Welcome to "Lightning in a Bottle"! Or something! · 1:15am Nov 19th, 2014
So I had an interesting idea lately. Reviews. I've often heard it said that the best way to become a good writer is to read. Read the good. Read the bad. Read the mediocre. Read what you like and what you dislike. Read what you know about, and what you're ignorant about. Read everything!
I agree with this advice... in theory. In practice, I'm not following it very well. I have little or no time for reading these days. Even worse, I've recently tried reading something... and try as I might, I just can't finish. It's not because it's bad or anything: I feel like I just can't concentrate on written words anymore. As if reading is a skill that I've lost over the decades. I used to be a total bookworm as a kid, more at home in the library than with friends. I remember growing up next to a gigantic set of shelves filled with my dad's vast collection of sci-fi paperbacks: Issac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Robert E. Howard... books that were old when I was born. I remember being a child in the shadow of those great names. And now? Now I plunk down in front of the computer and look at stupid internet videos or hours and hours. And that's about it.
I remember a time when reading used to be fun. It's been quite awhile.
If a skill can be lost, than surely it can be regained. Easier said than done, of course. So I've decided to start reading stories in an attempt to regain my appreciation of prose. I'll be trying to read at least one fic every week (monthly seems lazy, but who knows). If I stumble across a longer story that I like, I might limit myself to a chapter or a certain number of words every week. We'll see what I'm comfortable with. Every time I finish a fic, I'll post a review of it here.
I'm going to call this series "Lightning in a Bottle", and here's the catch... I'm going to use a very specific method for choosing which stories I wish to read and review.
Step 1: Go to the featured box and click on today's top-ranked story.
Step 2: Navigate to the user page of the author for that story.
Step 3: Select whichever story by that author has the fewest views. Review it.
I reserve the right to filter out explicit or erotic fics, and possibly stories by authors I've already reviewed. I'm kind of playing it fast and loose, so we'll see how these guidelines develop. All I want is to be exposed to stories I would never normally absorb of my own free will.
As god is my witness, I will force myself to have fun. It will happen.
I'm always down to read more reviews, and I really like the approach you're taking. I'll be here waiting!
Reading can be fun! (I say as someone who's had similar problems reading ponyfic in the past, despite... well, y'know, having a number of responsibilities that mean I'm supposed to do a lot of just that)
Anyway, I'd comment more extensively about the reading/writing trade-off and what other people have had to say about it, but I don't have tons of time at the moment. In any case, I think it's a cool idea... but I do think you're likely to find that you're going to run across a particular class of author/fic a lot with this strategy, and it may not do a whole lot to reinforce your desire to read more.
2603532
I'll try not to disappoint! I'm hoping that throwing this out there as a weekly thing will prevent me from procrastinating about it. The key is to build up muscle memory, and get used to the idea of sitting in front of text for half an hour at a time. No bathroom breaks.
2603557
Ouch. When you do something for a living, it can make it harder to just cut loose and enjoy it.
I'm very curious to see if any patterns or trends arise... I specifically avoided picking stories based on the ratings, since I didn't want all good or all bad. I suspect it will trend towards newer, shorter stories with boring or unpopular titles, tags and cover illustrations.
My main motivation is to take a deeper look at authors who hit the feature box. It makes me wonder how often such people were highlighted simply because they jumped on the right bandwagon, did something controversial, got linked by a more famous person or website, or just got the luck of the draw through no fault of their own. Fame is certainly exciting, but the mass audience can be a cruel, fickle thing.
Yay, reviews! I look forward to see where you're going with this.
I wonder if you might want to ease into it by doing the same "least views" dealie with a few randomly selected authors you're following. Reading unusual works that you are already predisposed to like (presuming you have a normal Follow strategy) might do more to boost your "reading=fun" enthusiasm than by going through highly obscure mediocrity.
Don't get me wrong, the concept of the series is fascinating, but I'd worry whether it meets your stated goal.
2603691
I had a few ideas of how to pick authors, and I might alternate between them now and again if things get too stale. One was to randomly pick them from the people who like, favorite, or comment on my own stories... it'd be interesting to examine the works of those who like my work. Another is to go after the most famous writers on Fimfiction, and see what their most obscure stories are like... or perhaps their earliest stories: sort of a "before they were famous" dealio. Intriguing!
Either way, my stated goal is simply to read more. To be honest, I tend to enjoy analyzing and critiquing even more than the reading itself... I'm hoping the reviewing aspect will help me find the good stories and learn from the bad ones.
Though I have to admit... the mediocre stories are the ones that worry me the most.
2603691
Now I'm all interested in this problem, because "least views" is a pretty novel metric. For the sake of reference (and honestly not to help DuncanR, 'cause he's got a tactic and it'll be fun to see him explore it, but because it's germane to the conversation and I think you might be interested too), here are a few least-viewed stories by folks we might know. I'm going to count only openly submitted stories, so not things like my story errata or our off-site drunk combo writing (for which, incidentally, I'm thinking about December 1 or 2, or somewhere in the span between about 12-16).
Horizon – Report 34
PresentPerfect – Button Goulash (and tragically not The JaAm Cycles—so close!)
Chris – Bantam Tales
JohnPerry – A Day in the Life of Truth Seeker: Ponyville's Resident Conspiracy Theorist
ColdInGardez – The Last Trumpet's Call
Skywriter – Cousin Braeburn Writes a Cropfic
Bad Horse – Keepers
PoweredByTea – Height
GhostOfHeraclitus – Obiter Dicta
Bradel – The Legend of Dash Ketchum
That's a cool method. Will definitely keep you from being just another "review the featured box" guy. :D
2604195
Button Goulash is going up on EQD, so JaAm Cycles will have its day once more. :V
2604195
Interesting!
Melt would easily be my least-read story if it weren't for Seattle's Angels. Poetry is … like the opposite of clickbait.
What the hell is The Last Trumpet's Call doing on the bottom of CiG's list?! I guess hordes of people just read everything he writes and that one's newest?
I'm noticing a couple of short story collections in there — no surprise. (My own shorts-comp is only a few hundred views above Report 34. I can't say I'm totally surprised at that being on the bottom, as it's a commissioned fetish fic that I blogged about when I published it, telling people they could skip it if they weren't into it.)
In fact, I feel safe saying that popular authors who have published short story collections are going to have those disproportionately represented. Let's test that with a few random big-name authors:
Bookplayer - Apple Potpourri (another short story collection)
darf - Brevity (another s.s.c.)
Eakin - The Last Days Of Parrsboro (has not published an ssc)
SS&E - Trouble at the Finish Line (NOT his ssc)
(Also, ping me by PM or IM re the drunkwriting. New mega-awesome computer is coming this week. We shall make it happen.)
2604195
How did it not hit me, when I was commenting here before, that I desperately need to get a story to sit in the top of the feature box, just so I can make you review my least-read story?