Back Story

[yukonnights]

The score seems like the authors' preferred way of looking at how a story rates. If you look at the number of favorites or the number of views then you will get completely different rankings.

The favorite story on Lit is "Sitting on My Son's Lap" by retired04. It has 6,328 favorites. The score? 4.43 -- it doesn't even have the red H. The length? Not even a Lit page.

Rating a story by favorites depends a lot on the number of views, so a category that gives you a lot of views -- by which I mean I/T -- will produce stories with a lot of favorites, and a lot of comments. Are they inherently better stories? I kinda doubt it.

The score is the only measure of success that takes the number of views into account in any way, but I'm not sure it's really a good measure of popularity among readers.

Yes, there's a number of ways to try to hone this down to a definitive answer. I've always been skeptical of a notice of someone adding a story of mine to their 'favorite list'. For the most part I view these as someone 'bookmarking' for later use. Could be because I rarely 'favorite' a story and when I do it's usually to study it at a later date, (or plan to read it but often do not, etc.)

Views too can be deceptive. Specifically the, no doubt many, views that are just a quick peek and don't like it then back out w/o reading.

There's also the diversity between readers of categories. Some categories have more generous and active readers, while another category has lethargic/less involved readers.

I think all of this leads to using the score/rating as a measure of quality.

Bottom line, it's a spinning of wheels to get too specific in what is good writing, popular, or the best way to craft a story. But we all know this, and the same discussion recycles rather periodically. Oh well, why not — it's cold outside and nothing much to do

 

[electric1]

Here's the Top List of Literotica stories -> https://www.literotica.com/top/

Just a quick look at some of the major categories for the number 1 stories;

Anal - 8 pages - 4.80
BDSM - series of at least 20 parts - 4.88
Erotic Couplings - series of at least 20 parts - 4.92
Fetish - series of at least 29 parts - 4.92
Romance - series of at least 20 parts - 4.93
Sci/Fantasy - series of at least 100 parts - 4.93

This brief example should give a fair indication of what the top stories here look like. I think this record indicates that developed stories (longer stories) rise to the top.

A good story can be any length provided the author is capable. It's very clear that different readers are here for different reasons. As I've said before; To be a happy reader - find those authors who write what "you" like. Don't read stories that "you" don't like. It's really quite simple.

In terms of score, longer stories have the advantage because the reader who hates the story will bail before he gets to the page that invites you to rate the story. The only people scoring a long story are the readers who really like it.

Similarly, a story broken into several chapters will usually get higher scores for the later chapters than the earlier ones.

 

[ElectricBlue]

In terms of score, longer stories have the advantage because the reader who hates the story will bail before he gets to the page that invites you to rate the story. The only people scoring a long story are the readers who really like it.

Not necessarily so. Trolls might well jump to the last page to leave a one-bomb and/or a junk comment. The sweep algorithm is likely to remove that vote, but it's up to the author to keep or delete the comment.

 

[yukonnights]

In terms of score, longer stories have the advantage because the reader who hates the story will bail before he gets to the page that invites you to rate the story. The only people scoring a long story are the readers who really like it.

Similarly, a story broken into several chapters will usually get higher scores for the later chapters than the earlier ones.

Yep, that's all true. That's why this discussion always ends up with no definitive resolution. This started out about 'back story'. Back story can, in general terms, imply a longer story. It also is one factor in separating a developed story from a 'flash piece' or a pure stroker. The OP initially spoke to irrelevant 'back story' — this is the first veering off into opinion. Each reader must decide what is relevant to the story, and those many reader decisions will vary.

To try to pull something useful out of all of this is more folly than fun, but the statistics we have are all we have. I don't think I'm alone, but I use the score and the H to help decide what I choose to spend my time on. That and knowledge of the author's works. I haven't been misled too often by these guide posts.

But back to the OP issue; For me as a reader, I appreciate whatever back-story is needed for the story to, not only make sense, but also be more complete. This is just a personal preference, of course.

 

[Kojak01]

I write stories, no strokers. I create characters, I try to avoid stereotypes. I'll use back stories whenever I feel for it.

It's always up to you to decide how to write a story and nobody even suggests not to use back stories. The general consensus on this board seems to be that you should include the back story as part of the story telling, not as a lengthy introduction to the story.

 

[Handley_Page]

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To try to pull something useful out of all of this is more folly than fun, but the statistics we have are all we have. I don't think I'm alone, but I use the score and the H to help decide what I choose to spend my time on. That and knowledge of the author's works. I haven't been misled too often by these guide posts.

But back to the OP issue; For me as a reader, I appreciate whatever back-story is needed for the story to, not only make sense, but also be more complete. This is just a personal preference, of course.

Amen to that.

 

[SimonDoom]

Not necessarily so. Trolls might well jump to the last page to leave a one-bomb and/or a junk comment. The sweep algorithm is likely to remove that vote, but it's up to the author to keep or delete the comment.

It's not necessarily so or always so, but I think it's usually so, or at least often so. Look at contest winners. They're often rather long, but not always the most viewed stories. I think that's in part because people who don't like stories don't finish them, and therefore don't vote. If you look at enough stories, you can see a correlation between length and score. For all the talk about the popularity of "stroke" stories, long stories actually do very well here.