What is your lowest rated story, and did you ever figure out the 'Why'?

[WeShallUnclench]

You can name the specific story and score, but you can also keep it more abstract.

To elaborate:

- Do you agree with the score, or does it confuse you?

- How do you see that story compared to higher rated ones you wrote? Does the ranking between your stories feel arbitrary?

- Did you learn something from the experience, that allowed you to adjust your writing from there on (if yes, what) ?

- Do you feel the score has more to do with writing quality & story design (aka your skill?), or simple audience preference?

- Was it one of your earliest stories, or a "surprise flop" much later?

 

[Kasumi_Lee]

Thank You, Darling - 2.47. It was a hardcore cuckolding story published in Loving Wives. Enough said.

 

[SimonDoom]

I know exactly why. My lowest-rated stories have low ratings for one or both of two reasons: they're very short (750 words, for the challenges) and/or they deal with the theme of a cheating wife in a playful or positive way.

My lowest-rated story is BTB, Incorporated, a Loving Wives spoof told in a mock Mickey Spillane style featuring a private detective who is based on Mike Hammer, working for a rich but unsympathetic male client who suspects his wife of cheating. The story does a switcheroo at the end that I knew would piss off the BTB crowd, but I had so much fun with the story I didn't care. Its current score is 3.73, which is a lot higher than it was for a long time after I published it. It generated by far the greatest number of outrageously negative comments, my favorite of which was "Here, eat my used condom."

Some other great comments to this story:

"Illiterate cuck shit."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"It's been a long time since I've read a piece of shit like this."

"this was just way beyond stupid"

"what a load of shit"

"UTTER TRASH"

On the other hand, I've received many comments from people who liked it.

 

[MadeleineSinha]

French Awakenings Part 2
Scores a 4, largely because it came early in my writing experience on here and I put it in 'Loving Wives' when it may have been better placed in another category.
I'm happy enough with the score which is slowly going up over time, and it puts it in my top ten most viewed.
I see LW as a trade off between viewers and squealing children leaving low ratings and vile comments.

 

[Escierto]

I think my lowest score is a 4.07 which is very odd because it is part of the a three part series and the other two parts have scores of 4.43 and 4.5. There is no difference among them as far as I can tell. I have given up trying to understand the ratings. They don't make any sense to me at all.

 

[intim8]

You can name the specific story and score, but you can also keep it more abstract.

To elaborate:

- Do you agree with the score, or does it confuse you?

- How do you see that story compared to higher rated ones you wrote? Does the ranking between your stories feel arbitrary?

- Did you learn something from the experience, that allowed you to adjust your writing from there on (if yes, what) ?

- Do you feel the score has more to do with writing quality & story design (aka your skill?), or simple audience preference?

- Was it one of your earliest stories, or a "surprise flop" much later?

Simple, it's not that good a story, the surprise twist doesn't work, and it has a lousy title. And no, it's not one of my early stories, it's the second most recent one I posted.

The Spring Dance Patsy

What I learned from it is that I don't mind taking chances, that every story doesn't have to be stellar. I try to make evry one as good as I can make it, but even so, some are just going to flop. The story I posted aftter it was a total home-run.

Oddly enough, my second lowest rated, And Then There Were Five, I think is a nice little story. I'm happy with it. But it is very short and has no sex.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

My lowest rated story is part of this year's 750 word challenge called A Year in the Life. I crammed references to 17 different Lit categories into 750 words and put in IT.
It's a super hot and very fun read, but IT was absolutely the wrong place to put it. Not sure where would have been better, so I just left it there.
Three of my other four stories below 4.5 were all part of the 750 word challenge, so I think that's a big reason.

My lowest rated 'real' story is Called Steve and I earned that rating by betraying my readers, turning a sweet reunion/lost love story into a hot tub fuck fest at the last minute. Not my best moment I've thought about deleting it or rewriting it, but the damage is done and I think we all need a reminder of our mistakes, so I just let it sit there and simmer in it's mediocrity. It got 6K views and three favorites, so someone liked it.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Shawna's Leaving Party at 3.03.

The why was fairly clear - a number of readers just didn't get the what was going on and told me in no certain terms. And as a 750-word story instead of giving up, people got to the end and voted.

In fairness, I only spent a morning on it, so I'm not too gutted. After that it's my two LW stories and they are (in this author's own opinion) actually good.

 

[MrPixel]

3.41 for Stood Up Again (750 Words). It's in Mature, oddly enough, 'cause it is about an older lady attracting younger suitors with her husband's approval and assist. Of course, it's really an LW story if there ever was one. It garnered LW-variety comments (tho' only three), and being a 750-word challenge entry, plot and development were rather thin.

And as a 750-word story instead of giving up, people got to the end and voted.

Exactly. I enjoy the 750-word event even though there seems to be an automatic 0.5-0.75 point penalty. There are readers who dislike the format, but the mere fact that you don't have to even click to a subsequent page makes them an easy target for 1-bombs. Some plots/scenes work better than others in the super-short format; conversely, my best-rated 750-worder is 4.34 with 20K reads and positive comments, so there is relative success to be had.

 

[alohadave]

I'm not going to count my WIWAW entry that is my lowest scoring.

Instead, I have My Daughter's Friend

It's a 750 word story published outside of the challenge. It was an experiment in style. First person present tense with no quotation. I was inspired to try it after reviewing Momscrolling by @burgwad

I'm not surprised that it's low. Comments were mixed, and the ratings show that readers didn't like it. Whether it would have done better during the 750 challenge, who knows?

 

[MillieDynamite]

This little gem of a cuckold tale, posted to Loving Wives, and hammered by one bombs and a plethora of comments about me being a total white slut. I deleted those as I'm not white, and don't cheat on Jo!

 

[Mastered_again]

In my Proclivities series (15 installments and more to follow), the lowest score is 4.32. Don't get me wrong, I'm far from complaining. Chapter 14: The Party is the only chapter that doesn't have explicit sex. It's discussed, but everyone keeps their pants on and in Erotic Couplings for lack of a more suitable category. There are also 2 other chapters in EC as well, clocking in at 4.57 and 4.69. So, it would seem, voters prefer role playing explicit sex to a group of women just talking about their experiences.

 

[Lifestyle66]

Pavlov's Dog -- 750 Words
"Her needs and routines might get a girl killed."

The story is at 2.24/714 votes with over 13k views. (It's in Loving Wives".)

It's a scene of the cheating wife coming home to her husband, and he's holding a gun pointed at her. She calmly gives him a blowjob as she thinks about this as their routine. She calms him this way every time she comes home from doing her lover.

 

[StillStunned]

You Know You Shouldn’t, at 3.93 stars. Why? Could be for any of a number of reasons: some readers argued it was rape (which legally I suppose it was), others seemed disappointed that it didn't go further. But it could also be that the story highlights the wrongness of the actions.

If I'm going dig really deep, I suppose that some people don't like 2P POV. But that's just a marginal group, surely?

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

You Know You Shouldn’t, at 3.93 stars. Why? Could be for any of a number of reasons: some readers argued it was rape (which legally I suppose it was), others seemed disappointed that it didn't go further. But it could also be that the story highlights the wrongness of the actions.

If I'm going dig really deep, I suppose that some people don't like 2P POV. But that's just a marginal group, surely?

You heathen monster, you

 

[Trionyx]

Bill, We Need to Talk-750 Words

The title says it all. The comments were uniformly positive except for one person.
I'm proud of this story no matter the votes.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Seeing a lot of 750 word entries in this thread. Perhaps as a general rule, we should turn off voting on them. Just a thought.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

At 3.59, it's no surprise, it's my only foray into Loving Wives. People actually quite liked it, though it was a short simple story derived from the Jack and Jill writing exercise. Except for our friend Anon who thought it was stupid cuck shit, British cuck shit, stupid British shit, &c.

Then at 3.92 to 4.26 there's three 750-word stories, in particular one I perhaps should have put in Non-Erotic. I was confused why a longer Lesbian story was only on 4.18, but on re-reading, it's only one page, so the comment 'I liked this, but a bit too short' is probably accurate.

So the first curious one on 4.28 is Undergrad Experiments - which actually had a red H briefly, then went down when it got about 12 votes (took a while, it's Gay Male), and hasn't gone up even with over 50 now. The commenters all like it and the sequel. I'm guessing it got linked to a story that wasn't actually that similar? Contains drunk students and alcoholism.

Mummy Porn is BDSM and no incestuous play whatsoever. It's an analysis of how becoming a mother affects sexual responses - OK, it's pure.porn, but can see why a comment was "nice, but not what I was expecting and probably not what others were expecting either".

 

[THBGato]

My lowest story is the first story I published, and it's more of a vignette than a story. It's low because it ends on a cliffhanger and there is no sex in it. Frankly, I'm amazed it has the rating it does.

 

[Erozetta]

2.something or other in Loving Wives. It got a 4.3 on an erotica podcast review, though.

 

[Hypnobitch01]

My newest story Pathokinetic. It’s not getting many views and is sitting at a 2.6.

I’m really confused as to why, but it was my first time posting in romance so maybe it’s in the wrong category. It's also my first longer story so that could play in too.

 

[yowser]

Of the half-dozen under-fours, one can be chalked up to the 750 word curse, another to LW, a third to an 'April fool's surprise' that came close to suggesting MM activity (the horrors!) and the rest were just lousy stories/writing.

 

[MK_Whimsy]

My lowest rated story is a male/male foot fetish story involving an anthropomorphic bird character, currently sitting at 2.5. Like any other story, I'm sure there is room for improvement with it, but I chalk this one up to reader preference. It's such a niche, out-there premise and probably not appealing to most people.

I had another story get hit with a lot of downvotes initially, I suspect because I miscategorized it and some of the readers were squicked out by it.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

My lowest scored story is my entry in the What I Wrote and Why challenge. I got 4.47 on 17 votes and 644 views It's that low due to the low number of votes allowing the typical two one-bombs I get on all of my stories to pull the score down.

 

[Mastered_again]

My newest story Pathokinetic. It’s not getting many views and is sitting at a 2.6.

I’m really confused as to why, but it was my first time posting in romance so maybe it’s in the wrong category. It's also my first longer story so that could play in too.

I'll try to give it a read, as romance appeals to me. However, as I understand things, Romance readers prefer subtle or even implied sex. Perhaps you were too graphic. My stories lean to Romance, but because of the explicit and (mildly) kinky sex, I've avoided it as a category, keeping to EC, BDSM, NC/R and Anal.