, rather than a chapter at a time?

Thanks!

It has been my experience with the N/N category, that readers come there expecting longer stories and appreciate not having to fuss with pieces of them being published as chapters.

I currently have 11 stories published in N/N with an average score of 4.80. Four of these were originally published by chapters which is where I received the reader feedback that encouraged me to delete those and published the single longer versions. Scores for the longer stories increased by at least .10 after the change.