How important are scores to you?

[BobbyBrandt]

I believe that most writers on Literotica are in it for their own satisfaction and don't worry too much about the scores that their stories receive from readers. (With an exception for contest entries)

However, for those of you who do care about the scores that readers dole out:

1. Is your choice of category influenced by it? (Fans of certain categories are notorious for being more critical, so do you try to avoid those, for example, posting in 'Romance' or 'Erotic Couplings' instead of 'Loving Wives')
2. Does your quest for a higher score influence your story's length, either the number of words or the number of parts it gets broken into when posting?
3. Is your choice of editors influenced by how they have affected the scores of other stories?
4. How much do you feel that reader comments influence the votes of other readers and do you moderate comments to mitigate the influence of negative feedback?

 

[tomlitilia]

1. Is your choice of category influenced by it? (Fans of certain categories are notorious for being more critical, so do you try to avoid those, for example, posting in 'Romance' or 'Erotic Couplings' instead of 'Loving Wives')
2. Does your quest for a higher score influence your story's length, either the number of words or the number of parts it gets broken into when posting?
3. Is your choice of editors influenced by how they have affected the scores of other stories?
4. How much do you feel that reader comments influence the votes of other readers and do you moderate comments to mitigate the influence of negative feedback?

1. The only time I deliberately stay away from LW is if I'm submitting the story for a contest. (I entered a LW story in a contest once, and it went as expected.)
2. Not really. I tried breaking up a LW story once to see if the first chapters would weed out the haters for later chapters, but the only result was that fewer people read the later chapters but the haters of course found their way there. But the story is done when it's done--I don't aim for specific lengths.
3. Nope. I use whatever editor can pick up my mistakes. That may influence the score, but that's not the goal.
4. Don't know. Not a lot, I would guess. I think few readers find their way to stories based on comments. I don't delete comments.

 

[jaF0]

1. No.

2. No.

3. I don't use editors.

4. I generally leave comments turned off. I'm not interested in them. I leave them turned on for a few days or weeks right after a story goes up, then turn them off. As the saying goes, opinions are like assholes ... everybody has one and they usually spew crap. For the same reasons, I don't summit reviews for products I've purchased, nor rely on the ones others have left.

 

[oggbashan]

1, No.
2. No.

3, No.

4. I delete comments that are personal attacks and not about the story. I also delete comments that are ridiculously overstated i.e 'stilted conversation' so a 2 star!

 

[SimonDoom]

Scores are of secondary importance to me. It's nice to have a high score, but it's not that important, and it's not what I write for. My primary aim is to connect my stories with as many readers who will enjoy them as possible, so to the extent getting a high score helps me do that, it's nice. But I've read enough stories here and seen enough scores that I don't take them that seriously as a mark of quality.

1. Category: Not usually but sometimes. Twice I've published stories in E&V that could have gone in Loving Wives. As a result I probably got a higher score for each story than I would have, but I may have sacrificed readers, so next time I write a similar story I'll put it in Loving Wives to see how it does.

2. No.

3. I've never used an editor, and if I did this would not be a factor.

4. I don't think comments influence other readers much, but I don't know.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

One additional question

I believe that most writers on Literotica are in it for their own satisfaction and don't worry too much about the scores that their stories receive from readers. (With an exception for contest entries)

However, for those of you who do care about the scores that readers dole out:

1. Is your choice of category influenced by it? (Fans of certain categories are notorious for being more critical, so do you try to avoid those, for example, posting in 'Romance' or 'Erotic Couplings' instead of 'Loving Wives')
2. Does your quest for a higher score influence your story's length, either the number of words or the number of parts it gets broken into when posting?
3. Is your choice of editors influenced by how they have affected the scores of other stories?
4. How much do you feel that reader comments influence the votes of other readers and do you moderate comments to mitigate the influence of negative feedback?

5. Whether or not scores influence you as a writer, do you track the number of views, and if so, does this mean more to you than a higher score?

 

[AlinaX]

1. Is your choice of category influenced by it?
I avoid Loving Wives unless I'm deliberately targetting it for whatever reason.

2. Does your quest for a higher score influence your story's length, either the number of words or the number of parts it gets broken into when posting?
I have an awareness of how story length will affect the score, and that anything less than 3000 words will take a hit, so unless I'm aiming for 750 I'll look for ways to develop the story until it's over 3000 words.

3. Is your choice of editors influenced by how they have affected the scores of other stories?
n/a

4. How much do you feel that reader comments influence the votes of other readers and do you moderate comments to mitigate the influence of negative feedback?
I don't think comments affect voting, although sometimes readers go there if they're confused about the story.

5. Whether or not scores influence you as a writer, do you track the number of views, and if so, does this mean more to you than a higher score?
Number of views is very reflective of category. It's interesting, but doesn't really say much. What is nice about it is seeing just how many readers there are willing to give the story a try.

Overall, though, I feel sad for a story that languishes below 4.0, and happy for a story that gets above 4.5. Any that level off at 4.6 or over I'll be delighted with. Occasionally I get stories that sneak over the 4.8 mark, although they seldom stay there, but this is more a curiosity than an achievement.

Favourites are always nice to see, but I love getting comments - good or bad, so long as they're not abusive.

 

[NotWise]

5. Whether or not scores influence you as a writer, do you track the number of views, and if so, does this mean more to you than a higher score?

I track the views, votes and rating. Recently I've also tracked favorites.

The score is important to me when a story is fairly new. It stops changing after a while, and then other measures become more important.

 

[SimonDoom]

5. Whether or not scores influence you as a writer, do you track the number of views, and if so, does this mean more to you than a higher score?

Several times a week I download the story stats file and save the data in an Excel spread sheet.

I track views, especially, because the number of views does the best job of any stat in telling me whether I'm doing what I want to do, which is reach out to and connect with readers who enjoy my story.

 

[Omenainen]

The first few stories’ scores were extremely important to me. I doubt I would’ve continued publishing if I wasn’t so well received. After that, not so much. I certainly don’t write aiming for a certain score or reader reaction. I write from inside out, so even when I know something will be not what readers expect or appreciate, I still do it if that’s the way it goes. Views are interesting, but most I care about comments. Good scores are nice while they last, but I have trouble getting very worked up over a single number, which keeps changing no less.

 

[lovecraft68]

Me back in 2010-very important
Me now-Not at all.

Granted, its nice to see a good score and an H, but after being here for years you end up seeing how scores-both high and low-are not indicative of the quality of the story, but the result of a system that is easily manipulated by trolls and cheerleaders from both story side and people on the boards.

best to focus on how you feel about your story than to put stock in the numbers.

 

[MColton84]

I cared about scores on my first fee stories, but nowadays I am writing for the sake of the story. I read through comments on the off chance that there is valuable feedback that will lead to improvement. I check out how many people are reading my stuff and of those, how many add it to their favorites. I want to write good stories with interesting characters in feasible situations. If all of my stories have an H next to them, great, gold star. Scores are scores, but you'll go nuts if you give them too much attention.

 

[Emirus]

I used to be concerned about the scoring for my stories but now I realise the rating of a story many times doesn’t necessarily reflect the quality of the story and that applies to stories by all writers.

I write the story and it then goes in which ever category it fits. I never choose a category and then write a story to fit that category.

A story is as long as it needs to be.

There are two fellow writers whose stories I like who, if I ask, will read my stories before submitting and give me their opinion which is more important to me than having an editor.

I don’t think previous comments affect subsequent comments and I think moderating them wouldn’t have any effect. It would have to be something serious for me to delete a comment.

I couldn’t tell you how many views my stories have because it’s not something I’ve ever been interested in. I do occasionally look back to see how a story is doing as against a few months ago. Which is sometimes interesting.

 

[karaline]

I believe that most writers on Literotica are in it for their own satisfaction and don't worry too much about the scores that their stories receive from readers. (With an exception for contest entries)

However, for those of you who do care about the scores that readers dole out:

1. Is your choice of category influenced by it? (Fans of certain categories are notorious for being more critical, so do you try to avoid those, for example, posting in 'Romance' or 'Erotic Couplings' instead of 'Loving Wives')
2. Does your quest for a higher score influence your story's length, either the number of words or the number of parts it gets broken into when posting?
3. Is your choice of editors influenced by how they have affected the scores of other stories?
4. How much do you feel that reader comments influence the votes of other readers and do you moderate comments to mitigate the influence of negative feedback?

Scores are more important to me than they should be that's for sure, but they don't influence my choice of category. Hits has some influence, I will always choose the more read category.

My stories length is based on personal choice, but as i write series score does increase with instalment. Currently readers are bit cross with me because the instalments are shorter than they'd like, this might be effecting my scores. They're shorter than I'd like too, but that's how its working out, and i'm not willing to make them artificially longer to make readers happy.

its never occurred to me that my choice in editor might increase my score, i'm sure having one, to pick up on typos would help though.

its also hasn't occurred to me that comments would overly influence scores.

As far as i am concerned the ratio of views on subsequent chapters is the best indicator of how good a story actually is, far more reliable than scores in a series.

Finally i am aware that my preference for 'happy for now' versus 'happy ever after' endings is not so popular with my readership -this definitely effects my scores adversely. And they certainly didn't like the one story i wrote with an unhappy ending. i still get angry emails and comments about it, years later. I'm still about to do it again though

 

[RejectReality]

1. Is your choice of category influenced by it? (Fans of certain categories are notorious for being more critical, so do you try to avoid those, for example, posting in 'Romance' or 'Erotic Couplings' instead of 'Loving Wives')

Potential score pitfalls are always a factor, but I also have other sites to throw into the calculation. If a story absolutely belongs in LW here, I just don't post it here. I have two other options where that isn't a problem. Same for things such as bi-male, pseudo incest, etc.

2. Does your quest for a higher score influence your story's length, either the number of words or the number of parts it gets broken into when posting?

Nope. Again, having options means that I have a place for really short stuff. So far as splitting up long stories goes, that seems to happen organically at the very beginning. I'm writing two as Dark now, where one is probably going to run out to 30-40k and will be a single submission. Another is probably going to be about 60k, and I started breaking it into chapters after the first 10k words. There was a natural break, and it felt right.

3. Is your choice of editors influenced by how they have affected the scores of other stories?

Unfortunately, I'm without a regular editor now. When I do use one, it's a matter of what they're catching, and the working relationship. The score has no bearing on it.

4. How much do you feel that reader comments influence the votes of other readers and do you moderate comments to mitigate the influence of negative feedback?

The only thing I delete is spam. In my experience, negative comments cause other people to comment to refute the negative one.

Score matters to me, but I don't let it affect what I choose to write — only where I choose to place it. It matters because it directly translates into more reads.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I aim for "That was Different" comments. If those are given in a positive way, it means more than a high score or any number of views. I know I can't compete with the better mainstream writers, but I can try to provide something new.

Yes, I'm quite pleased when I receive comments along the lines of, "Nice to see something different from the norm around here." Those stories also get rewarded by decent scores, too, so I know I'm writing something that pleases my readers.

 

[PennameWombat]

I believe that most writers on Literotica are in it for their own satisfaction and don't worry too much about the scores that their stories receive from readers. (With an exception for contest entries)

However, for those of you who do care about the scores that readers dole out:

1. Is your choice of category influenced by it? (Fans of certain categories are notorious for being more critical, so do you try to avoid those, for example, posting in 'Romance' or 'Erotic Couplings' instead of 'Loving Wives')

I don't write FOR the ratings but I do pay attention to them to try and gauge the reception. I'm not here writing for money, but if I didn't want to know that some people were seeing and reading my stories, why release them?

As to Categories, there are certain subjects about which I lack knowledge or interest, I/T, BDSM, gay male, are some, so I'm not likely to ever bother posting in them. I toss in the occasional bit of light bondage but it's never going to be central. LW is another. I'm not one of those people who see submitting at least one story in every category a worthwhile challenge given what I want to write already overloads the time I have in which to write it.

2. Does your quest for a higher score influence your story's length, either the number of words or the number of parts it gets broken into when posting?

No. I tend to write longer stories, most of mine are over 10,000 words and plenty are around the 30,000 mark. Where I'm doing chaptered stories I try to keep the entries more or less of consistent length but that's more for flow than ratings.

3. Is your choice of editors influenced by how they have affected the scores of other stories?

Not used an editor here. Someone might comment 'you should,' probably, but haven't as yet.

4. How much do you feel that reader comments influence the votes of other readers and do you moderate comments to mitigate the influence of negative feedback?

Part 1 of this, I don't know. From watching decades of online interaction I wouldn't be surprised if seeing complimentary comments might push a '4' to a '5' on rare occasions. Or even the reverse, now and again.

Part 2, I only remove spam or abusive comments. So long as a negative or critical comment reflects the story, I leave it. One person felt "where's the rest?" It's still there, it's critical but yeah, like many stories on this site that story could've continued (it did eventually) so why would I remove the comment? It wasn't abusive and it does remind me to THINK about my endings. I'd always planned to continue that story but knew it would be a while so I tried to not make it a cliff-hanger but open-ended. That reader felt I'd missed the mark a bit, others didn't. Fair enough.

 

[BarracudaSwordfish]

I don't actively do anything to try and influence my voting as regards groups or length, but it does mean something to me. As a bit of a stats nerd, I do like to keep track of my scores and views as it gives an indication of whether I am doing as well as I think I should be.

I suppose I write in a fairly niche corner of Lit in that my stories are primarily British-based, quite long and at times pretty explicit, with a leaning towards porn rather than erotica - so to see positive results and the odd nice comment means a lot to me.

It tend to stick to Les, Mature, Group and Non-con and would never have considered delving into LW, even before I started reading the warnings on here about fishing in that particularly toxic pool!

However, I still have trouble after four years of publishing and 45 stories under my belt to understand the way stories are received. For instance, on Friday, I released my latest magnum opus on an unsuspecting World and after two days, it has reached the following milestones...

My highest ever number of scores (beating one that has been out for 4 years)
My ninth most views
My fifth most favourites
My fifth lowest average rating

So all in all, a bit baffling unless the fact that it is a step-mother, step-son tale that skews things.

https://literotica.com/beta/s/one-step-beyond

Just glad it's for fun and not my day job!

 

[LexxRuthless]

Scores matter, of course, but there is too much variability to obsess over them. It is a free site, and we aren't paid to post anything here. Whatever your motivation, you probably want to do your best, and you hope that the scores your stories earn reflect the effort you've put into them.

A high rating will draw more eyes to your story, so that's always helpful. Story length is generally determined by how long it takes to tell the story I've got in mind, rather than being an end-goal. Scores don't seem to be adversely affected by taking a few extra pages to tell the story in its entirety.

It would never have occurred to me to seek out an editor with an eye toward influencing my scores; the editors with whom I've worked have certainly helped me improve my writing, but so have the casual readers who have reviewed my stories-in-progress and helped me spot inconsistencies before I reach the point of sending those to an editor.

I delete comments that actively detract from the story, and there are a couple of trolls whose comments I consistently delete. Otherwise I leave them alone. After my story is on the site, the Comments section can become a forum for debate and that isn't always even related to my story. I've learned to just leave it alone if it goes that route. Most readers don't bother to vote or comment, so they rarely notice the comments other readers have posted there.

Because ratings on stories can be so variable, the number of views and favorites can help paint a more accurate picture of what readers think of a story. Some of my most-viewed and most-favorited stories are also among my lowest-rated, so it's tough to know what readers really want you to write next unless they reach out to let you know. A few persistent trolls can wreck the scores on your more popular stories, and it may have nothing to do with the quality of your work.

Since we aren't permitted to track down the trolls and kill them (oddly enough, there are laws against that sort of thing), all we can do is try to ignore them and move on to the next story.

 

[AvroAnson]

Twenty years ago LW wasn't misogynist central and that is where most of my earliest stories were posted. I wrote as therapy following the recent loss of my parents and fiance (of 35 years). We had a very "Spartan" lifestyle and my stories were a trip down memory lane.

"A foreign woman, as it seemed, told her (Queen Gorgo of Sparta) that the women of Lacedaemon were the only women in the world who could rule men; 'With good reason,' she said, 'for we are the only women who bring forth men.'"
-- Plutarch (Lycurgus)

We lived in a way Queen Gorgo would have well recognized.

"There is ample evidence in ancient sources that the Spartans practiced polyandry. Along with plural marriage, Xenophon states that older men with younger wives were encouraged to allow younger, more fit men impregnate their wives, in order to produce stronger children. Further, Polybius claims that when a man had enough children, it was a Spartan custom for him to give his wife to another man so that he too might have children."
-- Andrew Scott (Plural Marriage and the Spartan State)

'Z' and I ran the business together. I belonged to him, was his reward and his disciple, and he brought home worthy younger (economic) warriors to fuck me during our playtime. This was not the typical LW plot and was voted down accordingly (but not with the vitriol found in the category more recently).

I don't much care. As said, I write for myself and if others enjoy my tales that is great. I also really enjoy comments that don't involve suggestions that I commit suicide, but scores - s'mores.

In my opinion, the Tragedian (Richard Dreyfus) from Tom Stoppard's 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' (1990) summed it up well.

“Audiences know what they expect and that is all they are prepared to believe in.”

The formula is easy to figure out. I wrote a few stories pandering to the crowd, giving what was expected. Almost all got red "H"s, all scored over 4.29. But they just don't "do it" for me, I like the unusual.

“We're more of the love, blood, and rhetoric school. Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can't give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They're all blood, you see.”

“There's a design at work in all art... events must play themselves out to an aesthetic, moral and logical conclusion. We aim at the point where everyone who is marked for death... dies.”

-- The Tragedian.

 

[HappySpouse]

It's funny to me because, as a reader, scores mean nothing. At best they might be a final tie breaker after titles, descriptions, tags, and categories. Interest in this material is too personal for a cumulative score to accurately determine how much I will like it.

However, as an author of a handful of stories, I've found that whenever I get a comment or favorite, I hop over to see if the scores have changed. Furthermore, I must to some degree have them memorized to the hundredth, because I am always able to tell if there has been a change. This is surprising behavior. In general, there are only a few people whose opinions carry much emotional weight with me.

#1-3 The only thing I've done in hopes of obtaining higher scores is to try to write a decent story.

#4 I'm sure that some people read the comments ahead of the story, maybe more so on longer stories. I would imagine that the majority don't see them until they hit the end of the story. Either way, most of the negative comments aren't very constructive or informative. So, I doubt they do a great deal to dissuade reading. (perhaps I'm giving readers too much credit)

I have deleted a couple of comments. My wife is a character in all of the stories, and there have been a couple of comments that I thought might affect her negatively.

 

[Northstar4695]

I've only posted one submersion so far (Chapter 02 pending!) and I have to say I probably wouldn't have done another one if the scoring and feedback was overwhelmingly negative. It would have made me feel like no one enjoyed reading it so I shouldn't bother with this hobby. If I was just doing it for me, I probably wouldn't post it anywhere. I want to write something that other people enjoy. The scoring and feedback is the only metric available on that front, so it does matter to me.

When I first contemplated writing something here, I read many of the how-to and writing resource entries that discussed (1) how to generally write a good story, and (2) how to get a decent story score. I would say I care more about writing something I am personally pleased with, but the score matters a lot. Reading posts here, it seems like a lot of writers don't, so I guess its all a matter of personal perspective.

 

[gordo12]

I believe that most writers on Literotica are in it for their own satisfaction and don't worry too much about the scores that their stories receive from readers. (With an exception for contest entries)

However, for those of you who do care about the scores that readers dole out:

1. Is your choice of category influenced by it? (Fans of certain categories are notorious for being more critical, so do you try to avoid those, for example, posting in 'Romance' or 'Erotic Couplings' instead of 'Loving Wives')
Not really. I have something like 14 or 15 stories in Loving Wives so I've done my time and have the scars that go with it. Currently I'm taking a busman's holiday in the easy categories.

2. Does your quest for a higher score influence your story's length, either the number of words or the number of parts it gets broken into when posting?
Not a bit. When the squirrels get lose on the keyboard they run until they get tired.

3. Is your choice of editors influenced by how they have affected the scores of other stories? I have only used an editor once for minor editing. I have put stories I'm not sure about out to a couple of authors I respect here. One got the go ahead. One went in the round filing drawer.

4. How much do you feel that reader comments influence the votes of other readers and do you moderate comments to mitigate the influence of negative feedback?

In loving wives MANY readers go read the comments BEFORE the story. I let them have their fun for the first couple of years but lately I've been deleting comments that go too far.

Overall, scores no longer concern me too much. I've proved to myself I can hit it out there and that's all that mattered to me.

Several times a week I download the story stats file and save the data in an Excel spread sheet.

I track views, especially, because the number of views does the best job of any stat in telling me whether I'm doing what I want to do, which is reach out to and connect with readers who enjoy my story.

Ditto. Although my view metric has shifted more to followers & favs.

 

[Athalia]

I believe that most writers on Literotica are in it for their own satisfaction and don't worry too much about the scores that their stories receive from readers. (With an exception for contest entries)

However, for those of you who do care about the scores that readers dole out:

This is an interesting question. I don't write stories to tailor them to a rating. But I value the scores to the extent that I use them for a barometer on how my readers relate to them. I'm as happy as anybody when I get that lovely red "H" in the same way that I get complimented for anything else I've done well, like cooking a dinner or making love. But I've been around this site long enough to see that red "H" disappear and reappear, even though I haven't changed a word of the story. So this occurrence doesn't bother me as much as it used to.

1. Is your choice of category influenced by it? (Fans of certain categories are notorious for being more critical, so do you try to avoid those, for example, posting in 'Romance' or 'Erotic Couplings' instead of 'Loving Wives')

Not a bit. I write a story, and then try to figure out in which pigeon-hole it best fits. So many of my stories are hybrids of the established categories that I've given up making sense of them. And many of my stories have different categories for each chapter. so there's that.

2. Does your quest for a higher score influence your story's length, either the number of words or the number of parts it gets broken into when posting?

No. I don't generally write long stories anyway, at least for this site.

3. Is your choice of editors influenced by how they have affected the scores of other stories?

I've had only one editor. Has he affected the scores of my stories? Only to the extent that he's made a better writer of me over the years. He's not only corrected my all-too-frequent errors in grammar and spelling and continuity, but he's told me what works for him and what doesn't.

4. How much do you feel that reader comments influence the votes of other readers and do you moderate comments to mitigate the influence of negative feedback?

I haven't had the negative feedback that others have had, so I've never felt the need to moderate comments or delete them. As for other readers, I don't think that they hold the other comments of much value when making their own comments or votes. If I felt strongly about it, I would turn off comments entirely. But it interests me to see how the story affected other people. That's the primary reason I post stories here at all, as opposed to writing them for my own jollies or restricting their posting to other sites.

 

[yukonnights]

I believe that most writers on Literotica are in it for their own satisfaction and don't worry too much about the scores that their stories receive from readers. (With an exception for contest entries)

However, for those of you who do care about the scores that readers dole out:

1. Is your choice of category influenced by it? (Fans of certain categories are notorious for being more critical, so do you try to avoid those, for example, posting in 'Romance' or 'Erotic Couplings' instead of 'Loving Wives')
2. Does your quest for a higher score influence your story's length, either the number of words or the number of parts it gets broken into when posting?
3. Is your choice of editors influenced by how they have affected the scores of other stories?
4. How much do you feel that reader comments influence the votes of other readers and do you moderate comments to mitigate the influence of negative feedback?

I care about ratings because they are the only reliable gauge of how I did. The rating is a gauge of my ability to craft a story. They are an average of what a group of people thought — like book sales numbers in the regular market. Why wouldn't I want to know that? If I didn't care, why publish them at all? Also, ratings have helped to guide my writing style choices, etc.

1. No. Just depends on the story.
2. No. If I break a story into chapters it's because the length is more than many readers have time for in one sitting. (I've been thanked for that more than once.)
3. No. The few "Lit friends" that beta-read mine are all people I'm just happy to know in a virtual way.
4. I don't think one comment has a great influence on what others might say. I will happily — gleefully delete spam. My only complaint about comments is; I just wish I would get more of them.