How To Break the Literotica Toplist

Lesbian sex

Do you know the answer to the question: "Who watches the most girl on girl porn?" If you answered: Men! You're correct. The majority of the readers in this category are male, followed by bi-curious females, with actual lesbians bringing up the rear. So the majority of readers will be looking for stories of (legal, of course!) teen girls having gentle, exploratory sex with their friends. If you want to make the toplist, I wouldn't write about rough sex, fist fucking, dykes, butches or ass play. To write a popular story in this category, think about male-oriented fantasy porn, and you've pretty much got it. Secret Kisses by stepjones is a perfect example.

Letters and Transcripts

The key element here is in how realistic you can get the piece to seem. The readers want to believe it's a letter or conversation that actually happened, rather than a creative piece. My Moment of Weakness by RebeccaBrowning is a great example.

Loving wives

This is the strangest category. "Loving" in the title at first seems like a misnomer, because basically, this category involves some sort of infidelity. The idea, often, is that the wife or husband "loves" their partner so much they're willing to give them anything they want—even another lover. Be forewarned, writing in this category takes a strong ego and the ability to withstand some pretty caustic criticism, because fans of this category are very vocal and opinionated, and often use the story comment sections to argue and debate their beliefs about infidelity. To write a popular story in this category, you need all the details. Readers here want to know characters' histories, motivations, all the details of their lives that led up to the infidelity, etc. and often the aftermath as well. Revenge stories are popular in this category. Usually, you're going to split your readership no matter what you do, because there are those that like the cuckold fantasy, and those who feel anything short of shooting a spouse who cheats makes the wronged partner a "wimp." There are authors who succeed here, though, and if you want to know what a popular Loving Wives story looks like, check out the Fool's Envy series by S-Des.

Mature

The most popular stories in this category are men with older women fantasies. There are a smaller percentage of stories that are younger woman/older man. The key to writing a good mature story is that the older partner should be comfortable in their sexuality, knowledgeable, and willing to fulfill the teacher role. For older women, there should be a physical indication that she's older—larger breasts and thick pubic hair, for example. For the older man/younger woman fantasy, the girl should be the petite, small-breasted, Lolita type. A good example of the older woman as teacher can be found in The Process of Illumination by Barb36D.

Mind Control

The most popular stories in this category are about sexually immature males with little or no experience who dream of being able to have the power to make women fulfill their sexual desires. To write a popular story in this category, you usually need to have a male adolescent main character who can suddenly get all the popular cheerleader types who have always been mean to him to do whatever he wants them to sexually. Revenge scenarios are popular, here, too. The Alan series by juliancoreto is popular in this category.

Non-Erotic

This is a pretty self-indulgent category on a sex site. Stories here are most often about writers working out a personal demon of some sort, and those that are popular happen to coincide with the personal demons of the masses. All By Myself by leapyearguy is an example.

Nonconsent/Reluctance

This is a complex category and, like Gay Male and Loving Wives, one that's difficult to excel in because so many readers will vote stories down simply because they don't agree with the basic premise. The readership is also split along gender lines, making it even harder to write something that appeals to the masses. This category is about power, either having it or not, and sex just happens to be the method by which it's expressed in a non-consent story. Like the exhibitionist/voyeur category, it's two halves of the same whole, but it isn't always expressed with the same perspective. Women who read and have rape fantasies want to experience a loss of control—they want to be dominated and forced. For men who read and have rape fantasies, it's about being in control, dominating, and forcing a woman to his will. The most popular stories in this category will come at the power dynamic from one of those two perspectives, and will give the reader a vicarious experience that is "safe" to live out in story form. Hunted by furrybert is an example from the masculine perspective.

NonHuman

Now here is where we find our Anne Rice vampire wannabe's and "I'm not a dog, I'm a werewolf!" stories. Also stories about aliens, ghosts, androids, fairies, demons, catgirls, things with tentacles—you name it. If you want to write a popular story in this category, you have to have a good grasp of the genre the creature you're writing about usually lives in. For example, most vampire lovers want the dark, brooding, irresistible sort. Also, readers here want sexual descriptions involving the weird and surreal aspects of these characters, so detail is important. Yes, they want to hear about large, hairy wolfman penises and tiny, little fairy vaginas. I'm not kidding. To write a really popular story in this category, it helps to have a little bit of a fetish in one of these areas, to make the details appealing to the reader. A great example is Dirty Alice Black's Wolf Man series.

Novels and Novellas

Novels and Novellas can be split into chapters or posted whole, but most readers seem to prefer the chapters, released a day or so apart, sort of like reading a serial story. Novels and novellas implies a longer work—don't post short stories here (anything under a total length of 25,000 words, I'd say, should go somewhere else.) Any genre goes here, of course, but the most popular are the romance novels. DanielleKitten's Saint's Quest is a good example, and even won a monthly award.

Reviews and Essays

I know this category says reviews and essays, but reviews are less popular than essays. For essays, as with how-to, the most popular are easily readable, humorous, contain personal examples, show the writer's personality, and are about sex. Again, BatsandGlamour excels at this with In Praise of Older Women.

Romance

This category is fairly simple to excel in, actually, especially if you've read a lot of formulaic romance novels. If you want to write popular stories here, make your characters larger than life, the situation pushing the boundary of belief with lots of adventure and conflict, have tons of sexual tension and banter between the hero and heroine before the first sex act, and make the sex more prosaic and softly done than hardcore descriptive. The number one requirement for a popular romance story, though, is some sort of Happily Ever After or Happy For Now ending. The queen of Literotica romance is DanielleKitten, and her A Gift of Love is a good example of what is popular in this genre.

Sci-fi and Fantasy

Storytelling and world-building is the key element in this category. Writing popular stories in this genre is all about how well you can immerse the readers into your created world, whether that's an alien universe or some magical realm. Colleen Thomas wrote superb lesbian sci-fi stories, creating worlds of depth equal and beyond many professional authors. See her The Run for an example. The sex in these tales is really just an incidental bonus as your readers are mostly focusing on the world you're creating. The Danica series by Darkniciad, does a good job of balancing both—great sex and great world building.

Text with Audio

Readers in this category are seeking a sexual experience beyond that of just reading words on the page. In these stories, you need to get to the action quickly, or at least put something in at the start to grab and hold the reader's attention. The other primary thing that makes these popular is a sexy, woman's voice reading the story. If she orgasms (or at least sounds as if she does) during the story, it's even better. Women with accents are very popular, as in Kitten's Playtime by sxy_kitten and Just For You by Asian Princess. These are stories that don't have an actual text to follow along with. There are popular authors who do write stories and read them in a sexy female voice, though, like the Bluebeard's Wife series by SelenaKittyn, which has proven quite popular.

Toys and Masturbation

This category caters primarily to men who like to see women masturbate. The most popular stories here should be female narrated, and about women. Toys and fingers and lots of detail will make the readership here very happy. My Time Alone by LilacWine is a great example.

Transsexual and Crossdressers.

This category is almost a cross between fetish and gay male. As in fetish, detail is paramount, especially in the case of a cross-dressing story. Also, your primary readers are probably men with latent homosexual/bi fantasies that read this category who refuse to read gay male, so the pronoun "she" is important here, even if she has a male appendage. My Initiation by cdandy is a good example of how to write a popular story in this genre.

Now, those are obviously just guidelines about what makes a story popular in any given category. It doesn't take anything else into account. If you write a story with any of the above elements so riddled with errors and human sexual positions which defy the laws of physics that your reader can't get past the first paragraph, you're going to seriously lessen your chances of getting onto the toplists.

If you already manage to write a decent story, though, and you employ the aforementioned formulas, you're going to increase your readership considerably—and probably make it into a toplist or two. Once you've made it there, you need to decide if and how you want to keep your momentum. There are writers who have made it to the toplists once or twice, and that's it. There are writers who have written hundreds of stories, whose names are all over the toplists. You need to decide which you want to be.

If you want to keep and maintain a readership, there are three more ideas I will leave you with. My first suggestion would be to write as a woman. A huge percentage of Literotica readers are male, and most of them really enjoy reading stories written by a woman (or someone they believe to be a woman.) I would also suggest never writing a story in 2nd person—1st or 3rd person is best. And my last suggestion would be to keep your readers happy—write what they like, write it well, and write it often.

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I hope this little how-to helped give you an idea of what a majority of readers are looking for on Literotica. Remember to take time to enjoy your newfound fame and all those little red H's! One last little hint... remember that the toplists are based on votes, so ask the readers to vote at the end of your story, something that looks like this: Thank you for reading! Please leave me feedback and remember to vote if you enjoyed my story!