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I just don't get it. Two stories by great and very skilled authors go with almost no kudos and comments. It is honestly disgusting that this happens.
Mad, just mad !!!!
Gwen
I do not get it
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Comments
Kudos are not a measure of quality
They mostly reflect how well the subject matches the interests of the readership.
Just so
There are some really great stories, like Horizons of the Heart which are richly and lovingly crafted with great presence yet it gets well under 100 kudos.
No accounting for taste.
BTW which stories are you talking about anyway?
PM me
I do not wish to hurt feelings. PM me and I will tell you in private.
Gwen
Kudos are free of charge
though sometimes I'm not sure about it, maybe some readers a really charged for each kudo they give.
I'm curious, have you the same stories in your mind as me?
more than 2.
I find a lot of great stories with under 20 kudos each
but then, I also find quite a few that are not really that good with massive kudo numbers in comparison.
no accounting for peoples tastes in reading material.
Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.
Maybe the issue
Maybe the issue is more like "what does the reader think they give kudos for".
Personally, I give kudos for stories I liked reading, for whatever reason. It could very well be that some of those stories you saw were stories that didn't work for me, you know, not my kind of story. In my case, for example, most Fantasy/medieval times stories are not my cup of tea, no matter how well written.
Anne Margarete
popularity contest
It's more like a popularity contest. Popular author's receive kudos, unpopular ones (wink, wink) don't.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
Sorry, but
If the stories don't match the reader's tastes, that reader will not leave a comment or give a kudo. I myself have a fairly strict screening process and if I see certain keywords or if they are by certain authors I don't even look at them. Circumstances later on may persuade me to look at something I initially skipped, but a quick sample usually sends them back to my personal reject pile. If the author shows a pattern for that type of story they get Ignored. If you saw my Ignore list you would probably be annoyed or upset.
Life is too short for me to waste my time reading stories on topics I can't stand. Indeed, many currently popular authors write on subjects that have the ability to trigger my depression. My depression is not well controlled by drugs and as a result I'm closer to the edge than many people realize. I just don't make a big deal out of it.
Just remember, please, that none of us are required to like a story, no matter how well it is written or who it was written by. You may feel insulted that our tastes don't match yours, but please don't take it personally. Different strokes for different folks.
I went outside once. The graphics weren' that great.
A look at the New York times
A look at the New York times best seller list should help. people read what they like, not what's good or well crafted.
Quality of writing and editing matters, too
I'll agree with the others here that I skip over a lot of stories because of the subject matter. I'll look at the summary or the title and go: doesn't sound like my cup of tea. To be honest, there are also some authors who've choosen screen names that make me assume that their stories won't interest me, so I've never even glanced at them.
But formatting, editing, and the quality of writing matter, too. If I have to essentially do an edit-rewrite in my head (or in a file) to figure out what the heck the author is trying to say, I'm going to skip it. If the story is in one long block of text, I'll skip it. If it's so full of misspellings and mispunctuations and missing or extraneous words that each sentence requires multiple passes to parse, I'll (usually) skip it. (There's a very short list of authors who write this way, but whose stories touch me enough to make it worth it.) And stories that just aren't told very well (vital information missing, skip around without warning, can't tell who is saying what, etc.) will make me give up on them pretty quickly.
There are a few other things, too: for instance, I'm not a fan of stories that never end, no matter how well written or how interesting the individual chapters are. I want my train rides to end. I want my road trips to get me somewhere. And I want my stories to take me to some conclusion.
These are just my personal prejudices, of course.
Clicking on the Kudos Button is...
...simply a way of saying to an author, Thank-you, I enjoyed reading that.
Adding a comment is a more detailed way of doing that or adding ones pennyworth to any discussion taking place in the comments area.
If you do not like a story it does not matter how well it was written, you are not going to click on a Kudos. It would be pointless, a meaningless action if we did that.
As an author you write what you write and hope someone likes it. WE write for pleasure. If someone likes it, Great, it is nice to know. But if they do not, well it's a free world, I'm not going to hold it against them.
Best wishes
Sophie
Speaking only for myself,
If ANY story includes the terms "sissy" "Pansy", humiliation or forced fem, I immediately ignore the story entirely. If the word "incest is used, or if a character is in it... again, that's an ignore from me.
If a story is full of mispellings, lacking in punctuation, is one long paragraph, or mistreats a child or an adult in an illegal way... bye bye story.
I don't care who the author is. I don't care what the story is about. I don't care if it's poorly written. As long as the author TRIES to do well or indicates that English is not their native tongue, I'll at least LOOK at the first few paragraphs before deciding it is or isn't for me.
There are, I'm sorry to say, a few "authors" who are on my "Don't read or even click on this thing" list. Obviously I will NOT type their names here.
Occasionally, I will get infuriated at mispellings or misuses of words. Among them are: Waste/Waist, Breaks/Brakes, Lose/Loose, Heels/Heals and Cloths/Clothes. There are more of these, but too many more to type them all here. Among the worst are those who use a word correctly in one sentence and wrong in the next one.
The "ranking" of an author means next to nothing to me unless it is one with whom I am familiar enough to know that they are meticulous in what they write and how they use their words correctly.
I almost always will kudo, which is, by the way, the singular of that word. "Kudoes" indicates more than one... the plural. I seldom comment unless a story really moves me. If you get a comment from me, you're truly accomplished something.
So much for my particular bitches about writers and stories.
Catherine Linda Michel
As a T-woman, I do have a Y chromosome... it's just in cursive, pink script.