So a couple of months ago I finished my first story in a long while - Dani's Turn - and posted it to my usual place, FM.
Hardly a ripple in the comments. Very distressing to realize I didn't need to spend weekends writing if that's the reaction I get. I don't write for myself, I am an utterly untrained amateur who appreciated positive feedback even when it came in emails with unsolicited panty photos.
So, I was directed over to this site, that people here would be more appreciative of my skills and stories which I was assured are considerably more creative than most.
So I posted Dani's Turn - 4 comments
One a Day for Girls - 3
Before and After - 2
See a pattern? And those are in reverse order of what I think is my best work. I even ended Before & After with what I would think is a pretty damn abrupt and frankly horrific ending, just to see if I would get a similar response as I did at FM, where the ending was far less sudden or jarring. Nothing.
I'm not asking for sympathy or encouragement. I just wonder:
Whether the thumbs up system reduces the number of comments posted?
Was I totally misinformed about the audience here? It certainly seems that never-ending stories are pretty popular (120 chapters? Really?).
Perhaps my stories are too explicit for this group?
Anyway I am irrevocably written out. The muse doesn't strike that often but the locks are changed and she won't get in even if she tries.
The stories are here and at FM. Adios.
Comments
Never understood how comments work on FM.
There is a link somwhere to go to comments (tried it once like 5 years ago... Had not seen since...)...
Anyways, never had enough drive to comment on FM, even tho I've read some of your stories there.
And again, to get many comments on FM... You need specific kind of story. Not the one you will be comfortable posting to the BCTS...
What is FM?...besides a
What is FM?...besides a frequency band.
I don't know how to answer this question...
Are you kidding me? (it is my First option...)
Acronym for a TG (don't ask me what TG means) stories site with some quite good stories but generally more into sissies, femdom, sado, mazo and such, subjects generally frowned upon on BCTS (don't ask me what BCTS is, or I will die laughing).
here the kudos
do detract from comment numbers. the most accurate way to judge how well received your work is in the number of reads minus comment number and kudo number. the result is hopefully very small, if it is then almost every reader enjoyed your work enough to either kudo or comment, or both.
for myself, I have not been on and reading much, never mind commenting or giving kudos, so I have not read any of your work and don't even think of commenting or kudoing until I have and have thought about the impact it has/had on me.
Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.
Well
As someone who runs his own website, I can tell you that number of comments and 'kudos' (in my case it would be likes) do not correspond to number of reads. I can see stats that say a number different people went through and read a bunch of different story parts, but none of them will leave comments. It can be disheartening, but it's not necessarily indicative of anything being wrong with your writing.
Have delightfully devious day,
I gave up on FM abot 10 years ago
It was when the new stories seemed to be all about 'Forced Fem' and/or 'FemDom' with a load of what verged on hard core porn thrown in.
I have no idea if the site has changed since then as I've never been back.
As has been said, you need to post a particular type of story to be successful on FM.
Samantha
Not necessarily true.
I used to think the same way, but I still posted my first ever attempt at fiction on there. I didn’t expect much, considering my story was non sexual, non forced, and I fully expected to only get comments telling me how much it sucked... Even with those thoughts, I wrote a TG story that I thought that I would like to read, and shared it on the cesspool I believed Fm to be... Oddly enough I got a following, and people commenting... Out of the three stories I’ve posted there all three were well recieved, and only one of them didn’t get much feedback, at least until I decided to end it... The feedback I recieved from my current offering completely blew me away... While the majority of the story’s there I would consider being there for the one handed reader, there are people there that appreciate good stories...
Becca
I know I’m weird. The fact that I’m trans is probably one of the more normal things about me.
I would say that...
... Generally it is a bit easier to find FM than BCTS. My path was even more convoluted and many years ago. Some obscure teleconference (are there anyone who remember that?) to nifty to Storysite to FM, and only from some reference on Storysite when it died but forum was still alive I learned of BCTS...
I'm going to be brutally honest here...
I'm going to be brutally honest here. If you're writing for recognition, find another hobby. That's not anything against your writing personally. That's just how being an author generally works. If you are not writing for yourself, then you will never get the kind of response you are looking for.
As for your question whether your writing is too explicit for this community, I don't think that is the main issue. I don't think your writing is particularly explicit. Here is what I think is happening with your writing as far as this group is concerned. You are a pretty good technical writer. What I felt I was not getting from your work that I have come to expect here is the emotional connection. I come back here time after time because I get emotionally invested in so many of the characters that I find here. There are a lot of writers here who you may not call great technical writers, but can write characters who I want to follow, who I want to find out more about. That's where the epic stories here come from. They come from characters who are not words on a page illustrating an idea. They come from characters who are people who inhabit a world a lot of people have come to care about.
I'll say it one more time. If you are writing for other people, think about finding something else to do. Reader response does not come from trying to intentionally craft a story that will generate a response. It comes from the passion that the writer puts into their stories.
I may be the wrong person to comment
If I were you, I'd go look at stories by other authors that use similar tags (Caution, Explicit Content, Sex/sexual scenes, etc.) to see how their work fares for readers over the same time frame.
I say that, because almost any caution, other than tissue alert, will cause me to give the story a pass. I'm not sure how many, others on here share my view. It may be that I'm in the extreme minority.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
I think just about anyone
I think just about anyone that has written something either here or on FM understands your frustration. You just spent hundreds of hours crafting what you feel is the perfect story and barely get a ripple in return. It's frustrating but it's also part of the deal and especially true when writing for an audience with vastly different expectations.
I check on my stories both here and on FM about once a year to see how many views my old stuff has gotten. I've found my stories on FM about transformation get about twice the views as my stories about crossdressing. Shorter stories always get more views. If you let the reader know there will be kink by adding a revenge or bimbo tag it adds another 50%. I'm sure a XXX rating will push it even higher but I try to write for R.
I do agree with your comment that the kudo system probably reduces the number of reviews/pageview on this site but you also need to realize the audiences are different. This site is more willing to read serialized stories about crossdressing. My best reviewed story here is about transitioning and has gotten twice as many reviews on this site as it got on FM. My other stories are very close to the review rate it got on FM. While this is a small sample size, the results are what you'd expect.
For what it is worth, on FM I've found my stories are lucky to get 1 review for every 500 people that have viewed it. A harsh truth I've also discovered is that number can go much higher as I've found a direct correlation between stories I know aren't my best work and number of reviews per pageview. I forced myself to write a couple of stories on FM in an attempt to 'write to the audience' to see if I could maximize views but all that did was get me to write a sub-par stories and taught me a valuable lesson.
The thing is - if you check some of the most read authors on both sites, you'll find similar results. I don't think I've ever seen a story get 1 review in 100 views. 1 in 300 is rare and even then you'll find these same authors have stories with 3 reviews and 5000 views. It happens and you should set your expectations accordingly.
The bottom line -- There's only one way to keep a modicum of sanity when writing stories for FM or BC and that's to write for yourself. If you go into this with the thought that people will hoist you up as the next Hemingway you are bound to be disappointed. Remember that even the best writers have critics. Convince yourself when you submit a story to be grateful for every person that took the time to respond. It will make you much happier in the long run.
For the 1,000th Time
There is absolutely NO CORRELATION between the quality of writing and number of reads, kudos and/or comments.
Zero.
Nada.
Zip.
What matters most is genre, length of story, age of the protagonist, etc. This was proven long ago on FM by a study of thousands of stories.
I absolutely love some of my older stories that have received almost no recognition.
Cherish what response you get to any story with explicit contents, because these stories are not normally well-received on BC.
Your writing is as good as most here. If that means anything to you.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Actually, quality of writing...
...directly affects number of comments. Worse your quality of writing is, more comments that your writing quality sucks you will get. Throw in some grammar flaws and you will get 100+ comments grammar nazis' flame war in your comment section. But it still does mean that number of comments by itself does not indicate if your story is good or bad.
:-)