opinion: guiding story down known popular avenues

[mlyn]

I was wondering what others thought about studying what other stories to see what people like (#votes, actual vote rating) and then creating story using the popular points you found.

For example, incest stories are the most looked at stories usually, so you try writing an incest story.

I guess on the one hand it expands you if you try a new genre, or slant. But if you do it just to please the reading public... then what?

And be honest... it is nice to see that a lot of people read the story, even if they don't complete/vote.

 

[Ray Dario]

As long as you don't go down the path to plagiarism there can be nothing wrong with writing what you think your audience would like. It researching that includes studying which stories get the most votes and trying to write similar stories then that is your choice.

Personally I don't do that here. But I do do that in my more serious writing (no SF&F published for money yet ). I study what is written in SF&F Magazine, Asimov's, Analog, and all the rest.

In truth, I think 75% of what they publish is crap. But it's crap that they paid someone for writing and I'm trying to figure out how to write crap someone will pay me for!

Just a redneck Indian's opinion.

Ray

 

[Guest]

popular avenues

Why wouldn't we want to write a story a lot of people would read? Does Stephen King write books he thinks people won't read? Write something that gets 40,000 reads your pandering. Write something that gets 2,000 reads you're what, some pure artist?

 

[Whispersecret]

Writing is a delicate balance of what story you need to/must tell and what story your audience wants to read. It also depends on how much you want to please that audience. Every writer will be somewhere on that spectrum, dependent upon their own personal quirks and motivation.

To answer your question I don't think I will ever deliberately construct a story designed to appeal to the greatest number of people based on what they vote on or what has the most views. The most I'll do in that regard is to perhaps pick a genre and understand the general "rules" of that genre, and then write story that *I* like.

I think if I tried to do a Tinker Toy type of story, where I gathered the elements and pasted them together, I'd end up with a crappy story.

 

[peterpan]

I wish someone would pander to me.

 

[Rod_serling]

Interesting question.
I think the old cliche "The Proof Is In The Pudding" applies here - if you 'guide the story down popular avenues' and do it poorly, people will know, and you'll get voted down. If you do it well, and the story is good - you get voted up, just like you deserve.

Radio stations play requests, and they play Top 40 (you can look at the top 40 as 'unspoken requests' - evidently someone wants to hear it, someone is buying these songs).
TV networks only keep around programs the audience wants to watch.
Why shouldn't authors write what people want to read?

 

[karmadog]

appealing to the masses

If you're not getting a significant amount of money, or getting laid for it, it's pointless to write for the masses. Most of us will never make a living writing. So on a site where we are giving it away, what's the point of trying to appeal to a mass audience. Write what makes you happy. Get paid for pandering.

 

[MaxSebastian]

Some of my stories I write because I have an idea what my particular brand of readers quite like (they tell me sometimes via feedback). I have tried writing a story to capture as much interest as possible - it was called The New Playmate's Friends, and the experiment seems to have been a success judging by the top lists. Maybe I'll do another one of those experiments again some day.

I work as a journalist for a living, and we always write to gain as many readers as possible. That doesn't mean you have to sell out at all.

Writers in this day and age have to know the marketplace if they want to be successful - it's as simple as that. You can go on writing stories that only you find interesting, ignoring popular opinion, but don't complain at the lack of a response.

But don't ever just write stories to pander to popular opinion. I think it is best to balance it - write some stories that will purely entertain, write some stories that will challenge. A good thing to do is to take popular themes and try to do them better than anyone else. Eventually, though, there's a danger that all the stories on literotica will sound the same.

 

[jon.hayworth]

I suppose the question is really what motivates each of us to publish our work.

I doubt anyone publishes on Literotica expecting to win a prize. - Although very few of us would return the cheque if it landed on our door-mat or in our mail-box.

So presumably if one was looking for a common factor it would be ego. - I admit I enjoy looking to see how many people have read my stories. I belong to a local arts group, many of the members are writers or poets, published and unpublished. When I "came out to them" as a sometime pornographer they looked down their noses. When I told them my stories had in total of over a 100,000 hits their attitude changed - most of them salivated like Pavlov's dogs. Several asked me for Literotica's web address.

So yes I do at times look at writing specifically for votes, - I certainly did that when I decided the genre of my Valentine's Day competition entry. However at other times I am experimenting with developing a writing genre and style I ultimately hope to get paid for, then I am not looking at votes - but I do enjoy the feedback.

Don't know if this has answered the question but I enjoyed posing it to myself.

jon

 

[its Leslie]

Not wanting to sound anal, but the saying is "the proof of the pudding is in the taste".

Additionally, the number of views is not automatically indicative of number of reads. I might go there see the story and then decide I was mistaken and not read it at all. But that is still a "view".
The number of votes is also just a measure of how many that cared or remembered to vote. That and the actual vote level is not entirely accurate.
Some people are jerks and vote a one to ruin it for you, while others might be friends that vote a 5 to just to "be nice" when honestly it might have been really just a 3 or 4 (but you never get to know).

 

[jon.hayworth]

I agree with Its Leslie that views do not tell the whole story, but I think they are probably a better indicator than votes cast. As you say votes only show those who took the time to vote - I always reckon that the people who download to read later probably never return to vote.

Any ideas on what could be done to make the system more accurate - one idea I had was to split all stories over a minimum of two pages then the counter could be connected to opening the last page.

jon

 

[its Leslie]

Further on the views vs votes

50 votes with a rating ending over 4. something is a nice compliment (thus far in my experience).

But I will take the 15 thousand views as a sign I should investigate how I lured them to look.

Remember people, a lot of books are sold on the basis of the look of the cover. Chose the name of your story veeeeeeery carefully.