Comments vs scoring vs Author's feelings

[Gamblnluck]

Many authors here in this forum say the scores they get are meaningless and they do not care about comments (unless they are constructive). I take that to mean that comments should be on how the story was presented rather than content. They think their story should be accepted and if rejected it is because of the closed-mindedness of the reader.
I recently ran across a story on Loving Wives that was not erotic, had no BTB etc. (like some here claim you have to provide). It was called Problematic Priorities by Choppedliver. The story rates about a 4.3 score and has 111 comments when I last checked.
Now why is this story getting such a reaction? And WHAT is the reaction it is getting? Chopped told a simple story about a man being unable to accept his fiance's part in their relationship. It does not particularly generate a lot of angst, but a general irritation and acceptance/rejection of the plot.
Most of the comments do EXACTLY what many of the authors here say they hate. They pick apart the characters' personalities, their strengths, failings and decide what they should do.
Why is that? To me, it says the author CONNECTED with his audience. He got the readers to identify. Some liked the MC, some thought him overbearing. They extrapolated those characters into a possible future action and commented.
They did not 'just accept what the author wrote as his story and like or dislike'. They got involved.

As authors, we need to understand we are NOT writing JUST for ourselves. (Well maybe you are, like masturbation.)

 

[iwatchus]

But you do not masturbate in front of other people. Or rather, if you do, it is o longer just about you. And it will change how you do it.

Personally, favorites are my preferred measure. Every one of those means you connected with someone, hopefully made their day. I do not get huge audiences and I am exstatic with ten favorites. But hopefully that means I made ten people's days (or hours or maybe just them to smile for a minute). Certainly ten of those has to have real value in the gran scheme of things.

And then there is @StillStunned who withholds that reward universally (unless you write something that helps his writing, I guess.)

 

[PennyThompson]

I'm of two minds on this.

On the one hand, I LOVE getting comments on my stories, especially the ones that are thoughtful and detail-oriented, either because they enjoyed something that I did with the story, or they had a bone to pick with something.

Writing is like a magic spell allowing a human can get into another human's mind from any remove of time and space, feel what they feel and think what they think. Inhabit someone else's shoes, experience something outside of themselves. Knowing that this happened because of something I created is like a drug!

But on the other hand, certain kinds of creative work lends itself to parasocial relationships, where the consumer of the work starts to feel like that connection is more of a two-way street. That they have a personal claim on the creator or on the creative work, and that it's a one-to-one relationship rather than a one-to-many. That can get weird and scary.

In those situations a person can form a narrative in their head that may or may not be in parallel to the actual narrative they're reading. @pink_silk_glove always says "readers don't want to read your story, they want to read their story." I don't think that's always true, but it's definitely sometimes true.

And when your story diverges too far from their story, they can feel betrayed or angry. Combined with easy access to the creator and the anonymity of the internet, it can and has led to some pretty dark and dangerous situations. I don't have a huge audience in this space so I haven't experienced this in a big way here, but I have in small ways that are sometimes uncomfortable.

 

[SimonDoom]

The way I see it is, if you feel like you are writing only for yourself, that's fine, but once you publish a story it's like tossing a stone into a lake, and you have no idea or control over where the ripples will go, and you should just . . . deal with it. It's part of the deal. You can't complain about what happens after that.

My attitude about my readers' feelings is that I may disagree with them, but I respect their right to have them and have no basis for complaining if they tell me what they think of my story.

 

[lc69hunter]

Personally, favorites are my preferred measure. Every one of those means you connected with someone, hopefully made their day. I do not get huge audiences and I am exstatic with ten favorites. But hopefully that means I made ten people's days (or hours or maybe just them to smile for a minute). Certainly ten of those has to have real value in the gran scheme of things.

Personally, favorites are my preferred measure also. My scores are always going to be low, based upon what I write, and the lynch mob in LW. After the lynch mob has trashed the story and gone away, the scores slowly creep up and the number who have saved it goes up, as others find them.

 

[Djmac1031]

Id never go as far as saying scores are MEANINGLESS. My only argument has always been that we as writers shouldn't hang our hats on them.

I've seen so many people cry about not getting a Red H and I go look and their score is 4 point whatever.

4 stars means READERS LIKED IT. Be happy with that!

As far as comments, I dont mind readers pitching me what they want next from my characters. It means they're invested in the story.

Doesn't mean I have to take their suggestions obviously.

Negative comments dont bother me, especially as most of them aren't actually critiques of my writing so much as they just didn't like something that happened in it.

I had one guy sarcastically thank me for adding the anal tag to a story so he "didn't have to read five pages of that crap." (if he'd actually read it, it was one scene lol)

 

[Nynah]

As authors, we need to understand we are NOT writing JUST for ourselves.

On some level, I think anyone who has published here knows that they don't truly write only for themselves. After all, posting your work here is a conscious choice, as are leaving the scoring and commenting options on. If anyone was truly writing only for their own entertainment/edification, then they'd just write the stories without sharing them.

But to Penny's point, the relationship between author and commenter can only go so far. Yeah, it's great to have interaction from people who read your work, but unless you're explicitly crowd-sourcing the major story beats of your narrative, you are still the author and you still control where things go. I think it's a healthier balance to receive feedback gracefully and keep it mind when you're plotting your next steps but not necessarily let it completely influence how you write.

Commenters also aren't a monolith or a hive mind; there are always going to be a vocal few who want things to go their way but you are not beholden to listening to them, especially if the way you have been doing things is working for you.

The breadth of author interaction with their audience is a spectrum, not a binary. Different authors have different ways of interacting and that's okay, especially when you consider the... zealousness of some of the readership here. We as authors can and sometimes should connect with the people who read our work. What that looks like is different for everyone.

 

[lovecraft68]

Like they say, there's no such thing as bad press.

If you get someone to react to a story or the characters to the point they're gushing over them or trashing them as if they're real, its a win.

I put a story out a couple of years ago featuring three characters who were all unlikeable for different reasons. basically no one to root for and a lot of people seemed to find that confusing and irritating. I got asked why would I write something like that and my answer, besides being it was what I wanted to write, was that there's a lot of shitty people in real life. The fiction is that there's always a good or right person in every situation and we should know that's not the case.

I went for real not popular. The score sucks but the backlash on the characters is worth a lot more because my goal was for them to not like any of them or their motivations.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

4 stars means READERS LIKED IT. Be happy with that!

If you mean that one reader scored your piece as a 4, then yes, that is a positive feedback. but if you mean an average score of 4, actually no, that is a bad score. A fair amount hated it and most didn't like it all that much. Someone crunched the numbers a few months ago and the mean score on lit is around 4.4. This means that a score of 4.0 is well below average. The same data showed that a score of approx 3.75 was the 10th percentile, so a score of 4.0 is probably around the 20th percentile. That's pretty bad.

For the record, my average score is between 3.8 and 3.9, which is appalling. Big deal. (shrug)

Now, I know most of you have your opinions of me and my opinions on scores, but once in a blue moon a knowledgeable or otherwise talented writer will check out something that I wrote and and remark, "How the fuck did this get such a shit score like 3.9?"

The reasons are:
1 ~ I don't recite porn fantasies (nothing against them, they just bore me to death).
2 ~ I don't write unicorns (same reasons).
3 ~ I don't write incest (that's a big one).
4 ~ I write sexy assertive charming men (a turn off for many male porn readers).
5 ~ My stories have plot with motive and conflict - two downsides to this, readers who want porn don't want conflict, extra plot drives down the smut ratio.
These 5 basically amount to the fact that I don't pander. Now there are other authors who score well without pandering, but I don't even come close to accidentally pandering. My tastes just do not align with the masses. That's my problem, not the readership's. But I'm also aware that it means that the scores have nothing to do with my actual ability as a writer, so I need another metric for that. Basically, feedback through comments and peer review.
6 ~ There are childish fucktards in this forum who get butthurt when I speak the truth and some of them take it out on my catalog.
7 ~ Due to my low popularity, I don't have a following to offset the downvotes, so the bombers win.

Except that they don't win because I might be the only person on this forum who doesn't attach emotions to my scores.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

. @pink_silk_glove always says "readers don't want to read your story, they want to read their story."

Well, that's a paraphrase. I always state that one of two ways, either as hyperbole, or qualified as something like "the porn crowd (which is the majority) isn't interested in your plot. They just want their own fantasy recited back to them." Which is absolutely true, proven by the comments in the high scored plotless porn unicorn stories so prevalent on lit. Obviously the porn crowd isn't everyone here. Tastes vary widely and there is an audience for everything. but the porn crowd has the most sway bar none.

And so I won't get any hate over this (but I will anyways), for the millionth time, there is nothing wrong with any of that, either writing it or wanting to read it. Just be real about why you are getting the score that you are getting. Remember, it is largely a porn crowd here. The literary level is low. That's okay. A writer can offset that if they gather a following that is into the niche that they provide, but otherwise it's the porn crowd that dictates the scores, and quality of prose and storytelling is negligible in their rubric. Be real about that.

 

[Gamblnluck]

Personally, favorites are my preferred measure.

I have followers but not that many. Only about 1800. I never even paid attention to how many favorited any particular story.

 

[Gamblnluck]

I had one guy sarcastically thank me for adding the anal tag to a story so he "didn't have to read five pages of that crap." (if he'd actually read it, it was one scene lol)

And I've had a few that got angry because I did not use an anal tag because of a single scene. I don't tag everything in a story. I use them for a general idea of the storyline.

 

[Gamblnluck]

But on the other hand, certain kinds of creative work lends itself to parasocial relationships, where the consumer of the work starts to feel like that connection is more of a two-way street.

In some ways, many readers consider it exactly that. They actually put themselves into a story. The more your readers do, the more they are involved/ invested. If you can do that, it means you communicated. If they tell you are full of shit, well, maybe not so much.....

 

[PennyThompson]

They actually put themselves into a story.

and that's why we never write in Second-Person

 

[SimonDoom]

Id never go as far as saying scores are MEANINGLESS. My only argument has always been that we as writers shouldn't hang our hats on them.

My view as well.

There are many different factors, some having nothing to do with quality, that account for scores. That said, all other things being equal, a story with a 4.84 score is LIKELY to be better than a story with a 4.3 score.

I'm not tooting my horn in saying that. I don't actually have any stories with a 4.84 score. My highest is 4.8 and my lowest is around 3.72, and the difference between them has less to do with literary quality than with the cateogry and the story's fit within the category.

I tend to agree with iwatchus that favorites are the best measure, because they indicate that I'm getting my stories across to people who enjoy reading them. I'd rather have a story get a 4.5 and 100 favorites than a story get a 4.9 with 10 favorites.

 

[Gamblnluck]

If you get someone to react to a story or the characters to the point they're gushing over them or trashing them as if they're real, its a win.

Exactly. You touched a nerve somewhere. Now you have to decide if it is the reaction you were after. If they extrapolate your character even beyond your intentions, to me that means you developed that character to a point they could do that. It was not a 1 or 2 dimensional effort.

 

[Djmac1031]

I'd rather have a story get a 4.5 and 100 favorites than a story get a 4.9 with 10 favorites.

The story I personally feel was my best writing currently stands at 4.73 with 30 votes and only 2.7k views.

Id gladly trade that score for more readers, any day.

 

[Gamblnluck]

If you mean that one reader scored your piece as a 4, then yes, that is a positive feedback. but if you mean an average score of 4, actually no, that is a bad score. A fair amount hated it and most didn't like it all that much.

Maybe if you include those categories that give a 4 or better for anything legible. In some categories nothing gets below a 3.7. But some, like LW you will find few stories now that approach a 4. The majority don't even get above a low 3.

 

[FrancesScott]

On scores, it’s tempting to say that if someone votes three, that’s a neutral vote. But it isn’t. In the same way, a score just over four doesn’t mean that your story is in the top 20% of stories.

Most of my eleven stories here have had votes come in so slowly that I can track them with at least reasonable accuracy. And I think what has happened to my eleven stories is probably a version of what happens to most.

The votes follow a J curve. Most people vote five. The next biggest category is either four or one. Hardly anyone votes two or three. So if you plot a chart, it like looks like a J. J curves occur because often the only people who bother to vote are those who hate or love a story.

Voting on a J curve means a score of four is not very good at all. Even the coveted red H doesn’t necessarily put you in a high decile. I’ve not done the math (as I can’t get the data for the whole site), but I suspect the mid point for story ratings is probably something like 4.3 or even 4.4, and even 4.5 only gets you into the top third.

 

[iwatchus]

I have followers but not that many. Only about 1800.

I am proud that I have over 200. 1800 sounds amazing to me.

 

[Djmac1031]

On scores, it’s tempting to say that if someone votes three, that’s a neutral vote. But it isn’t. In the same way, a score just over four doesn’t mean that your story is in the top 20% of stories.

Most of my eleven stories here have had votes come in so slowly that I can track them with at least reasonable accuracy. And I think what has happened to my eleven stories is probably a version of what happens to most.

The votes follow a J curve. Most people vote five. The next biggest category is either four or one. Hardly anyone votes two or three. So if you plot a chart, it like looks like a J. J curves occur because often the only people who bother to vote are those who hate or love a story.

Voting on a J curve means a score of four is not very good at all. Even the coveted red H doesn’t necessarily put you in a high decile. I’ve not done the math (as I can’t get the data for the whole site), but I suspect the mid point for story ratings is probably something like 4.3 or even 4.4, and even 4.5 only gets you into the top third.

You're probably right. I've honestly never tracked my scores that closely.

Most of my stories have the Red H. That's not a brag, just a fact.

The ones that don't? I have pretty good ideas of why not, including accepting that maybe some of them are good, but not great.

And there's a couple i know angered some readers. Others, like the 750 word stories, well, we authors love to write them but a lot of readers find them unsatisfying.

At the end of the day there's a million things that factor into ratings, including, yes, trolls that just love to take a good story and it's author down a peg.

 

[iwatchus]

Voting on a J curve means a score of four is not very good at all. Even the coveted red H doesn’t necessarily put you in a high decile. I’ve not done the math (as I can’t get the data for the whole site), but I suspect the mid point for story ratings is probably something like 4.3 or even 4.4, and even 4.5 only gets you into the top third.

8letters did some good work on this. For some categories (and it varies pretty significantly by category) 4.5 is about the media score. For tough categories, the median was more like 4.1 or 4.2.

 

[FrancesScott]

8letters did some good work on this. For some categories (and it varies pretty significantly by category) 4.5 is about the media score. For tough categories, the median was more like 4.1 or 4.2.

I’ve only published in a few categories, so my observations are restricted to those. But I would think every category follows a J curve, just with different medians.

 

[Actingup]

On scores, it’s tempting to say that if someone votes three, that’s a neutral vote. But it isn’t. In the same way, a score just over four doesn’t mean that your story is in the top 20% of stories.

Most of my eleven stories here have had votes come in so slowly that I can track them with at least reasonable accuracy. And I think what has happened to my eleven stories is probably a version of what happens to most.

The votes follow a J curve. Most people vote five. The next biggest category is either four or one. Hardly anyone votes two or three. So if you plot a chart, it like looks like a J. J curves occur because often the only people who bother to vote are those who hate or love a story.

Voting on a J curve means a score of four is not very good at all. Even the coveted red H doesn’t necessarily put you in a high decile. I’ve not done the math (as I can’t get the data for the whole site), but I suspect the mid point for story ratings is probably something like 4.3 or even 4.4, and even 4.5 only gets you into the top third.

See my thread on this. The focus was LW, but it would be possible to do this for every category as well as for the whole site. At the time I did this, using the method I used, the median for all stories over time was 4.41. That will shift around according to overall voting trends, sweeps, and tweaks to the method.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Maybe if you include those categories that give a 4 or better for anything legible. In some categories nothing gets below a 3.7. But some, like LW you will find few stories now that approach a 4. The majority don't even get above a low 3.

We all know that LW is the special case.