The Official Authors' Hangout Valentine's Day 2021 Contest Support Thread

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

Congratulations to the winners, regards to the entrants, and thanks to the readers.

 

[MColton84]

Congratulations to the winners.

 

[NotWise]

With three stories up, I notices something interesting. If you add the number of votes on the IT story and the Reluctant story, they are less that the Romance story. They had about the same views, which I thought was even more interesting.

I don't know about NonCon readers, but I think Romance readers are more prone to voting than the I/T readers. I put a story in I/T and then a story in Romance in consecutive contests. The I/T story has 733 votes on 134K views. The Romance story has 517 votes on 18.5K views.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Wow. I have actually made some money from my hobby of writing porn... (probably about a fiver after exchange rates taken into account!)

I wasn't expecting to place given my story was in the BDSM category and was about two women.

Many thanks to all the support I've got from people on this forum over the last couple years - I'd have stopped posting stories without you all. And been more bored.

 

[jsmiam]

Nice job, winners and participants!

 

[mfan2112]

Congrats to SisterJezabel, Bellie444, Kumquatqueen, and all who entered.

 

[SisterJezabel]

Thanks, everyone. I'm as shocked as Rhys adn Val when they realised they'd done the deed that morning!

I agree with KQ though- the support in the AH is invaluable.

And for those who fret about when to post in a comp and all the variables...

1) I started writing in mid November, inspired by a Christmas story of the pretend boyfriend ilk and a throwaway comment by a doctor at work that his sister was the only one in the family who hadn't studied medicine, but they were convinced they were going to marry her off to a doctor.

2) I edited quite severely, multiple times. I then read it aloud and noticed where I had used the same word twice in a sentence for instance.

3) I had enough of re-reading through it so I submitted it a few days before the comp opened. It started towards the bottom of the list and I had 201 followers. I now have 235.

4) Scoring hovered around the 4.3, 4.4 mark after 24 hours and stayed there until the big sweep. When I went to bed last night it was 4.85 after 30 votes had been removed and I thought that was where it was going to end up.

5) It's not my favourite story by a long shot. I deliberately took out the angst and grief my characters usually have, but it was liked enough by enough people to win a competition and this is really the only place I can share my excitement without telling friends and family that I write porn, even if this story has not a great deal of sexy time in there!

Thanks again everyone for your support and encouragement, especially when I get neurotic over comments etc. Congratulations to everyone who entered- I read so many of the other entries and loved them.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Congratulations to all! Great work.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Hey congratulations to the three - and everyone else that entered

 

[Bh76]

Damn. I tied at 4.85 with the 3rd place entry. Now I’m gonna have to read how tie breakers work.

Congrats to all! Well deserved.

 

[SisterJezabel]

Damn. I tied at 4.85 with the 3rd place entry. Now I’m gonna have to read how tie breakers work.

Congrats to all! Well deserved.

There's been a lot of 1 bombing since the announcement- I've dropped from 4.92 to 4.88.

 

[Bh76]

Thanks, everyone. I'm as shocked as Rhys adn Val when they realised they'd done the deed that morning!

I agree with KQ though- the support in the AH is invaluable.

And for those who fret about when to post in a comp and all the variables...

1) I started writing in mid November, inspired by a Christmas story of the pretend boyfriend ilk and a throwaway comment by a doctor at work that his sister was the only one in the family who hadn't studied medicine, but they were convinced they were going to marry her off to a doctor.

2) I edited quite severely, multiple times. I then read it aloud and noticed where I had used the same word twice in a sentence for instance.

3) I had enough of re-reading through it so I submitted it a few days before the comp opened. It started towards the bottom of the list and I had 201 followers. I now have 235.

4) Scoring hovered around the 4.3, 4.4 mark after 24 hours and stayed there until the big sweep. When I went to bed last night it was 4.85 after 30 votes had been removed and I thought that was where it was going to end up.

5) It's not my favourite story by a long shot. I deliberately took out the angst and grief my characters usually have, but it was liked enough by enough people to win a competition and this is really the only place I can share my excitement without telling friends and family that I write porn, even if this story has not a great deal of sexy time in there!

Thanks again everyone for your support and encouragement, especially when I get neurotic over comments etc. Congratulations to everyone who entered- I read so many of the other entries and loved them.

Don’t be shocked. You’re an amazing writer and I for one love your hard work.

 

[SimonDoom]

Damn. I tied at 4.85 with the 3rd place entry. Now I’m gonna have to read how tie breakers work.

Congrats to all! Well deserved.

Scores change constantly at this stage. The scores at the time the winners are selected won't necessarily be the same as the scores three days later, or even one day later.

4.85 is a great, great score. Good job.

 

[NotWise]

There's been a lot of 1 bombing since the announcement- I've dropped from 4.92 to 4.88.

With a score at 4.92, you don't need 1-bombs to drop the score. Anything but a 5 will have a noticeable effect.

 

[RejectReality]

Damn. I tied at 4.85 with the 3rd place entry. Now I’m gonna have to read how tie breakers work.

Congrats to all! Well deserved.

Vote totals. But if that's a tie as well, both stories are declared for that position in the standings. ( Per Laurel in a long-ago conversation )

As folks have mentioned, you can't count on anything you see about someone else's score even immediately after the announcement. Absolutely nothing on the website with the exception of your own statistics updates in real time. Everything else is a snapshot from some point in the past.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

My story's route, somewhat similar to SisterJ's but also not;

1. Scribble a few sentences and quotes during the summer of 2020, while editing my Smoking Hot series. I considered including Ali and Becca in that series but decided against.

2. September 2020: churn out a stream of unpunctuated text on my phone at high speed. Back it up on Dropbox at 17k words (the final story is 17.5k), which is most of the story minus the main sex scene .

3. Give up finishing a story for Halloween (I have 2/3 of a Romance done), life gets in way, and I don't write anything until early January. I idly edit Ali and Becca - reading through to insert the punctuation, tighten up the sentences (Stephen King says to remove 10% when editing - I'm more like a quarter for descriptions, little change in dialogue), and put some sex in.

4. Late Jan, someone here mentions the Valentine's competition. I wonder if I can retrofit Valentine's Day into Ali & Becca's story. I figure Ali would hate it. Insert about 200 words at various points, read and edit.

5. A couple readthroughs and also edits starting near the end, checking every sentence to ensure its clear what every pronoun refers to (harder, when both leads are female) and each change if speaker is in a new paragraph and all that sort of thing. Decide what 10 tags to use as tags seems to be how most people find stories after they aren't New.

6. Post a couple days after first stories appear. It gets about 2.5k views on each of the first two days, then about 500, then about 100 a day steadily after that. Guess when it left the BDSM New List.
I was pleased with the numbers and that it got its 20 votes on day 2. The score was between 3 and 5 on the first couple days, settling round 4.8, then round 4.75 for most of the contest though it was 4.91 for a bit.

7. The few days before results it varied a lot again, from 4.89 to 4.65, despite votes staying stable at 40. My comp entries tend to fall at the end so I figured I'd done what I came for, got 3x more readers than otherwise (nearly 7k now), 7 nice comments, 8 Favourites and 10 new followers.

8. Remember results are out sometime on 12th. Nothing before breakfast, look while cooking dinner. Score at that point was 4.89 with 42 votes and a new follower, but it's down to 4.66 now. Whatevs.

9. Do a bit more writing. Some silly fanfic to go on AO3 and an even sillier piece destined for here eventually. And claim forms for someone's disability benefits, and an analysis for work. Some of these are motivating me more than others...

Also read more of the entries. I'd skimmed a dozen and read about five, and despite the scores none were bad at all. (Posting a competition entry in LW - not a good destination!)

 

[Nellymcboatface]

Congrats

Congratulations to the winners.
I really enjoyed writing my entry, and reading the few I have found time to.
Well done everyone.
Certainly a well-subscribed competition with some great stories and I am sure there are some more to be found.

Time to knuckle down on the April Fools contest now.

Stay safe.
Nelly

 

[Nellymcboatface]

Damn. I tied at 4.85 with the 3rd place entry. Now I’m gonna have to read how tie breakers work.

Congrats to all! Well deserved.

BH76. It's great that your story did so well, but how do you know the final position of your story?
Mine went from 4.78 to 4.76 then 4.85 in the morning for the 12th - UK time, so I could be anywhere in the top 10?...

 

[BuckyDuckman]

Congratulations to the SisterJezabel, Bellie444, and Kumquatqueen. Good job!

All three winners are women. Two are from Australia and one is from the UK. Don't know if either of those bits of trivia are interesting to anyone but me, though.

 

[jsmiam]

...Damn. I tied at 4.85 with the 3rd place entry. Now I’m gonna have to read how tie breakers work...

Congrats on a high score. Keep in mind that The score displayed is only two decimal places. The score in Lit’s computer is more than that, probably 8 decimal places, maybe more.

So in addition to all the other answers here, including exactly what time the contest was and where you looked at the score (updates not in perfect synchronization), it also probably wasn’t a tie. Imagine one story, 499 total points and 100 votes. That score is exactly 4.99. Another story was 504 total points and 101 votes. That score is 4.99009901, which is still still 4.99 when rounded to two decimal places, but Lit would know the difference when putting scores in order, highest to lowest

 

[Bh76]

Don’t be shocked. You’re an amazing writer and I for one love your hard work.

BH76. It's great that your story did so well, but how do you know the final position of your story?
Mine went from 4.78 to 4.76 then 4.85 in the morning for the 12th - UK time, so I could be anywhere in the top 10?...

I looked at the score.

 

[GinnyPPC]

Congrats to the winners and all who entered. I enjoyed many of the pieces written.

 

[KeithD]

I looked at the score.

You don't know when Laurel looked at the score definitively, though. Whatever your time of looking at a score, it obtains a different result from the precise "now" time in the system.

 

[Voboy]

Congrats, winners!

Way to go!

 

[oggbashan]

I am pleased that three of my four ended up with just creeping over the H mark - at least for a while.