lets work together Topic Tuesday #15: Tagging Your Stories On GA

[Brayon]

This week's topic is something I find a bit hard to do when I go to publish a story on GA: Tagging.

 

GA has 118 story tags, and each story can currently have up to 8 tags on them. But what tags do you use for your story, in order to get someone interested in your work? We've all seen stories here on GA with very few to no tags. The Admin has even asked us to help them, by reporting those stories with suggested tags, so that they can go in and fix them. If you find that GA is lacking a tag, you can even suggest one, and the Admin might add it to the system. I've mentioned two that I've found that GA didn't have, and now we have the "Death" tag, and the "High School" tag. Both of those tags were missing, but we had a number of stories that had those elements in them. Now stories set in a High School, or has a character's Death in them, can be tagged as such to inform the reader.

 

Informing vs. Enticing

This is the part that I find to be a little hard when I'm trying to inform the reader, entice them, and trying not to spoil the story. Some tags are absolute by the rules, such as when you have Rape or Incest in a story. This is to inform the reader of the subject material in your story. Others are more subjective. But when do you use what tags?

 

Quote

Let's say I've written a story about this guy that finds out that aliens are real. He's sitting at home and hears a noise in the backyard. Come to find out, its an alien on the run, looks human but has silver skin and blue hair, and begs the MC homeowner for sanctuary. During the course of the story, they fall in love and end up having some mind-blowing sex. Now they are on the run from the authorities.

 

What tags would you use for this story? Well, first off, let's look at the list: https://www.gayauthors.org/storyoptions/storytags/ . This page has all of GA's story tags in both ordered by use and alphabetical order. By far the most popular tag is "Gay". Go figure... we're on a site dedicated to Gay Stories. Now the example story above, what should I tag it? Well, there are aliens, so "Aliens" should be a tag. I would use "Gay" because a Male-on-Male relationship does develop. It might be a bit of a stretch but "road-trip" could signify that they were on the run. For the mind-blowing Nifty Level sex-scene, "Anal" and "Oral" could be used. So that's five tags: Aliens, Gay, Road-Trip, Anal, and Oral. I've got three more tags I can use. Do I use them or not? That is up for each individual author to decide when tagging their stories. I could throw in "Military" because they are being chased by the Authorities, or "Alternate Earth" because it's in a different world than ours, but are they enticing the reader to read the story or making them shy away? Is less more? Again, that is what we each have to decide for our selves. Some might tag this differently, and go with Aliens, Young Adults, Love, Dark, Psionics, and Anal. Or even more different combinations of tags. With the exception of what is required by the posting rules, the skies the limit.

 

So, what about you? When it comes to tagging your stories, how do you approach it? Inform or Entice? Do you use all 8, or go less?

[Comicality]

I personally use all 8 tags when I post a story, but there are some that I usually avoid using at all. And mostly because, like you pointed out, it gives away some major plot points of the story ahead of time. I think that some tags can suggest certain material without spoilers.  For example, I almost never use any of the sex tags. Oral, anal, etc, I feel, is suggested by using the 'mature' tag. The only tag I use in that section is the 'no sex' tag. Other than that, I'd rather have readers find out what happens on their own.

 

I also use tags for setting and theme. If it has a sci fi, paranormal, or vampire theme? It's important for readers to know that going in. It informs them, but doesn't give anything away about the story. If it takes place 50 years in the past, or 50 years in the future...that's also important for readers to know. I would use the 'modern' tag or 'period piece' tag for something like that. Ages of the characters (high school, college, adult) is also a good one to use. It guides readers in the right direction. But I usually refrain from using anything too specific if I can help it. I haven't written anything with rape being a central focus, so I may add that as a tag, but only if it was the centerpiece of the whole story, and was intentionally made to be disturbing. I would definitely warn readers about that ahead of time. 'Death', on the other hand? I might hold off on using that tag. The death of a character, especially a main character, might be a shocking end or turning point in the story. I wouldn't want readers going into the story with 'death' on their minds. To me, that kind of ruins the effect.

 

Anyway, my suggestion would be to avoid the specifics UNLESS a part of your story is going to come off as deceptive or traumatic to your readers due to its content. Using tags like 'Mature' or 'Dark' or 'Light Hearted', can do the trick just fine. And if you don't use all 8? Then you don't use all 8. Use what you think is effective. And if there's a small corner that the tags don't reach, then you can add that bit of info in your story written description. Done.  

[Timothy M.]

It's new to me we can have 8 tags, the old limit was 6. But even then I didn't always use six tags, although I often include the 'gay' tag, which is pretty obvious. However, as I've also written stories with bi and straight characters (and sex), using the gay tag is important, in case I ever post any non-gay stories here (not likely, but still).

I've only used the anal and oral tags for one story which had a large amount of sex, since I agree that a Rating as Mature should be enough for readers to expect sex.

 

I can see the problem with balancing the use of the best tags with the need to not spoil the story. However, I rarely look at the tags when I start reading a story, so they don't matter that much. To me tags are about three things: 1) to enable readers to search for specific story elements which they like and 2) to warn readers about possible sensitive content, and 3) to protect the author from readers being angry about 'bad' surprises.

In other words, if your story includes e.g. abuse, be sure to use that tag, or suffer the consequences.  

[Cia]

I consider tags to be less about informing readers about what is going to be in the story before they read it, and more about making sure readers find my story when they use tags to search/filter stories. So, to that end, I'll be more inclined to use tags that might be 'spoilerish' than not if it's a major element I know interests readers and would be something they'll want to read because it's more important they find my story than not find my story because it might be spoiled.  In the end, I'm going to rely on my ability as a writer to keep the twists and reveals coming as those AHA moments in the story for readers regardless of the tags, rating, description, warnings, etc...