How influential are comments?

Cross posted from another thread because it’s relevant here.

My latest has managed to attract some really nasty snide and spiteful commenting. Loving Wives recently has really started to look like 4 Chan in its commenting.

One thing I’ve really started to notice is that people will comment if you are have god level stories, and then it’s a stream of ‘this is so great!’ Over and over again. Lovely for the ego, but it doesn’t do much to make you a better writer.

Otherwise it’s a litany of complaints about anything and everything, real or imagined. Very little constructive criticism, mostly just complaining that it’s either too short or too long, not enough details, too much detail, and my favorite ‘this character wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) behave like that’. As though characters are real and have their own lives.

There’s this weird need for a specific type of reader to project themselves - or an idealized version of themselves - onto the characters and what they do, and they get majorly bent out of shape if they don’t behave as the reader ‘thinks’ they should.

There’s a tremendous amount of entitlement from readers, that you as an author, because you’ve decided to spend the time and effort to write something, somehow owe the reader exactly what ever they think they want. Because they’ve decided to read it, you somehow owe them a story tailored to their desires.

Lit commenting is a post child for the old adage ‘if something is given freely, it is considered of no value by those receiving, and treated as such.’

In terms of ‘does it influence me?’ No, not really. I’ve added a chapter to one story years ago simply because I realized I hadn’t given a point of view from the betraying wife, but I’ve never gone back and changed anything based on comments.

I have, however, written a sequel to a story because so many commentators asked, and I wish I’d never done that. Sequels are never as good as the original. Always keep them wanting more is good advice, that I should have paid attention to. But no, my ego was flattered and so…

My top amount of comments is just hitting 850 on one story, and honestly, there’s about 8 comments in there which is actually worth anything, nice though it is to get that kind of attention - and in Loving wives, too, which is a notorious hive of scum and villainy.
 
It's certainly not out of the ordinary, but it is still grossly misunderstood, so misunderstood that people get upset and angry if you try to show them the truth about it.



Providing a reading experience and/or making a connection, and seeking applause and affirmation are two very separate things. However, they are related. Writing to share that connection, to offer that experience, is writing from the heart. Writing for the external affirmation is writing from the ego. It can be very difficult to tell the difference. In fact most people can't. And if you try to explain this to them, they become offended, "Ohhh, you say I write with ego, well fuck you! Who do you think you are?" which is really the ego getting pissed off and confirming that they are writing from ego. And the answer is, "whether you realize it or not, well yes, you are writing from your ego." It's just the truth. And I'm not saying that anyone is wrong for writing from the ego but I am saying that one would be wise to recognize when they are or aren't so that they do not kid themselves about their own writing. You are not wrong to write from your ego, but you are wrong to believe that you are not when you actually are. Because unless you can maintain the attention of readers like silkstocking does, writing primarily from the ego will probably eventually kill your writing. It will certainly limit your inspiration in the long run.

Writing from the heart and writing from the ego is a spectrum. One cannot write 100% from the heart and also a little bit for the ego. It's not possible. Personally I always strive to write 100% storytelling from the heart. Am I doing it? Difficult to measure. Maybe I am 96% heart 4% ego, or maybe 92/8 or 99/1 or something, and certainly a little different on each story. But there are many writers here that are obviously more than 50% ego (some way more) and less than 50% heart, and only maybe 1 or 2 will actually admit it. It's super easy to tell by the way that they talk about their scores and feedback and sometimes even their literal motivations.



Are you kidding? Look how many people live and die on comments and scores?



Chaptered stories are usually the biggest examples. The vast majority of chaptered stories are written one chapter at a time, and the following chapters are influenced and inspired by the positive feedback and external affirmations of the previous chapters. It's a plague of meandering soap operas that more often than not have no end. Why? Because the writer is addicted to the affirmation and when it dwindles and stops, the writing dwindles and stops. It's super easy to spot.

My personal opinion on the nature of the phenomenon:

1 ~ someone gets the idea to write a story, a genuine inspiration to create something. They are writing from the heart (or largely or very close to 100% heart).

2 ~ They publish and get lots of positive feedback, probably unexpectedly good or strong. It's a pleasant surprise and they want more.

3 ~ They feel the high of the external affirmation which pulls their motivation/inspiration more towards the ego, maybe 80% heart 20% ego).

4 ~ They publish the next chapter and it gets less feedback but still positive.

5 ~ They feel less of a high but think that it's just variance and that they can get the original high back again with chapter 3. The motivation/inspiration moves to 50/50 heart/ego to chase that external affirmation high.

6 ~ They publish chapter 3 and the feedback is less, partly due to fickle readership who have lost their excitement in general and partly due to the lack of genuine inspiration from the writer. The high is even less.

7 ~ The cycle repeats and after chapter 5 or 6 (or 11 or 15 etc) the inspiration moves to 20% heart 80% ego, the feedback trickles, the high is gone and the writer quits writing due to lack of motivation (can't get the high anymore).

Notice that the cycle repeats. It's an addiction. It's a downward spiral of diminishing return of energy. It's a dead giveaway that someone has been writing primarily from the ego and no longer from the heart, whether or not they realize it themselves. I don't need to make any assumptions nor read anyone's mind (as I often angrily get accused of). I can see it in plain sight (and you can too if you know what to look for).

It's exactly like an addiction. The writer is chasing an external energy source (smokes, drinks, drugs, sex, etc) and the more that they turn towards it, the bigger dose they need to stay high, and when they reach the point where it is impossible to maintain the high, they overdose and die - or in the case of the writer, they quit writing (writing death).

And remember, most of the readers are addicted too, usually to their kinks. When a writer gives them something that hits their kinky fantasy and everything works out the way that they want, the reader gets an external high. That's why they give 5s and ask for "more!" The writer feeds the addiction. How many readers on lit read this way? 60%? 70%? 80%? (shrug)
I don't think that there is an author in existence who can fully negate what you call "the influence of ego" on their writing. It's human nature. And I agree that if it becomes the primary source of motivation the product will likely suck.

I can also easily agree with what you said about chaptered stories, that some people steer their future chapters based on reception and feedback. For some, it's a purely commercial decision (Patreon model and such) but for some, I agree, it's to try to get even better scores - what you call pandering.
Yet I believe that's a foolish approach as chaptered stories rarely get plenty of comments, so it often comes down to steering your story based on a comment or two. That seems idiotic to me, even if one's goal is to improve their scores, as one or two comments can't possibly represent the desires of thousands who didn't leave any feedback at all. In the Patreon model, at least patrons get to vote so you know you are giving your financial supporters what they want.
That is why I said what I said about chaptered stories - because I don't believe that the approach you mentioned actually results in an improvement in scores of chaptered stories. The improvement, among other things, is mostly due to those who don't really like the story being filtered out over the course of many chapters.

As I already said, the most pandering that happens here on Lit is when authors try to copy the theme and the plot of a story that did very well with the readers, such as the backseat mom and similar, and not because they are truly interested in the theme but because they think it will bring them laurels and followers. Now that's pure ego and pandering in my book.
 
comments have definitely impacted some of my style elements, especially in my early days of writing for the site. I became a better writer by taking some of the advice to heart. Much of what really helped me grow came more in PM's or here in the AH though.

As far as motivating me for future stories, ABSOLUTELY. But I can't remember ever going back and doing a complete rewrite to satisfy commenters. And those times where I have continued a story directly because of comments have, IMHO, resulted in some of my weaker efforts.


The most angry/aggressive comments I think I've ever received was not a story here on Lit but a co-written work published by a now defunct e-pub called Phaze. Imp and I had a series we wrote for them and in the third "book" (really more a novella in length than a novel) we wrote a character into the story whose entire purpose from the beginning called for her to not survive the story. Fortunately or unfortunately, we had a clear enough vision of her that she almost immediately became a fan favorite. Her demise in the same story ended up generating an awful lot of anger among some of our readers, but we resisted the urge to resurrect her because we really didn't have anything else for her to do. She was the sister of our female lead for the series. I seem to remember we discussed the possibility of using her as a main character in a spinoff prequel, but we never did write that. At the time we had a few sets of characters and story arcs we were following and we also were trying to put out as much new content as we could to help us increase our sales and following. Trying to shoehorn a "dead end" prequel into our world-building wasn't a thing we felt would help in the long run.
 
Some of my harshest comments have come from stories that readers invested the most in. That was really important feedback to me. I studied how I built those characters and have tried to emulate it in other stories. Also, the hate when you write something challenging and real… those comments mean more than the floss on schmaltzy things.
 
I've never made major changes based on comments, But I can imagine myself doing so if someone got me thinking. I have written at least one story that was only written because of how many were asking for a sequel, but I wrote it for the wrong reason and the characters in the story were entirely based on me and a girl I dated in college. Because I didn't use actual events in the sequel, I found that I wasn't in nearly the same mindset and I feel that the result is one of my weaker stories on the site. The story it is a sequel of is perhaps my BEST work on the site, mostly because I was very comfortable writing it because I knew exactly where it was heading. I think it has my best dialogue here. Wingman won the annual award for Best Erotic Couplings story in 2004, so I must have done something right.
 
Naw.
The comments do not influence my stories at all.
I do delete the really horrible comments.
A few have even made me crack up laughing.
 
Ultimately, do you write stories for your entertainment, or did you write a story for the least common denomination of an audience?

I write for myself - stuff I like to read or re-read.
 
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