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Data Mining?

Bebop3

Bebop3

Really Experienced
Joined
Oct 24, 2017
Posts
293
Has anyone spent any time going through the Hall of Fame for various categories and seeing if there are commonalities between the highest rated stories?

For example (completely made up here), seeing that the most popular stories in the Mature section average out to about four pages, involve older women with younger men, the men are white collar professionals and the stories are set in metropolitan areas.

Thanks!
 
A word of advice if you're going to 'data mine' ignore anything with a chapter number and just look at stand alone stories. Chapter series, especially never ending ones, are their own form of top list success that has nothing to do with the content within the story.
 
I haven't done this but I think it would be very interesting to do.

The dataset offered by this Site is very large. There's a lot of interesting information to be gleaned from it with the right tools and some patience.
 
To what end? To write stories with formulas that get the best ratings/most comments on a single Internet story site? Hack writing?
 
What makes it "hack writing"? There's nothing wrong with trying to understand your customers better and give them what they like. People who write only for themselves, with no consideration for what readers like, might as well just write in a journal they keep under their pillow.
 
sr71plt said:
To what end? To write stories with formulas that get the best ratings/most comments on a single Internet story site? Hack writing?
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No, not that. It would have limited usefulness for writing good stories, for the reason you allude to. But it would be interesting as an assessment of what interests readers of erotica, and what they respond to. That may not be interesting to some people. I think it would be interesting, quite apart from whether it offered any useful guidance to an author.
 
Carnevil9 said:
What makes it "hack writing"? There's nothing wrong with trying to understand your customers better and give them what they like. People who write only for themselves, with no consideration for what readers like, might as well just write in a journal they keep under their pillow.
Click to expand...

You wouldn't be trying to connect with "your" writers--with your voice and storytelling technique. You would be trying to connect with some imaginary high-rating, nice-commenting reader set of some other voice and storytelling technique altogether. You'd be a prostitute writer (since you don't like the term "hack writer.")

Which is fine, if you have some sort of ego need to be that.
 
Bebop3 said:
Has anyone spent any time going through the Hall of Fame for various categories and seeing if there are commonalities between the highest rated stories?

For example (completely made up here), seeing that the most popular stories in the Mature section average out to about four pages, involve older women with younger men, the men are white collar professionals and the stories are set in metropolitan areas.
Click to expand...
I haven't looked at the Mature category, but I have looked through the top 10 complete stories in Incest/Taboo a couple of times when people have posted a "Incest stories are all the same" screed. I saw very little commonalities - different lengths, different types of incest, different socio-economic classes, different writing styles. When I read them, I didn't finish most of them and the few I did, I thought "This is in the top 10?"

I'd love to see some statistics on say average rating for different tags or page lengths, but in the end I'm going to write the story I find most compelling regardless of how its different attributes have done in the past.
 
sr71plt said:
You wouldn't be trying to connect with "your" writers--with your voice and storytelling technique. You would be trying to connect with some imaginary high-rating, nice-commenting reader set of some other voice and storytelling technique altogether. You'd be a prostitute writer (since you don't like the term "hack writer.")

Which is fine, if you have some sort of ego need to be that.
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Seems like you have the ego issue as anyone successful here rating wise in your eyes must be a hack because you're not-in the ratings/top list sense.

Not looking to argue, but that's what your post says to anyone taking a couple seconds to analyze it. Jealousy is an ugly emotion.

Not to mention you're always yelling about vigilante critiques and people judging others efforts, but you can just swipe the brush and dub everyone a hack?

I knew I wouldn't miss anything taking a few months off-other than JBJ being banned it seems. As Zeppelin tells us, the song remains the same.

.
 
The most useful thing you could likely get out of it ( other than writing targeted stories ) is information for more intelligent categorization.

Stories can and often do cross categories. Finding out where the elements of your story receive better viewership or ratings by data mining ( or just reading/experience ) can help you place them in front of the most and most friendly eyes.

A story may be romantic, but if it's sex-heavy, it probably won't be received all that well in Romance, resulting in lower than average views for the category. Placing the story in Erotic Couplings could result in somewhat lower readership, but may receive a higher score and more positive reader interaction through comments and favorites.

There are umpteen examples just like that.
 
All methods work. For some, writing formula works because they know they have/can get a dedicated audience. Romance has this down to an art. It's there, it endures, and it's BORING AS HELL. Mystery is the next formulaic category. Same end result.

For others, writing creatively means they can express themselves as they see fit. There's no time clock, no fussy editor or publishing date, no rote workload that turns creativity into drudgery. And, who knows, YOU could be the next E.L. James or J.K. Rowling. (Or remain forever in the ranks of the unknowns, it's a crapshoot.)
 
I've often thought there's an anthropological thesis in the Lit dataset somewhere, just because of it's sheer size and age. It's a hell of a cross-section of one big block of reading habits, over nearly two decades. There would have to be some indicators of trends and shifts in tastes over time. I reckon there would be some fascinating material buried away in there.
 
KindofHere said:
There are two ways to look at what Sr71plt is saying.

1) You can write something formulaic, like: Law & Order, Criminal Minds, CSI, Day Time Soaps

or

2) You can write The Wire, The Sopranos, Shameless, American Gods, or something unpopular that only last 1 season and you can't remember the name of one show like that no matter how hard you try so you can write it in a post, but it just won't fucking come to you. Dirk Gently! (It lasted 2 seasons).

Incidentally, I like all of those shows, Criminal Minds early seasons only.

They're both good, but the second option can be great or not, while the first option will usually find an audience, but it's not like the writer is putting much effort into being creative, you know what's coming and how they do it, but you still enjoy watching.

For the record: I find nothing wrong with either, I'm just saying.
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Indeed, but I think some of the responses here have over-interpreted the OP's original question. Bebop3 didn't ask "how can I optimise my views/ratings/etc.?"; they just asked what kind of stories do score well, and people have assumed a motivation that wasn't stated in the OP.

It's quite possible to be curious about how such things work, without having any intention of capitalising on that knowledge. Some people just find that sort of information interesting for its own sake.

HisArpy said:
All methods work. For some, writing formula works because they know they have/can get a dedicated audience. Romance has this down to an art. It's there, it endures, and it's BORING AS HELL. Mystery is the next formulaic category. Same end result.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, which romance books have you read to form that opinion?

I'm not trying to evangelise romance here; it isn't a genre I read much, except to the extent that it intersects with erotica. But I'm aware that there are plenty of intelligent and creative people working in that genre, and I've noticed that many people who are eager to trash romance have less knowledge of the subject than I would want to have before passing judgement.
 
electricblue66 said:
I've often thought there's an anthropological thesis in the Lit dataset somewhere, just because of it's sheer size and age. It's a hell of a cross-section of one big block of reading habits, over nearly two decades. There would have to be some indicators of trends and shifts in tastes over time. I reckon there would be some fascinating material buried away in there.
Click to expand...

Indeed, and I'm aware of a couple of researchers who've studied Literotica data in one way or another.

One was looking at Literotica and other sites to study how consent is described in stories. Unfortunately, he wasn't aware of Literotica's rules concerning non-consent, which obviously affect what's published here; he was a bit upset when I mentioned them to him!

It'd be fascinating to do some text-mining to see how people's fantasies have evolved in the last couple of decades. How quickly do new celebrities become fantasy fodder? etc. etc.
 
Bramblethorn said:
Out of curiosity, which romance books have you read to form that opinion?

I'm not trying to evangelise romance here; it isn't a genre I read much, except to the extent that it intersects with erotica. But I'm aware that there are plenty of intelligent and creative people working in that genre, and I've noticed that many people who are eager to trash romance have less knowledge of the subject than I would want to have before passing judgement.
Click to expand...


I don't sleep well so I read. I've read A HELL OF A LOT since I was three years old. I read on average of 4 to 5 books per week in addition to the crap I read for work, as well as the crap I read on the dozen websites I frequent each day, as well as the crap I get as email. That's a lot of written words getting crammed into my head. A head which tends to analyze things looking for patterns which can be exploited. I can recognize the formula that Romance works adhere to as well as the other formula fiction genre's out there. They're pretty basic and very predictable. It's why it's called formula fiction.

On top of that, I've been writing for the last 40 years in just about EVERY genre there is. I've written straight up porn as well as children's books and everything in between. So, in addition to my reading habit, that gives me a fairly solid basis to form an opinion as to what's acceptable to readers as well as what is expected by publishers.

So,my opinion on this subject is just that. MY OPINION. It's based on my life experiences, my reading and writing exposure to the various works in the various categories, my attempts to write other than the required formula and be accepted for publication, as well as what I've seen with my own two eyes and heard with my own two ears.
 
Bramblethorn said:
Out of curiosity, which romance books have you read to form that opinion?
Click to expand...

HisArpy said:
I don't sleep well so I read. I've read A HELL OF A LOT since I was three years old. I read on average of 4 to 5 books per week in addition to the crap I read for work, as well as the crap I read on the dozen websites I frequent each day, as well as the crap I get as email. That's a lot of written words getting crammed into my head.
Click to expand...

Four to five books a week - that's impressive! I wish I could still keep up that kind of reading.

But I presume that's across all genres? My question was specifically about what romance books you've read in order to inform your opinion of the genre.
 
I know I'm a slow reader, but I have kept a list of my reading since college, and hitting 50 a year (which I will do this year) is a good year for me--a year in which nothing much else made demands on my time. I pretty much just smile at claims of four times that number.
 
There was a brief period of maybe a year when I was reading 4-5 a week. It was when I first discovered TSR D&D novels, and there were already mountains of them published. The paperbacks were cheap, and I finished most of them in a little over a day, so I was buying from 5-10 per trip to the store. Once I exhausted that, I added Feist, Eddings, and TSR authors who had work with other publishers, which kept the string going for a while.

Once I wiped that out, the cost of new hardcovers and nothing grabbing me from other authors as I browsed Waldenbooks ended the streak.
 
sr71plt said:
I know I'm a slow reader, but I have kept a list of my reading since college, and hitting 50 a year (which I will do this year) is a good year for me--a year in which nothing much else made demands on my time. I pretty much just smile at claims of four times that number.
Click to expand...

In terms of books read, I probably hit my peak as a kid. I'd read in the car, on the bus, holding a book one-handed while working a vacuum cleaner with the other...

In fourth or fifth grade I got through the whole of "Lord of the Rings" in two weeks. Around that time I signed up for a charity event (MS Read-A-Thon) and read 67 books in a month - though most of those were short and light reads, Dr. Who novelisations and the like. For fiction I could probably read about two pages a minute.

But these days? I probably read just as many words as ever, but not much of it is in book form. Mostly online, in smaller portions.
 
If you could get it out, I would drool over the analysis with you. But getting usable data out of big text blocks is going to be a circle of hell.
 
Bramblethorn said:
For fiction I could probably read about two pages a minute.
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So 600 - 700 words a minute? I can scan that fast, possibly faster, but actually reading the words written, I figure a printed page a minute as my norm. A decade ago I'd easily read 2-4 novels a week, mainly because I'd read several at the same, usually a mix of junk, mid-brow and high-brow. Now, I read a lot less because I write a lot more.

Read Women in Love in a day-and-a-half at Uni once, because the first tute was on Monday and I left it till Saturday to start - that's the fastest thing I've read. Four hundred pages of D.H.Lawrence...
 
Bramblethorn said:
Around that time I signed up for a charity event (MS Read-A-Thon) and read 67 books in a month - though most of those were short and light reads, Dr. Who novelisations and the like. For fiction I could probably read about two pages a minute.
Click to expand...

My normal reading speed is about 700 words a minute. Has been since I was about 10 years old. Apparently I started reading when I was about 13 months old and I've never stopped. I think my best run was 2 weeks of High School vacation when I flew off to stay with my dad and it rained every single day all day and night for 2 weeks solid and in that 2 weeks I read 72 books. Including every Georgette Heyer regency romance written. My Dad would come back to the hotel and go "how many today?" And I'd say 5 or 6 or 4 or 1 - that was "Anthony Adverse" and that is one huge novel. I went from about 6am to midnight on that one. I'm still bad like that when I get a good book.

I read all the time. I think I've got well over 2000 books now and my SO has over 6,000. Our tastes overlap a lot in books but we don't have many duplicates so I've got years of reading just to work my way thru his books. At a couple of books of his a week that's 3000 weeks of reading. If im still around in 60 years I'll be happy. Lol.
 
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