What do I put in the story "Description" field?

When you publish a work at Literotica, you need to supply a few things along with the work itself - namely, a title, a description, tags, and a category.

The description is the little “blurb” that appears below the title in many locations around Literotica. Descriptions are very important to attracting readers. A good description should:

• Accurately describe the story’s content.
• Entice an interested reader to click on (and hopefully, read) the story.

It’s a balancing act. You want to attract the eyes of readers seeking your type of story, while dissuading readers who may not be interested in the content or story line of your work. A good description is long enough to inform the reader, but not so long and wordy that it becomes boring. The effort it takes to craft the perfect description line pays off in increased readership not only of one story, but across your entire body of work.

Description Dos:

• Know Your Audience. Take a few minutes with our Story Search and Story Tag features to find stories in your genre, kink, and/or category. Read the descriptions you see there. You should get a feel for what may be effectively attracting readers, in addition to what you personally think reads well. Do not copy other writer’s descriptions! Instead, study what makes those lines work, and use those techniques to create a description that fits your work.
• Tease Your Story. What is the conflict? Make the reader want to know how it’s resolved. (i.e. “Co-ed Maggie’s clothes are stolen while skinny-dipping in her neighbor’s pool.”) Asking a question is another way to pique readers’ interest - “Can divorcée Mary resist the advances of her best friend’s college age son?”
• Telegraph the Kink. Readers of erotica are generally very specific in their tastes and can react strongly to “surprise” content. Clearly stating the kinks in your tale will not only attract appreciative readers, but will help you avoid angry responses based on unwanted content. If your threesome includes bisexual male interaction, you might use the description, “Mark explores his bi side with Mary and Will.” This would attract the attention of readers seeking bisexual male threesome themes while warning readers not interested in bi-male.
• Avoid Category Cliches. Witty descriptions are great, but avoid the obvious. Readers have seen countless ravishment stories described in variations of “So-and-so gets more than they bargained for.” Or a romance with a heroine with “curves in all the right places” and a hero who’s “hungry, but not for food!” Be original, but also concise and appealing. It’s a tall order, but you can do it!

Description Don’ts:

• “The Best Story Ever Written!” Not only is this unlikely (though your story might be very good!), it also gives the reader no clue as to what your story is about. And promising the world may result in a disappointed audience - which will lead to low votes and other poor feedback.
• “This is Chapter Two of ‘My Storytitle’” If your story is titled “My Storytitle Ch. 02”, then this information is unnecessary. The description should describe the story, not explain that the story is part of a series.
• Promise of Content Not in Story If your description promises a bachelor party, there should be a bachelor party in the story. Bait and switch to increase clicks on your story will lead to angry readers and very poor feedback.
• Keyword Spam While you are encourages to include relevant keywords in your description for readers, the description should read like a sentence. If you submit something like “Sex, gay, threesome, naked, hot, underwear, bikini”, your work will be sent back. Comma separated keywords are meant for the Tags field, not the Description.

Writing a great description may seem challenging at first, but once you’ve published several works and received feedback from users, it will become easier. When in doubt, you always have the option to research what has worked for other authors in the Literotica community. You created your story, you understand it’s theme better than anyone, so dig deep into what your story means to you, then communicate this to others who feel the same way.

If you need more help, you might try the Literotica Authors’ Hangout Forum and the Writers Resources.