Are we writing Quality?

[Cacatua_Galerita]

A short diversion prompted by a few recent threads…

“Quality” of writing comes up a fair bit in the AH forum. We all hope that readers are voting on our stories as a measure of quality, and expect a bell curve of votes to indicate our story’s quality in the ratings. (Noting that LW authors often complain of a bi-modal pattern of votes, where a second population bombs their stories with protest votes against the theme, rather than an honest assessment of the storytelling.)

Quality – and defining it – is a central theme in Robert Pirsig’s bestseller “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, An Inquiry into Values”.

As a philosophical treatise (in a fiction-novel format) I highly recommend it. It’s one of those books that can change your world view – of writing, the arts, science, technology, and life.

Below is an excerpt, as encouragement to go read it.

In ZMM, Pirsig’s character Phædrus was a teacher of Rhetoric and Writing in the English Department of a Montana college. This point in the story recalls the struggle to define the essence of quality and the attempt to gain further insights by asking his students to write what they think:

...concerning Phædrus’ first class after he gave that assignment on “What is quality in thought and statement?” The atmosphere was explosive. Almost everyone seemed as frustrated and angered as he had been by the question.

”How are we supposed to know what quality is?” they said. “You’re supposed to tell us!”

Then he told them he couldn’t figure it out either and really wanted to know. He had assigned it in the hope that somebody would come up with a good answer. That ignited it. A roar of indignation shook the room. Before the commotion had settled down another teacher had stuck his head in the door to see what the trouble was.

”Its all right,” Phædrus said. “We just accidentally stumbled over a genuine question, and the shock is hard to recover from.” Some students looked curious at this, and the noise simmered down.

He then used the occasion for a short return to his theme of “Corruption and Decay in the Church of Reason.” It was a measure of this corruption, he said, that students should be outraged by someone trying to use them to seek the truth. You were supposed to fake this search for the truth, to imitate it. To actually search for it was a damned imposition.

The truth was, he said, that he genuinely did want to know what they thought, not so that he could put a grade on it, but because he really wanted to know.

They looked puzzled.

”I sat there all night long,” one said.

”I was ready to cry, I was so mad,” a girl next to the window said.

”You should warn us,” a third said.

”How could I warn you,” he said, “when I had no idea how you’d react?”

Some of the puzzled ones looked at him with a first dawning. He wasn’t playing games. He really wanted to know.

A most peculiar person.

Then someone said, “What do you think?”

”I don’t know,” he answered.

”But what do you think?”

He paused for a long time. “I think there is such a thing as Quality, but that as soon as you try to define it, something goes haywire. You can’t do it.”

Murmurs of agreement.

He continued, “Why this is, I don’t know. I thought maybe I’d get some ideas from your paper. I just don’t know.”

This time the class was silent.

In subsequent classes that day there was some of the same commotion, but a number of students in each class volunteered friendly answers that told him the first class had been discussed during lunch.

A few days later he worked up a definition of his own and put it on the blackboard to be copied for posterity. The definition was: “Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a nonthinking process. Because definitions are a product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined.”

The fact that this “definition” was actually a refusal to define did not draw comment. The students had no formal training that would have told them his statement was, in a formal sense, completely irrational. If you can’t define something you have no formal rational way of knowing that it exists. Neither can you really tell anyone else what it is. There is, in fact, no formal difference between inability to define and stupidity. When I say, “Quality cannot be defined,” I’m really saying formally, “I’m stupid about Quality.”

Fortunately the students didn’t know this. If they’d come up with these objections he wouldn’t have been able to answer them at the time.

But then, below the definition on the blackboard, he wrote, “But even though Quality cannot be defined, you know what Quality is!” and the storm started all over again.

”Oh, no, we don’t!”

”Oh, yes, you do.”

”Oh, no, we don’t!”

”Oh, yes, you do!” he said and he had some material ready to demonstrate it to them.

He had selected two examples of student composition. The first was a rambling, disconnected thing with interesting ideas that never built into anything. The second was a magnificent piece by a student who was mystified himself about why it had come out so well. Phædrus read both, then asked for a show of hands on who thought the first was best. Two hands went up. He asked how many liked the second better. Twenty-eight hands went up.

”Whatever it is,” he said, “that caused the overwhelming majority to raise their hands for the second one is what I mean by Quality. So you know what it is.”

There was a long reflective silence after this, and he just let it last.

This was just intellectually outrageous, and he knew it. He wasn’t teaching anymore, he was indoctrinating. He had erected an imaginary entity, defined it as incapable of definition, told the students over their own protests that they knew what it was, and demonstrated this by a technique that was as confusing logically as the term itself. He was able to get away with this because logical refutation required more talent than any of the students had. In subsequent days he continually invited their refutations, but none came. He improvised further.

To reinforce the idea that they already knew what Quality was he developed a routine in which he read four student papers in class and had everyone rank them in estimated order of Quality on a slip of paper. He did the same himself. He collected the slips, tallied them on the blackboard and averaged the rankings for an overall class opinion. Then he would reveal his own rankings, and this would almost always be close to, if not identical with the class average. Where there were differences it was usually because two papers were close in quality.

At first the classes were excited by this exercise, but as time went on they became bored. What he meant by Quality was obvious. They obviously knew what it was too, and so they lost interest in listening. Their question now was “All right, we know what Quality is. How do we get it?”

Now, at last, the standard rhetoric texts came into their own. The principles expounded in them were no longer rules to rebel against, not ultimates in themselves, but just techniques, gimmicks, for producing what really counted and stood independently of the techniques’ Quality. What had started out as a heresy from traditional rhetoric turned into a beautiful introduction to it.

He singled out aspects of Quality such as unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance, precision, proportion, depth and so on; kept each of these as poorly defined as Quality itself, but demonstrated them by the same class reading techniques. He showed how the aspect of Quality called unity, the hanging-togetherness of a story, could be improved with a technique called an outline. The authority of an argument could be jacked up with a technique called footnotes, which gives authoritative reference. Outlines and footnotes are standard things taught in all freshman composition classes, but now as devices for improving Quality they had a purpose. And if a student turned in a bunch of dumb references or a sloppy outline that showed he was just fulfilling an assignment by rote, he could be told that while his paper may have fulfilled the letter of the assignment it obviously didn’t fulfill the goal of Quality, and was therefore worthless.

Now, in answer to that eternal student question, How do I do this? that had frustrated him to the point of resignation, he could reply, “It doesn’t make a bit of difference how you do it! Just so its good.” The reluctant student might ask in class, “But how do we know what’s good?” but almost before the question was out of his mouth he would realize the answer had already been supplied. Some other student would usually tell him, “You just see it.” If he said, “No, I don’t,” he’d be told, “Yes, you do. He proved it.” The student was finally and completely trapped into making quality judgments for himself. And it was just exactly this and nothing else that taught him to write.

More about ZMM and the ‘metaphysics of quality’ at the author’s site and at moq.org

 

[SimonDoom]

I read that book a long, long time ago, and I remember thinking that it was enthralling and wise in its way but that I could never fully embrace it. I mean, Pirsig was mentally ill, and the character he wrote about was mentally ill. His obsession with quality manifested itself in the book primarily by getting fussy and querulous about the way acquaintances maintained their motorcycles.

I think quality always matters, and I think it matters in erotic stories. But I don't think of quality as a blessed realm. I think you can drive yourself crazy (Pirsig did) thinking of it that way. Strive for quality but don't obsess about it. With my own stories, I try to write them "well," whatever that means within my abilities, but I hit the "submit" button knowing that if I tried harder I could make them better. I don't lose sleep over that.

A crucial point about Zen is that it's not a place you try to go to; it's a way of understanding where you are.

 

[LoquiSordidaAdMe]

A friend of mine in college recommended ZAMM. I never took him up on it. Maybe it's time to fix that.

As to what Quality is, I think Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's statement about pornography applies as well. "I shall not today attempt further to define... ['hard-core pornography'], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it..."

Quality had the same kind of recognizable yet undefinable quality.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Quality had the same kind of recognizable yet undefinable quality

which is often easier to spot when it's not there, than when it is.

 

[Cagivagurl]

Quality is hard to define.
I read a lot, I have a list of favoured authors. Why? Because they are able to weave wonderful stories. Where words describe worlds and characters so well, that I can picture it in my mind. I feel drawn into the story. I imagine walking those roads, seeing those Cities and places. For me that is quality of writing. Pictures painted in words.

Literotica is a different animal. Quality in Literotica is more about content than the actual story telling. I have read absolutely awful stories, that have incredible scores. When I analysed why. It was content rather than writing that excited the audience.
For me, it's the other way around. I have read genres that really don't appeal to me based on the quality of the writing...

Tell me a wonderful story full of colourful characters where the emotions are stretched and tweaked. If you can do that, I'll read it...

So, quality in Literotica is hard to judge. Give the readers what they want in content, and it will be well received. Even if the writing is terrible. So, is that a high quality story because it filled the need???

Who knows, not I said the fly...

These are nothing more than my thoughts.

Cagivagurl

 

[Kelliezgirl]

The challenge with quality is that it's often a relative consideration.
I've had quality $20 meals, and I've had quality $200 meals.

I'm sure the usual suspects will be along shortly to deliver the same tired arguments about how your score is no indicator of quality and all that.

The reality is that we all determine quality by different metrics, particularly when we are talking about art. I recently recomened a movie to a friend which I think is quite good. He watched it and said he thought it was ok, but not great. We're both correct in our judgement, because everything in art is subjective.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I'm not.

 

[Cacatua_Galerita]

I'm not.

Try making it a ‘relative consideration’ as Kelliezgirl writes. Just divide your story rating by how much you charge people to read it. The result is your story’s ‘quality’.

 

[Cacatua_Galerita]

A friend of mine in college recommended ZAMM. I never took him up on it. Maybe it's time to fix that.

Don’t be scared off by the ‘motorcycle maintenance’ part. It isn’t trying to teach you how to rebuild a carburetor. The 'motorcycle maintenance' allegories are along the lines of:

• The seasoned motorcycle tourer, who can do their own maintenance, versus the BMW rider accompanying him, who will only take their bike to a dealership for maintenance work. They implicitly trust the reliability of a BMW to get them to their destination.
• A broken chain guard that is repaired by a small town welder, who turns out to be a true artisan with a gas torch and can weld thin sheet metal without blowing a hole through it. Yet he only charges a dollar for his skill.
• A loose handlebar on the above-mentioned BMW, that could easily be fixed by a metal shim cut from a beer can. However, the concept of repairing “his new eighteen-hundred dollar BMW” with a beer can was an anathema to the owner – who is a ‘romantic thinker’.

Another extract:

A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance. If you were to show an engine or a mechanical drawing or electronic schematic to a romantic it is unlikely he would see much of interest in it. It has no appeal because the reality he sees is its surface. Dull, complex lists of names, lines and numbers. Nothing interesting. But if you were to show the same blueprint or schematic or give the same description to a classical person he might look at it and then become fascinated by it because he sees that within the lines and shapes and symbols is a tremendous richness of underlying form.

The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. “Art” when it is opposed to “Science” is often romantic. It does not proceed by reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic conscience. In the northern European cultures the romantic mode is usually associated with femininity, but this is certainly not a necessary association.

The classic mode, by contrast, proceeds by reason and by laws, which are themselves underlying forms of thought and behavior. In the European cultures it is primarily a masculine mode and the fields of science, law and medicine are unattractive to women largely for this reason. Although motorcycle riding is romantic, motorcycle maintenance is purely classic. The dirt, the grease, the mastery of underlying form required all give it such a negative romantic appeal that women never go near it.

 

[alohadave]

Literotica is a different animal. Quality in Literotica is more about content than the actual story telling. I have read absolutely awful stories, that have incredible scores. When I analysed why. It was content rather than writing that excited the audience.
For me, it's the other way around. I have read genres that really don't appeal to me based on the quality of the writing...

Both conditions are true and I've happy read poorly written stories that got the story right, and excellently written stories that barely qualified as erotica.

 

[PennyThompson]

I haven't read ZAMM, but that excerpt and this conversation reminds me of something more recent, the episode "Forks" from The Bear. (The whole show is amazing, you should watch it )

But this one episode was literally a little bit life-changing for me, the way it elevated and esteemed the idea of service work as a calling, and the importance of paying attention to details and striving for excellence in small things.

The whole episode is wonderful and worth watching, but I found one scene on youtube that gets at the heart of it: doing a thing well is valuable, and doing it for someone else is noble.

 

[StillStunned]

Quality is probably different for everyone, because everyone has a different focus.

Some writers write about characters and people. They want to show a journey, where the character is clearly different from where they began. How this is achieved, and how effectively it works, is probably what defines quality for them.

Other writers care about the story. They want to write something that's compelling, that keeps the reader transfixed from start to finish with a plot that's coherent and logical without being predictable. That would probably be their measure of quality.

Still other writers focus on the prose. Finding the right balance between description and suggestion, crafting a sentence or paragraph with the right rhythm and sounds, where the words give the story added depth.

There are probably other factors as well. And one writer's measure of quality might be a secondary matter to another writer. Above a certain level - competent writing, an engaging plot, believable characters - it's all a matter of taste. And as @ElectricBlue noted above, it's below that basic level that it becomes conspicuous by its absence.

 

[Cacatua_Galerita]

I see what you're trying to do... You want me to cite the whole book so you don't have to spend $15.99

The reason people see Quality differently, he said, is because they come to it with different sets of analogues. He gave linguistic examples, showing that to us the Hindi letters da, and dha sound identical to us because we don’t have analogues to them to sensitize us to their differences. Similarly, most Hindi-speaking people cannot distinguish between da and the because they are not so sensitized. It is not uncommon, he said, for Indian villagers to see ghosts. But they have a terrible time seeing the law of gravity.

This, he said, explains why a classful of freshman composition students arrives at similar ratings of Quality in the compositions. They all have relatively similar backgrounds and similar knowledge. But if a group of foreign students were brought in, or, say, medieval poems out of the range of class experience were brought in, then the students ability to rank Quality would probably not correlate as well.

In a sense, he said, it's the student's choice of Quality that defines him. People differ about Quality, not because Quality is different, but because people are different in terms of experience. He speculated that if two people had identical a priori analogues they would see Quality identically every time. There was no way to test this, however, so it had to remain just speculation.

 

[Cacatua_Galerita]

Rather than philosophizing further (the book itself and the links above do that to death), how about some practical introspection?

How do you personally write Quality into your stories?

a) I leave that up to my Muse – I’m just the typist.

b) I studied at the Derek Zoolander Center For Authors Who Can’t Write Good (or equivalent institution).

c) I write stuff down then keep editing it until it no longer makes me feel nauseous.

d) Methodically. I used AI to calculate the best metrics for erotica, based on the current Top Lists. Now I target 43% dialog, 56% narration, 1% chapter titles and notes, a metaphor every 1,388 words, 2.2 similes per page, and one fart joke per story. Oh, and I “show, don’t tell” while using the rule of 3, of course.

e) I read. Lots and lots of reading. Now I can write.

f) None of the above.


I guess I’m a c), but I have felt the touch of a) on rare occasions.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

F.


And that's usually my grade too.

 

[shelleycat1]

I read the book in university and liked it so much my friends and I painted up tee shirts with the spanner and flower. My girlfriend then stole mine and wore it until it wore out. So she got a quality shirt from it, and I got a wife and then a quality life.

 

[StillStunned]

e) I read. Lots and lots of reading. Now I can write.

This, mostly. Combined with 25+ years' experience as a copyeditor and proofreader. I have an MA in English, and I suppose I did learn a thing or two from that.

I'll add to my earlier post that my biggest concern is the third example I gave: the prose. I'd like to be better at creating great plots, but it's not my priority. And character development even less. I have almost zero interest in character-driven stories, in my own writing, in the stories I read and in the television I watch.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I think quality always matters, and I think it matters in erotic stories. But I don't think of quality as a blessed realm.

And I agree. I just don't understand why you always have to disagree with me when we are so close to the same stance. All that I've ever said was that if you are taking scores to be an accurate measure of the quality of your work (which most of us are doing) you are fooling yourself. I'm not saying and never ever have said, "you guys can't write like me because I write high quality and you guys don't," which is usually the conclusion jumped to by most when I make these claims. I never remark on my own stories. I never remark on anyone's specific stories. I never call anyone out. I never ever ever say that someone is a lesser writer for writing a plotless unicorn (despite the fact that that may bore me personally - that is MY problem and mine alone). I HAVE said that writing a plotless unicorn (on top the fact that it's exceedingly predictable) handcuffs your ability to achieve quality because you take plot and motive and character depth out of your arsenal of quality, and in order to achieve quality your prose, voicing and immersion has to really shine to make up for the loss, so it's harder to achieve. But the vast majority of stories on lit are NOT very good quality at all (that's okay), yet almost half of them get Red Hs. If we look at this scientifically, 45% of stories are Red H and maybe 20% of stories are of a selected calibre of quality, then AT BEST (assuming that quality IS a prime indicator of score which it isn't by a long shot) AT BEST approx 42% of Red H stories are any good (the reality is much lower than that). Yet pretty much anyone who gets a Red H is all proud of being a good writer because the Red H proves it. I'm not trying to say that anyone is or isn't a bad writer. I never have. I'm just saying that if your measure of quality is the score, don't kid yourself.

Some writers write about characters and people. They want to show a journey, where the character is clearly different from where they began. How this is achieved, and how effectively it works, is probably what defines quality for them.

Other writers care about the story. They want to write something that's compelling, that keeps the reader transfixed from start to finish with a plot that's coherent and logical without being predictable. That would probably be their measure of quality.

Still other writers focus on the prose. Finding the right balance between description and suggestion, crafting a sentence or paragraph with the right rhythm and sounds, where the words give the story added depth.

All true. But the READERS are the ones rating your stories. Yes many of the writers are also readers but we make up a small percentage of the readers. And 60-70-80% of the readers don't grade on those factors because they don't know what they are. I'm not being snobby (I'll leave that to Plathfan) I'm being realistic. They have the mouse in one hand and their privates in the other and they want the slut to pounce the geek NOW dammit! And if you don't give them that you are not getting very many 5s. I'm exaggerating of course, but the phenomenon is true. Different categories may have different requirements, different templates, etc, but your chance of a good score greatly increase if you stick to the template, and risk reducing the more that you stray from it. Whereas an actual good quality piece will increase your score so minutely you can't really measure it. The ratio of shitty 4.8s to good 4.8s is about the same is shitty 2.9s to good 2.9s. I've read more than enough to know.

Do you really want to know how well you are writing or how well you are improving as a writer? Befriend a couple of good writers here that you respect, that you admire their skills, that are into your genres/kinks and get them to read your stuff and tell you what they think. That will be a FAR FAR better measure than scores and comments.

 

[StillStunned]

All true. But the READERS are the ones rating your stories. Yes many of the writers are also readers but we make up a small percentage of the readers. And 60-70-80% of the readers don't grade on those factors because they don't know what they are. I'm not being snobby (I'll leave that to Plathfan) I'm being realistic. They have the mouse in one hand and their privates in the other and they want the slut to pounce the geek NOW dammit! And if you don't give them that you are not getting very many 5s. I'm exaggerating of course, but the phenomenon is true. Different categories may have different requirements, different templates, etc, but your chance of a good score greatly increase if you stick to the template, and risk reducing the more that you stray from it. Whereas an actual good quality piece will increase your score so minutely you can't really measure it. The ratio of shitty 4.8s to good 4.8s is about the same is shitty 2.9s to good 2.9s. I've read more than enough to know.

You must have very different readers from mine then.

Do readers rate stories for hot, steamy content? Of course they do. They're on Lit, they don't come here to read an in-depth study of life under Stalinism, or the struggles of an outsider adapting to a different culture, or a grown person's addiction to their interactions with an imaginary childhood friend.

They come to read sex, and by publishing a story here you agree to that basic assumption. If you're not happy with the response your stories get, you should ask yourself whether the problem is with you or with your readers. But in my experience - 51 stories posted - readers respond to quality, or at least what I consider quality.

Of those 51 stories, all but 9 have a red H, and only 5 have a score lower than 4.48. My stories cover 10 categories, ranging from WIWAWs to silly fantasy to short sex vignettes to grim sci-fi and sword & sorcery to mood pieces and (despite what I wrote in an earlier post) character pieces. The sex varies from vanilla to voyeurism to transgender reluctance to graphic rape to lesbian to tentacles to sibling incest to threesomes to no sex at all.

So I feel quite safe in saying that there's an appreciative audience for what I consider quality writing, and that has nothing to do with basement dwellers popping pimples while they fondle themselves.

 

[Shuntwell]

It's a bit like asking if good cinematography matters in pornos. Up to a point, yes -- you want to be able to see what's going on. If it's lit really well and has good camerawork, people are going to like it and point it out but will it get more views than a hot chick getting railed by a guy dressed as the Count from Sesame Street shot on an iPhone? Probably not.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

They come to read sex, and by publishing a story here you agree to that basic assumption. If you're not happy with the response your stories get, you should ask yourself whether the problem is with you or with your readers. But in my experience - 51 stories posted - readers respond to quality, or at least what I consider quality.

You've missed the point completely. I have never said that I am not happy with the response of my readers. I have never ever said that I am not happy with my scores, because I am totally fine with my scores. Might be nice if they were a little higher so I could get a few more eyeballs but that aside I have zero problem with my scores. My stance is not about and has never been about me or fairness in judging me. I have never given a fuck about getting a 'fair shake' or whatever. Really, never ever ever. That is purely the assumption of many others in this forum - the false conclusion that they jump to.

And yes, I have always agreed to that basic assumption that people are here by and large to get off. That is my whole point. We know that the readers want to stroke (not all but mostly, or those who do want more than stroke still like to stroke along to the more or however you like to put it), yet a good score is always assumed to mean good writing. Why do we assume that? The audience is here largely to live fantasies and their fantasies usually have to plot, no depth, no conflict. This stance of mine has never ever been a condemnation of these readers or their attitudes, only a reality check for those who want to believe that this is a stroke site, yet also believe that the high scores mean that you write good. You can't have both. It's not primarily a literature site, it's primarily a porn fantasy site. Be real about it. You scores are not primarily indicating your quality of writing, they are primarily indicating whether you matched the reader's fantasy or not.

That is all that I've ever tried to say and for that I'm a butthurt cunt who feels injustice over her own poor scores. No, I'm not. I have said a jillion times in the past couple of years: I DO NOT CARE ABOUT MY SCORES. And every time I meant that literally 100%. The only thing that I care about in voting is votes to hits ratio because that is a metric of interest and connection. Whether the score goes up and down, I do not care. No one believes me because no one wants to believe me because it's easier to dismiss me to keep believing the fantasy that a high score means better writing. It's a porn site FFS, quality writing is the smallest factor in your scores.

And you can all keep equating scores to quality all that you want, but I will keep saying it from time to time because anyone who does finally get it WILL BE HAPPIER in their writing guaranteed and will discover more ways to enjoy writing and improve in the craft that they never knew existed.

 

[StillStunned]

No one believes me because no one wants to believe me because it's easier to dismiss me to keep believing the fantasy that a high score means better writing. It's a porn site FFS, quality writing is the smallest factor in your scores.

No-one believes you because, despite what you say, you're forever making sneering comments about "pandering to the stroke crowd" and "writing plotless unicorns". Those are value judgments. If you're going to make them, at least own them.

And you can all keep equating scores to quality all that you want, but I will keep saying it from time to time because anyone who does finally get it WILL BE HAPPIER in their writing guaranteed and will discover more ways to enjoy writing and improve in the craft that they never knew existed.

From what I've seen over the 18 months that I've been in the AH, most people agree that - above a certain level - scores are more an indicator of popularity than of quality. And that they're influenced by so many factors that they're impossible to predict.

My point above wasn't that a high score indicates quality. I said that consistent high scoring shows an appreciation of what I consider to be quality. It shows that my readers' tastes, and their ideas of quality, match my own. And if you're publishing for an audience - and why else would you publish? - their response is as good a measure of that quality as any other.

Do you really want to know how well you are writing or how well you are improving as a writer? Befriend a couple of good writers here that you respect, that you admire their skills, that are into your genres/kinks and get them to read your stuff and tell you what they think. That will be a FAR FAR better measure than scores and comments.

Why should the opinions of dozens, hundreds or thousands of readers carry less weight than the opinions of a small group of handpicked writers? If you're asking for feedback from writers you admire, you're limited to a group who are predisposed to share your tastes and ideas of quality. A hundred readers chosen at random will give you a much more objective opinion.

 

[Erozetta]

Rather than philosophizing further (the book itself and the links above do that to death), how about some practical introspection?

How do you personally write Quality into your stories?

a) I leave that up to my Muse – I’m just the typist.

b) I studied at the Derek Zoolander Center For Authors Who Can’t Write Good (or equivalent institution).

c) I write stuff down then keep editing it until it no longer makes me feel nauseous.

d) Methodically. I used AI to calculate the best metrics for erotica, based on the current Top Lists. Now I target 43% dialog, 56% narration, 1% chapter titles and notes, a metaphor every 1,388 words, 2.2 similes per page, and one fart joke per story. Oh, and I “show, don’t tell” while using the rule of 3, of course.

e) I read. Lots and lots of reading. Now I can write.

f) None of the above.


I guess I’m a c), but I have felt the touch of a) on rare occasions.

A, C, & E

Some people think it's of a decent quality. That's good enough for me.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

No-one believes you because, despite what you say, you're forever making sneering comments about "pandering to the stroke crowd" and "writing plotless unicorns". Those are value judgments. If you're going to make them, at least own them.

That's not what I said at all. You're reading way too deep into it and spinning it on purpose to double down on your opinion that I'm just a vindictive bitch. It's much easier than admitting that you jumped to conclusions.

Why should the opinions of dozens, hundreds or thousands of readers carry less weight than the opinions of a small group of handpicked writers? If you're asking for feedback from writers you admire, you're limited to a group who are predisposed to share your tastes and ideas of quality. A hundred readers chosen at random will give you a much more objective opinion.

Because they actually know something about writing. The vast majority of the readers here don't know much at all (and that's okay - for the zillionth time). So you'd rather be judged by 100 people who don't really know what they're talking about than to seek the advice of 2 or 3 who do? Of course 2 or 3 is a small sample, yes 100 admired writers would be better but try and find 100 in here. We just wrote chain story together, helped each other outline edit and proof. What is a better opinion of your work, 50 random porn fans or 5 peer writers of decent caliber giving you full beta reads? You know the answer (psst: it's the 5 proper beta readers).

 

[StillStunned]

That's not what I said at all. You're reading way too deep into it and spinning it on purpose to double down on your opinion that I'm just a vindictive bitch. It's much easier than admitting that you jumped to conclusions.

A conclusion I've jumped to after seeing you make the same comments dozens of times. If you genuinely don't feel that way, try to avoid phrases like "plotless unicorn" and "pandering" in future.

Because they actually know something about writing. The vast majority of the readers here don't know much at all (and that's okay - for the zillionth time). So you'd rather be judged by 100 people who don't really know what they're talking about than to seek the advice of 2 or 3 who do? Of course 2 or 3 is a small sample, yes 100 admired writers would be better but try and find 100 in here. We just wrote chain story together, helped each other outline edit and proof. What is a better opinion of your work, 50 random porn fans or 5 peer writers of decent caliber giving you full beta reads? You know the answer (psst: it's the 5 proper beta readers).

There's a difference between having the experience of writing a story and being able to express an opinion on a story. What's your basis for saying that "the vast majority of readers here don't know much at all"? Do you know them? Do you know their background? Or are you assuming that they "have the mouse in one hand and their privates in the other and they want the slut to pounce the geek NOW dammit!" As I noted above, that's not my experience with readers at all, even allowing for exaggeration. If it were true, most of my stories would be rated in the low 3s.

And what's your basis for saying that writers know something about writing? Most people here in the AH will tell you they've never had any training. "I had an idea and just started putting words down. I enjoyed it, so I kept doing it." That probably extends to a substantial proportion of Lit's writers. They'll also happily admit they know nothing about literary devices, or even grammar and punctuation. If you admire someone's writing, that's absolutely great. But it doesn't necessarily make them a better or more objective judge than the thousands of readers here.