Audio files can now be uploaded and attached directly at story creation time.

So come on, sexy Lush voice artists. Let's hear you...

puts on creative hat

Will see if the hat offers any wisdom. Whether I enter or not, thank you Kimmi for this most generous prize and your support of the writing community here. ❤️

Quote by joe71
Why not leave the banner up at least until the announcement

Nice idea but it usually advertises "enter the comp" on the banner wording, which is misleading if it's over. And we don't have the capability to change the banner when entries close, nor is it satisfactory to put some text over it due to the different banner colourings and positions (mobile, desktop, etc).

I think we're stuck with it disappearing on closing date, sadly.

Congratulations, good sir. No mean feat.

Quote by sprite

Sorry, ominonicromiumcon badgers, but yeah, got a new one on its way. Micro-micro. Stories will need to be exactly 1.5 words long. should be up sometime in October.

What th...?

Quote by yourfantasylover

I'm still pretty new, and have no friends here, well, one. Sort of.

Then I'd start there. Read a load of stories here. Vote and comment on them. Put a few things on your profile wall. Start discussions in the forum. Pimp your stories in the Self-Promotion forum. Share your writing expertise; anything.

The more you start to contribute to more stuff on the site, the more people get to know you and check out your work. The more people you can start following you, the more exposure you get each time you publish.

RRs are nothing more than a personal recommendation from the moderator and gets the story listed on the Recommended Reads page, in additiom to whichever category and tags you used. It carries no more weight otherwise.

(Besides the prestige! They're not all that common)

Some categories are phenomenally popular and others, as you've found, aren't. The more niche fetishes, as well as (sadly) fantasy/sci-fi, tend to not have as many people camping there to see what's new.

But you should still publish in the most appropriate category for the story. Just because a story category doesn't have a massive following and your expected interaction counts are lower then you'd like, doesn't mean you won't get reads as you build your portfolio.

Speaking from experience, many people who follow you will read most of what you write, irrespective of genre, if you demonstrate you're good at the craft in genres they do like.

I won't have a sweet innocent 17yo called something like Brenda or Doris in my stories. The names don't fit them. But they'd suit a middle-aged mom next door whose kids had flown the nest. Or a horny dinner lady.

So yes, like Milik, I pay attention to how I think the name reflects the character. And like he says. it's also fun every now and again to play with misdirection.

Quote by Milik_the_Red
Names have some meaning to me. It's hard to explain but they have to feel right to the character.

Same for me.

Quote by Chet_Morton
they don't know how long a job will take until they open the story

This is true. It's not immediately obvious whether a resubmission contains a handful of changes or a tonne, and we need to lock it to find out.

I've locked a story before, started it, then got a client have something fall over and I drop everything to get them back online. That can lead to a flurry of changes that may take a few days and I might not even log back into Lush, so I'm not distracted.

Sometimes things just don't go as planned.

Quote by typhoon2099
How do we win this competition?

Write the best story 😂

The competition judging process.

Yes you can edit your story or cover at any time. But as ShyExhibitionst says, it goes back into the queue. If you add a Moderator Note with the resubmission to say you've only made a few edits or changed the cover, we can normally pick those out fairly quickly.

Also, for info: story verification times.

Quote by KimmiBeGood
play with some of my toys in Storeroom #4,

Do I wanna know. .?

Wait, one of them's a ukulele, right?

Quote by Milik_the_Red
once a story leaves the front page, It’s gross viewer count drops substantially

Including bot/spider count, because once they've indexed it, they move on 😁 Frequency of spidering is related to content churn.

I'm sure there are casual viewers, including new people just discovering the site. But a more likely landing page is from a search engine term like "erotic cheating stories" (we're 4th in DuckDuckGo and 2nd in Google, currently behind Lit) which lands you on that specific category page.

People tend to search for something like that, rather than the more generic "erotic stories sites" or "erotic stories" (although we do rank highly for those terms too and, in fact, the endpoint is the Stories list rather than the home page).

In the age of search engines, the adage that "every page is the front page" is truer than ever.

I don't normally drop in here but my ears started burning 😎

Thank you for the props on the team effort. Over the weekend, we managed to slay over a hundred stories from the queue, and considering the queue goes up a lot more over the weekend too, it was probably way more than that by the time the weekend was over.

I say "we" when of course I mean the royal 'we' because I had nothing to do with it. My weekend was taken up driving from place to place and I had very little free time. But to whoever did log in and help blitz the queue, it's most appreciated. You're all marvellous.

We're still drowning in submissions and it'll take a sustained effort like that to drive it down to manageable levels. I'm hoping the development dry spell will come to an end soon, so we can get some metrics and tools in place to help us more actively manage the queue and pull story verification times into the meat of the bell curve instead of loitering with the current outliers, a few standard deviations wider than optimal.

However...

Quote by Milik_the_Red
We need a longer front page

... to this I disagree, and have done so since we moved to Lush 2. I base this on people's browsing habits, and how social media works. Almost nobody sits with the front page open on their browser and hits refresh refresh refresh, waiting for stories to drop. In fact, the only things that predominantly do that are bots / spiders.

Most humans browse either genres or tags they like. And on those pages, there's the Trending carousel, then 15 results per page. Plenty of exposure on "page 1" of that category or tag, because the story rotation is a lot slower.

On top of that, followers are notified of new content, and stories from those authors are automatically added to their reading queue. That gives direct access. Plus, when you get to the end of a story, there's links to chapters (if the series feature is used), plus "more from this author" and then the more generic other story links that share category+popular tags with it. I've had a few hits from the bottom of other stories.

All that adds up to way more exposure than even two days on the front page would afford.

Note the "classic stories" section on the front page? I've had a story feature there for over a month... and got one Like. A short while later when it had been replaced by other classic stories, I pimped the same story on my profile page and got a bunch of new comments, likes and favourites from people who follow me and had missed it. And got a few new followers from people who saw they'd interacted with it.

Lush V2 is a lot more about networking than V1 was. It's harder work, but it pays greater dividends to build and sustain a following with superb stories than it does to rely on hoping someone stumbles across your content on the front page.

I've been lucky enough to have been trialling the alpha version of the new interactions panel for a while now. It still has teething issues (and without much dev time, they've not been fixed, so it's not been made more generally available). But it's really neat for finding out who is interacting with your content and what people you follow are reading and commenting on. Plus recommendations (which are a bit shonky still!) based on your viewing history.

I solely use that page as a hub to jump off and explore other content. It's my "Lush home page" and is way more nuanced, tailored and downright interesting than the front page could ever hope to be. When it's fixed up a bit and rolled out, keeping up with friends, followers and fans is going to take a huge step up.

Anyway, make mine a frosty cider, please barkeep. I'm a bit parched after waffling for so long.

Quote by Evocative
Why This Is Feasible Now

Well, nearly! The following elements require developer time:

• Create a hidden forum section.

• Batch post there as “Sneak Previews”.

• Readers can comment with "Approve” [comments stay with a story after publication so would need special dispensation if they're not to be displayed post-publication]

• Require one-sentence justification [how would this be enforced?]

• Impose a daily or weekly cap [for the record, I dislike this. I would prefer to limit an individual's submission rate by empowering mods to see how "fast" someone is submitting and/or being rejected or deleting stories etc]

• Identify authors with 10+ cleanly approved stories [needs stats displaying somehow to mods]

• Collect data

Sadly, developer time is limited at present. But I like the idea of a softly softly trial of some of these features if we can swing it.

Quote by Shyexhibitionist
I was always taught not to use a comma with a conjunction

At the risk of spinning this thread waaaay further off-topic, that's the problem with rules. They're too rigid and don't capture the nuances of language. I was told the same thing. And never to start a sentence with "And". Or "but" or "because". But I do.

My rough stance: "is the sentence clear with/without the comma or rule? Then leave it the hell alone." I'll only change it if the meaning is ambiguous or the sentence needs it for clarity. Otherwise, who cares?

I get irked if I have some dialogue like this:

"Me too."

And someone changes it to the grammatically correct:

"Me, too."

If I'd wanted my character to have said: "Me {pause} too." I'd have put the comma in myself. But they're saying it fast, and it's speech, so, y'know, it's fine to relax rules. But I know the rules and have chosen to break them. It's different maybe if you're starting out and need to learn them first. That's where the tools come in: a learning aid.

Likewise, I use the Oxford comma if it's needed for clarity, or omit it if it isn't. And I apply the same logic to story submissions. If the sentence is clear without it, that suits me just fine.

My Obsessed competition entry is chock full of sentence fragments. It's a grammatist's nightmare. But my character narrates like that, so that's how I told it. I'd have had words with anyone who sandblasted it for grammaticalness unless their version was clearly better (and I know that sounds terribly arrogant - it's not meant to be). But there's a difference between using fragments for stylistic purposes (knowing they're bad but using them for effect) vs not grasping why they're bad and using them wrongly. We do get a lot of people who don't realise they break narrative flow if used willy-nilly.

Mods do a fantastic job at guiding authors, and love working with people who care about writing. They've caught countless errors I've made and it's always appreciated. I've learned an awful lot from reading other stories, and from Mods' advice (I still do).

The automated tools are there to help authors help us by presenting the best version of their story. But the tools aren't foolproof and sometimes make ridiculous suggestions, so basic knowledge and reading up on the rules and when to apply them can help to know when the tool is being overly prescriptive. Sometimes they contradict themselves!

Quote by MissVixen
They seem to be easy to spot.

If it only it was that simple. We can tell with a reasonable degree of accuracy, but where do we draw the line? We ask authors to use Grammarly and its friends to spot errors. Those tools - even Microsoft Word with its stupid Copilot - now have "AI" features built-in that rewrite sentences for you, to make your work sound like everyone else.

How can we reasonably turn around and say "don't use any AI features to improve your work" when we've asked you to use such a tool that now oversteps its original station, to bring writing up to scratch from a technical viewpoint?

There's:

• AI-written "A". You type a scenario. It steals shit off the internet and recycles it for you. You keep prompting "carry on" until it's the length you want.

• AI-written "B". You steal an existing work, or supply a prompt, then ask the engine to rewrite it in the style of {some published author}.

• AI-assisted "A". You write a story and pass it through an AI engine to make your work sound more polished.

• AI-assisted "B". You generate a story like in point (1) or (2) but then rewrite or extend parts to make it raunchier than the bot is allowed to generate.

• AI-assisted "C". You write a story and pass it through a grammar checker. It makes suggestions and you keep some or all of them.

Although it's sometimes obvious, it's more hassle than we have time to filter, discuss, reject and potentially piss off authors who have written good work but have picked up AI traits and used them a lot in their writing.

We don't like lazy authors. We want to discourage authors from using AI to generate stories because it's not fair on those of us who work hard on, and love, the craft of writing, and enjoy storytelling.

It's not impossible to spot, and we have a naughty list, but at this stage we're not actively rejecting them. That may change.

Quote by wxt55uk
thank you for taking the time to fully answer Evocative’s comprehensive post.

I didn't reply as comprehensively as I'd like, but I'm at work.

Evocative, that's very comprehensive. Thank you for taking the time to put your thoughts together in a cohesive manner.

Some of your points (auto-publish or a fast-track skim read for trusted members who consistently publish work that needs little to no effort from the moderation team) have been considered and I really like the ideas.

(Moderators already get Premium as a perk, btw.)

Community-level screening and flagging is an excellent idea too, and we've considered this. It's something I'd be keen to offer if we can make it work. You have highlighted one of the pitfalls: people reporting content to eliminate the competition. We do, sadly, have members with axes to grind and some just badger us with report after report. People are triggered on some strange things, so basing decisions on the level of reporting isn't useful if someone has a vendetta or is thin-skinned. Limiting reports and reducing or removing the privilege if the reports don't hold value is a good workaround, but requires additional development and also takes time away from moderators to investigate or respond, so we need to be sure we're not merely swapping one duty for another.

Likewise, levelling-up based on scores and trust works, as long as we're careful. Even without the incentives, we've had authors in the past who gained popularity by exchanging favours or begging for reviews just to increase popularity. If there are other carrots, well, let's just say being popular or buying a high tier account doesn't necessarily mean stories meet our publishing guidelines.

We have the pesky problem of AI-generated content, which authors already swamp the queue with. It's all technically sound and would pass any automatic or pre-screen or skim read checks (because it's programmed to make flawless technical content), but it's lifeless drivel and boring as all fuck to read. In an auto-publish paradigm, anyone who routinely generates this crap and basks in the glory of doing next to nothing, can immediately push it to the site after any rate limits we enforce. The site quality will gradually deteriorate because the stories are essentially plagiarised from millions of others, and the whole site will descend into a soup of mediocrity.

I quite like the idea of trusted yet unmoderated stuff only being available to premium members. Hadn't considered that. The sneak preview angle is neat. Again, we need to be cautious. We're already in the cross hairs of ridiculous government legislation initiatives because of our images and content choices (IF, primarily) and almost no financial institutions will work with us (they prefer funding war, guns and AI to erotica, but that's their moral compass). If we start automatically publishing stuff, we'll potentially get hit even harder if the slightest sniff of controversy occurs. It's, frankly, pathetic when all we're trying to do is help people be happy in this fucked-up excuse for society!

The other fly in the ointment is that all your proposals require development effort. Currently, we have almost none due to various reasons I won't bore you with. Until we are allocated a suitable chunk of development time, we're unfortunately stuck with what we have right now.

We'll definitely take your ideas and cogitate, because there are some fantastic proposals in there that would definitely help the site and its authors. Thank you again for voicing them.

After much wrangling, rewriting, and more editing late nights than I care to admit, I finally hammered my entry into a shape I consider worthy. And here it is:

One Last Fuck To Give

This was a very tough piece to put together. The voice. The plot. The dialogue. The sex. It all needed to fit and I couldn't make it work. For over a week, I've been staring at it and not making progress, deleting stuff, adding stuff, swapping words. Nothing worked, until yesterday when I blitzed through it, moved chunks around, tightened everything, and decided enough was enough.

With not an AI tool in sight, not even a grammar checker, this is 100% imagination and 200% hard graft. Yes, it's 1500 words over my planned length, but the story seemed to need the space, so I listened. Hope the extra is worth it and I would love to hear what people think.

Now I have some catching up to do on other entries. I've only read a handful, and not even got round to commenting on half those.

Quote by Chet_Morton
This is all fine for the authors who scour the forums and choose to modify their behavior, but others will continue as before, blissfully unaware, because the site doesn't have a reliable way to make announcements

Interestingly, we do have a Site Announcements feature available to us, but I've never used it so I'm not sure where they show up. Maybe we should give it a whirl someday!

With regards authors being blissfully unaware, that's only the case for the first time. We don't necessarily expect authors to have studied the various terms and info smattered across the site (it's a bone of contention and is on the list to consolidate one day), though it's nice if they do. But in the moderator feedback, we politely remind anyone who does serially submit to please be considerate. Anyone who continues to spam the queue after that is doing it on purpose.

And, yes, we have people who take to the forums, complain on their profiles, and file helpdesk tickets asking why their story hasn't been published, on top of submitting multiple stories in quick succession (or all at once). Even after they've been asked to slow down for the good of the site as a whole. Dealing with this takes away precious time from the team trying to publish as many stories as we can.

Quote by Alfresco
The longer waiting times can perhaps mean that authors ‘tee-up’ their next story in drafts with their trigger finger hovering eagerly over the ‘publish’ button

That may well account for the phenomenon, yes.

And that's great, except if someone pushes a new story immediately - especially if it's a chapter series - then it doesn't give long enough for many readers to absorb the recently-published chapter. Some people only log on once or twice a week, so if they're following you and suddenly see 3 new stories, each 7K words, they might not bother with any of them due to the time commitment to read them. Spacing them out gives more time for current publications to accrue readers, new followers, and comments, and gives authors time to pimp their work in the forum and on profile walls, as well as to enjoy other people's work.

Clearly there's a cutoff point where some may have forgotten what went on before, so it's a balancing act. And the variable publication times don't help. But I doubt a reader will begrudge an author a week or three between chapters. And that breathing space gives stories more time to gain readers and affords us moderators breathing space too.

Quote by GreyMatter
Just to give some idea of what's happening now...yesterday, during my lunch break I modded five stories. By the end of my lunch, the total number of stories in the queue hadn't changed

Ah yes, moderator maths. When you spend an hour modding 5x 3K stories, and 7x 8K stories are in there to replace them by the time you're done. Grrr...

Quote by keylime314159
The "follows" sounds to me like it should be a listing of who I follow, but it's actually my followers. people who follow me.

Yes, an unfortunate situation, but the word was chosen because it actually offers both.

The first page is who follows you. If you then tap the View Following link on the right, it toggles to show who you're following.

Neither word "following" or "followers" give an accurate representation of the dual nature of the content on this panel, so the diminutive form of the word "follows" was selected to a) give an idea of what the page is about, b) save space in the menu.

Quote by wxt55uk
Have the improved metrics and back-end tools arrived yet?

No. And no timescales have been provided, sadly.

Quote by wxt55uk
where we are atm with wainting times and plans for the future to reduce them

Waiting times are long.

The current plan is to sit on stories from authors who continue to ignore our reasonable requests to slow down their submission rate, so other authors get a chance.

There's nothing else we can do if people continue to be impatient and spam us with multiple stories at once, or send their latest piece ten minutes after their last one is published. And that's not hyperbole.

As always, with any altruistic system utilising a shared resource, the few are spoiling it for the majority. We're having to waste time identifying and engaging with such people, which is time we could be spending on reducing the queue times for everyone.

Quote by Milik_the_Red
I’m working through the plot line of a science fiction story

Sounds intriguing. But unless it has copious boobs and butts as part of the plot, you might be better off publishing it over on StoriesSpace. Or, as you say, self-publish.

What Seeker4 said.

The rule of thumb is you can hypnotize someone or use suggestion/mind control as long as they don't do anything totally out of character that they wouldn't do if they were not under the spell.

Establish consent and boundaries beforehand or ensure all characters are "in on it" at some point during the chapter. This is especially true for multi-part stories. Consent and willingness must be established and wrapped up withiin the chapter. E.g. No non-consent situations or unwilling participants in chapter 1 that "dangle" and are then revealed that it was all pre-planned in chapter 2 or 3 or some time later.