Forum: Author Hangout

In general avoid including two tags where one is a superset of or implied by the other.

I don't agree.

If I have "coercion" or "blackmail" or "mind control," etc. I will also include the "non-consent." Why? Someone may be looking for "non-consent" but not the others. Or if I include "non-consent" but not "blackmail," I lose those searching only for "blackmail."

But on the other side, you may loose people who avoid stories with "too many" tags.

I wonder whether that applies principally to readers accessing stories via the homepage or New Stories rather than via the Search facilities.

Forum readers who claim that they won't read a story with too many tags - how do you access stories? If you search for a stories to satisfy certain kinks, would you sample a story with too many tags anyway or would you ignore it?

AJ

I've intentionally limited my tags to the ones that most directly apply:

mt/ft, ft/ft, Mult, Teenagers, Consensual, Romantic, School, Alternate History, DoOver, Oriental Female, Anal Sex, Cream Pie, Oral Sex, Petting, Safe Sex, Politics, Slow

To be honest, several of the 'sex' tags could (maybe should) be dropped, too, since I've mostly cut down greatly on the explicit sex scenes, and there's no explicit ft/ft scene in Book 3 (book 4 TBD, of course :) ). On the other hand, they could easily come up in an explicit scene (of which there will probably be some).

I could easily code 'Heterosexual', 'Bisexual' and 'Lesbian' (if/when there's an explicit f/f scene), plus 'Gay' if we're simply discussing characters and not explicit scenes.

'Fiction' is obvious (too obvious). By definition, 'Crime' fits, since there are numerous crimes going on (anything my non-straight characters do in bed; illegal gambling; tax evasion; speeding). 'Humor'? I hope some things are funny! 'Tear Jerker'? Sooner or later, someone's going to break down in tears.

'Sharing' certainly fits. 'Hispanic Female' and 'Indian Female' have both applied, as well as 'White Male' and 'White Female'. 'First' has applied a number of times.

I don't think anyone's losing out by those tags being ignored, but I could almost double my tags (into the 30+ range) if I was including everything. That would probably just nudge tag-sensitive readers away.

I'm not a fan of just not tagging things that there are tags for because 'it's a surprise' (in general, that's between bad and very bad)

I once saw a movie where two people fell in love and were to be married. As their wedding day approached, they discovered they were brother and sister which caused all kinds of conflict.

Now if that was a story on SOL and they had sex before finding out they were siblings, including the "incest" tag would ruin the surprise which was a big part of the story. So if it was put in, it would ruin the surprise and the story. If left out, someone for whom incest was a squick would be pissed.

Sometimes you can't win.

Certain kinds of surprise endings are in themselves bad things that author's should generally avoid doing.

Tell that to O'Henry.

Take a case that has been discussed multiple times on the forum, a story that appears to be a male/female romance, but in the final scene where the couple finally ends up having sex, the "female" character ends up being male.

Authors should never, ever, under any circumstance, surprise readers with something that will squick a majority of readers.

And yet, it can be a very worthwhile thing to do. The most obvious example of this is the film "The crying game". A film that put most of the ignorant watchers in the same situation as the protagonist.

When done well, surprise endings are what makes the film. Cases in point, 'Momento' 'The usual subjects' 'Seven'. Granted these are films, but I don't see how the written versions would be anywhere less impactful.

Or ruins it for anyone disturbed by the ending.

That's where I sit on the subject. If I try a story and the author does this with one of my squicks I exclude the author from my searches going forward. If I see something in the description about minimal tags or not all tags included to not give something away I skip the story.

Cases in point, 'Momento' 'The usual subjects' 'Seven'.

"The Sixth Sense" had a great surprise ending.

As to "Momento," I recently tried it again. I gave up on it after that guy jumped in front of the car for the umpteenth time.

'The Sixth Sense' fits this discussion well. The advertising people successfully avoided the major 'twist' in the movie, but still managed to half-spoil the movie by including the line 'I see dead people.'

If you watch the movie doing your best to ignore that you know that Cole 'sees dead people,' it's just plain a better movie. Obviously something disturbing, likely supernatural, is happening, but what? You don't get that answer for quite a lot of movie time.

If they had to tag it with 'ghosts' and 'twist ending', how much of the impact of the movie would be lost?

If they had to tag it with 'ghosts' and 'twist ending', how much of the impact of the movie would be lost?

Exactly!

By the way, every scene with dead people in it had red somewhere. A red sweater, a red chair, etc. So every scene with Bruce Willis in it had red.

While I wasn't really responding to you, and I mostly agree (that's included in my comment about 'bad or very bad'), I don't completely agree. Some art has the point of being disturbing. 'The Crying Game' is an example. It may not be some people's cup of tea, but there's little question that it's generally considered a very good movie, with both positive reviews and favorable audience responses. I would still guess that the ending 'significantly disturbed a significant portion of the viewers' (mind you, 'significant' is a very slippery word).

The issue here is that, for every author who's producing something on that level, there are many more who would simply put a transgressive twist ending there for the point of the transgressive twist ending (i.e. the squick is the goal, not an accident).

The problem is that we have a catch-22. It's impossible for a work to generate the same reaction if people know the ending twist (which isn't their cup of tea). Indeed, the entire point of that part of 'The Crying Game' is that it's not most people's cup of tea.

The work would be significantly lesser if the twist was revealed in the beginning, in other words.

Note that I would feel very differently if the twist were early in the film and the bulk of the movie was an exploration of physical intimacy between the characters, but that's not what the film is doing. Of course, critics and audiences would probably hate that version, too.

In this case, the proof is in the pudding: audience reactions to 'The Crying Game' were highly positive, far beyond the number of people for whom the twist itself might be expected to be their cup of tea. If audiences had hated it and it had flopped, we would likely not even be referencing it in discussion at this point.

A bigger twist, or a more disturbing twist? It's all case by case. There's little doubt that many things go too far, but the existence of things that go too far doesn't mean that all disturbing twists are bad.

In that case, I wouldn't use the rape tag.

Going out on a limb, I suspect anyone searching for 'rape' stories would be very put out to find a story that didn't include penetration, and voting is anonymous.

AJ

On the other hand, I suspect that anyone looking to avoid 'rape' stories would not care whether or not an attempted rape in the story was successful.

I suspect that examining the scores of stories in which rape is prevented before it happens would show otherwise. There's a significant feelgood factor attached to heroic saviours.

ETA - the SOL definition of 'rape' is 'violent rape'. Take away the rape and there's still 'violent'.

AJ

How the hell do you all (and also readers in general) manage with dead tree press? What do you do if you read your favourite DTP writer and come across a squick?

Why are we putting so much focus on something that doesn't even exist, and indeed hasn't existed for literally centuries in physical publications?

Personally, I'm far less adventurous with paper books.

My question is why would we care about paper publications? We're dealing with a different medium here. To me it would be stupid to not take advantage of the differences.

In general, I'd say it is not as much of a problems as DTP stories often don't skate as close to the lines and, when they do, it's pretty obvious (Fifty Shades of Grey)

Let me re-phrase that for you- You haven't read any that do... ;)

Perfect example of that is Tom Holt writing as KJ Parker and some of his work which is downright brutal- like going into great detail how the protagonist dismembers his own son to craft a bow. There is also a lot going on in the Game of Thrones books that didn't make the TV series for some strange reason, that would squick a lot (Though I was surprised that they did include a scene where a barely teen boy suckles on his mother's breast- the SFX was so bad that it had apparently been done deliberately, so as people could see that it was blatantly a prosthetic...)

I'd say it is not as much of a problems as DTP stories often don't skate as close to the lines and, when they do, it's pretty obvious (Fifty Shades of Grey).

I can't speak for the sequels but 'Fifty Shades of Grey' is actually very vanilla. I suspect most of the people who think it's objectionable haven't read it either.

AJ

Sending a copy of 50 to someone in the BDSM lifestyle is about as welcome as sending a Nerf gun to a Ukraine soldier.

I haven't read the sequels. Is the 'red room of pain' stuff any stronger?

AJ

Non BDSM people are often referred to as 'vanilla'

I didn't know that. I apologise for any confusion it may have caused.

AJ

* Never discuss your story until it is complete, least your writing be contaminated with the thoughts of others.

I disagree as my early readers (chapter by chapter) have had some keen insights into characters and that has helped me flesh them out.

And we won't even begin to discuss my editor who kibitzes line by line as I write!🤪