Do you remove a story if it flops?

[IsenRae]

I wrote something random and... well I thought it was interesting.

Others do not seem to think so. It was for a contest. Perhaps I hurried a bit to make the deadline.

Maybe I shouldn't have even tried.

What do you do if a story flops and gets tons of downvotes?

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Leave it be.

Sometimes stories with lots of downvotes also have lots of upvotes.

My most-hated story isn't even in Loving Wives, has a score below what I thought was possible for anything literate - and has half a dozen positive comments, three asking for a sequel.

Even if your flops don't have fans, it's useful to have them there to analyse later - with years passing, I can now tell why some of my earlier stories just aren't very good.

 

[UncutinSocal]

Don’t take anything down. At most just release an updated or revised version later on.

It’s good to see where you started and sometimes, certain stories just don’t do well

 

[PattyJune500]

I have published more than 100 stories and some performed far better than I would have expected, and others I really liked have low views or low scores. However, just as soon as I get ready to delete a lower performing story, I get a wonderful comment or a series of favs of it that make me glad I did not act.

I am proud of every story I publish and I welcome all positive and constructive feedback and suggestions. I do this for myself but also for the readers on this site. I want a two-way communication with folks.

It is like the saying, ""Things are never as bad or as good as they seem."

I say allow lower performing stories to remain for posterity and those who do not fly mainstream.

Best wishes, Patty

 

[MelissaBaby]

I've ben tempted a couple of tinms when my stories did not do as well as I had hoped. But, and here is a bit of an object lesson, over time, the ratings on those stories have risen to more respectable score.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

Nope. I prefer to leave it there as a form of spite against the very fact that it flopped.

 

[ColtonWrites]

Nope. Leave it alone.

With the possible caveat of if you know why it's doing poorly, and you can correct it, you should do that - I had some stories do poorly because I hadn't put them in the right category.

 

[NotWise]

I wrote something random and... well I thought it was interesting.

Others do not seem to think so. It was for a contest. Perhaps I hurried a bit to make the deadline.

Maybe I shouldn't have even tried.

What do you do if a story flops and gets tons of downvotes?

My worst-scoring story is an important part of my catalog. I measure other ratings against it. "It doesn't look good, but it's better than that," and so on.

I'd leave it, especially if it's in the current contest. Scores for stories in the current contest will go up, and some can go up a lot.

There are different reasons for a story to flop, and sometimes excellent stories can get low scores.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Cancel something because it doesn't do well? You must be confusing me with Disney/Lucasfilm.

No. Because at the end of the day, I wouldn't have submitted it if I didn't like it.

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

Is this your latest, Wild in Eden, you're talking about? I enjoyed that one immensely. That was some trippy shit. Please don't pull it.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Is this your latest, Wild in Eden, you're talking about? I enjoyed that one immensely. That was some trippy shit. Please don't pull it.

I looked in her library but only found her series. Link the new one please?

 

[WaxPhilosophic]

I looked in her library but only found her series. Link the new one please?

Here ya go: https://www.literotica.com/s/ai-era-wild-in-eden

 

[crookedletter]

I wouldn’t do it based on reception, but maybe based on my own feeling about it. If I really felt I rushed a submission and regret not taking more time with it, I might consider pulling it down and giving it another look/revision/rewrite.

 

[SmilingLez]

I have never removed anything that I've ever submitted here or elsewhere. I write for myself not for an audience. Ratings, views, best of lists, and little red hot tags mean nothing to me. YMMV

 

[JGittes]

When I started publishing here, I rewrote several of my first efforts. It was part of my learning process.

I've been working off and on for a decade now on a sequel to my first story. It had grown to 80k words and there was a time where I had gotten stuck and fed up to the point I decided to abandon it and salvage it for parts. (Don't try learning how to write a novel while writing a novel.) There were at least 20 interesting situations that could be individual stories, and I started breaking those out and writing them as individual stories.

I published one salvaged part before I figured out how to proceed with the big story, and abandoned the salvaging project. It's clearly a vignette, and not a complete story by even my low standards. It's rated higher than I think is warranted.

If I ever finish the 'big' story (I'm old, have rewritten it down to 65k, but am only half way through), I will probably pull the salvaged vignette, only to lower confusion. While it would be interesting to compare a decade old version of part of a bigger project, as KeithD used to say, this is a reading site, not a literary criticism site.

 

[IWroteThis]

It was for a contest. Perhaps I hurried a bit to make the deadline.

My worst (scoring) story was one I rushed as well.

I spent a lot of time working on my first story, excited about using the 750 Word Project as my debut. Then I got the endorphin rush from the feedback and I was hooked! I went from having one story ready to submitting seven stories before the month was over.

Long story short, my focus was on beating the clock instead of the stories, especially with my third one.

It was a new idea, and I rushed through finishing the first draft, rushed through editing, and submitted something beneath my skill level in that rush. I've thought about rewriting it a few times, but it's an important part of my writing history, reminding me why I don't rush to publish. Still, I've never considered deleting it.

 

[bumpercars]

I have a film noir-esque series about a detective who solves mysteries that involve a lot of ravishment, like The Big Sleep with less murder and more sex. I have fun writing them, I think they have good one-liners and satisfying mysteries, and commenters seem to like them. They're also among my lowest-voted stories.

Sometimes you write a thing and lots of people like it. Other times you write a thing and most people are meh but a handful of people absolutely love it. You never know what will appeal to who, and a story that gets downvoted might still be a new reader's favorite. I would encourage you to leave the story up.

 

[Bamagan]

I wrote something random and... well I thought it was interesting.

Others do not seem to think so. It was for a contest. Perhaps I hurried a bit to make the deadline.

Maybe I shouldn't have even tried.

What do you do if a story flops and gets tons of downvotes?

I'd only penalize a story for soccer flopping (faking an injury).

 

[Rob_Royale]

Read it. Loved it. Left a comment.

 

[Voboy]

Stories I have reservations about don't get submitted. If I post a story, it's because I like it.

Even if it bombs, I still like it.

So no, I wouldn't even think of removing it.

 

[WittyUserName]

I wrote something random and... well I thought it was interesting.

Others do not seem to think so. It was for a contest. Perhaps I hurried a bit to make the deadline.

Maybe I shouldn't have even tried.

What do you do if a story flops and gets tons of downvotes?

I'd leave it, but it's up to you. I submitted my first story that was under 4.5, and I honestly considered it. But instead, I'm continuing the story. I like it, I enjoyed writing it. I can learn from it. You can learn from yours, too.

 

[deathlynx]

I don't normally pay much attention to the ratings, so I decided to go through and take a peek. Aside from a couple of my newest works (one with no ratings and a 2 star with only a single rating) my lowest is actually the final chapter of a series. After that are a couple of non-erotic pieces where I played with style to a degree that I knew they weren't going to do well. They were experimentation.

I go with the prevailing sentiment here, leave it up. Maybe, after a few years, look back at it, edit and repost an updated version. I've been going back through old stories, editing and reposting, and it's interesting to see how both my writing and psyche have progressed over the years. I can, often tell when I wrote something just based on the themes present by how they match up with what I was going through IRL.

 

[WCSGarland]

I wrote something random and... well I thought it was interesting.

Others do not seem to think so. It was for a contest. Perhaps I hurried a bit to make the deadline.

Maybe I shouldn't have even tried.

What do you do if a story flops and gets tons of downvotes?

Downvotes are a story flopping? Hell, I guess that means I should remove most everything I published in Loving Wives.

 

[SmilingLez]

I wrote something random and... well I thought it was interesting.

Others do not seem to think so. It was for a contest. Perhaps I hurried a bit to make the deadline.

Maybe I shouldn't have even tried.

What do you do if a story flops and gets tons of downvotes?

IMO If you enjoyed writing your story and you like the story, leave it be. If the purpose of the story was to get high ratings, a little red hot tag and perhaps be on the best of list, the choice is yours. YMMV

 

[JohnBJohn]

Definitely leave it up. One of my stories wasn't particularly well received, nor was its sequel. However, an author that I really like and admire actually read it and sent me a note saying that he did and why. We exchanged a few emails about it and he asked if I'd be publishing the final chapter. As I wasn't too happy with the direction it had been going, I had stopped work on it, but someday I'd like to return to it.

Going back and looking at the two chapters just now, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the first one had somehow crept up over 4.5*. So over time, a low rated story can rise up.