How influential are comments?

[Belegon]

far more influential than votes... though of course it does depend on the comment and at times on the commenter. I can think of several people who could write "This was good." in a comment on one of my stories that would absolutely thrill me.

 

[SexyInMy60s]

Hey dumb question but how do I reply to comments on my stories? I see authors who reply to commenters but I have no idea how to do it. Help!

 

[PennyThompson]

Hey dumb question but how do I reply to comments on my stories? I see authors who reply to commenters but I have no idea how to do it. Help!

You can't reply directly to another commenter, you can only add a comment of your own. When I want to reply to a comment I mention the person's name (or I call them Anon #1 or whatever if they commented anonymously).

I don't think most people ever go back and look at a comment section after their first visit though, so I wouldn't plan on having a conversation that way!

If I want a conversation I'll either use their Send Feedback button on their author profile if the have it enabled, or I'll try to DM them here on the forum side

 

[SexyInMy60s]

You can't reply directly to another commenter, you can only add a comment of your own. When I want to reply to a comment I mention the person's name (or I call them Anon #1 or whatever if they commented anonymously).

I don't think most people ever go back and look at a comment section after their first visit though, so I wouldn't plan on having a conversation that way!

If I want a conversation I'll either use their Send Feedback button on their author profile if the have it enabled, or I'll try to DM them here on the forum side

Gotcha! Thank you and I will simply message commenters in future.

 

[rlaflamme]

I actually stopped writing before because on comments made to me and messages sent. They can be very disheartening.

 

[rlaflamme]

You put your art out there for all to see, exposing what you have to offer. Then the slash and smash happens from an anonymous poster. Makes you not want to share it anymore. You are essentially having your love smashed.

 

[PennyThompson]

You put your art out there for all to see, exposing what you have to offer. Then the slash and smash happens from an anonymous poster. Makes you not want to share it anymore. You are essentially having your love smashed.

Oof that hurts

I've been lucky enough to only get a couple of those, but it's easy to let them live rent-free in your head, hard to evict them.

I think it's good to remember that some negative comments can reveal real problems in a story and could help you grow as a writer, and some negative comments are just angry miserable people who want to make you angry and miserable too.

You gotta go take a walk around the block or something before you can decide which is which!

 

[Davidwa1]

My attitude regarding comments that are rude and have no basis to anything constructive is to ignore them. I give them as much credence as I do to the political board here. If someone is so damn good, let's see your effing story.

 

[rlaflamme]

Oof that hurts

I've been lucky enough to only get a couple of those, but it's easy to let them live rent-free in your head, hard to evict them.

I think it's good to remember that some negative comments can reveal real problems in a story and could help you grow as a writer, and some negative comments are just angry miserable people who want to make you angry and miserable too.

You gotta go take a walk around the block or something before you can decide which is which!

I agree. There are so many reasons for negative comments and low ratings. It just makes it so you don't want to share anymore.

I've had some wonderful comments and messages as well, but the negative ones bring doubt.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

You put your art out there for all to see, exposing what you have to offer. Then the slash and smash happens from an anonymous poster. Makes you not want to share it anymore. You are essentially having your love smashed.

Love cannot be destroyed. ; ) Write brave.

 

[rlaflamme]

Love cannot be destroyed. ; ) Write brave.

Love cannot, but passion can. And writing is a combination of both, you need both. You don't see the enjoyment of it anymore. It is funny and sad; one bad comment can outdo 10 positive ones.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Love cannot, but passion can. And writing is a combination of both, you need both. You don't see the enjoyment of it anymore. It is funny and sad; one bad comment can outdo 10 positive ones.

Only if you let it. As a mentor of mine once explained to me; your opinion of me is none of my business. It's just not my garbage - unless I choose to pick it up.

Negative comments on our stories only have the weight we give them. In this venue, even signed comments are anonymous. Treat them accordingly. Keep what makes you better and throw the rest in the trash(metaphorically or literally. You choose.).

 

[rlaflamme]

Only if you let it. As a mentor of mine once explained to me; your opinion of me is none of my business. It's just not my garbage - unless I choose to pick it up.

Negative comments on our stories only have the weight we give them. In this venue, even signed comments are anonymous. Treat them accordingly. Keep what makes you better and throw the rest in the trash(metaphorically or literally. You choose.).

That is great advice! Just hard to do.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

That is great advice! Just hard to do.

Yeah, but if my dad had told me how hard this whole adulting thing is, I'd still be 16.

 

[Bazzle]

I always listen to feedback. Negative or otherwise.

It might be hogwash. But it's still how my writing might be seen.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Love cannot, but passion can. And writing is a combination of both, you need both. You don't see the enjoyment of it anymore. It is funny and sad; one bad comment can outdo 10 positive ones.

Do you get your enjoyment from writing or from people telling you that you're good? You can do a little of both sure, but the more that you love writing, the less that criticism will de-motivate you. So if criticism harms your passion or your inspiration, that is a sign that you are not loving your art as much as you think you are.

The ego is the part of you that seeks the applause. The heart never does. The heart just gives, beautifully, endlessly. There is nothing wrong with seeking applause, but you will find in the end that you will enjoy your writing and improve your writing much more if you write from the heart.

Criticism is our friend. It helps us. Always. But we have to check our ego when we accept it so that we can see the truth in it. The ego does not want the truth if it is not 100% supportive so it will mask and block and cause us to dismiss valuable feedback.

The big positive here is that now we have found where the ego lies. In order to keep it in check, we must first find it. Most people go through their entire lives without a clue towards pinning it down. Criticism makes you not want to write. You've just found your ego. This is the first big step. Now you will be able to spot it more easily when it rears it's troublesome (not ugly) head. The ego is important. It's a part of us. It's our survival instinct in a brutal world. Just don't let it get in the way of your art or your art will be compromised in some way.

Love is the opposite of fear. Write fearless. Write brave. Write from the heart. Open your imagination and go for it.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

You put your art out there for all to see, exposing what you have to offer. Then the slash and smash happens from an anonymous poster. Makes you not want to share it anymore. You are essentially having your love smashed.

I feel you on this. It's funny - I can get dozens of good comments that make me feel good, and I'll be thankful about them, but that one nasty comment will stick with me for a while, even as I tell myself not to listen to it and to focus on the positives.

Our brains are wired weird sometimes. I wish I could dwell on the positive, rather than the negative.

In the end, I have to remind myself of what I said when I started writing here - I was doing this for me, more than anything else, and even if nobody liked my stuff, I would be happy that I got to write and people chose to read it, even if they didn't like everything I wrote. For me, writing here has been validation - I can actually put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, if you will) and tell stories. I didn't know if I had that in me before, and now I know I do, and that has added significantly to my confidence about my writing skill, regardless of the feedback I've received.

 

[StillStunned]

Yeah, but if my dad had told me how hard this whole adulting thing is, I'd still be 16.

We should have the option of going back to an earlier save point.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

We should have the option of going back to an earlier save point.

I would love that. To be 16 again and know what I know about myself with the resources and services available today...

FWIW, one of my WIP stories working title is "Loopers."

 

[StillStunned]

I would love that. To be 16 again and know what I know about myself with the resources and services available today...

FWIW, one of my WIP stories working title is "Loopers."

My sweet spot would be around 35. I could have lived that life for years.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

My sweet spot would be around 35. I could have lived that life for years.

Me, too. I chose 16 because it would have been my best age to transition.

 

[SerenaSteeleMonroe]

I've had a few lovely comments on my first two stories and some terrible ones on the newest, which I put in LW! They are nice to read on the nice ones, and the others are entertaining.

 

[Actingup]

You put your art out there for all to see, exposing what you have to offer. Then the slash and smash happens from an anonymous poster. Makes you not want to share it anymore. You are essentially having your love smashed.

We all have different pain thresholds. It might be helpful to read some stuff about how some professional creatives use rejections to spur them on and develop resilience.

You can also decide your own comments policy. You can turn off comments (but then you miss out on much that is of value). You can choose to read but not respond, or you can actively engage with commentators. You can avoid publishing in troll-heavy categories. You can decide to delete comments that you don’t like (but remember… that person made an effort to comment and may not appreciate seeing their comment deleted!!).

I try and do a mixture - some active engagement, some passive. I’ve deleted a very small handful of comments that were personally abusive towards me or other readers. You have the power to choose your strategy, and that can help you feel more able to ride things out.

 

[rteny3245]

I encourage comments in my profile, in author notes, by posting a comment myself in each of my stories, and I try to respond to most comments, especially if they are more than "nice story" which I do appreciate. Even anonymous comments. Those people while hiding behind internet anonymity were so motivated to pass a captcha, which isn't nothing. I've got two examples that I think are relaveant to the discussion.

1 - I've found the secret to getting a lot of comments. Post a story with an obvious and repetitive grammar mistake. Even after I acknowledged it in the comments additional commenters kept pointing it out like they discovered something new. It was also the first chapter of a series too. So there was Salt Spray and Sweet Trouble Ch. 01 freshly published and comments about the bad grammar kept rolling in. Well I learned a valuable lesson that day about editors and proofreading and the urge to publish before the story is ready. An edit has since published that corrects the errors and I've deleted all the comments that only specifically were made to point out the error (even my own) because the story they were commenting on doesn't exist anymore really. So those comments were helpful but it did feel a bit like piling on at a certain point. I think I even turned off commenting for a period of time on that story.

2 - In Off Script Ch. 06 I received this anonymous comment:

This chapter felt like it had serious continuity issues. There was a single line referencing Ashley's history with both of them, but then that history was completely ignored the rest of the chapter. The initial hesitancy to acknowledge Matt's attraction to Ashley makes no sense; they dated for several weeks before he and Emma got together, so them being attracted to each other is no secret. And Emma and Ashley are much more distant through most of the chapter for former lovers, particularly given Ashley's continuing feelings for her. And what's with Ashley calling Matt by is last name? I know she's done it in other chapters, but in the first chapter she always calls him Matt, and it's weird that she changed.

In short, this chapter should have been the transformation of their long-standing love triangle into a proper throuple, but instead it's weirdly executed as bog standard awkward "you can have sex with my friend just this once" threesome as if Ashley were a brand new character with no history in the story with the two of them.

Also, Ashley doesn't work in marketing. She's an event planner.

And here was my response:

@Anonymous - Oof, you're entitled to your opinion and I appreciate you sharing it with me here as a comment. I appreciate your following of the story and your clear investment in it.

To address some of your points: I felt there was a fundamental difference between casual individual encounters that happened before Matt and Emma's committed relationship versus a threesome occurring within their established relationship. The hesitancy and careful navigation in this chapter reflects that shift in dynamics - exploring something together as a couple with someone they both have history with creates what I felt was a completely different emotional landscape that requires delicacy and consent from all parties.

I figured the idea that Ashley and Matt had become more familiar over time that she now refers to him as Harris more out of sense of friendship than anything. This was to show that while everyone was attracted to each other the Matt and Ashley relationship at this point had become more friendly and familiar than physical and emotional.

The original draft of the story had them as a throuple at the end but it just doesn't feel like the Ashley character I created was meant for that nor was Matt and Emma. The chapter ends with Emma being open to maybe more, which leaves possibilities rather than definitively closing them. So I wouldn’t call it definitely a one time thing.

In chapter 1 in Ashley's introduction Emma says "Ashley works in events and marketing at the Mandarin Oriental."

We're allowed to have a difference of opinion on where the story should go. I've always welcomed thoughts and suggestions. At the end of the day, as the author, I made choices that felt authentic to the characters I've developed over these six chapters.

I value you as a reader and person who took the time to post a comment. I hope you keep reading and commenting. And if you have an idea of where the story should go next I would love to hear it.

I could easily speculate that this person felt connected to Ashley as a character and was mostly mad about my decision to just have her in the story as a friend and occasional threeway partner and not part of a throuple. So they decided to attack what they felt or imagined were inconsistencies in the story, which actually I saw as an evolution or growth of the characters in the story. I did my best in the response to be even handed in approaching their issues because I do value everyone who takes the time to even kind of read my stories let alone leave a comment or feel this connected to a story. This comment did make me reconsider the trajectory of the story overall and it may have influenced my desire to wrap this series up sooner than exploring it further, but I still feel like I made the right decision, especially considering I tried writing them as a throuple and felt it was too complicated and messy and not part of the overall focus of the series. In wanting comments and encouraging them I'm committed to being part of the discussion. Sure none of the people commenting may come back to see if I replied and there is some evidence that people don't read other comments before commenting themselves, but I'm interested and motivated by the discussion at least for now.

 

[BlazonG]

I just got the nicest comment that my femdom story was “beyond hot.” Now I’m way more motivated to write!