Where do I go from here?

[ThatNewGuy]

Some good advice here. I hope it's helpful, OP.

I'll echo what @ronde said about reading some Hall of Fame stories in your preferred categories. They'll give you an idea of what stories have struck a chord with readers in the past. See if there are any lessons you can draw from those stories that you can apply to your own work.

Detailed, constructive feedback is invaluable, so you might consider asking for a review of one of your stories in the Story Feedback forum. @yowser has a Yowser Yelps thread that serves this purpose. I've found his reviews to be thoughtful and insightful.

I agree with others about crafting the most compelling title and short description you can. That's your first opportunity to hook the reader. Here's a good thread from @pink_silk_glove about titles and short descriptions.

I've only skimmed a few of your stories, but one specific piece of advice I would offer is to set your hook right away. Your Erotic Horror story, for example, starts with these sentences: He walked into the small office. It would be an overstatement to call it a lobby. It's not until the sixth paragraph that we get to the hook. What if the story started here instead: "You're in luck. We have one room left." The desk clerk glanced up. "Gotta warn you, though. They say it's haunted."

The openings of a few other stories I skimmed also seem to dwell on descriptions of setting and/or characters before really getting into the meat of the story. Establish the essential question/mystery/conflict first. Give the reader a reason to keep going. Then you can flesh out the setting details and character descriptions as you go. I think @TheLobster said it well:

That's the biggest thing here: if the reader doesn't care, he will click away, and he'll be right to do so. Start with some enticing tease then build up on it.

Best of luck with your next story!

 

[StillStunned]

I've only skimmed a few of your stories, but one specific piece of advice I would offer is to set your hook right away. Your Erotic Horror story, for example, starts with these sentences: He walked into the small office. It would be an overstatement to call it a lobby. It's not until the sixth paragraph that we get to the hook. What if the story started here instead: "You're in luck. We have one room left." The desk clerk glanced up. "Gotta warn you, though. They say it's haunted."

I always say that you have your reader's attention on credit. They've clicked on your story and decided to give it a go. You have to start making it worth their while before they invest much more of their time and attention.

 

[Thanatos_X13]

I read through a few of your stories (Lagniappe, Halloween Blowjob, & Beebacks), and I think TheLobster already covered a lot of what I would give as feedback, but here were may takeaways:

• Your stories are generally very short and not a lot happens in them. It takes a long time for anything interesting to occur, and by that time, most readers have likely bounced off. Your story Lagniappe has three? characters sitting around talking about nothing for the bulk of the first page. You don't have to get right into the sex, but your story needs tension and momentum to carry the reader through.
• There's a lot of words on the page with little being said. For example, you'll take an entire paragraph to describe someone's appearance, when a single sentence would suffice. This combined with the above gives your stories a sluggish pace. Even when there should be tension, the prose draws things out so much that all tension is lost. Your writing could stand to be more economical and to the point. Using a lot of words for any particular thing should be reserved for things that are deserving of that attention.
• As a symptom of the above, you have some poor openings. Lagniappe especially starts with "The fiftyish woman" then "The woman seated behind the desk" and then an overly long description. 100+ words into a story and the reader doesn't know who these characters are, why they're here, or why any of this matters. Start where the story starts and start with something happening. And whatever is happening, there needs to be tension and conflict from the jump.
• In general, readers are here to get off. Your writing doesn't have to be great as long as it meets the subjective expectations of what readers find "hot." In the stories I read, I don't think the way you write sex is meeting those expectations. In Beebacks, there's no sex. As a NC/R writer and reader, I can tell you, you can't get away with a nearly 3k word story and cut away as soon as the sex starts. In Halloween Blowjob, the actual blowjob is very short, blink and you miss it. I would guess that it did as well as it did because I/T is a popular category, more forgiving, and the story premise is a popular one. The sex in Lagniappe is not really BDSM in any meaningful way, so I think the readers who did bother to read it didn't get what they were looking for, and it's also interspersed with soooo much talking.

As many have said, TheLobster really nailed it with the statement that if you don't make the reader care, they'll click away. Focus on getting right into the central conflict of your story, use language sparingly and with intentionality, and try to write the sexiest, most erotic sex you can. As others suggested, maybe read a bunch of popular stories in the genres you post in and analyze what they're doing well.

Hope some of this helps, Good luck to you.

 

[Voboy]

Nothing is "effortless."

I'd say I've had some success here on Lit... but I've been at it for almost a decade and churned out over a hundred stories, most of them over 15k words. I'm not sure I'd call that "effortless." And after all that, I've barely got over 2,000 followers. I suspect I'd have more if I wrote in T/I or perhaps LW, where I'm sure I could write stories that would inflate a lot of my numbers. But I wouldn't think of that as "success" since I don't want to write those stories.

OP, just redefine what you think of as "success."

 

[Areala-chan]

Just as an example of someone who frequents the AH, it might help to know that my five most recently posted works have a combined view total of just under 13,000, and under 300 total ratings. Three of those were done for events. So, yeah, it really isn't about volume or anything. It really comes down to marketing via titles and descriptions, or hitting the I/T or LW categories.

It genuinely is a crap-shoot.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

In eleven years, I have published 29 stories in 9 different categories here. Certainly not the most prolific writer on the site, but I tend to write longer stories and post most of them in Novels/Novellas.

I have just over 900K views combined for all of the 29 stories, and over 200K of those views are for my few stories in I/T. The average score for all my stories is 4.62.

I tend not to focus as much on the number of views. Instead I look at things like the vote-to-view ratio, which tells me more about the "quality" of the views than focusing on the quantity.

This story is an example of that. It has a good score but very few views in the two and a half years it has been published here. However the number of votes that it has received with those few views indicates that it is holding the readers who view it, and that they seem to like it.

As others have said, you need to decide why you are writing. What motivates you? Then figure out how to measure your progress towards those goals. There are no short cuts.

 

[dirk2024]

It’s not effortlessly for me. It takes a lot of work. Others may have a different experience.

Many of my stories have under 5,000 views. I write in a lot of different categories and some of them have graveyard-like qualities. SciFi & Fantasy numbers used to be OK, but have declined very rapidly of late.

This is shocking and disappointing. I find some of the best writing in SciFi.

 

[EmilyMiller]

This is shocking and disappointing. I find some of the best writing in SciFi.

IMO it’s a volume problem. The reader numbers have probably increased, but the number of stories has increased even more. It’s hard to stand out, even as a semi-established writer.

 

[StillStunned]

IMO it’s a volume problem. The reader numbers have probably increased, but the number of stories has increased even more. It’s hard to stand out, even as a semi-established writer.

There's probably also a generational difference in taste between what older and younger writers/readers like.

(Yes, I'm dubbing you an honorary Old Fart for these purposes.)

 

[TheLobster]

IMO it’s a volume problem. The reader numbers have probably increased, but the number of stories has increased even more. It’s hard to stand out, even as a semi-established writer.

Yup. SF&F has half (!) the submissions of T/I, and the readership is what, 10% of that? It's a supply and demand issue, exacerbated by the fact that most 'stories' in there end with "Vol. 7 Bk. 13 Ch. 42-69", meaning that the standalone stories drown in a sea of endless series.

 

[AchtungNight]

I know how the OP feels. Writing stories here isn’t going to make me into a bestselling or critically acclaimed author, nor is it something I can use to endear myself to the average person. I’ve done it since 2006 with many periods of hiatus, that won’t change. I wrote my stories because they were fun to create and I wanted to share them. Any writer having issues writing, yet wanting to continue, should look for stories that give them similar vibes. Take a break if you want, recharge, find inspiration again. Good luck.

 

[EmilyMiller]

There's probably also a generational difference in taste between what older and younger writers/readers like.

(Yes, I'm dubbing you an honorary Old Fart for these purposes.)

What’s that thing about Steogsaurus lived longer before T. rex (proper binomial contraction) than we live after T. rex?

Yeah, I’m the T. rex in this analogy. Rah! Or more likely, hiss!

At least I was 18 not that much more than a decade ago. I was always old for my age intellectually and in interests if not so much in appearance.

 

[NuclearFairy]

What’s that thing about Steogsaurus lived longer before T. rex (proper binomial contraction) than we live after T. rex?

Yeah, I’m the T. rex in this analogy. Rah! Or more likely, hiss!

At least I was 18 not that much more than a decade ago. I was always old for my age intellectually and in interests if not so much in appearance.

So if he's a stegosaurus, and you're a t-rex, then who's the spino?

 

[Djmac1031]

This is shocking and disappointing. I find some of the best writing in SciFi.

I really wish others would lol. My best efforts at storytelling are in Sci Fi and while they've done okay, its still a pretty small audience.

 

[Djmac1031]

My apologies for bringing up this "evergreen" topic, but I'm about to give up on this site.

I've put about four dozen stories here. Half are in a pair of series of a dozen each, but all are intended to be read and enjoyed singly. I have no impact here whatsoever.

I've tried following advice, such as taking part in the periodic contests (I've done Halloween last year and Sports this year) to gain some visibility. I've chatted with people here on AH. If anything, my visibility has declined since my early stories three years ago. (I've actually dabbled with Lit for a couple of decades or more, but put it aside for a time and forgot my login name and password so I started all over in 2022.) I've tried being patient.

People who post here in AH effortlessly garner tens of thousands of views, dozens of comments, and of course plenty of votes. Good for them. Me, I get 900 to 5000 views and essentially no votes, which I presume to be mainly bots or else bored people clicking. The one exception was 50K views and almost 1000 votes for the purposely bad Halloween story I submitted in the Incest category - go figure.

It's rare that I garner even as many as 10 votes, which seems to be the threshold to achieve Hot status (and presumably get noticed) even if the average score is high enough.

I feel like my works are good-not-great in general, with a few I am proud of. But I'd be prepared to be told no, it's pretty much crap. But I don't even get comments to the stories, constructive or otherwise. Crickets.

Apparently there's 100+ stories published here every single day. I don't like reading them. It's too much, and it's mostly mind-numbingly repetitious. I can hardly blame other readers for feeling the same way.

Now I have a couple of stories in some state of partial to complete first drafts. I'm asking myself this: do I invest the effort to polish and publish, or cut my losses? Or phrased another way, what am I missing?

Okay so without repeating everyone else's points:

With just a quick breeze through your catalog, you're getting views. Some decent amount of views given some of the categories you post in.

Not everyone here is getting tens of thousands of views, that's reserved for the Big Three: Incest, LW, Non Con.

If it's any consolation, Ive noticed views in general dropping on the site in all categories.

But, back to views. You're getting them. So what seems to be happening IMO is you're not keeping readers around long enough to finish it, and those who do are, well, voting accordingly.

There's been plenty of advice here on tips to draw readers in with catchy titles and descriptions.

Also suggestions on improving your storytelling in general. That comes with time and patience and a willingness to accept criticism.

You're drawing a pretty decent amount of clicks on your stories. So just work harder at giving them something worth sticking around for and rating.

Best wishes in your efforts.

 

[Djmac1031]

@PrimalDual

So I read your Halloween story and your comment about it being a parody and I just had to laugh because I had a very similar experience.

I wrote a story under the pseudonym Todd Everman called Mom's Backseat Boy. It was an intentional parody of the classic Mom / Son Incest trope where she's forced to sit on his lap in the car and somehow sex ensues.

I wrote it as a joke and a connection to a story I wrote called Pornville about a guy named Todd Everman who woke trapped in the world of his own trope laden sex stories.

Anyway; Mom's Backseat Boy has outperformed every other story I've ever written as DJ and it's not even close.

340 THOUSAND views. 4.67 rating with 4.3K votes. 119 comments

it was insane.

It really drove home the point to me that for all our efforts to simply write the best stories we can, there are forces in play way beyond our control here.

 

[AchtungNight]

So if he's a stegosaurus, and you're a t-rex, then who's the spino?

Can I be a raptor? I know how to open doors!

 

[MelissaBaby]

I don't think your stories are for me, so I'll leave thoughts on writing style and subject matter to someone more immersed in those genres...

But just glancing at your author profile, my first comment would be that your story titles and descriptions have a lot of room for improvement!

A lot of them are single words that don't seem to mean much, and the descriptions don't really illuminate the topic very well either. There are multiple stories published in every category every day, dozens of stories per day in some categories. If your title and description doesn't generate curiosity or excitement or interest at first glance, why would I click on it over something that sounds more promising?

Your jokey Halloween incest story that got 52,000 views, "Halloween Blow Job from Sister Sam?" Regardless of the merits of the story, it tells a potential reader exactly what they're in for

I don't think there's one right way to title and subtitle a story in a way that gets views. The title can be super literal like that one, or they can be more abstract and intriguing, and let the description line say more about what the story is. But one of them, either the title or the description, needs to give the reader an idea of what's going to happen.

You have to admit though, Take It Out at the Ballgame is a great fucking title.

 

[iwatchus]

Yeah, I’m the T. rex in this analogy. Rah! Or more likely, hiss!

If Emily is a TRex, I think I am a Tkitaalik.

 

[NuclearFairy]

Can I be a raptor? I know how to open doors!

Okay, but you gotta remember, velociraptors were the size of turkeys, and dinosaurs can't pronate their hands.

 

[AchtungNight]

Okay, but you gotta remember, velociraptors were the size of turkeys, and dinosaurs can't pronate their hands.

I take that back. I’ll be a Pterodactyl. They’re way cooler.

 

[NuclearFairy]

I take that back. I’ll be a Pterodactyl. They’re way cooler.

For sure, their babies are called flaplings, how cool is that?

 

[iwatchus]

Okay, but you gotta remember, velociraptors were the size of turkeys, and dinosaurs can't pronate their hands.

But Utalrapotors were plenty big enough. Besides, have you ever messed with an angry turkey? They are vicious.

 

[NuclearFairy]

But Utalrapotors were plenty big enough. Besides, have you ever messed with an angry turkey? They are vicious.

Last turkey I knew was a sweetheart, but she had the worst case of gout I've ever seen.

 

[iwatchus]

Last turkey I knew was a sweetheart, but she had the worst case of gout I've ever seen.

My son volunteered at wildlife rehabber wherewhen he was in middle school or so. Meaning my SO and I were volunteered.

The rehabber had a nasty tom who was about as tall as my son. He loved to terrify my son and trap him in a corner. My son did work there for almost five years and ended up majoring in zoology. But he had two unpaid internships and decided he wanted to work somewhere that actually paid him. Of course, he and his partner are back living with us, so...