Do normal stories / characters score better?

[Ysoi]

Hi again!

As part of my sub-quest to improve my style, I have to rely a bit upon literotica ratings and the number of "favourite story" votes. (I just wish literotica would let us see how many rating of each score a story got! It would be nice to know if everyone thought a story was mediocre, or if it was just a lot of fives and a lot of ones.)

Now obviously that process is complicated by the fact that each story has a different genre / set of sub-genres. Unfortunately as part of my main quest to have fun, I :

(a) would rather not churn out the same sort of subject time and time again;

(b) often write about characters who have (for me) unusual desires - such as a desire to be thought of as a person's slut - or flawed characters, or who are just plain scumbags that the world would be better off without.

Now going by the comments that I have seen, and assuming that anyone willing to comment will also vote, I have to wonder by how much a story is penalized for having those sort of characters. Do you find that your normal-characters / normal stories score better than your not-so-normal?

 

[Kurokami]

To some extent, yeah; I guess there's a kind of band of things that people come to Lit to see. If you deviate from that too much you're obviously going to be appealing to a different set of people. Rather than being penalized for going off of the mainstream, think of it as a numbers game; I'm currently writing a story about a female to male crossdresser, which is something of an underrepresented concept, to my mind. I'm going to get less votes than the guy writing straight, cisgendered stuff, simply because less people are looking for the stuff that gets my motor running enough to write about it.

But personally, I've found the opposite happening; my ongoing series features a main cast that's pretty detestable mostly, and the comments I get reflect that. Most of the time, people will lead in by telling me how much they hate my lead character, how much of a scumbag he is and they wish he'd get his comeuppance, before going on to say that they still love the story and can't wait for the next chapter. This tells me that people are willing to accept unusual or even outright despicable characters, so long as they're written convincingly.

I also just find it really flattering they can work up enough emotion to hate my guys. They are villains, after all.

 

[Ysoi]

Hi Kurokami!

Good to hear that they can compliment the story and slag off the characters.
For myself, the story with the scumbag in it didn't get any comments so not sure what people thought of him or the ending.

Suspect that making him a woman-hating scumbag with severe issues regarding his premature-ejaculation might not have helped it though.

Other comments mentioned were posted to another story that I submitted. Found it interesting that despite the fact that it was an incest story, people marked it down for bdsm and urination. (Though that latter was mentioned only twice, I believe.) Fair enough I guess and each to his own, but it did remind me of the joke about the male arctic explorer who was going out to shag a polar bear - but only if it was female.

Ysoi

 

[CWatson]

One question I can definitely answer: it's lots of 5's and the occasional 1. The reasons for that are simple: the only people who ever REACH the voting buttons either liked the story enough to finish it (at which point it will typically get a 4 or 5), or hated it (at which point it will get a 1). If it's mediocre, they won't vote because they just hit [Back] instead. ("Number of non-finishes" would actually be a very useful metric, but I don't know if there's any way to measure it.)

As to how characters are received... Well, I will be honest: I think you are making a mistake in the way you quantify or qualify characters. The great gift of fiction is that it can make the strange become normal. Few of us will ever be rapist serial killers, but if you read Red Dragon by Thomas Harris you will understand what it's like to be one. None of us will ever have the necessary genetic modifications to simply not need sleep (science currently believes that this is impossible), but Nancy Kress's Beggars in Spain talks about the experience. How many of us have pet dragons? Through the eyes of Daenerys Targaryen in A Song of Ice and Fire, we can. (And it's not all fun and games, let me tell you. How do you teach a dragon not to eat whatever's nearby? Say, children?)

What matters is not how unusual the character is. What matters is how grounded the character is. People with weird traits or kinks or whatever are still normal human beings in the rest of their lives, and there's no reason your characters can't be the same. Harry Potter lost his parents to the villain of the piece. His resulting fear of abandonment makes him bold and heroic, and other characters frequently compliment his selflessness (or, occasionally, lament it--the villain does exploit it at one point, with disastrous consequences). Magic doesn't play into it at all, because it doesn't need to. Human nature is human nature, and the best characters stay true to it, no matter what else is odd about them.

So, to answer your question directly: I do find that audiences respond better to "normal" characters. I also don't see any need to write non-"normal" characters. Husbands, assassin-wizards, people who've lived on space stations their entire lives, girls who have Complete Androgen Insensitivity Disorder and discover that they're technically trans boys, high schoolers forced to strip naked by President Rodham Clinton... They are all normal characters. And that's all there is to it.

My two cents; worth what you paid for 'em.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Characters who desire to be a person's slut are common as beans around here. Just saying

 

[Ysoi]

Damn. I live in the wrong place!

Characters who desire to be a person's slut are common as beans around here. Just saying

Any chance I can actually live online?

Ysoi

 

[Ysoi]

Not quite what I meant, I think

One question I can definitely answer: it's lots of 5's and the occasional 1. The reasons for that are simple: the only people who ever REACH the voting buttons either liked the story enough to finish it (at which point it will typically get a 4 or 5), or hated it (at which point it will get a 1). If it's mediocre, they won't vote because they just hit [Back] instead. ("Number of non-finishes" would actually be a very useful metric, but I don't know if there's any way to measure it.)

Ah. That does make sense.
Thank you. m(_ _)m

As to how characters are received... Well, I will be honest: I think you are making a mistake in the way you quantify or qualify characters. The great gift of fiction is that it can make the strange become normal. Few of us will ever be rapist serial killers, but if you read Red Dragon by Thomas Harris you will understand what it's like to be one. None of us will ever have the necessary genetic modifications to simply not need sleep (science currently believes that this is impossible), but Nancy Kress's Beggars in Spain talks about the experience. How many of us have pet dragons? Through the eyes of Daenerys Targaryen in A Song of Ice and Fire, we can. (And it's not all fun and games, let me tell you. How do you teach a dragon not to eat whatever's nearby? Say, children?)

What matters is not how unusual the character is. What matters is how grounded the character is. People with weird traits or kinks or whatever are still normal human beings in the rest of their lives, and there's no reason your characters can't be the same. Harry Potter lost his parents to the villain of the piece. His resulting fear of abandonment makes him bold and heroic, and other characters frequently compliment his selflessness (or, occasionally, lament it--the villain does exploit it at one point, with disastrous consequences). Magic doesn't play into it at all, because it doesn't need to. Human nature is human nature, and the best characters stay true to it, no matter what else is odd about them.

So, to answer your question directly: I do find that audiences respond better to "normal" characters. I also don't see any need to write non-"normal" characters. Husbands, assassin-wizards, people who've lived on space stations their entire lives, girls who have Complete Androgen Insensitivity Disorder and discover that they're technically trans boys, high schoolers forced to strip naked by President Rodham Clinton... They are all normal characters. And that's all there is to it.

Hm.

I think that I'm thinking about something different to what you're talking about, but it is late for me so I could be missing something.

(As an aside, looking at your list and criteria, I'm not sure what an abnormal character would be!)

By normal characters, I mean more specifically that the characters have what are considered abnormal desires by the readers of that genre. As the characters who drew the most comments of this nature were in an incest story, those desires would be :

(a) a desire to be thought of as a slut;

(b) a desire to be forced to do degrading things by the man that she loves.

Even though grounded in the history of a relationship with an domineering husband, these were greeted by negative comments and thus I can only assume low scores as well. My question might have been better phrased as "does making your characters/stories drastically different from what is considered normal for that genre tend to result in lower scores (not just lower votes)."

My two cents; worth what you paid for 'em.

Actually, your two cents are worth far more than I paid, but I won't say no to a bargain.

Ysoi

 

[CWatson]

My question might have been better phrased as "does making your characters/stories drastically different from what is considered normal for that genre tend to result in lower scores (not just lower votes)."

Yes, because people are stupid. >_>

Pr0n, to many people, is like comfort food. They don't come here for exotic tastes or wild experiments; they come here for something that has a reliable effect on them. They don't want to be challenged--in fact, they want to be the opposite of challenged. They want something pat and pablum that tells them they're right. Curveballs piss them off.

This does not mean that you shouldn't experiment and push boundaries; it simply means that people will resent you doing so. It also doesn't mean that there isn't a space for stories that depart from the typical conventions of the genre, but--alas--I have no idea what that space is.

One of the things I'm not as fond of here on Literotica is the fact that your story can only have one category; at other websites the "tag" system is all there is. "Hey, you got incest in my submission!" "Hey! You got submission in my incest!" With the tag system, you know that up front; with categories... So maybe the answer is to publish through those other sites, where it's easier to make clear what your story involves.

All I can tell you is to take pride in your work. Cover your bases, proof-read, revise, and make sure it's the best it can be. If people don't like it, it's because they're too close-minded to appreciate your genius.

 

[Bramblethorn]

To some extent, yeah; I guess there's a kind of band of things that people come to Lit to see. If you deviate from that too much you're obviously going to be appealing to a different set of people.

The flipside is, the ones who DO like the sort of stuff you're writing will be coming back for more. I was worried about the reception I'd get when I started posting stories that were long on talk and short on sex, but it doesn't seem to have hurt them at all.

 

[lovecraft68]

I think this goes along with the cliche thread I started last year.

People seem to want the same meal here every day. The same premise time and again and they eat it up.

Dare to be different and you will usually not do so well

MY SWB series was pretty unique and far more realistic than the average stroke incest series, it alsso only received an average of 100 votes a chapter as opposed to the hundreds other long incest series received.

The answer isn;t what people want its what do you want? Do you want to write your story as you see it to make it yours or do you want to make readers on a free site happy and pat you on the back?

 

[emap]

One thing you are forgetting, normal is relative. Being 7' tall is normal to Shaq say, but stretch me up there and I'm lost, also stumbling around like a 2 year old.

It doesn't matter how perv you make your characters, establish a baseline and hold to it and people will like it. I have some western stories and they are well voted, the sex is all in character described the way someone from the 1870's would say it and most of them have red H's.

Let's go back to the baseline, I'm not talking all the men want to fuck a redhead's brains out or anything like that. On a side note, yes please. The baseline is whatever you want it to be, so say you want to write a western, keep the story in character so they are placed there. Want to write a sci fi, figure out how to show people it's the future, or whatever.

Once you have figured out the style of the place, hold to it. Say with a western, everyone using revolvers and lever rifles suddenly pulling out a submachine gun is going to freak people out. A person can't walk on the ceiling unless that is part of the setting. Once you have that all figured out, just stay in it unless you want to freak people out.

For an example of turning everything on it's side read one of my stories, Caregiver. Link is at my name, go to my homepage. It's an erotic horror that sets you in one place, then picks you up and drops you in another. People found it confusing but that was the idea.