Why is LW category so hard to please?

[CherieSin]

I've been publishing stories on LitE for five years. Of my 73 stories, 54 of them are in LW.

Six of my LW stories are rated over 4.0. Most of the others are between 3.0-4.0, with a five below 3.0.

Quality of writing and eroticism aside, in general, the LW audience prefers stories in which the husband is NOT a weak or passive victim watching the wife having extra-marital sex. Even a strong husband in charge who wants to just watch his wife with another man will be slammed as a weak cuck.

The husband should be portrayed as a strong, in-charge type who gets as much or more extra-marital sex as his wife. The wife can get her pleasure, but the husband needs to at least get as many or more extra partners.

That's tough to do if you are publishing your stories in a series. And if it's only about the husband wanting to watch his wife being fucked, then that story arc in general will likely average well below 4.

Of my six LW stories rated over 4, the closest I came to the "husband watches his wife being fucked" is in:
"A Dare at the Nude Resort"
"Husband watches his horny wife and her boy-toy in a restroom."

They are a swinger couple, and the husband dares his wife to seduce a younger man. Then he watches the other guy fuck her, and the husband gets "sloppy seconds" fucking her immediately after the first guy. The husband doesn't go down on her, and the other guy is very respectful of the husband. The end has the wife setting up a follow-up meeting for a week later, where she and the other guy's wife are going to do an FMF with the husband, and the other guy knows it's going to happen but can't be there due to his job.

So, in general, for successful, non-BTB LW stories you need strong, in-charge husbands, respectful loving wives, don't focus solely on the husband's voyeurism, have all other men respectful of the husband, and see that the husband gets at least as much (number wise) as the wife. And don't introduce other triggers such as inter-racial, BDSM, incest, or Bi-sexual male-on-male scenes which draw attacks from those subsets of readers who might hate them. One such small piece of the story will trigger a disproportionate negative response from the subsets of haters.

EDIT: When I say the husband gets the same amount of sex as the wife number wise, that means if they go to a party and the wife takes on five other men, then the husband must get five or six other women. There are 1-bombers who will blast the story if the husband is worn out after fucking a third or fourth woman. It's not realistic or fair. But that's what an author should expect with the LW audience.

That’s really good insight into the LW category, I appreciate it. I’d also like to hear your opinion on how my miniseries should continue, though I’d prefer to talk about that in PM if that’s fine with you. Don't want to spoil the entire plot in here.

 

[DarkCosmos]

Maybe this speaks more to me as a human being than it does as a writer, but I'm going to be posting my first LW series on Lit soon fully expecting it to get bombed. The way I see it, the louder the trolls scream, the more people will come over to see what all the fuss is about. And if you can manage to pull an insightful or flattering comment out of the toxic cesspool that is the LW comments section, then that just means the reward will be all the sweeter. If the commentors start arguing and screaming about whether or not your work is trash or not, even better I say. Stir up the beehive and grab that honey anyway like the honeybadger you are.

 

[Lifestyle66]

That’s really good insight into the LW category, I appreciate it. I’d also like to hear your opinion on how my miniseries should continue, though I’d prefer to talk about that in PM if that’s fine with you. Don't want to spoil the entire plot in here.

You're already off to a potentially low rating average if the wife is texting with the stranger about finishing.

If you want to head off the 1s, maybe have the wife think about her loving husband, and have her delay her affair then set up a girlfriend to reciprocate the handjob for her husband. The GF could even suggest to husband that they go further, and the wife sees if he's honest enough to tell her.

Since you're telling this from the wife's POV, the more you can make her the "loving FAITHFUL wife, the more it will appeal to those readers who dealt with their own cheater. She might eventually seal the deal with that stranger. But don't make her the conspiratorial, cheater. Have the husband cheat in secret first, and she gets revenge with her own.

My story "Going Down Together" has an innocent, faithful wife getting revenge on her cheating husband. It's rated 3.88. but I added a suggested lesbian follow-on, which acts as a 1-bomb magnet from a subset.

 

[WCSGarland]

It is important to make the distinction between a chaptered story and a series.

Loving Wives readers appear far less tolerant of chaptered stories than readers in other categories. There are some successful series within the category, but those are complete stand-alone stories that share a common theme, not merely parts of a whole.

If you are going to publish pieces of a story, try to get all the pieces to publish as close together as possible.

Maybe you could explain why my series did okay for the first 5 episodes/chapters, but by the time I got the the next 3 in, the ratings ended up half of what the others were. I mean, if the majority of readers weren't tolerant of episodic/chaptered stories, then I should think that every episode/chapter after the first would have been bombed big time.

EDIT: Oh, and my one stand alone in LW... about half the comments are people asking for a follow up story.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Maybe you could explain why my series did okay for the first 5 episodes/chapters, but by the time I got the the next 3 in, the ratings ended up half of what the others were. I mean, if the majority of readers weren't tolerant of episodic/chaptered stories, then I should think that every episode/chapter after the first would have been bombed big time.

EDIT: Oh, and my one stand alone in LW... about half the comments are people asking for a follow up story.

Look through the top lists of LW stories to see how many are titled "Story - Chapter #" versus ones with obvious series titles, such as "The Shack - Blah blah", followed by "The Shack - Yack yack" or similar.

In your case, I suspect a couple of factors contributed.

First, it isn't until the 5th installment that your reference the episode being part of the "Untethered Hearts" series, calling them chapters, which is more what they read like to me. The association of one to the other isn't clear unless someone visits your stories page and sees the series info.

Second, from the first episode to the latest, more than 10 months has passed. This plays to my recommendation to publish associated chapters or episodes as close together as possible so that readers don't lose interest. This holds true for most categories.

Readers requesting a sequel to a stand alone story can mean that either they became so invested in your characters that they want to read more about them, or that your story left them somehow incomplete/unresolved. I haven't read your story, so I'll leave it to you for the determination.

 

[BryanRichardson]

dirk2024 said:
And everyone knows that's a myth.

How to say you're alone and single without having to say you're alone and single.

I’m married not alone, and I almost made the same joke…

 

[sirhugs]

Maybe I'm just a beggar for punishment, but I have noticed that it is about four years since I posted in LW, so I started a Story Ideas thread looking for, well, an idea for an LW story...

 

[BryanRichardson]

https://literotica.com/s/eleventh-anniversary Is doing as expected.

Low score, but several comments and likes. And it’s only been a few hours.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Maybe I'm just a beggar for punishment, but I have noticed that it is about four years since I posted in LW, so I started a Story Ideas thread looking for, well, an idea for an LW story...

I just replied to your story idea thread.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Posted to @sirhugs in Story Ideas:

I've been a regular reader of the LW category for over a decade. And within the past five years I've posted over fifty stories in LW to gauge their reactions, trying to understand what they are looking for.

First, the MC's need to be married or in a committed heterosexual relationship.

There needs to be extra-marital or at least sex outside of that committed relationship.

If the extra is known and consensual to both of the couple, then your story won't reach the Red-H level. Depending on the writing quality and any other factors such as story arc or other fetish triggers, there is a vocal "monogamous-only" faction in LW who will dislike or hate the sharing.

If the story is about one of the couple cheating (having the extra sex without the other's knowledge), then the rating will depend on whether they reconcile or divorce.

The vocal audience of monogamy-only will applaud your story is it shows that swinging and sharing are a bad idea, and that those who do it are eventually punished with broken marriages. Basically, most of the Red-H or 5-Star stories publishing in LW today must exclude that LW definition of "FUN" when it comes to swinging and sharing.

There are many in the LW audience (like me) who look for the fun sharing stories. Our ratings will prop up the fun stories to the 3.5 to 4.4 level. But the haters of that sharing fun will be more vocal in their comments. And their hateful comments will attract the wrong kind of attention with future 1-bombing haters weighing in to keep the average below 4.5.


EDIT: If you're looking for story ideas, I just ignore the 1-bombing haters. I write my storries looking for ways to change their attitudes toward that sharing. I tried building characters who have a reason for the extra-marital sex. In my "Aftermath" stories, I painted the perfect MFC wife as having been raped, and now NEEDING more than her loving husband could provide. And in my latest "Band" story, I show the loving GF/wife who needs the extra to fight off PTSD, instead of using drugs.

With those two examples, even if you show the very real NEED for extra marital sex, the haters still 1-bomb the story. But they are not as vocal in their comments. And those depressing themes of death or desperation seem to turn off some of the sharing lovers. They might like the story intellectually, but they can't 5-star it when it's sad.

But it's fun to experiment with such ideas of showing them a different view of WHY would anyone do that.

 

[CalBishForNow]

Fuck the haters, write what you want to write.

My second series is probably averaging one star lower than my first series or more, and I don't think I became a 20 percent worse writer, it's just that my second series is mostly in LW whereas my first series was mostly in Group Sex. But my second series still has a lot of potential and is more dramatic (overall, although individual installments have varied), and the LW themes of it are unavoidable, so I'm keeping it there and just mentally giving the scores an asterisk.

It's easy to look down on the one-star bombers and "cuck shit" commenters, but the greater engagement in comments has advantages too. There's positive feedback now and then and honest constructive criticism I got more rarely in other categories.

Despite the above, Lifestyle66's comment upthread here seemed interesting to me:

So, in general, for successful, non-BTB LW stories you need strong, in-charge husbands, respectful loving wives, don't focus solely on the husband's voyeurism, have all other men respectful of the husband, and see that the husband gets at least as much (number wise) as the wife. And don't introduce other triggers such as inter-racial, BDSM, incest, or Bi-sexual male-on-male scenes which draw attacks from those subsets of readers who might hate them. One such small piece of the story will trigger a disproportionate negative response from the subsets of haters.

It gave me an idea for a story I'm currently working on that obeys the main rule there rigorously, and might also avoid the "other triggers" or might include them in minor and not-plot-relevant ways. (Not sure, it's probably only half-done so far.) When I finish and see what the results are, I'll post about it here.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Fuck the haters, write what you want to write.

My second series is probably averaging one star lower than my first series or more, and I don't think I became a 20 percent worse writer, it's just that my second series is mostly in LW whereas my first series was mostly in Group Sex. But my second series still has a lot of potential and is more dramatic (overall, although individual installments have varied), and the LW themes of it are unavoidable, so I'm keeping it there and just mentally giving the scores an asterisk.

It's easy to look down on the one-star bombers and "cuck shit" commenters, but the greater engagement in comments has advantages too. There's positive feedback now and then and honest constructive criticism I got more rarely in other categories.

Despite the above, Lifestyle66's comment upthread here seemed interesting to me:

It gave me an idea for a story I'm currently working on that obeys the main rule there rigorously, and might also avoid the "other triggers" or might include them in minor and not-plot-relevant ways. (Not sure, it's probably only half-done so far.) When I finish and see what the results are, I'll post about it here.

I threw that "triggers" part into the warning because I did just that in one story, ... deliberately.

In "His Vixen" (3.88/225 with 26K views), the strong confident husband allows and even encouraged his wife to try other men to build her own self-confidence. She does so, and in the story, she's tired of it after her sixth lover. BUT she also sends her husband off SIX times for the same extra sex! I threw in the scene of her sixth lover as being Black, and that called out the inter-racial haters.

One comment in particular:
==================
by 26thNC on 12/08/2024

Decent until you couldn’t resist putting the Big Black Clown and white wife trope into it. The whore made her husband a cuck at that moment. I gave it up at that point. I did understand that stag-vixen is just silly animal names for cuck-whore, nothing more. You did prove that.
=================

Yes, I did throw that trigger in deliberately. I actually expected the story rating to be much lower because of that trigger. So, I'm pleasantly surprised that it's at 3.88, one of my better rated ones (shitty author that I am.)

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Yea, the verdict is in. On average, LW has the stupidest readers. : P

 

[Lifestyle66]

Yea, the verdict is in. On average, LW has the stupidest readers. : P

The racist reaction for "His Vixen" is just a subset of one faction in LW.

The story is overall about a loving couple just experimenting with sharing to prove to themselves (and each other) that they don't really want anyone else.

I threw in that inter-racial trope to see how much the racism would affect the rating. The fact that it's one of MY higher rated stories indicates there's less racism there than I expected.

Note: MY running average for all stories is about 3.66, with just the 54 LW stories at 3.48 average (thus I'm a shitty writer). I think the positives in LW for the story were that it was from the wife's POV, she was thinking and showing her own reluctance and doubts about sharing, and when SHE decided she no longer wanted to do it, she still sent her husband off with another woman to balance the numbers. Maybe if I'd left out the BBC trope/trigger, the rating might have been over 4.0

 

[MillieDynamite]

There are at least three factions in loving wives: the BTB, RAAC, and the INCELs. Probably some religious far-right-wing nuts as well. Anyone who was cheated and hasn't moved on with their life will one-bomb all sharing stories. I believe it is a no win catagory, though some stories are highly rated.

 

[Lifestyle66]

There are at least three factions in loving wives: the BTB, RAAC, and the INCELs. Probably some religious far-right-wing nuts as well. Anyone who was cheated and hasn't moved on with their life will one-bomb all sharing stories. I believe it is a no win catagory, though some stories are highly rated.

The BTB and RAAC stories are two variations to end the cheating story arc. They are not descriptive of the audience.

Loving Wives has cheating stories (with those two outcomes) and fun, sharing stories where the spouse knows and approves/participates in it.

What type of story reaction would indicate your "INCEL" audience? How do we test that theory?

You know I tried writing a humorous story to draw out INCELs to scream at me. But that didn't happen with the LW audience reactions. At 3.12/215, it's more of a "Meh! Whatever." reaction, similar to many other stories I put there.

@sirhugs is looking for story ideas to write an LW story. How could we test the INCEL audience theory?

 

[MillieDynamite]

The BTB and RAAC stories are two variations to end the cheating story arc. They are not descriptive of the audience.

Loving Wives has cheating stories (with those two outcomes) and fun, sharing stories where the spouse knows and approves/participates in it.

What type of story reaction would indicate your "INCEL" audience? How do we test that theory?

You know I tried writing a humorous story to draw out INCELs to scream at me. But that didn't happen with the LW audience reactions. At 3.12/215, it's more of a "Meh! Whatever." reaction, similar to many other stories I put there.

@sirhugs is looking for story ideas to write an LW story. How could we test the INCEL audience theory?

You tell me what these people are? One poster, which I don't know if I put up or not, cursed me out for having an interracial extramarital affair. (me, as if I were the character) The issue was that both people were white.

 

[sirhugs]

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You tell me what these people are? One poster, which I don't know if I put up or not, cursed me out for having an interracial extramarital affair. (me, as if I were the character) The issue was that both people were white.

comments... cherish the nice ones.... forget the rest.

 

[Lifestyle66]

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You tell me what these people are? One poster, which I don't know if I put up or not, cursed me out for having an interracial extramarital affair. (me, as if I were the character) The issue was that both people were white.

Millie, do you know what an INCEL is?

What in those comments indicates an "INCEL" versus someone who (as I say) HATES cheating spouses who get away with it?

INCEL implies they are just not getting any sex (involuntarily celibate). And while that might be the case for some, there are no indicators in those comments to suggest they are INCELS.

There are clearly haters among those comments, with some clearly triggered by pointing out you're a lesbian. But don't just throw out every insult you can at them. Be descriptive and try to be a little more accurate.

I liked the middle of one comment when anon said "Then she went off in the middle of the night and dropped a single rose. I think you meant TURD..."

Now there's a good insult. That anon and others are TURDS in our swimming pool! (Great insult from the movie "Dirty Harry") But INCEL? Who knows? (However, I'd hate to meet the woman who would put out for him. Talk about no self-respect!)

 

[Lifestyle66]

comments... cherish the nice ones.... forget the rest.

Or learn from them

That's why in my latest story I have the two husbands (both Spec Ops Team Sergeants) talking, with the one depressed saying "So, I'm to accept that I'm a cuckold." The other replied “Since WHEN do YOU need to prove anything to a bunch of name-calling pussies?!”

If the commenters in LW want to throw out terms like calling the MMC a cuckold, USE IT!

 

[MillieDynamite]

I know what an incel is. I didn't call them anything (other than misinformed) in any comment I made to them. The story still has 53 comments after I'd deleted the most hateful ones about me, not the story. I left the other personal attacks up and good, the bad, the ugly, and the rest of them. Those attacking me that remain, showing their own ignorance.

Millie, do you know what an INCEL is?

What in those comments indicates an "INCEL" versus someone who (as I say) HATES cheating spouses who get away with it?

INCEL implies they are just not getting any sex (involuntarily celibate). And while that might be the case for some, there are no indicators in those comments to suggest they are INCELS.

There are clearly haters among those comments, with some clearly triggered by pointing out you're a lesbian. But don't just throw out every insult you can at them. Be descriptive and try to be a little more accurate.

I liked the middle of one comment when anon said "Then she went off in the middle of the night and dropped a single rose. I think you meant TURD..."

Now there's a good insult. That anon and others are TURDS in our swimming pool! (Great insult from the movie "Dirty Harry") But INCEL? Who knows? (However, I'd hate to meet the woman who would put out for him. Talk about no self-respect!)

 

[MillieDynamite]

@Lifestyle66, and clearly, many of these people read the cheating stories to be insulted so that they can vent their fury.

 

[Lifestyle66]

@Lifestyle66, and clearly, many of these people read the cheating stories to be insulted so that they can vent their fury.

Hmmm.

If I wanted to read lesbian stories, where might I find those.

But I prefer reading the "extra-marital FUN, sharing" stories. And where might I find THOSE?

It just happens that I find some cheating stories, and I rate the BTB ones usually with a "Meh!" as in average. I don't have any fury at the commenters anywhere. Everyone is entitled to their opinions.

I just like jerking their chains sometimes, because they are chained by their hatred.

 

[BryanRichardson]

What does FTDS mean? I’ve had a couple of comments include that acronym and I don’t know it means.

I’ve had a couple of positive comments, but most are upset that the story is incomplete. It’s only sort of incomplete in that I left it open ended as to how the story would continue. One person appreciated that choice enough to say so.

 

[iwatchus]

I assume Finish The Damned Story.