Love Your Readers: Categories

Final 'trump' category: Fetish

Feet, panties, food and other kinky things. The catch-all category of kinkiness. Beyond what the category description says, golden showers, scat, CFNM (clothed female, nude male), cuckolding, pegging, pregnancy, spanking, cum-play, lactation, and forced chastity, are some of the more popular kinks explored here. It's worth noting a lot of crossdressing ends up here, when it's part of marital high jinks, instead of in Transsexuals & Crossdressers, which leans strongly toward TS. Because fetish stories often have a very high 'squick' factor, offending many readers, you may want to consider placing your story here if it contains less 'mainstream' elements. This category would be the highest 'Trump' category, if it didn't cover such a broad spectrum of Kink. Let's just say that many of the 'kinks' are Trump kinks, and if you have them, you'll want to categorize your story as fetish.

As Darkniciad said in his post on the subject, if you have a gay cross-dresser blackmail his brother for sex then you're pretty much screwed. No matter where you put it, the majority of the readership is going to hate it.

Normal Categories

Once you've gotten past the exempt and trump categories, what you have left is what I consider the normal categories. Normal categories basically address the central theme of your story. Elements of normal categories can often be found in other stories, with no adverse effect. It's more a case of what you consider the theme to be.

Before you go too far, it's worth noting that there is an element to a few of these that I call the 'Picky Readers'. Picky Readers often have ideas of what these stories should contain, and where these elements should be categorized. They tend to be very vocal about it. They vote low, and vote often.

The most egregious of these categories is Loving Wives. Loving Wives stories have morphed over the years, and there are definite 'packs' of readers who have very strong opinions about what a loving wife story is.

Loving Wives: Loving wives stories tend have 8 to 10 basic themes. Discussing the Loving Wives reader is worth a How-To of its own. There are two types of Loving Wives stories where many readers will insist the story is mis-categorized.

1) Willing Cuckold Stories: A large number of the Loving Wives Readers will scream this is a fetish and should be categorized as such. It's up to the author, but cuckold stories in Loving Wives get terrible scores and comments nowadays. It wasn't always this way. Now they do significantly better in the Fetish category.

2) Black 'Master' Stories: If a black man, seduces and uses a white woman, she can't get enough of his huge black cock, and the husband is made into a wimp, many readers will insist this should be in interracial. It's worth noting a LOT of Loving Wives stories involve a white wife cheating with a black male. Most of the time it's not a big deal unless it meets the specific elements listed above

Lesbian Sex: Another type of story with Picky Readers is the Lesbian Sex story. Lesbian sex is usually welcome in almost all categories. FFM is a staple of Group Sex. However, if you place it in the Lesbian Sex category, there had better not be anything but Lesbian Sex in it, or there are some vocal readers who will quickly inform you how you've sinned.

The remaining Normal Categories are:

Anal - The butt, and nothing but. Stories where the principal focus is anal sex. Perhaps that should be more specific, heterosexual anal sex. First time anal sex is very popular here.

Exhibitionist & Voyeur - Watching and being watched. Not a lot to say about this one. Public nudity is a big winner here, along with secret voyeurism.

First Time - Memories & stories of people's first times. Cherry popping, and de-virginizing the nerds play well. Longer pursuit and capture stories score high.

Group Sex - Orgies, swingers, and others. Orgies and swingers are only a small part of this category. Threesomes, polyamory, teen harem, partner swapping, and gangbangs make up a lot of this category. Slut-wife gangbangs are more likely to appear under the Loving Wives categories.

Interracial Love - It's all black & white, and white & Asian, and... Most of this category is Black on White. Black women, white men romantic stories do very well in this category. A few authors have expanded the category to Vampires and/or Werewolves and normals, two different races, although most of those are correctly listed as Non-Human.

Mature - May / December lust and love affairs. Not much to say here. Young lover, often college age, with a mature, older mentor. Seduction could go either way, and it doesn't seem to matter if the mature person is male or female. A loving relationship by two mature characters, may also be found in this category, and may do better here than in Erotic Couplings. These are usually heterosexual relationships, or should be categorized as Gay Male or Lesbian Sex.

Toys & Masturbation - Battery-operated, vegetables, etc. Stories where the focus is on masturbation, to the exclusion of sex. This could be self masturbation, or teasing manually and with toys. Fucking machines and devices like the Sybian are also very popular.

The last two categories to review each have special situations associated with them.

Romance - Candlelight, wine and a soft kiss. Romance can be a catch-all category, where a lot of the other elements are overlooked in a long story of love and seduction, chase and capture. In general, these are longer, plot-driven stories where the final result is a monogamous relationship. Sex is not nearly as important as plot. Many of the better stories on the site can be found in this category.

Erotic Couplings - Wild one-on-one consensual sex. Short vignettes, and a category to try when little else seems to fit. This seems to often be a catch-all category.

* * * The Summary and Last Words * * *

To summarize, the following order of categories should be considered:

Exempt Categories:

1) How-To
2) Reviews & Essays
3) Celebrities
4) Illustrated
5) Chain Stories
6) Novel and Novellas
7) Humor and Satire
8) Text With Audio
9) Sci-Fi & Fantasy
10) Erotic Horror
11) Non-Human
12) Mind Control
13) Letter and Transcripts
14) Non-Erotic
15) Non-English

Absolute Trump Categories:

16) Incest
17) NonConsent/Reluctance

'Soft' Trump Categories:

18) Gay Male
19) BDSM
20) Transsexuals & Crossdressers
21) Fetish

Normal Categories:

22) Loving Wives
23) Lesbian Sex
24) Anal
25) Exhibitionist & Voyeur
26) First Time
27) Group Sex
28) Interracial Love
29) Mature
30) Toys & Masturbation
31) Romance
32) Erotic-Couplings

All of this is conjecture and opinion on my part. There is only one definitive rule about story categorization, and that's Literotica has the last call. What I've outlined here is based on years of reading and writing, receiving a lot of pointed comments, and numerous discussions in the Author's Hangout over in the forums.

In addition, the complexity is exasperated by the amount of any one off-theme subject, within a story that is dominated by another theme, or has multiple 'squick' elements. There is no absolute rule, and every rule I've laid out has plenty of exceptions on the site. If you're really in a quandary, my only suggestion is going back to Weird Harold's "Rule of Least Squick." That or ask around in the Author's Hangout. Finally, I've heard of people asking in the comments for Literotica to choose the category, when they're really stuck.

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I hope this will be of help to my fellow writers, and I'd love to hear other opinions, particularly by those who have a lot of expertise reading and writing in one particular category.

Remember, the main purpose here is to find the right category, which will help your readers find the stories they want to read, and who should be your intended audience.

Tx Tall Tales