That weird parasocial thing some readers do

[lovecraft68]

I wasn't talking about negative reactions per se. I don't consider a comment like "I'd rather have read about Cassie fucking Jim" to be negative. Instead, it gets me thinking about whether Cassie ought to fuck Jim. By the way, the answer is "no". At least so far.

Oh, yeah. You can post 40 chapters of two people screwing and if you stop, they still want more so I never take those too seriously.

My fifteen years writing here I've done two sequels and both were in the last year but only because I really enjoyed the characters and thought they had more to say.

I do like the troll comments of "Please stop!" Though, those are funny.

 

[sirhugs]

I started writing as a hobby a few months ago and used to think I should give readers what they want. Tried that and it made me less interested in the story I'm writing. Now I just think I should write it however I want and see how many people like it. Maybe that's a better mindset to have to stay interested as a writer (at least for me, anyway). I won't really know until the re-edited version of my story finally gets published...

I suggest that there is a middle ground where you write what you want, but try to do so in a way that pleases readers. Otherwise, you won't encourage them to read future stories; you won't get as many favourites (not that I care about them); you won't get as high scores (I care more than I should) or comments (including good comments, about which I care).

 

[sirhugs]

Oh, yeah. You can post 40 chapters of two people screwing and if you stop, they still want more so I never take those too seriously.

My fifteen years writing here I've done two sequels and both were in the last year but only because I really enjoyed the characters and thought they had more to say.

I do like the troll comments of "Please stop!" Though, those are funny.

My second Lit story (ulp... 23 years ago) was a sequel to my first. That plot line ran five stories (I think) before I branched out. I now do sequels whenever I feel like I have more to say about the characters (or their world). Lately, there has been a lot of that.

Trolls are such fun.

 

[Belegon]

For my Summer Lovin’ story, I had a comment saying that the FMC and MMC were ‘acting out of character.’ Given the FMC was loosely based on me and the MMC on my SO, this was news to me .

When Imp and I published Spring Training, we had a reviewer respond very strongly that "No red-blooded american male would ever act like this!!!" in response to the more mature of the two MMC. I had an extreme problem with this as the characters' attitudes that were in question were pulled directly out of my own personal make up and last I checked I am red blooded, American and most decidedly male.