Do tags spoil the surprise of an interesting story?

You've just written a story with an interesting and winding plotline that takes the story beyond what the genre usually calls for, or touches on several other genres. You want the plot/scene/characters to surprise your readers with unexpected twists and turns hoping the surprise itself will entertain.

Are you then spoiling those surprises by an exhaustive listing of tags? I know they provide a search capability that allows readers with the interests you've tagged to find your story, but is it worth it? Do they entice an otherwise reluctant reader? ... or give away the story before they've even read it?

Interesting topic, as I have long thought that tags could be spoilers if one isn't careful. That's why I leave out some if there's some plot twist or surprise I want to lay onto readers.

Given the twisty nature of many Micros, I almost always use very generic, very banal tags. Costs me readers, I'm sure, but better that than spoiling the tale.

I learned about tags from fanfiction - which is mostly to help filter out unwanted content. So my tags are mostly like warnings of 'Hey if you don't like stories about this thing, may not want to read this' cos I ultimately want my readers to enjoy the story and not get squicked halfway through and then abandon the story, no matter how good I think it is. That said, if there are things I write about a lot, where they have become a theme or a stock thing I write about, then I may leave it out, as it's not a key thing in the story, or if it is not a 'big deal' about the story, Like it's a wibbly thing using tags, cos you do gotta kind of omit some of them sometimes, and other times, it is like a 'head up' if you don't like this content click away, which, on a site like this with the tags on the bottom, I don't know how many people scroll down to look at the tags before they dive in the story or not, but like yeah.

Quote by LuceDevlin
on a site like this with the tags on the bottom, I don't know how many people scroll down to look at the tags before they dive in the story or not, but like yeah.

I know I look at them. You don't really have to scroll to see them as they're quite visible in listing of many stories on a page. Some may not know you can click on the tags and see other stories that have that kind of content within them though they may not be in that genre. There are many stories tagged with 'spanking' but are not in the genre, so I can find other stories about my favorite subject that aren't the spanking genre. I agree with you that they're helpful to allow a reader to avoid a story that has a distasteful element to them ... incest for example.

So, as you've pointed out, it depends a lot on the story whether to reveal elements you'd prefer to be a surprise or let the reader know some of the twists and turns the story takes to entice and/or warn them.