Message to Authors

ornry1

Virgin
Joined
Feb 26, 2002
Posts
4
As a reader (not writer) of lots of stories here let me give you one view of the score thing. If I read a story and I truly like it I will vote it a 4 or 5 depending on its overall appeal. If I really do not like the story at all, I dont vote. I do this out of respect for the writer because I understand how badly a 1 can hurt the overall total and I appreciate all of the writers here even if I happen not to like one of your stories.
If you are one of the writers that asks nicely at the end of your story for my vote and I didn't like the story I will give it 3.
By the way a 1/2 point graduated system would be really nice. :p :rose:
 
Aye

Once you click onto the story, it decreases the percentage, by views.

I presume you read stories within a topic you are interested in.

I admit, I have a dial up time limit, so to read stories online takes time, therefore I copy and paste, to read later, therefore I decrease the percentage.

If it is a really good story, one that I have enjoyed I will go back and vote!

So, I discount my votes, my stories have been viewed many times compared to the votes.

I prefer feedback!

I just hope I don't get a dreaded 1 vote!

As I said, I tend to be one of the viewers, rather than a voter, but that is my time limit!

I write as a hobby, I am not a good writer, but I do my best!
 
ornry1 said:
If I read a story and I truly like it I will vote it a 4 or 5 depending on its overall appeal. If I really do not like the story at all, I dont vote.

Thats exactly what i do.
 
What the fuck?! I mean, if everyone only voted a 4 or 5, but never a 1, then the system is fucked up! So then should only allow votes of 3, 4, or 5? Then readjust it so its 1, 2 or 3? Sorry people but there are some stories out there worthy of a 1 vote!
 
I--braces herself--agree with Unregistered. An author needs to know when their story isn't measuring up to the reader's wishes, otherwise they'll think everything is fine and continue to churn out crap.

Unless it's a vendetta, in which case please do NOT vote a 1, your opinion is one of the main reasons why we write. Yes, there is an amount of ego-stroking at seeing our work on a big site like this. However, a 4 or a 5 becomes less honest when you don't give the same honesty to a poorly-written story. If you don't like it, don't be ashamed to say so! Otherwise, the score will keep getting higher by the FEW people who did like it, and that misrepresents the story and cheapens the battle of genuinely good stories. They fought the few dissenters for their 4.56. The "bad story author" got his friends to vote on it, so it too gets a 4.56 because you were too chicken to tell him his story needs work?

If you're thinking of courtesy to the author, think of courtesy to ALL the authors.
 
1's are good...5's are best...but I

prefer feedback. Numbers just lump the *likes* and *dislikes* into categories. They dont tell me if my story is choppy, or if it flows.

They dont tell me if they liked my characters.

They dont tell me that they had to reread and reread just to understand.


ALL OF WHICH is why I tend to send feedback to other AUTHORS, whether I vote or not.


--Belle:rose:
 
Whether it was a good or a bad story, I vote. I have not problem giving a story a 1 if it really deserves it (and I have read a few at Literotica, unfortunately). Sometimes, I'll start a story and it's so bad that I just click back and pick something else. So, even though it sucked, I won't vote at all unless I actually read it all the way through. Most stories that I read, though, end up getting a 3-5 rating from me. I just try to vote what I honestly think it deserves.
 
Unregistered said:
What the fuck?! I mean, if everyone only voted a 4 or 5, but never a 1, then the system is fucked up! So then should only allow votes of 3, 4, or 5? Then readjust it so its 1, 2 or 3? Sorry people but there are some stories out there worthy of a 1 vote!

I dont like to criticize peoples stories when mine arent all that good, so i only vote for the ones i like.
 
1 votes are valid. By definition very few stories deserve them.

If on a scale of 1 to 5 you rate something with 1 being the worst and 5 being the best then only the worst should get a 1 vote. Right?

So what kind of story deserves a 1?

Is it when the spelling and grammar are so poor that it is nearly impossible to read? Go to the top lists in the "Loving Wives" section. I bet right now there are three of these stories on the first page.

Is it when a character in the story does something you don't like?

Is it when the author has said something on the boards that you didn't like?

Unfortunately what really happens is most voters seem to vote either a 5 or a 1. Sometimes they will throw a 4 vote in too.

So we have a three point scale: 1, 4, or 5.

Problem is with this kind of scale the 1 vote is much more powerful than the 4 or 5.

I wish all readers would take the time to vote and would really think about their vote before clicking that button. That's not going to happen and without it, votes are really fairly meaningless.

Oh I still look at them but I don't take them as seriously as I used to. My latest story "Visitation" is much better written than "Help" but its score is far lower. Every feedback I have received via email has been glowing. Even the feedback that LadyPhoenix gave was pretty positive, yet it scores low, around a 4.29 now as opposed to 4.54 for "Help Chapter 2".

So, like so many others have said on this thread, vote how you want, but feedback is a much better way to get your thoughts across to the author.

Ray
 
Ray, I wish that I could complain about a score of 4.29 being low. But the truth is, it can get way lower than that!

I don't get to read much on this site, but sometimes I put aside time to read a couple, and I always vote and send feedback.

I think feedback is the more useful gauge of things, it can tell you what is wrong or right with the story, as opposed to an average score that tells you how popular your story is overall.
 
Ok by your reasoning Ray then only a few stories should be worthy of 5s. You can't have a shitload of 5s and a few 1s. I agree there is abuse of 1s but it goes to the other extreme. I know for a fact people give others 5s because they're buddies, they feel sorry for them (because they complained about a low score), and probably they vote themselves a 5. The only true way to fix this voting system is to abolish it.
 
Unregistered said:
You can't have a shitload of 5s and a few 1s./B]


Sure you can. Happens all the time.
 
Unregistered said:
Ok by your reasoning Ray then only a few stories should be worthy of 5s.

Exactly! If all readers voted and gave 5's to only those stories they truly felt were "the best" and only gave 1's to those stories they truly felt were "the worst" Then the score for an average story would be around a 3, not around a 4.4.

Yeah, my scores would drop. They would drop a lot, probably. But the voting would be much more meaningful and when you were scrolling down the "new" list and saw that very rare H you would pretty much know the story was good.

Now I find the H nearly meaningless too. What I do look for is the E. Seems to me that Laurel and Manu have better taste than most

Ray
 
Ray Dario said:
Now I find the H nearly meaningless too. What I do look for is the E. Seems to me that Laurel and Manu have better taste than most

Ray

I don't think I will ever see an E on one of my stories.
I have noticed something rather interesting in the top list section. There are 500 stories in lists, unless noted.


VOTES..............HIGH--LOW
Incest............... 4.81-4.50
Lesbian Sex........ 4.72-4.32
Celebrities.......... 4.71-2.34
Erotic Couplings.. 4.69-4.46
Loving Wifes....... 4.66-3.37
NonConsent....... 4.66-4.18
Fetish............... 4.62-4.18
BDSM............... 4.55-4.30
NonHuman......... 4.72-2.24 only 419 on list
Gay Male........... 4.71-1.74 only 420 on list
Anal................. 4.71-2.34 only 247 on list

These are only a few of the list totals. But, incest is clearly above most other categories in favorable voting. This shows that all 500 of these incest stories will have at least a 4.50 rating and H. I guess I was grossly unaware of how popular this fetish is.

Also, I heard the person or persons who are going around voting 1s on the H rated stories is mainly doing it in the BDSM area. Did I hear this correctly? If so, maybe my category isn't so low on the list, after all. Personally, I thought BDSM was more popular than these totals show. Maybe I should change to incest stories.
 
Yep

Usually a 1 vote is a wrecker, most readers don't vote that unless it is a vendetta and a 5 is either a first time reading or from friends. It usually drops later.

Viewing drops it by percentage, I believe.

I don't always give feedback, only on those that I think will be constuctive or worth the praise or if I read something that is really bad, but that would be in the wrong category then for me to read it.

It depends, if it contains something I am not into, like incest for example, and in the wrong category, I usually give up reading, without voting. Maybe I should at least mention it to the author.

Now I tend to follow authors I like.

I rarely check my votes, I prefer feedback, good or constructive.

I have had a few bad feedbacks but they are from anonymous, which annoys me!
At least allow me to answer and ask questions!

I write because I enjoy writing it and I have been happy to get feedback asking me to continue.
 
I agree with most of the responses here. Personally, even if I've read a story that did not particularly grab my interest, i.e., Incest, lesbian encounters, I don't vote low because the topically category wasn't what I would normally read. I occasionally will read stories in these categories to learn what people like to read and the style of the author. I look at the overall presentation, grammer, and spelling. I vote as honestly as I can.

I, too, prefer feedback and received some great feedback when I posted my first and only story thus far. These people helped me to understand where my writing needed improvement and how my characters came off to them, what I needed to do to possible improve the 'pace' of my writing, etc. Taking these comments and applying them has encouraged a larger writing project.

A vote with no feedback is empty in itself. If someone takes the time to read a story and vote on it, feedback to the author should be strongly encouraged.

TrinaT

:rose:
 
Agree

TrinaT said:
I agree with most of the responses here. Personally, even if I've read a story that did not particularly grab my interest, i.e., Incest, lesbian encounters, I don't vote low because the topically category wasn't what I would normally read. I occasionally will read stories in these categories to learn what people like to read and the style of the author. I look at the overall presentation, grammer, and spelling. I vote as honestly as I can.

I, too, prefer feedback and received some great feedback when I posted my first and only story thus far. These people helped me to understand where my writing needed improvement and how my characters came off to them, what I needed to do to possible improve the 'pace' of my writing, etc. Taking these comments and applying them has encouraged a larger writing project.

A vote with no feedback is empty in itself. If someone takes the time to read a story and vote on it, feedback to the author should be strongly encouraged.

TrinaT

:rose:

Oh yes, I think feedback is more important, it shows that your story have been read and enjoyed or hated!

I think the anonymous should be banned, even a hotmail address is better than nothing!

If I get something constructive, or just fan mail asking me to write more, I like to reply!

I really don't check my votes, that is not important to me as I know it is a viewing percentage and not a real vote anyway!

Feedback is much more important.
 
The best creative writing teacher I have ever encountered, used, what I have always thought, was an excellent way of judging amateur fiction. Did the reader understand what the writer was trying to convey?

If the reader liked the story because s/he understood what the writer meant, the writer was successful.

If the reader disliked the story, but s/he understood what the writer meant, the writer was still successful.

If the reader disliked the story, because s/he did not understand what the writer meant, the writer was not successful.

It the reader liked the story, because s/he did not understand what the writer really meant, the writer was still not successful.

For the writer, the important part is to write with clarity, to be understood. Like, or dislike of content, lies within the taste of the reader.

Of course, you try to write a story that will be enjoyed by some niche of the population, but you can never please everyone.

This is why actual feedback, rather than just numbers, is so important.

Then, there is the problem of the quality of the feedback.

If they say, "You Suck!" does it mean your writing was miserable?
Or, do they mean they have a phobia against "Loving Wives" stories, and send that message to every writer?


Professional writing?

Provided the writer always meets the deadline, and fulfils all contractual obligations, I guess it comes down to the matter of how much they get paid for whatever they can get away with.

That is how professional writing is scored.


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

BTW: Striving for clarity, has increased my rewriting and editing from about two drafts to seven or eight. If I can't get it right by then, I retire it.

Think of all the confused scribbling the world has been protected form, thanks to that teacher's efforts.
 
I don't know whether its because I'm attracting the wrong readership, but I rarely get any useful feedback. I put my "Seducing Dawn" series up on the Story Discussion Circle to try and get some constructive criticism rather than just "Yaay, your story's great." Don't get me wrong, that's nice, but not very helpful. So votes are really all I can tell about my story. My worst story is on a 3.94, which isn't terrible (the other two are 4.52 and 4.64), but it has obviously suffered from "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." It's a bad story and deserved more ones, but it didn't get any because nobody wanted to be nasty. Putting it on the feedback forum got me some ego-destroying results, but they were perfectly true and I'd like to think that I won't write a story as bad as that again.

Be cruel to be kind.

The Earl
 
Unregistered said:
What the fuck?! I mean, if everyone only voted a 4 or 5, but never a 1, then the system is fucked up! So then should only allow votes of 3, 4, or 5? Then readjust it so its 1, 2 or 3? Sorry people but there are some stories out there worthy of a 1 vote!

An interesting paragraph? Go to this thread and then decide for yourself
 
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Re: 1's are good...5's are best...but I

BamaBelle said:
prefer feedback. Numbers just lump the *likes* and *dislikes* into categories. They dont tell me if my story is choppy, or if it flows.

They dont tell me if they liked my characters.

They dont tell me that they had to reread and reread just to understand.


ALL OF WHICH is why I tend to send feedback to other AUTHORS, whether I vote or not.

I agree. Votes are a clumsy form of feedback. They're one more source of info for authors, but IMHO should not be given even near the same weight as written feedback.
 
Laurel said
I agree. Votes are a clumsy form of feedback. They're one more source of info for authors, but IMHO should not be given even near the same weight as written feedback.

I go along with that. I admit I watch the voting like a hawk for the first week or so after a new story is posted, but only so that I can get a feel for how it is being received. It is the feedback that really means a lot to me. The 1s hurt at first but amuse me now, because I know my writing isn't that bad.

What does upset me is if a reader takes the time to give me feedback, makes a valid point or asks a question, and doesn't supply an e-mail address for me to respond!

Please readers, provide an e-mail address. I like to thank those who provide me with feedback and to answer their questions, but without an address I can't.

Alex
 
Feedback would be nice, but I don't get any. None, after the first week or two. Now, the voting is all I have to go by.

Woo-Hoo! Today, (6-9-2002) I got some feedback!
 
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