Please translate this rating activity!

[bienheureuse]

Disclaimer: I don't sweat ratings. I know that the internet is a cruel and fickle mistress, and I write to please myself anyway.

That said... I posted two new pieces this week -- the first two in a serial (under a different nom). Part 1 is backstory, and Part 2 begins to dive into actual sex scenes.

Neither stands alone as a Great Fast Wank Story (which is fine, that's by design).

But of course I'm watching comments and ratings, just to see how the project is being received... (I've got a 20-chapter timeline and plot mapped out already, and if it's shit and not worth pursuing, I'm going to rethink the investment of my time, yes?)

So both are hanging nicely with 4.X for the first couple of days... and then this afternoon somehow the backstory Part 1 is plummeting, holding barely above 3.0.

Disclaiming again that I know it's way early and not likely anything to stress (in the long run, which this is) --

How would you interpret the sudden downvote burst on the non-sex intro chapter?

And... bonus question for any reading this far... is there a best practice accepted among regular Lit authors regarding a serial novel that is placed in different categories, depending on the focus of that chapter? Better to stay only in Novels/Novellas for a serial, or are readers smart enough to find them if you split them up to their more appropriate homes?

 

[Voboy]

I started with chapters until I realized my readers had an attention span. Most of my subsequent stories run to about 15,000 words and are well received. Readers DID NOT like it when I switched categories in subsequent chapters, though I wasn't using "novels and novellas."

20 chapters seems excessive to me, assuming you mean 20 different Lit posts. Though I haven't read your story, in fairness.

As for the rating activity, I'd worry about it only if an uptick doesn't follow, say a couple weeks to a month from now. Laurel will do one of her mysterious sweeps and whatever cryptic one-bombs you got should disappear.

 

[TamLin01]

Disclaimer: I don't sweat ratings.

Okay, problem solved?

 

[bienheureuse]

I started with chapters until I realized my readers had an attention span. Most of my subsequent stories run to about 15,000 words and are well received. Readers DID NOT like it when I switched categories in subsequent chapters, though I wasn't using "novels and novellas."

20 chapters seems excessive to me, assuming you mean 20 different Lit posts. Though I haven't read your story, in fairness.

I did mean 20 different posts... [ETA: And, if it clarifies... there are multiple plots and character arcs and group dynamics happening within... this isn't just one exhaustive pair of people over a lifetime or what-have-you.]

(and, although I don't expect anyone to take the time, I'd be happy to send a link if interested, please msg me)

They are running about 4500-5000 words, split up into 2-4 "scenes", so creating about 2-3 "Lit pages". The details on how you are breaking up longer stories and handling categories is quite helpful -- many thanks.

 

[NotWise]

Disclaimer: I don't sweat ratings.

Just curious, but if you don't care how your readers rate your stories, how will you get better?

Or don't you need to?

 

[bienheureuse]

Well, I think it's fairly obvious that if I didn't care *at all*, I wouldn't be here asking.

I care enough that I want to ascertain via crowdsourced feedback if I'm on a worthwhile path, I guess is the more accurate statement.

 

[ElectricBlue]

How would you interpret the sudden downvote burst on the non-sex intro chapter?

You're getting one bombed. Somebody has taken objection to something, but you'll never know what. If it's all background and scene setting, and no sex, someone might be bored and is taking it out on the story. But they'll rarely ever tell you why.

Your score will bounce up and down as the sweeps take place. Keep an eye on the number of votes, if it goes down and the score goes up, a sweep has cleared the one-bombs.

My only long multi-part story stayed in the same category (Erotic Horror) coz each chapter stayed on theme. My shorter multi-part stories jump from category to category, depending on the major theme. The number of reads go up and down accordingly. Seems lots of people will read a second or third part but not go back and read the first. I don't quite get that. Or maybe folk are reading later chapters twice, don't know.

 

[Voboy]

I did mean 20 different posts... [ETA: And, if it clarifies... there are multiple plots and character arcs and group dynamics happening within... this isn't just one exhaustive pair of people over a lifetime or what-have-you.]

(and, although I don't expect anyone to take the time, I'd be happy to send a link if interested, please msg me)

They are running about 4500-5000 words, split up into 2-4 "scenes", so creating about 2-3 "Lit pages". The details on how you are breaking up longer stories and handling categories is quite helpful -- many thanks.

All I'll say is that it's likely that, by story #20, you'll be down to a "core readership" of a few hundred or so, each viewing your stories a couple of times. You won't be finding many new readers, is what I'm saying.

Check out a writer called TheRachelChronicles to see how this can be done. He/she has about forty chapters of the same story, and it works... but probably only if you're a fan of well-written blowjob stories, though he/she has started branching out lately. You've got to figure that when the tenth chapter of the third novella got posted, new readers weren't likely to be interested but his/her dedicated readers were hanging on every word.

It bears mentioning, too, that each such story runs to around four Lit pages, sometimes more and sometimes less.

 

[NotWise]

Well, I think it's fairly obvious that if I didn't care *at all*, I wouldn't be here asking.

I care enough that I want to ascertain via crowdsourced feedback if I'm on a worthwhile path, I guess is the more accurate statement.

Your crowdsourced feedback would be more effective if you provided a link to you story so that your crowd could read it for themselves.

 

[hylas_]

You're getting one bombed. Somebody has taken objection to something, but you'll never know what. If it's all background and scene setting, and no sex, someone might be bored and is taking it out on the story. But they'll rarely ever tell you why.

Your score will bounce up and down as the sweeps take place. Keep an eye on the number of votes, if it goes down and the score goes up, a sweep has cleared the one-bombs.

Huh, how does that work? Who does the "sweeping", and how do they know that someone gave the story an unfair one star rating? Maybe that person just really didn't like the story, for subjective but valid reasons?

 

[TxRad]

Huh, how does that work? Who does the "sweeping", and how do they know that someone gave the story an unfair one star rating? Maybe that person just really didn't like the story, for subjective but valid reasons?

No one knows how or why. If we did then so would the one s trying to one bomb.

And just for information, you can lose 5 bombs too.

 

[bienheureuse]

Your crowdsourced feedback would be more effective if you provided a link to you story so that your crowd could read it for themselves.

Oh, dear. I'm afraid I haven't been very clear.

When I said "I want to ascertain via crowdsourced feedback if I'm on a worthwhile path", I meant that, while I don't obsess ratings, I *do* use them as general popular opinion metric, (ie crowdsourced feedback) and an indicator of whether/if a particular piece of writing is being well-received.

I can see how it might have seemed like I was referring to my question here and the subsequent responses as crowdsourced feedback... but I actually meant views/comments/ratings.

 

[NotWise]

No one knows how or why. If we did then so would the one s trying to one bomb.

And just for information, you can lose 5 bombs too.

I've read second hand that at least part of the decision is based on the amount of time the document is open before a vote is cast.

The size of the vote isn't a factor. The later chapters of my longest chapter story have had quite a few 5-bombs removed. I think in those cases, the reader got to the end and decided he liked it, then went back and cast votes on earlier chapters.

I wonder sometimes if there might be other reasons for sweeping votes. For instance, when a reader is banned or otherwise identified as a troll, then maybe his votes are removed. That is largely speculation.

 

[NotWise]

Oh, dear. I'm afraid I haven't been very clear.

When I said "I want to ascertain via crowdsourced feedback if I'm on a worthwhile path", I meant that, while I don't obsess ratings, I *do* use them as general popular opinion metric, (ie crowdsourced feedback) and an indicator of whether/if a particular piece of writing is being well-received.

I can see how it might have seemed like I was referring to my question here and the subsequent responses as crowdsourced feedback... but I actually meant views/comments/ratings.

Without linking your story here, I think the only answers we can give you about the voting pattern are purely speculation. Even with a link the answers are likely to be speculation.

Someone already suggested that you being one-bombed for some reason.

Another possibility is that your story is unpopular in the category you posted it in. In that case you can get good scores while the story is still visible on the new stories list, but poor scores when it disappears from that list and is only visible in the category hub. That happened to me as the result of posting a story to the wrong category.

If you track your score as the votes come in, then you can often tell what the individual votes are and look for patterns that might help you understand what's going on. That also helps understand the sweeps.

 

[hylas_]

I've read second hand that at least part of the decision is based on the amount of time the document is open before a vote is cast.

Ok, that would make sense...

 

[sbrooks103x]

If you've go a 20 chapter time line, and it seems like most of the others aren't even written yet, and you've already posted Ch 1 & 2, you should expect a lot of angry comments. Although one category is best, I don't have as much problem with crossing categories as others seem to. When I see a part of a story, I go to the author's page and all the chapters are listed there, regardless of category.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Just curious, but if you don't care how your readers rate your stories, how will you get better?

Or don't you need to?

Readers aren't very useful for that. They might be if they paid for the material - nothing says "I like it" like cash. But here quality of writing takes a backseat to tickling a fetish, people are often indifferent to technique as long as you can get them to the orgasm payout, and 1-votes are handed out if your story is good, because of jealousy in various forms. There's too much noise in the signal.

Minor boast: I write pretty well. If I didn't have a day job, I'd probably make a run at writing for profit, and with retirement not too many years out I still might. When I post a story here, it's going to rise into the 4.9s right off, get a couple of generic hate votes that beat it down to 4.6 or 4.7, then it's going to rise again. When it get near a toplist first page there are more low votes, and I end up in the 4.7s or 4.8s. Some of my more experimental stuff is 4.6s (and deserves it). Bottom line, I write for a specific audience that enjoys domineering men with a secret or developing heart of gold, and they eat it up. I pace pretty well, foreshadow nicely, do real character development, and mostly pick the effective phrases. And I used to be pretty proud of my scores.

Until I started looking at what my fans liked.

Mostly, stories here have no sense of timing, there's no character development, characters say things that no one says, there's no plot beyond boy seduces other person... and the scores aren't all that different than my stuff.

Readers, meh. If they aren't paying, it don't mean much.

 

[NotWise]

Readers aren't very useful for that.

That's certainly true if you're looking for feedback on the quality of your writing. The bulk of readers don't respond to the quality of writing. The rating system is a measure of popularity.

An ability to write high-quality prose isn't of much value if people don't like what you write. What you can get from the readers are clues about how to make your stories more popular.

 

[Green_Knight]

I can only say write what you enjoy writing but, if your scores and views are consistently not what you'd hoped for, you may need to consider whether this is the best outlet for your talents.

Forget about ratings, favourites and even views on here except in the broadest terms - the system is so deeply flawed as to be pretty well useless for most purposes. I recently had a chapter two get in excess of three times the number of views that chapter one received, yet it can't have made a lot of sense to anyone who hadn't read chapter one. I could ponder for ages about possible explanations but it wouldn't really do me much good.

However, if you're getting consistently low scores, you've either upset an awful lot of people or you're missing your target in terms of what people here want. Sadly, a comment I had quite recently sums up the situation - 'a really good story, and well-written too'. As writers, we may think that the well-written bit should go without saying. I won't get more than halfway down page one if a story's badly written - I regard it as insulting my intelligence - but, as you've discovered by looking at your fans' likes, well-written is a secondary consideration for most readers.

 

[Hypoxia]

...as you've discovered by looking at your fans' likes, well-written is a secondary consideration for most readers.

The major impetus for my writing for LIT was reading intriguing but shabbily-crafted tales and wanting to edit them, then thinking, "I can write better than that!"

And some of my efforts have done well. But I still see formulaic fetish-feeding crap gaining popular approval. So yes, most LIT readers prefer action to literary quality (which a ghostwriter in a Doonesbury panel said meant adding adverbs).