Forum: Author Hangout

The other factor is that publicly encouraging reader feedback also helps. Though again, with short stories, readers are more likely to read it through, and then put it aside, rather than seriously contemplate the unfolding tale, imagining how it might progress.

Longer stories encourage those deeper contemplations, and thus generate more feedback, and yet, the 'tear jerker' IS a red-flag for many. Yet again, most don't object to the occasional sad moments in an ongoing story, yet knowing the entire story ends badly for the central protagonists is rarely encouraging.

Thus it's often better putting a more positive spin on the stories, and then letting the stories decide what direction they'll take AS they unfold over time. Even squicks, like gay sex, water play or even scat episodes, are all fine, as long as they're mostly 'off-screen', as the characters merely reflect on what happened, rather than shoving the worst 'squicks' into the reader's faces.

People tend to dislike what they've always disliked, yet when coupled with what they do enjoy, it's often easier to find the delicate balance between the two. But to a large degree, there's a lot of psychology in determining what readers are most likely to respond to.

I'll try to avoid that tag in the future, but I probably won't stop writing about the inner experiences that the characters have.

Don't avoid it if it applies. It wasn't my intent to discourage you from writing those kinds of stories.

I am a firm believer in allowing stories written for niche audiences to have a place here.

That said, you need to understand when you are writing stories that will only attract a niche audience. If that's what you want to do, I have no problem with you doing it, even if they don't appeal to me.

Writing a story that appeals to a narrow audience and then publicly complaining that it isn't drawing a mass audience won't do you any favors.

In both cases, one or both of the protagonists need to come to terms with shit in their lives which (in my own personal experience) gets dealt with in therapy.

Here is how SOL defines Tear Jerker: Sad story or containing sad moments

So, for your story, is the shit in their lives that they have to come to terms with itself on stage, or only referenced as they deal with it?

Are they successfully overcoming it and building a better life or are they failing to deal with it in a positive way?

Some things to think about in deciding if the tear jerker tag applies.

Yeah, DS's reflection on your focusing a story on a narrow audience and then bitching about the scores comes across as your complaining ABOUT the niche audience themselves, and no reader wants to be criticized for reading YOUR stories. That's just intuitively non-productive.

So, instead focus on rewarding your most loyal readers, while 'spreading the wealth' to hopefully pull in other readers with each story. Popular appeal rarely happens instantly, instead you have to actively work at 'building your audience', often a few readers at a time, until your readers become so numerous, they'll consistently upvote your stories. Yet that ONLY works if you DON'T piss them off! ;)

Yeah, DS's reflection on your focusing a story on a narrow audience and then bitching about the scores...

Technically he was complaining about the lack of votes rather than the score.

Despite having few votes, those two stories have the highest download count out of all of his stories.

I agree, as the total number of readers is a much more vital metric than the scant few scores are, yet as usual, I was referencing his complaints about feedback, not scores nor votes. There are often specific ways to encourage feedback, and requesting feedback is usually the best way to start.

But, as usually, I tend to tie the normally unconnected threads in ways that others don't, which is why I've most ceased posting comments under my own name anymore. If readers don't recognize an author's name, they're rarely quite as harsh. Not necessarily more forgiving, just less hyper-critical, which admittedly, is often well deserved. As I've always pissed off a LOT of people in my forum posts.

So, sometimes hiding under rocks IS the best way of escaping relatively unscathed.

Rather than short stories 'overwhelming' readers, more often they 'underwhelm' readers. Most readers don't view short stories as being deeper and more impactful, instead they tend to see them as simple 'slice' of life, incomplete portrays of one short period in their lives, which is rarely a complete reflection of who they actually are.

In longer stories, readers get a much better feel for who the protagonists really are, allowing them to show the many aspects of their personality, rather than just one or two.

That said, your descriptions tend to not be terribly 'descriptive', merely empty promises of what it might be, rather than accurately describing the stories themselves. But then, writing story descriptions is a separate art in itself, which only tends evolve in its own time.

I've gotten quite good at my story descriptions, yet after 57 different stories, full novel lengths stories, which includes a LOT of direct experience.

Very few readers will bother to comment.

You definitely have the right premises, as you DO want teasers, just more fully formed ones. So you lay out the story, while emphasizing the central story conflicts and indicate the story's overall trajectory (i.e. it's 'story arc').

I can always show you samples of mine (57-published ones, plus many, many more unpublished, unposted ones that never saw the light of day). But the key is to get in every detail possible, in the fewest words, which means: revise, revise and revise again, as well as breaking the standard grammar rules (I've always found that mixing sentence and paragraph tenses (sentence segments are consistent though), as they typically produce the tightest, most concise descriptions.

Your earliest teachers would NEVER approve, yet writing is more about 'breaking established rules' than it is in strictly follow the least productive ones.

By the way, I've never published/posted using this particular pseudonym, so you'd never find my stories unless you know my actual name (trust me, most of those here are aware of it, yet the pseudonym affords me a greater latitude online. — VB

Yep, book 4 of my six-part Catalyst series (originally posted as one HUMONGOUS single story, which I later expanded and divided into more 'manageable' sizes (adding content and keeping each book unique with their own unique goals and conflicts, within the larger series' conflict).

As I always warn, don't feed the haters, as antagonizing them does just that. Hate isn't the opposite of love, as they're merely two sides of the same coin, so utter indifference is the opposite of both. Yet specifically targeting them just gives them an easy target for them to vent over.

With trolls, the best tactic is to simply starve them, but cutting off what they're most hungry for (attention). As I've had too many 1-bombers in my life to want any more, so I just tell them "I agree, this story clearly isn't for you, so quit troubling yourself and quit reading."

Unfortunately, those most likely to 1-bomb you, are also those who'll actively read EACH and every chapter, within days of its posting. They're just pissed at your fictional character's perceive political position, even when they isn't one.

Thus they're responding like bully's, they don't you to stop, they just want to bully you to write what they most want—their own political agenda.

That makes sense, as those that are always exceptionally long, annoying me just as much as those that are too short to fully appreciate. And, I prefer reading until I'm tried of reading, so as always, keep each chapter as long as it needs to be, and not a single word longer (i.e. revise, revise and revise again, to keep the content as concise (tight) as possible.

Again, I always write incredibly complex stories, and I often have to 'stop button', so I'll often wax lyrically to excess, so if I didn't keep them that concise, no one one would be able to read them.

I agree, yet I'm not afraid to read it a section at a time, so whenever my mind begins wandering, I move on to something else (typically my own writing, rather than another SOL story).

That and Ellery Queen magazine, and Zane Grey's Western magazine. There were more in the SciFi, mystery, and western genres that I can't remember. CRS strikes with age. I kind of lucked out since I got my older brother's collection when I was 8 and he was going to college. There was even some James Bond and Mike Hammer books in with the magazines.

We are dating ourselves...

In the old days, before the 'short-attention theater' days, I'd often write 30,000 word chapters. Yet back then, readers were thankfully a bit more … literate. ;)

I always keep track of my chapter and novel word counts, so for my two most recent WIP:

LO:
01: 3,925
02: 4,269
03: 5,373
04: 3,614
05: 4,022
06: 3,314
07: 4,355
08: 4,369
09: 3,810
10: 3,158 and
11: 2,048 (for my currently unfinished chapter)

MT:
01: 3,879
02: 4,489
03: 3,123
04: 3,598
05: 4,339
06: 3,819
07: 4,897
08: 4,092 (the same as my other current chapter, incomplete)

Of course, certain genres are notoriously longer than others.

You are in a comfortable range. 👍

I've only posted a few stories with chapters longer than 8,000 words, and long chapters don't seem to do as well. I'd suggest 1.5k to 4k words per chapter.

In what over-all length of story. Over-all story length likely makes a big difference.

It seems to me that epic length stories do just fine with longer chapters.

Looking at stories over 10,000KB (the 10 largest stories on SOL), the smallest of this group being 1.9 million words.

The highest scoring story in this group (9.62) has a chapter size over 25K words.

Only one story in this group has a chapter size under 4K words. It has over 1.2K chapters. It is the lowest scoring story in the group at 6.32. It also has the lowest download count, despite having way more chapters than any other story in the group.

Repeating the analysis using the 10 largest completed stories (over 7227 KB / 1,339,980 words), doesn't change the results much.

Only one has a chapter size under 4K. The second smallest chapter size is 5.5K words. The largest chapter size in the group is over 36K words.

Scores range from 9.37 down to 7.83. The lowest score in this group is neither the longest or the shortest average chapter size.

The lowest download count goes to the story with the second lowest average chapter size.

So I'm pretty sure chapter length is not an explanation for Mike Cropo's higher scores.

I didn't say chapter length was an explanation for higher scores.
My point, my ONLY point was that looking at either score or downloads, for the longest stories, evidence is lacking that longer chapters perform worse.

I interpreted your 'just fine' as 'well', not indeterminate.

Saying that epic length stories do well with longer chapters is not remotely the same thing as saying that epic length stories to well because of longer chapters.

The latter statement implies a causal relationship. The former does not.

In that case, your attempt to identify or refute a causal relationship between chapter length and story score was vainglorious

Well since I wasn't attempting to do that in a general sense...

People claiming that such a causal relationship need to put up evidence for it.

because of the confounding correlation between story length and story score, which could well be disguising a negative correlation between chapter length and story score.

Or there just isn't a correlation between chapter length and story score that is constant across stories of all lengths.

Also, score isn't necessarily the best measure of story "performance". Which is why I looked at both score and downloads.

There's also the consideration that readers of bloatware stories probably exhibit very different behaviour to more mainstreaa readers.

Exactly. Which is why my original reply starts with:

In what over-all length of story. Over-all story length likely makes a big difference.

I'm not disputing that chapter length makes a difference in shorter stories.