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

[ICantLeafYou]

I've only been posting for a few months and only have 7 stories up. After so little time and with so few stories, I don't think any real trends can be sussed out yet.

But just for fun.



Obviously fetish content that doesn't even feature an orgasm will rate lower than more typical stories featuring sex and masturbation.

 

[burgwad]

What a strange conversation, how many of us have “lowest scores” in the 4+ range. Good for you guys! Meanwhile, I’m proud to have three works above the 4.0 line.

I only really write for me - which I guess also means I only really write for writers, bookworms, Midwesterners, Millennials, liberals, white guys, college graduates, and creeps who get off on I/T fantasy. So much of my feedback is unwelcoming, I have to suspect this does not describe a whole lot of Literotica’s I/T readership.

Because surely the problem can’t be related to my actual talent level. S-surely.

 

[WhiteTailDarkTip]

My lowest score came from entering a story into a competition. I excerpted a chapter from a story I'm (still) writing and put it in just before the deadline. Consequently it had some rough edges and, because it was the Valentine's Day contest I flagged it as Romance. It got 80 odd votes and a dozen comments split fairly evenly between those that like things neat and tidy and those that like some things left to the reader's imagination. It was a bit of an experiment and I thought it boded well for the finished work when I get around to it.

 

[HippyJeanSalon]

My lowest rated story is "Late Night Laundry", one of my 750 word stories. It's also my only story I wrote for the Loving Wives category, which I assume explains why its rating. On the other side, it also has been rated more, has more comments and is favorited more than any of my other stories. Maybe I should do another Loving Wives story just for the fun of it.

 

[Plumbr]

Some of my favorite stories here rated below a 3.

 

[SamBomb]

The Refugee Predicament at 4.37. probably because it's bad and it's not clear it's starting a series I abandoned. I really hadn't figured out some things by then. Plus the name is kind of odd.

 

[lovecraft68]

My two lowest are in Loving Wives-what a shocker.

Just saying they're in LW is enough of an explanation, but I'll go a little further.

The absolute lowest (I think its like 2.9) was published as a satire, so over the top that no one should have taken it seriously. But hatred has no sense of humor, nor were there enough IQ points among readership to realize it wasn't meant to be serious.

The second which is around 3.20 or something like that was a serious effort, but it portrays three shitty people with no clear protagonist, so I got a few "well written but..." comments, but in general, it was "Why the hell would you write this shit?" Answer is because writers write what they want, not always what you want.

In general, my take on the cuck/hotwife genre is the antithesis of what can work over there, and seeing there is a natural enmity between the kind of person I am and what passes for people over there, I do take satisfaction in knowing my particular kink sends them frothing.

 

[MyBareTorso]

Unsurprisingly, my lowest rating stories (all in the mid-3's) all feature "failed" erotic situations (a premature ejaculation story for the 750 word challenge, a possible hook-up that doesn't pan out for the 750 word challenge) or slightly off-piste approaches to category (a violent but romantic prison story in Romance)...and then there's my recent "sharing" story in Loving Wives, which is my now my lowest rating story. Again, not hugely surprised by any of these scores...just heartbroken and emotionally destroyed.

My low rating Loving Wives story went from 3.5 to a red H 4.59...not sure how those sweeps work, but I like it! Not that I really care about scores etc...

 

[RetroFan]

Although not the lowest rated, one of the stranger experiences I've had was with the only story I published into 'Exhibition and Voyeurism'. Consensus among other authors with the E & V category seemed to be that the readers there were plentiful and generally easy-going and generous with their comments and scores.

So I submitted my story 'Betty the All American Cock Tease' as part of the Nude Day contest. In the story, which is set in Maine in the late 1940s the narrator Betty gets a thrill from opening the windows and drapes and allowing Eric next door - a shy mama's boy completely under the thumb of his domineering mother and aunt while his father stands back and says nothing - to look into her bedroom while she is undressing, and into the bathroom to see her having a bath, taking a shower or sitting on the toilet. Betty is also excited by Eric seeing her bras and panties on the line on laundry day, and of him looking up her skirt or dress to see her underwear.

The story got lots of views and votes - it wasn't one of those stories which seems to be overlooked by everyone and quickly forgotten - and some favourites, yet rated very poorly and just one negative comment until I got a positive one earlier this year. In Loving Wives the tolerance for wimps and simps is close to zero, so something such as a mama's boy who still rides a tricycle at age 18 secretly being in love with the pretty girl next door and perving on her while she for her part secretly likes the attention but won't put out would have set off a torrent of anger and abuse, but there don't seem to be the same triggers in E & V. There doesn't seem to be an overall preference for stories written from the perspective of the voyeur rather than the person is the target of the voyeurism (whether they know about it or not), nor did I get a lot of negative feedback to give me a clue about what I did wrong, such as 'why would we want to read your boring story about a wimp perving on a teasing slut set 75 years ago?' or complaints that the two main characters didn't have sex.

Just what I did wrong with this story I could never work out.

 

[lc69hunter]

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?

Cheating and Perception 3.23, Essays, Very easily understood. I posited that unlike men, most of whose brains are binary in thinking(up down, left right, right wrong, etc, women's brains, being far more complex, are able to compartmentalize their cheating/extracurricular activities, separate from the love of their husband, their marriage and their family, and that men do not understand that because their binary brains can't even conceive of that concept. I knew it was a target.
As expected, the LW trolls went crazy on me.
I blame @Grendelpuppy for the idea.

 

[WeShallUnclench]

Btw the story I entered for the summer competition was one of my lowest rated, lingering in the 3+ space.

THEN, the day before the competition ended, boom, it turned into one of my highest ranking ones (still low by standards of those who feel everything below H is low, but still).

My working hypothesis is that one of those "sweeps" might have played a role. Did someone hate my story so much they fraudulently 1-bombed it multiple times in a way that got it "sweeped"? I dunno.

EDIT: It was this very story I talked about earlier, btw

A recent contest entry of mine doesn't cease to amaze me: so far it seems to flip consistently between 1 (or 2) and 5 star ratings (I have checked, reverse calculating every new vote based on the average).

If I were to guess, I would say it's because the sex scene in it is very short and merely the abrupt culmination of tension that has been building over the course of the story. It also requires you to accept the premise that the female lead is wet enough that underwater sex doesn't wash away all the lubricant to the point of being unpleasant.

Oh yeah, and the male character never gets to climax.

And there is a recurring joke about truly awful garden gnomes.

Typing this has the simultaneous effect that I now love my story more than ever, and starting to grasp (grumpily) why it attracts hate from some people (up to half of the audience).

EDIT:
On a general note, I am really starting to feel my lower scores have to do with what I find personally entertaining and kinky to write and to read (I basically write the stories I cannot find elsewhere).
In terms of strict writing quality, I firmly believe that even all of my lowest stories are better than some of the 4+ that essentially come down to gushing over how hot the characters are and how hot it is that they are having sex, you guys, with no regards for story structure, avoiding repetitions or even grammar.

Note that I never got a truly nasty comment, so far. Even the one I am most unhappy with was still insightful - they insisted on what more sex acts they wanted to see in there (driving home the "oh yeah, some people just come here to be turned on" point).

The most useful feedback so far, I ironically got on my "H" story (sidenote, I don't personally feel it is necessarily my hottest story). It taught me that in my writing flow, I have to make sure the world building and character profiles stay "on model" in a way the reader will understand; I can't just assume the in-story world and logic are as clear to them as it is to me.

 

[Voboy]

My working hypothesis is that one of those "sweeps" might have played a role. Did someone hate my story so much they fraudulently 1-bombed it multiple times in a way that got it "sweeped"? I dunno.

Likely enough it had little to do with them hating your particular story. Bombing often seems to happen for various nefarious reasons that we love to speculate about, but haven't achieved consensus on.

The simplest explanation is that our competitors do the bombing themselves, which has a certain grim logic. I don't want to think that that happens, but it has before.

 

[Writer61]

My lowest are two stories with 4.38 rating (I know, first world problem). I don't know why but I have hypotheses:

• Adam In Asia - Under Pressure which I can't see anything much wrong with except that it is a bit short
• The Fall of Laura Pt. 05 is the final part of a story and, as the title implies, ends on a bit of a downer which might be the reason

 

[ChuckWolf]

I believe my lowest rated story has its ranking because:

- Posted in the wrong and obscure category.
- Formatting errors in transferring from a freeware MS Word knock-off.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Likely enough it had little to do with them hating your particular story. Bombing often seems to happen for various nefarious reasons that we love to speculate about, but haven't achieved consensus on.

The simplest explanation is that our competitors do the bombing themselves, which has a certain grim logic. I don't want to think that that happens, but it has before.

Or their fans.

One time I noticed a story by another author was getting boosted with something like a hundred 5* votes a day, which is way outside what you'd expect to see naturally in that category for something that wasn't brand new. I reported it to Laurel, the votes got swept, more came in, they got swept again a couple of times.

Next thing, the author had posted in their bio about how they were leaving the site because votes kept disappearing without explanation. I guess they could've been faking surprise, but my best guess was that some fan had tried to "help" and the author didn't realise that the votes being swept were bogus.

 

[LonRivers]

That would be this one for me, and I even went back and added some details and changed it around and tweaked this and that, and it still sucks. I never tried to figure it out. Could be just because it is one of my earlier, rushed stories? No clue.

The Round Table

 

[LonRivers]

OK, so, in looking over my story, The Round Table, I noticed that the Story Tags were not correct. I changed them to reflect what fits the story. Now let's see how well it goes. This might not be that bad after all, or it may still suck. Who knows? But it also might show how the proper Tags for a story are VERY important.

 

[jehoram]

My lowest score was an essay I wrote on "The Right Editor." After it came out, some of the other folks on the forum took it as a sort of advertisement for her services, and felt that it was inappropriate. Hence the disclaimer by her, at the end of the essay. I think that essays in general don't rate as highly as erotic fiction, so there's that, although another essay, "Nudism and Sex," is highly rated.

Anyway, the link to "The Right Editor" is here:
https://www.literotica.com/s/the-right-editor

As for her services being available, it's no longer an issue since she passed away last winter. So I'm in search of another editor who might be able to fill her shoes.

 

[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.

The story I referred to earlier in this thread, Rectification (I guess I neglected to actually link to it), is no longer my lowest-rated. The score has since gone up. Hooray!

That just means I have a new lowest-rated one: Settling In, with 3.31 stars as of this post. This is a prison-themed 750-word challenge entry and has gotten very mixed ratings. I suspect this is because it has very little actual sexual content, focusing more on the situation and setting. It comes across as more of a "tease" story. (For comparison, my other 750-word entry, The Pull, had much more complete, for lack of a better term, sexual content and did far better ratings-wise). Also, I can see where the prison theme may not be universally appealing.

 

[NuclearFairy]

My story with the lowest score (that has ten or more votes) is The Parasite with a score of 4.33.

Only thing I know for sure is wrong with it, is the description. I either should've made the girls description peppered into the story more organically, or I should've made it clearer earlier that she was not actually the point of view character, maybe a little of both. And the description of the tentacle monster itself was a little lacking. I need to work on that if I write anything else in this vein.

Beyond that, I'm not sure. Maybe the sex scene was too short, maybe the audience was upset with the tentacle monster being devoured before he could finish impregnating the girl, maybe they don't like that the girl forgot what happened. Might've been a combination of things, or something else entirely. I don't know for sure because no one that has rated it low has commented.

 

[Dearelliot]

I only have 4 stories published...I take a long time to get it done...somewhere near 1 a year...I think for every 3 stories I write, I manage to post one. Not sure why the lowest score was given...
I suppose I should do better...the score would go up..

 

[iwatchus]

My lowest score by a reasonable margin at 4.23 is also my only LW. It also has the most votes (by x4), the most comments (by x10) and the most favorites (by x2). And by a slight margin, the most views.

 

[Actingup]

It's called 'Three's the Charm' and is rated at 3.85 in Loving Wives. The husband consents to his wife sleeping with a (fake) prince, and many people on LW hate that. Also, the fact that he consented meant that no Burn the Bitch storyline was practical - you're only allowed to sleep around on LW if you're going to die at the end.

For a special mention, 'Crapshooting' , also in LW and with 3.91, has consensual swapping without contraception - the (very silly) couples are playing a form of fertility musical chairs where the first pregnancy will result in the successful pair staying with each other. Many readers hated the concept, although others enjoyed how batshit crazy it was.

In both cases, the reasons for the reader reaction were clear.

 

[Djmac1031]

Lol. Oh, that's easy.

You Hear The Bullet. My first and only Loving Wives story. Published 2/01/2022, it currently sits at:
54.2K views
3.78 stars / 1.2K votes

https://www.literotica.com/s/you-hear-the-bullet

To elaborate as you requested:

-"Do you agree with the score, or does it confuse you?" - I don't agree with the score, but I fully understand it.

"How do you see that story compared to higher rated ones you wrote? Does the ranking between your stories feel arbitrary?" - Honesty, it's not my best work. It was a rather oddball idea writen for the 750 Word Story Challenge. And readers tend to low rate those in general, then couple it with being in LW and the subject matter and yeah, it threw off a few people

- "Did you learn something from the experience, that allowed you to adjust your writing from there on (if yes, what) ?" - I learned some people have no sense of humor, and still others are under the mistaken belief that just because an author writes about murder that they must approve of it.

- "Do you feel the score has more to do with writing quality & story design (aka your skill?), or simple audience preference?" - it's hard to fuck up 750 words too badly. Audiences hated it because I didn't have the wife shot along with her lover.

- Was it one of your earliest stories, or a "surprise flop" much later?"- it was about 7 months in. So not exactly a newb, but still learning my craft.

 

[Rob_Royale]

All my low scores are due to the fact that they are either 750 words, Loving Wives or a WiWAW. All of those I get.
Except one. Dreams of Him is in the Mature category and has a 4.42 stars. Now I know that cannot be called a low score, but as it's not one of the above kinds of stories, it's an outlier. All of my stories that end up lower than 4.5, that aren't in the above categories, eventually creep up up over time into the red H zone. Except that one.

It's a sexy son-in-law story but it's different than most as their attraction is never acted upon. The ending is a little weird. But it's just been stuck at 4.42 for so long, neither going up nor down, and it makes me wonder what's going on with it.