OverconfidentSarcasm
Illiterate
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2022
- Posts
- 665
The question was how do you use the rating system. And personally, when I post my work to these kinds of sites---whether it's erotica or fantasy or flash fiction---, I think of it mostly as a collaboration between people with similar passions. I don't expect a reader to adhere to the standards of a critique, but for an author not to, that's a bit disappointing.
Because that's not what the site is asking for.
Again, the site is not asking to rate submissions from "Bad Story" to "Good Story", judging it's literary value and readability. It's asking to rate submissions from "Hate it!" to "Love it!", judging the level of enjoyment I got out of it in order to identify the submissions with the most marketing value.
If you want to know how I personally do it, I rate it based on how much I enjoyed it, and then leave a comment on how to improve. That comment, in most cases, points out logical errors, typos, grammar, and, much too often, the lack of an actual plot.
But, honestly... I also operate under the impression that, if you post your story with ratings and comments enabled, you're (at least to a point) looking for validation. And in that case, you need to know what the readers were looking for when clicking your story, to understand why that validation fails to happen.
So, yeah, I get it. I look like a fat seal out of water as I clap my hands every time I get a 5/5 rating, or read a comment where someone actually fully grasped what my intent in writing my piece was. But I also accept it when people ask for different developments, because that's what they came hoping to find. It's then my choice whether I write for a purpose and am happy with the few people who get that, or if I need to please people and complain about the readers not liking my content.
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