Don’t sweat the score.

[Emilymcplugger]

So usually my scores float around between 4 and 4.5 and I like that. Some of my chapters are heavy on plot, don’t fully go all the way on sex scenes and that’s fine. However for HOT AND FUZZY part 3 I was horrified early on to see a 3.75 rating. Not only did it look like I was losing my touch but also losing my audience.

Then I looked at the numbers. 4 votes. This means it was probably a 5, two 4’s and one 1-bomber asshole.

So, for everyone who worries about what others might think, don’t, or at least try not to. Post your story no matter what, tell it your way and the consequences be damned. If you’ve got people that follow you and read what you write…then you’re good enough.

 

[thomas1965]

This means it was probably a 5, two 4’s and one 1-bomber asshole.

You need a sum of 15 from 4 votes to get a score of 3.75.
There are many more combinations.
Just a few:
2 3 5 5
2 4 4 5
3 4 3 5
3 5 2 5
plus many more

 

[Emilymcplugger]

You need a sum of 15 from 4 votes to get a score of 3.75.
There are many more combinations.
Just a few:
2 3 5 5
2 4 4 5
3 4 3 5
3 5 2 5
plus many more

I know, but considering my “normal” score I had to work out what was the most likely.

But now I’m back to my normal 4.14 from 7 so there you go. Not great, but not much group in this group story so understandable.

The next part features a lesbian three-way, 2 women six-guys combo and a foursome sex game for two pages so I should be back to normal then.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Score stability is another reason that I like posting stories as a single submission now versus a chapter at a time.

If you want to view scores as a critical review of your story-telling skills (and I'm not saying that you should), unless every chapter contains the elements required to make them a complete story, are chapter ratings telling the correct tale relative to the whole story?

Personally, I would value chapter-by-chapter comments as having greater value than chapter scores. I have seen several stories "maturing" as newer chapters were posted, indicating that the writer learned from comments and adjusted accordingly.

 

[onehitwanda]

I know, but considering my “normal” score I had to work out what was the most likely.

But now I’m back to my normal 4.14 from 7 so there you go. Not great, but not much group in this group story so understandable.

The next part features a lesbian three-way, 2 women six-guys combo and a foursome sex game for two pages so I should be back to normal then.

how the hell do you keep track of all of that?

 

[Emilymcplugger]

how the hell do you keep track of all of that?

Well, it’s tied together by story and plot.

Both the earlier scenes are answers to the question “What did Mel get up to earlier in the day? What’s her secret?” So essentially they’ll be two flashback scenes (when published).

The sex game is Michael and Mel going out with Talia and Trent, Mel drinking too much and getting competitive that they are wilder than the other couple.

All of it has breathing room though with the mysterious deaths.

 

[oneagainst]

That moment when you're averaging comfortably red H's and you're six chapters in and you have a scene with a male chastity device and you just *know* you're going down to 3.7 for that one. And you do it anyway, because it's part of the plot.

 

[ronde]

Score stability is another reason that I like posting stories as a single submission now versus a chapter at a time.

If you want to view scores as a critical review of your story-telling skills (and I'm not saying that you should), unless every chapter contains the elements required to make them a complete story, are chapter ratings telling the correct tale relative to the whole story?

Personally, I would value chapter-by-chapter comments as having greater value than chapter scores. I have seen several stories "maturing" as newer chapters were posted, indicating that the writer learned from comments and adjusted accordingly.

I struggle with that decision as well and for the same reasons. I currently have two stories that are in excess of 55k words and still haven't decided. If I break them up into chapters the word total will probably increase by about 20k words because I'll have to write a short summary of the prior chapters in order to maintain the continuity of a story and so it makes sense to a reader who only reads that chapter. I've done that before and the results have been mixed with the first chapter getting very low votes and comments and subsequent chapters doing better. I've also experienced the opposite with the first chapter getting relatively high scores and subsequent chapters rating lower. Part of the reason for that is that some chapters are necessarily just the setup for something that follows and may not have much if any erotic content.

My concern with publishing either as a novel is whether readers will actually read 55k words.

I write long stories as a single piece of work before publishing any of it, so any maturing I do will be done after I've proofed the whole thing and decided something could be written in a better way. I'd find it very difficult to change subsequent chapters base upon scores of comments and still maintain the continuity of the story.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

I struggle with that decision as well and for the same reasons. I currently have two stories that are in excess of 55k words and still haven't decided. If I break them up into chapters the word total will probably increase by about 20k words because I'll have to write a short summary of the prior chapters in order to maintain the continuity of a story and so it makes sense to a reader who only reads that chapter. I've done that before and the results have been mixed with the first chapter getting very low votes and comments and subsequent chapters doing better. I've also experienced the opposite with the first chapter getting relatively high scores and subsequent chapters rating lower. Part of the reason for that is that some chapters are necessarily just the setup for something that follows and may not have much if any erotic content.

My concern with publishing either as a novel is whether readers will actually read 55k words.

I write long stories as a single piece of work before publishing any of it, so any maturing I do will be done after I've proofed the whole thing and decided something could be written in a better way. I'd find it very difficult to change subsequent chapters base upon scores of comments and still maintain the continuity of the story.

I've read long stories that are around 27 pages before now. It can be off-putting and certainly you'd need to make sure your tags are on point but they do tend to bring in the right reader you want whose interest isn't in immediate gratification but in character development and story.

Which category are you looking at putting it in or will you plump for the ever reliable Novels and Novellas?

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I write long stories as a single piece of work before publishing any of it, so any maturing I do will be done after I've proofed the whole thing and decided something could be written in a better way. I'd find it very difficult to change subsequent chapters base upon scores of comments and still maintain the continuity of the story.

I think it's always better to have a story complete before posting any part of it. It provides for far better management and control of the writing and publication processes.

I have several stories posted here in excess of 50K words. My longest single submission story is 31 Lit pages and no one has complained about any of them being too long. To the contrary, when I break a story up, that is when I receive comments from readers complaining about it, and this is one reason why I stopped breaking things up here.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

It has been a while since we had a proper scores thread, so I totally support.
Btw, is it me or our Emilies seem to be in a contest who is going to start more threads?
If that is so, the other Emily is way ahead, so you got a lot of catching up to do.
Oh yea, I should say something about scores so I don't come out as a total troll, I guess... Scores aren't a good measure of story quality, not even close. There are so many issues that I can't even make myself write all of them. Voting based on liking some kink or not; general shift of story ratings towards higher values, so a story with 3.00 score is generally considered a trash story, whilst it should actually be an average one, etc etc. As a consequence of the last thing I mentioned, Hall of Fame top lists are so vulnerable to sniping and practically one person obsessed enough with the order of stories could rearrange the top list they way he/she sees fit etc.
But as I said, I totally support this topic. It is bound to bring some sorely needed flavor. The non-con arguing is passé.

 

[Rob_Royale]

My highest-rated story has 39622 views since posting on 12/30/22. It's been rated 953 times. That means only 2.4% of people that viewed my work, bothered to rate me. It's hard to get excited about story ratings in the face of the math.
I do see them as a weather vane though, as to whether the story is a thumbs up or thumbs down.

 

[alohadave]

Scores aren't a good measure of story quality, not even close.

I'm a pretty shitty writer, and I have 5/14 stories with a red H.

Giving people what they want will give you good scores.

 

[ronde]

I've read long stories that are around 27 pages before now. It can be off-putting and certainly you'd need to make sure your tags are on point but they do tend to bring in the right reader you want whose interest isn't in immediate gratification but in character development and story.

Which category are you looking at putting it in or will you plump for the ever reliable Novels and Novellas?

I'm struggling with that a bit as well. One is a western set immediately after the American Civil War and the other is about a carpenter in the early 1700's. I was thinking both should probably be in Novels and Novellas, but they'd probably get lost in the crowd. Both are romances, so if they're not so long readers won't finish them, I'll put them in romance and see what happens.

 

[ronde]

I think it's always better to have a story complete before posting any part of it. It provides for far better management and control of the writing and publication processes.

I have several stories posted here in excess of 50K words. My longest single submission story is 31 Lit pages and no one has complained about any of them being too long. To the contrary, when I break a story up, that is when I receive comments from readers complaining about it, and this is one reason why I stopped breaking things up here.

Thanks for helping me decide. Both stories really need to be published as one piece, and I'll try doing it that way.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I'm a pretty shitty writer, and I have 5/14 stories with a red H.

Giving people what they want will give you good scores.

I can't "like" your post even if I somewhat agree with the second statement. When it comes to the first one, try not to be so harsh towards yourself. After all, no one here is competing with Tolstoy or Shakespeare. Try to rate yourself in comparison with an average Lit writer, and you will likely appreciate yourself much more

 

[thomas1965]

My concern with publishing either as a novel is whether readers will actually read 55k words.

I certainly wouldn't. The maximum I read on a PC is 2-3 pages.
If you would offer it as an epub then I would read it on my kindle.

 

[alohadave]

I can't "like" your post even if I somewhat agree with the second statement. When it comes to the first one, try not to be so harsh towards yourself. After all, no one here is competing with Tolstoy or Shakespeare. Try to rate yourself in comparison with an average Lit writer, and you will likely appreciate yourself much more

I appreciate that, but I know my writing isn't great. I work on it though, and hopefully I improve over time.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

I'm a pretty shitty writer, and I have 5/14 stories with a red H.

Giving people what they want will give you good scores.

I have 2 stories, 9 parts, 1 H.

By your metric that would make me terrible.

 

[alohadave]

I have 2 stories, 9 parts, 1 H.

By your metric that would make me terrible

Please don't take it that way. That's not what I was trying to say. Just that having the H doesn't necessarily mean the writing is good.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

My highest-rated story has 39622 views since posting on 12/30/22. It's been rated 953 times. That means only 2.4% of people that viewed my work, bothered to rate me. It's hard to get excited about story ratings in the face of the math.
I do see them as a weather vane though, as to whether the story is a thumbs up or thumbs down.

One of my highest rated (4.85) stories was posted in January 2023. It has had only 532 views but of those, 356 have voted. That's almost 67%. In contrast, my first story posted here in 2014 remains rated at 4.86, won a monthly contest, has over 137K views but is seeing a voting percentage of around 2%.

So it's not just ratings that are an unreliable metric here.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I certainly wouldn't. The maximum I read on a PC is 2-3 pages.
If you would offer it as an epub then I would read it on my kindle.

Different strokes...

Most of my readers, or at least the most that comment, have continually stated that they prefer me to post longer single-stories than break them up into chapters or parts. I guess it depends upon what a person likes to read. The ratings for both are comparable, but the comments are more positive with the longer stories posted in one installment.

 

[SimonDoom]

I agree strongly.

Story scores have some value in predicting quality from the 30,000-foot level. If you were to select 100 Literotica stories at random with a score of 4.2 and 100 stories at random with a score of 4.7, the 4.7 stories on average would be better. I think that's true. I think if all of us went to the tedious trouble of doing that test ourselves we would agree.

But there are a ton of caveats and variables involved, when you move beyond random selection. Late chapters in many-chaptered stories have higher scores, because of reader attrition rather than quality. Some categories get higher scores than others. Stories that flout category conventions are likely to get downvoted, even if they are very good. Stories about hot wives are likely to be downvoted, even if they are very good. Very short stories are likely to get downvoted, even if they are very good. These reader-scoring tendencies are well established at Literotica, and they have nothing whatsoever to do with story quality.

I've published 54 stories and I don't think the scores say one damn thing about the difference in quality among my stories. On that issue I think scores are completely worthless as a guide.

I pursue views and favorites rather than high scores. It's much less anxiety-producing and it seems truer to what I'm trying to do. I don't care if my stories are exposed to people who don't like them. I want to maximize the audience of readers who enjoy what I write, even if I also pick up negative readers along the way.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Wow!

Makes my 8000 views seem like piffle (and that’s only cause I posted it twice by accident).

I posted to make everyone else feel better and now I feel much much worse.

That didn’t work out at all really did it?

 

[Rob_Royale]

Wow!

Makes my 8000 views seem like piffle (and that’s only cause I posted it twice by accident).

I posted to make everyone else feel better and now I feel much much worse.

That didn’t work out at all really did it?

I wouldn't worry much about that either. I've done some tracking of my views and it seems to be nearly entirely based on category and the presence of eye-catching, provocative keywords in the title. There is a thread here in the AH and it's a deep dive into that subject, I just can't remember the name of it.
My two stories that both appeared in the mature category are Hedonism House and MILF Cruise. Both are 18-20k words. Guess which one has the most views?
It's a shame really, in my opinion, HH is a better story.
I'm sorry if I made you sad.