Hiya peeps, I'm a new author on here and I just wanted to ask for some more experienced opinions regarding the pacing of stories on CHYOA and general chapter lengths. I personally have always believed that the effectiveness of a good "sex story" per say is the build up of the characters, growing attached to them overtime as you learn more about their story, defined by their interactions with other characters, their choices, their thoughts, etc. I know that I can feel aroused by a simple "teacher fucked hot popular student" story, but I always think about how much more fun it would've been to watch it progress from simple flirtations or innuendos till eventually the teacher goes for it or vice versa. This is why my story, https://chyoa.com/story/The-New-Guy.20275 , has relatively slow pacing in terms of "smut scenes" or any sexual activity the main character is engaging in, except for the incest branch, which I haven't really explored much recently. I wanted to flesh out "Nate" fully before having him participate in sex scenes so that the reader really felt something when the character was getting the living shit fucked out of him or he was dominating someone. I also want to pursue a somewhat romantic story line with the different branches leading to different suitors / boyfriends (and 1 girlfriend branch) but I sometimes feel like readers don't really want to sit through it and just want something hot and heavy they can quickly jerk off to. This also goes along with chapter length... I always feel like I need more in a chapter before ending and I'm not sure if it's gotten excessive. I feel happy with the length so far of all my chapters as I feel they conveyed all of the information that I wanted them to, but I also somewhat feel like they are too long and people don't want to sit through it and read it. I don't know. I just wanted some outside opinions to help gauge this... lol. Thanks .
When writing erotica, you need to ask yourself the question: do you want to write porn or a good story? You can't really have both, unfortunately; the 'porn without plot' stereotype has truth to it. The former will obviously attract far more readers - I find that many on here simply don't read (or write) non-sexual content. The latter will, in the majority of cases, be of more satisfying quality, but nobody on here expects a poetic masterpiece; they just want to see their fantasies realised in words. As such, the popularity of your writing will be proportionate to its density of sexual content. Rule of thumb: an erotic story should have an intrinsically sexual premise. If you don't have a solid reason to drive the plot into sex again and again, you'll end up writing a regular story that just happens to have sex scenes in it. Which isn't a bad thing, per se, but it's not really erotica at that point. I personally prefer stories that know how to chill a little bit, but I'm in the minority here. TL;DR: A faster paced story - that is, more sex - will inevitably reach a bigger audience. There's not really any other way to put it. Whether that is primary motivation or not is up to you.
