Making the reader finish

[Britva415]

I just checked my story stats, and I have about 1082k views with 14.5k votes. This is spread across 63 stories, ranging from 181k views with 3k views (60:1) to 834 views with 36 votes (23:1). Overall, the view-to-vote ratio is 75:1.

Most people quote a rates of about 90:1 to 100:1. If so, I must be doing something right. Particularly if we take this as an indication of how likely a reader is to finish a story.

So I'm sorry to disappoint all you statisticians, but this is actually a thread about getting readers to keep reading.

We're forever discussing ways to get people to click on our stories, and of course that's the first step. Without the click, there's no reader, no vote, no comment, no disturbing email about how the story reminded the the reader of what they did to their mother when they had to share the guest bedroom.

But once we've got the click, what then? Assuming that the reader has some idea of what to expect from the category, title and description, how do we hold their attention until the end, when they wipe their brow/eyes/fingers [delete as appropriate] and leave a vote and perhaps even a comment?

Two of my high view count stories that skew higher than my average view-to-vote count most likely put readers off quite quickly. One is 2P POV, the other warns about a twist halfway through the story (the blackmailed student turns out to be trans and blackmails the professor). I think we can chalk those up on the side of "don't try this at home".

But how about some positive advice? Something more concrete than "I just try to write an engaging story." Sure, we all do that. But what do you do to engage your reader? Instead of just shrugging and muttering "dunno", take a moment and think about your writing style, or your approach to characters and plot, or setting the mood, or whatever.

Remember, there are no wrong answers. Except shrugging and muttering "dunno".

(I'll link to this thread in the other thread about the craft of writing.)

I kind of wasn't expecting this to be about finishing the story

 

[EdgySubMic]

Agree. My not very scientific calculation, based on my chaptered stories and seeing how many views there are on the last chapters, is that maybe one in five who open Chapter One will finish the whole story, and that's if you're lucky. Based on my own curiosity openings, that's being generous.

One of my criteria for whether to start reading at all, is how long a story is. Negative points if there are tons and tons of chapters. I've found out "the hard way" that stories with a lot of chapters tend to fall into repetitive patterns. Actions repeat and repeat and repeat. The story doesn't move on, because there often simply is no real story: the author is just looking for a way to once more describe what I can only call his or her fetish. Even worse, descriptions of recurring events do the same: they repeat and repeat and repeat all the details, instead of just saying something like "Well, the same thing happened again the next day, except that...". Back when I still read chaptered stories, I'd often bail out before the end because of those reasons, so nowadays I don't even start reading such stories unless I have a very good reason to.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

One of my criteria for whether to start reading at all, is how long a story is. Negative points if there are tons and tons of chapters. I've found out "the hard way" that stories with a lot of chapters tend to fall into repetitive patterns. Actions repeat and repeat and repeat. The story doesn't move on, because there often simply is no real story: the author is just looking for a way to once more describe what I can only call his or her fetish. Even worse, descriptions of recurring events do the same: they repeat and repeat and repeat all the details, instead of just saying something like "Well, the same thing happened again the next day, except that...". Back when I still read chaptered stories, I'd often bail out before the end because of those reasons, so nowadays I don't even start reading such stories unless I have a very good reason to.

Ahh yes, the aimless meandering (lack of) plot. It is self-indulgent, self-gratification, most often just attention seeking. That's fine, but that's what it is.