Poorly performing stories that you still love

[ronde]

My lowest rated story is one of my first and is the story of a man visiting Haiti and meeting a young and seductive Haitian woman who takes him to the grave of a woman who used slaves to satisfy her carnal desires. It was in the "non human" category and received 2 nice comments. I thought it was both an interesting story as well as a peek into slavery in Haiti and the vudu religion of that time.

https://literotica.com/s/the-tortured-spirit-of-lovers

 

[Priscilla_June]

I'll back @EmilyMiller up in that getting to know writers here in the forums generally (not always, of course) leads to reading some of their stuff, and they'll read yours.

And since we all know how awesome it feels to GET comments, we generally try to give them.

Nothing wrong with writers supporting other writers IMO.

After all, most of us ARE readers, too.

A great point i need to be better about checking out other’s work.

 

[EmilyMiller]

A great point i need to be better about checking out other’s work.

The vast majority of people are super friendly and we all share the same hobby (or varieties of it).

Em

PS iOS autocorrect changed “hobby” to “hubby” above - how very Literotica!

 

[tenyari]

A great point i need to be better about checking out other’s work.

Likewise.

And I know it's worth it because I find some of the best stories by reading some of the people here. Still need to go back and put in some comments for some of them so they know I read them...

 

[Djmac1031]

Likewise.

And I know it's worth it because I find some of the best stories by reading some of the people here. Still need to go back and put in some comments for some of them so they know I read them...

It's not easy, for sure. So many folks here I keep promising myself to read. Simply not enough hours in the day lol.

But in my PERSONAL experience (yours may vary, of course) I think the best stories I've read so far are by authors who also hang out here.

They're also super supportive, even if they're not big fans of whatever genre you write.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

My lowest-rated story remains BTB, Incorporated, which is a "Burn the Bitch" spoof with a twist, narrated by a Mike Hammer-style private detective. I thought it was amusing, but the subject matter, and especially the twist at the end, guaranteed that it would be hammered by the BTB reader crowd. It has a score of 3.73. It received far nastier comments than any other story I've published, by far. But it's had over 80,000 views, and has its share of good comments and favorites, as well. It was one of my most enjoyable stories to write. I put pedal to the metal with the material and laughed as I wrote and didn't care what sort of reception I got.

One of my personal favorites that didn't score that poorly but has never had a red H is A Bikini With A Mind Of Its Own, about a woman who purchases a bikini online, takes it to the beach . . . and finds it keeps mysteriously falling off her and exposing her. It has a score of 4.44. The surprising thing is it has over 317,000 views and over 1700 votes. The story has some magical/whimsical elements, and I think they turned off some of the readers.

This is what I take away from scores, as they apply to my stories (disregarding how they compare with other people's scores): they have nothing to do with how good I think the story is or whether I like it. That's a big reason why, after six years of writing, I don't care much about scores. Some stories have good scores but don't get as many views. Some have lower scores and get many views and favorites. The notion that "My story has to have a high score or nobody will read it" is completely wrong, at least as applied to my 54 published stories.

In my experience, stories score lower because 1) they're only 750 words long (all my 750 word stories are under 4.5), 2) they prominently feature women who have sex outside of marriage and enjoy it, or 3) the stories contain whimsical or odd elements that conflict with the expectations readers have for stories of that category.

I enjoyed BTB, Inc. and gave it five stars. I can understand why you would be disappointed with the reception it received.

 

[SimonDoom]

I enjoyed BTB, Inc. and gave it five stars. I can understand why you would be disappointed with the reception it received.

I appreciate your comment.
It was only my third story, published about three weeks after my first one, so I had no idea what to expect. I was bowled over by the nasty comments, like "Here, eat my condom." Many were deleted by the Site at one point or another (not by me). It was a good lesson, and I've toughened my skin and I don't care as much anymore.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Okay, don't laugh but my biggest performance surprise for a story remains 1990. It has been published now for 107 days, and is still averaging just over 5 views per day for a total of 552 views. However within those views, it has 373 votes (4.84) and 16 comments - all positive.

In contrast, my Valentine's Day story, Family Fornication Contest has been published for only 94 days. It's averaging over 850 views per day, has 915 votes (4.73), and 28 comments.

 

[gunhilltrain]

See that’s 6 years of learning. I’m sure I’ll be all grown-up about it too, when I’m 32 .

Em

My daughter will be thirty-two in August. So they let people your age have drivers licenses and stay out after 11:00 PM? (Just kidding!)

 

[EmilyMiller]

My daughter will be thirty-two in August. So they let people your age have drivers licenses and stay out after 11:00 PM? (Just kidding!)

They do. It’s a crime, right? I can even get served in some bars.

Em

 

[JessGabriel]

My story, Finding What's Real. It's long, and it's a slow burn, so I know that's why it doesn't have the views or ratings. Here's the TRUE synopsis and link:

Kira Jensen and Vinnie DeLuca were close once, but a burgeoning mental illness drove a wedge between them. When the death of Vinnie’s mother reveals that he may have another sibling, they embark on a cross-country trip where friendship and passion bloom amid snark, tears, and laughter.

https://literotica.com/s/finding-whats-real

 

[Ian_Snow]

Not on this site but elsewhere, I've got a novel called Billionaire's Bequest, a strange little personal project I worked on last year I absolutely fell in love with. The backbone is pretty typical - a young man stands to inherit a ton of money from his model/actor father when he passes from cancer. There's some threesome romance elements to it and a fair bit of heat, but the part I fell in love with writing was the young man getting to know his family, who he had never really met before. It turns into this really sweet exploration of brotherhood and friendship. Unfortunately, as you can probably tell, it's a mess of ideas. There's an undercooked mystery, family intrigue, and much of it is a travelogue as much as it is a novel. It got ravaged in early reviews and never recovered, which I get. But it doesn't stop me from loving the whole thing very dearly.

That seems to be a running theme with my own personal favorites among my work. If I love it, it's probably going to get butchered. Hah.

 

[gunhilltrain]

As anyone who's read my posts over the last 5 years, I enjoy recording, noodling over, and discussing numbers. I regularly monitor my story stats on an Excel sheet I started keeping 6 years and 10 days ago. I find it fun to do so, and somewhat informative.

I'm also very competitive, but I also believe that competition only means something when the competitive criteria mean something.

The key is to be realistic about the numbers, and to understand the limits of what they mean, and how they can be manipulated, and how completely incommensurate numbers in some contexts are with numbers in others. You might feel good knowing that your story received 10,000 views when you know somebody else's story received 1,000. You might not feel so good when you know somebody else received 100,000. It's all relative, and if you look at it any other way things get silly quickly. It's why I think the red H, and especially the preoccupation with it, is silly.

Something to keep in mind: ratings exist for the reader, not for you. A rating is to help a potential reader to decide which stories to select. The entire system is set up to facilitate readers in selecting stories. When you shift your frame of reference, and see it that way, and stop seeing it as a reward or as something that your story "deserves," then it makes it much easier to deal with. It takes a load off the mind.

I've gotten to the point that while I might be disappointed in how a story's numbers have fared, I'm never bothered by it. It's not worth being bothered by.

I haven't gone the Excel sheet route yet.

I suppose scores are for the readers, but it's probably also the best metric (about the only metric) for authors, so I'll take what I can get. I haven't reached the blasé state (if that is the right word) that SamuelX seems to have reached, and I never will. (Samuel, are you out there somewhere?) So you did say that your Excel sheet was informative.

I guess all numbers can be misleading and manipulative, although salaries, bank balances, portfolios and such count for a lot.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I'll back @EmilyMiller up in that getting to know writers here in the forums generally (not always, of course) leads to reading some of their stuff, and they'll read yours.

And since we all know how awesome it feels to GET comments, we generally try to give them.

Nothing wrong with writers supporting other writers IMO.

After all, most of us ARE readers, too.

I've sort of apologized for this before, but I don't read much of what is on here. I'm not even sure why. The next thing I'll be reading is Charles Bukowski's Hollywood.

 

[gunhilltrain]

They do. It’s a crime, right? I can even get served in some bars.

Em

It was more fun when the drinking age was eighteen in many states, including New York. Now I get carded if I buy beer at a supermarket. I suppose my face is not a good substitute ID.

 

[EmilyMiller]

It was more fun when the drinking age was eighteen in many states, including New York. Now I get carded if I buy beer at a supermarket. I suppose my face is not a good substitute ID.

It’s only in the last year or so that I’ve lost a bit of my teenie look and occasionally get let in. It helps I’m often with my mid-thirties bf.

Em

 

[NoTalentHack]

I haven't gone the Excel sheet route yet.

I suppose scores are for the readers, but it's probably also the best metric (about the only metric) for authors, so I'll take what I can get. I haven't reached the blasé state (if that is the right word) that SamuelX seems to have reached, and I never will. (Samuel, are you out there somewhere?) So you did say that your Excel sheet was informative.

I guess all numbers can be misleading and manipulative, although salaries, bank balances, portfolios and such count for a lot.

It's a terrible metric for authors, honestly. I mean, there are worse ones, but I'll give you two examples right now: Why She Cheated and In Vitro Veritas, the two stories I released yesterday. I know why they each didn't do as well as they probably should have, which is good, but that's me applying a qualitative "fix" in my head to a quantitative issue.

Why She Cheated went into Loving Wives; it could have gone into Romance, but cheating (which is a central part of the story) often goes over like a lead balloon there. Besides, it's specifically what the category is "supposed" to be about: a cheating wife and her affair partner, a guy she meets in a bar. My beta readers loved it, to the point where one told me she cried and another said it was one of her favorite stories I'd ever written. It's at a 4.31 in LW specifically because it does have a compassionate and sympathetic view of a specific cheater and why she cheats, and because of some spoiler-y stuff that's "how to deal with a grown up, modern relationship" stuff. A lot of people in the comments love it. A number specifically hit the spoiler-y stuff as to why they didn't like it. And some flat out said, "Cheating should never be glorified." There are legitimate complaints about it too, i.e., the ending's a little abrupt, but I wasn't trying to write a novella.

In Vitro Veritas is a cuckqueaning story over in Fetish, also at 4.31, that's about a husband/cuckquean/cuckcake relationship that's pretty well established. It's also a love story, of sorts, between the three of them. Someone whose opinion I trust in this particular arena, who is also very highly rated with similar content, said it was excellent, if very dark; there's quite a bit of cruelty involved, but also a very HEA ending. I know, or at least am as certain as I can be, that I picked up 10 followers just off the back of this story, based on the other things/writers they've favorited/followed. If I had dropped it, sight unseen, on a new account, I'm pretty sure it would be an H story, and maybe a highly ranked one. But because it's on the NTH account, the people already following me from LW came to see it and a lot of them DID NOT like it at all, and they told me so in the comments. Even though I said "hey, this is in Fetish, here's the content warnings of what's going to be in here, turn back if you're following me from LW and don't want to see this." I know this because, looking at the front page of Fetish, there are a number of stories in the 4.5+ range that don't have an H next to them, which means they haven't received ten ratings. IVV has received 87.

Both of these stories, IME, are very good stories. One can't find a space that's "right" for it here, and the other is hampered because people don't really follow the guidelines that are given, instead choosing to "Dead Dove" stuff that they are told they aren't going to like, no matter of whether it's technically good and/or the content will be interesting to the people that will like it. The site just isn't set up in such a way as to provide good feedback through its rating system, because that's not really what it's meant to do. And, of course, there are the people that 1-bomb anything a particular writer does because the writer pissed them off at one point for not giving them exactly what they want.

What I'm most reminded of is all of the Amazon reviews that are one stars, with the complaint, "UPS mangled the box in shipping." We get a lot of those here. So don't worry about the ratings so much, and go with your gut, with what trusted beta readers tell you, what's in comments that have useful things to say, and what other writers tell you.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Well I’ve only done 2 multi-part stories, one of which is ongoing now.

I guess part 4 of ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE was one I had an issue with. It’s not the lowest scored story at 4.33 but it’s one where the resolution to the story begins (along with the introduction of the BDSM kink) and so I expected it to do better.

Obviously HOT AND FUZZY is still ongoing so all the bets aren’t in yet with part 5 being the end of the week.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Arriving late to this thread (it's early morning here in Oz).

Sally's Cream Pies my lowest rated story (4.08/63, off 16k Romance).

As a commenter noted, they couldn't see why this story didn't do better, because it's a sweet little thing about a woman being pampered after a busy day at work. I suspect the low score is because perverts expecting porn cream pies didn't get any, and couldn't handle the sweetness. This is why I never subscribe to Simon's click-bait title theories - this title sucked readers into disappointment (maybe that proves his theory is right, but what were the perves doing in Romance?).

In the Library - Chapter Seven (4.07/61, off 13k Erotic Horror). For many years this had pride of place as my lowest score, sitting at 3.96 without moving. It's part of a long shaggy dog story (23 chapters), the first long thing I wrote on Lit, back in 2014. Most of the rest of it is Red H content.

It's my living proof that even in Erotic Horror, people draw the line at son fucking father incest, with mom depicted as a slut. I now have a squick warning in the comments to Chapter Six, but I cannot account for why its score has crept up in the last several years. This whole story also shows the the long haul - this thing has pulled in four times more views over the years than it did in the first year.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I suppose if I had to pick a story I was happy with that just didn't get the reaction I'd hoped for, it would be Night Of The Giving Head.

https://literotica.com/s/night-of-the-giving-head

Excellent title though!

 

[Emotional]

The thought of being tied up by you is sooooo tempting, but can't take the risk, I've read your stories.

 

[Djmac1031]

Excellent title though!

Thanks. Obvious homage to Night Of The Living Dead is obvious lol.

So much so that I felt obligated to give George Romero credit in the afterwards.

I guess women zombies who craved dick instead of brains didn't appeal to a mass audience though lol.

 

[gunhilltrain]

It's a terrible metric for authors, honestly. I mean, there are worse ones, but I'll give you two examples right now: Why She Cheated and In Vitro Veritas, the two stories I released yesterday. I know why they each didn't do as well as they probably should have, which is good, but that's me applying a qualitative "fix" in my head to a quantitative issue.

Why She Cheated went into Loving Wives; it could have gone into Romance, but cheating (which is a central part of the story) often goes over like a lead balloon there. Besides, it's specifically what the category is "supposed" to be about: a cheating wife and her affair partner, a guy she meets in a bar. My beta readers loved it, to the point where one told me she cried and another said it was one of her favorite stories I'd ever written. It's at a 4.31 in LW specifically because it does have a compassionate and sympathetic view of a specific cheater and why she cheats, and because of some spoiler-y stuff that's "how to deal with a grown up, modern relationship" stuff. A lot of people in the comments love it. A number specifically hit the spoiler-y stuff as to why they didn't like it. And some flat out said, "Cheating should never be glorified." There are legitimate complaints about it too, i.e., the ending's a little abrupt, but I wasn't trying to write a novella.

In Vitro Veritas is a cuckqueaning story over in Fetish, also at 4.31, that's about a husband/cuckquean/cuckcake relationship that's pretty well established. It's also a love story, of sorts, between the three of them. Someone whose opinion I trust in this particular arena, who is also very highly rated with similar content, said it was excellent, if very dark; there's quite a bit of cruelty involved, but also a very HEA ending. I know, or at least am as certain as I can be, that I picked up 10 followers just off the back of this story, based on the other things/writers they've favorited/followed. If I had dropped it, sight unseen, on a new account, I'm pretty sure it would be an H story, and maybe a highly ranked one. But because it's on the NTH account, the people already following me from LW came to see it and a lot of them DID NOT like it at all, and they told me so in the comments. Even though I said "hey, this is in Fetish, here's the content warnings of what's going to be in here, turn back if you're following me from LW and don't want to see this." I know this because, looking at the front page of Fetish, there are a number of stories in the 4.5+ range that don't have an H next to them, which means they haven't received ten ratings. IVV has received 87.

Both of these stories, IME, are very good stories. One can't find a space that's "right" for it here, and the other is hampered because people don't really follow the guidelines that are given, instead choosing to "Dead Dove" stuff that they are told they aren't going to like, no matter of whether it's technically good and/or the content will be interesting to the people that will like it. The site just isn't set up in such a way as to provide good feedback through its rating system, because that's not really what it's meant to do. And, of course, there are the people that 1-bomb anything a particular writer does because the writer pissed them off at one point for not giving them exactly what they want.

What I'm most reminded of is all of the Amazon reviews that are one stars, with the complaint, "UPS mangled the box in shipping." We get a lot of those here. So don't worry about the ratings so much, and go with your gut, with what trusted beta readers tell you, what's in comments that have useful things to say, and what other writers tell you.

I've used the Amazon analogy myself before. But we don't have much else to go on with Lit. There are the scores, the views, the comments, and the favorites. Some people monetize their work, but Lit itself pays us nothing. So here we are, on a site with a huge number of writers, and huge number of stories, and a huge number of readers. It's kind of a mass production assembly line, except each one of us authors make the products on our own time.

It used to be that published authors, filmmakers, and musicians might read reviews in various publications, but probably the most important metric for them was sales, box office receipts, and so forth. Now anybody can comment anywhere. But does Brian De Palma (he just popped into my head) care about what is on Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb.com? Does Lady Gaga look at what people are saying about her albums on Amazon? I doubt it.

This site allows votes and comments from non-members, including anonymous ones, so it's particularly a circus. There are a couple of sites that don't allow that, so they are a bit calmer. But on any site, you get your two weeks of attention or so, then you go into the back catalog. That is the nature of what is possible for us. None of us are going to be, say, T.S. Boyle (he just popped into my head too).

 

[gunhilltrain]

It’s only in the last year or so that I’ve lost a bit of my teenie look and occasionally get let in. It helps I’m often with my mid-thirties bf.

Em

If you've got the ID, you should be let in, no matter what you look like. They don't let you take out your license or whatever?

 

[EmilyMiller]

If you've got the ID, you should be let in, no matter what you look like. They don't let you take out your license or whatever?

I expressed myself badly. I meant waved in without being carded. Some places card everyone of course. But I was used to going out in a group and being the only one carded. Of course they would then let me in.

Em