Popular · 9:34pm Mar 23rd, 2015
I've had a few thoughts on what it means to actually be popular and whether or not that means that what you write is "objectively" good.
I think most of the disagreements about whether something is "objectively good" stem from a lack of deciding what definitions we're going to use for a particular subject, and a lack of agreement on those definitions. Because of this it's easy to get stuck in an endless loop of "Well, I think 'good' should be defined like this," going back and forth forever. It's for this reason I'm going to have to ask, for the sake of my own argument, that anyone who reads this agree with the following terminology:
1. In order for a story to be "good" by any sense of the word it must first be legible so that we can recognize the content.
2. Legibility comes from following generally known rules of grammar and spelling.
3. Grammar is what we grew up with in American English classes—from vowels to definite articles and so on.
4. A good story must not be derivative—in this case, derivative means imitative of another work to the point where it is obvious the derivative work makes little to no effort to conceal the inspiration and take the idea in a new direction or substantially add to it; i.e. a Human in Equestria fic that attempts to be different merely by making the human character a different gender/cosplay/body of the Mane Six and not making a thorough exploration of how these differences would affect a character's experience.
5. When a story is novel and not derivative, it manages to draw from general archetypes and ideas instead of particular works it wants to imitate and provides at least some semblance of originality by giving us a fresh look at these archetypes and ideas.
5a. By a fresh look, I mean it builds up its own world or setting around these basic ideas and gives us a wealth of content to enjoy or ruminate upon, word count notwithstanding.
5b. A story does not necessarily have to be "long" or "short" in order to also be "good." It only needs to pass along these new ideas and experiences to us before the end.
6. A good story presents these ideas in a cogent and consistent manner, convincing us of objective goodness by maintaining the logic of its internal consistency; i.e. the story does not launch into random tangents that have nothing to do with the actual plot line, does provide clear arcs of progression for its characters that make sense both within the story's setting and to the reader himself, etc.
6a. If a story is meant to be random, surreal, or nonsensical, then internal consistency must still be maintained, i.e. the ideas being presented by the author must be clear within the words of the work itself.
6b. A truly random story that adheres to no internal or external rules of logic or grammar and is there purely for the shock value of being completely nonsensical may be enjoyable, as in it titillates the senses, but it cannot objectively be called a "good story."
7. We must accept that there are varying degrees of "goodness," as a story may break or exceed any of the above rules, but generally speaking, if a story has satisfied all of these rules, it is still within the realm of "objectively good."
8. Popularity shall not be considered as part of the criteria of being "objectively good" as there are countless reasons why a certain story is not well known.
Okay! Now that that's out of the way, I think I can continue talking like a normal person. Of course, all this comes with the caveat that I am not a person who is omnipotent and all-knowing and therefore you may not agree with everything I have said/will say.
If you happen to agree with the rules I described above, then I think we can all rest easy knowing that goodness has more to do with cleaving to orderly logic and consistency more than it does with shock value and total batshit insanity when it comes to stories... but why aren't good stories more "popular?" Well, now you've done it. We have to define "popular" now!
Popularity, as I see it, is nothing more than being regarded with favor and affection by a large group of people. Now, popularity itself has nothing to do with being "objectively good" as I see it; it merely reflects the current mood or desires of a certain group of people. And we cannot say that being popular means that the definition of objective goodness of necessarily changing, because what is popular among one group of people can be reviled by another. For instance, Fifty Shades of Grey was popular with millions, but also rejected as cheap shlock or even just never even picked up and read by equal millions. That video game "Five Nights at Freddy's" was nothing more than a haunted house where you pushed buttons to avoid losing, and it made little to no effort to build on that or be anything other than that exact, strict experience of "push buttons at right time to win game." Yet it exploded. Who's to say where the wind will blow next?
So when you look at what's popular, you can't really include it with whether or not something is good. We humans have a finite life and finite time to pay attention with, and we generally go with what's enjoyable and enticing to our senses over what's actually, truly good for us.
So when you write a story and you're pretty sure it's good, all I'm saying is that you should never expect it to be popular simply because it is good. Do you want to know why? This is the big secret nobody wants to admit. The vast majority of people these days don't want good things! Seriously! They actually want to be spoon-fed a quick, basic experience that takes little to no time to process, and if that experience has satisfied that quick burst of enthusiasm they had for it, they will call it good and then move on to the next one. It's what you do, it's what I do, it's what everyone does, at least from time to time.
People find comfort in this consistency. When something is identified as "good," and by that I mean "gives me a little surge of adrenaline/pleasure," they want more of it, and they want it in the exact same way. It's why for all we decry the lack of innovation in games and music and books, the least innovative experiences are often the ones that explode the market and take companies to the top of bestseller list. It's why clop is so popular in the featured box—sex gives you both adrenaline and pleasure at the same time, and it feels really, really good. So people don't want sex gift-wrapped in a bow-tied box with pretty wrapping paper, they ultimately just want the sex, and that's it. If we do bother to gift-wrap it, well, that's just a bonus and it maybe makes us feel less guilty for reading it because "it had a plot."
It's why everything we call bad in this fandom just won't stop being made, often by the exact same people who complain about it. And it never will.
We came here because a little girl's show about ponies happened to be better than we expected, and we expect the show to keep giving us that exact same experience. And yet we do not expect the same quality from each other—because we aren't the same experience as the show. So the writers of MLP are in the unenviable position of being expected to produce top-tier stuff all the time every time... yet at the same time, we fans will happily gobble up the latest incest-futa clop or "Human in Equestria turns into Lyra instead of Rainbow Dash so it's TOTALLY ORIGINAL GUYS." We want to experience the same pleasures, the same laughter, the same affirmation, all from (and this is important) the same sources all the time, every time. We just want more of whatever experience we got from that particular outlet. And if that outlet dares to give us a different experience... well, we rant and write long blogs about how unfair the internet is (cough cough). Or we set incredibly high standards for that outlet to meet next time so it can make it up to us.
Is this wrong? Maybe. Is it the way people are and how they think? Well, from my point of view, yes, it is.
Am I saying this is how you, personally, the guy reading this right now, think? Well, no, I'm not, but I am saying it's more than likely that you do think this way, consciously or not. I do it too when I'm bored and surfing the internet and looking for ways to waste time instead of writing my stories! Like right now.
Ultimately though, should this discourage you from writing? Should it keep you from writing the absolute best that you can with every story you put out? Should it keep you from having standards and keep you from working hard to make a story that you know, deep down, is "objectively good?"
Hell no it shouldn't. Because sooner or later you'll find someone who enjoys good writing as much as you, and even if it's just that one person, it's the audience we should all strive to have.
Just be aware—if you do happen to write a truly, objectively good story? That will be all you can ever write, at least to the faceless mass we call "the public," those people who will never know you personally, only know you through what you create. So make sure that when you write it good, it's what you actually wanted to write about, not what will get clicks and views and little gold stars that will die along with this website someday in the future.
I suppose, after learning how complicated and hard being both popular and good is, writing what you wanted to write is really the most important rule of all.
This is about "Huggled," isn't it.
2903245
I'm not saying it's not, but it kind of is.
o/` I'll be as popular as popular can be. Making my mark, making my mark on fanfic society. I'll be the one to watch, the squirrel in the flow. o/`
Brilliant blog post here, Squirrely.
That was a nice, thoughtful blog, and it certainly bears some thought, especially by some that are really obsessed with that situation... I thought briefly of writing a blog on the same lines, but now that I've read this, I'm good.
2903355
Heh that's ironic, I had been thinking about this issue myself, and this post actually expired me to write it now, rather than just sitting on it. Specifically, to write a rebuttal. I don't think I could disagree more with the central thrust of this.
Have I ever told you that you're my new best friend?
2903318
o/` I'm the type of writer every author should know! o/`
2903528
I think you mean o/` "Do you know you are my very best frieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnd?" o/`
2903423 Let me know when you do, I'll definitely take a look!
2903647
My indirect rebuttal.
RedSquirrel456, talk to me on Equestria MUCK if you want.
You make a lot of really great points here.
A well-thought out post, and I can think of no one better qualified to speak on the subject. By your definition and mine, you're one of the best writers in the fandom. If I ever ragequit from FIMfiction, I'll point to "A Story Of Solstice" and it's 35 upvotes as a reason.
I've been planning on writing a blog post about this topic for a while, but this blog post put me over the top. Here it is.
The long, the short, and the middle of it is that quality does in fact weakly correlate with viewership - while any individual story might or might not be good, the more views a story has, the better it is likely to be, on average. If you go and look at the stories with, say, 20,000 views, and then go and look at the stories with 20 views, you and I both know that the stories with 20,000 views are going to have a much higher average quality than the stories with 20 views.
I think it is less that people don't like good things, and more that people have trouble finding them or differentiating them as individuals.
Thank you for writing this.
You've kept me going for another couple months.
At least until the eventuality of being burdened by the inequality of effort-to-response once again rears its ugly head.
If you know how to get over this one, please. Please share.
We are all dying for our sins.
Let me suggest a different view, one that explains both your own and 2905020 's findings:
People want what they want, and they would like for it to be good. However, given the option of something they don't want that's good and something they want that's not good, they will gladly choose the latter.
This makes sense. If you want a hamburger, and have the choice between McDonald's and a quality, custom made hamburger done to your specifications, you're going with the latter. If you want a hamburger and your choices are McDonald's or a perfectly prepared chicken breast, there's a good chance you're going with McDonald's because you wanted a hamburger. And, I should note, that the chicken is going to do especially poorly if maybe it isn't as good as you thought it was to begin with, even if it's still better than McDonald's.
I write shipping. It's hard work, coming up with good ideas that aren't derivative, especially in pairings like AppleDash and TwiDash that have been done over and over. But the most popular stories, the ones people remember, are the good shipping stories for those pairings. If they can't find one, they'll move on to the next best story for that pairing, and so on. They are unlikely to jump to another pairing, or a comedy story about totally different ponies, or War and Peace, because they like shipping stories and they like this pairing. But if someone will write them a good story about their pairing, they will love that story.
So, if an author does want to be popular, the solution is simple: make people a world-class hamburger. Find out what people want, and give it to them in the form of something good. People like quality, and they like what they like, and the two are not mutually exclusive.
Now, obviously, if you don't want to write things people want to read, that's fine too. Everyone should write for their own reasons. But it doesn't mean that people have bad taste or that your story will necessarily be better than the best HiE or shipping story out there. Someone can easily have talent equal to your own and apply it in that direction, and they will be more popular and just as good. Getting mad at that is just getting mad at people for not liking what you like.
2905253
2905020
2905154
I think I made a grievous error when I left out what I mean by "wanting."
We can agree that people want what they want, and when they want something they want it to be good, but what they want and how good it must be for them to consume it is, as was pointed in the McDonald's/chicken sandwich analogy, often two completely different things.
Perhaps I should clarify my position to bookplayer's and say that it's not that people will actively reject objectively good things, but that the really good things out there are, more often than not, not what people actually want to see in a good story. That is, I'm sure a really well written HiE where there's a romance with Twilight Sparkle, or a really well written character study of, say, Fluttershy, will succeed over a really well written OC adventure that doesn't feature the Mane Six at all, especially given the audience on this site.
Of course there are other factors, like how easy it is to read the story and understand the ideas in it, how much a given story will conflict with people's ideas of what a good MLP story should be, etc., but I think the point still stands that popularity and goodness correlate more than cause, if I may say so; especially if you consider that, if my untrained eye is correct, people continue to return to venues they perceive to be good and continue to consume media from it, so a small number of apparently good authors can attain popularity while many, many other good authors are hardly searched for and need a leg up from people with more views.
And given how many stories that can be said to be actually, truly bad still get ridiculously popular, I still think the willingness of people to forgive utter badness in search of that particular jolt of "I wanted this and now I have it" is something to consider...
As for the whole "effort-response" struggle, I think it's something even the epically good and popular authors deal with. "Why did this story get ten thousand views but this one only five hundred?" It's something I could write a whooooole other blog post about, and I think I will!
Heck, even I deal with it sometimes due to SOME STORIES I COULD MENTION.
2904536
You're too kind! No, really. Stop it.
(but seriously thanks)
2904370
I'm just happy you read it!
2903967
I shall, once we catch each other, or perhaps in the Skype chat? You brought up some interesting stuff I definitely left out, including that ever-elusive but all-important factor of "sheer luck."
2903326
*takes a bow* Now I need to actually churn out another brilliant story...
2905702
Might be a little sour and dour coming from me, but I've never really been a cheerful sort. I'd be more than interested in reading what you had to say on the subject, simply because... well. At the very least, it'll reinforce what I already know, and the truths that we soulful few must cling onto to continue working in such a harsh environment, like a camel who periodically forgets his humps.
At the most, it can give me some new insights into this phenomenon that, while I already understand it, I still seek ways to understand further.
I appreciate what you've written here for the simple fact that it is still a light in the darkness. And we all who hide in the darkness can only use these blinking stars to make our way, while being in denial that it is us who entered the darkness willingly.
I apologize for the slices of lemon I also seem to be scattering about the place.
On a more interesting note, the conversation and discussion between TD and I on this very subject actually expanded a lot somewhere else. If you were interested and inclined, you could check out our thoughts here -> CLOARK MEI
2905020
It started off rather silly, but then sort of went into a serious exchange of views, and then later backed up into silliness again. I also made a comparison, but I mention it now because your current reply has given me cause to now agree with your point of view. And certainly, certainly, people do return to venues where they know they can get a steady flow of what they want. And sometimes, people just like that level of comfort. We gravitate towards the familiar, don't we? We like stability, too. I think... a good point between what you can objectively call 'good' and part of why people don't necessarily always choose that is because they don't always provide that comfort.
Objectively good stories always seek to challenge things. They seek to bring something new to the table, and they seek to explore convention and type and form and style. And people don't like to be challenged unless they're ready for it, which is why preferences exist in the first place. Some challenges are a lot simpler than others, say, trying out a new flavour of ice cream. But reading is far more personal. I'd like to think maybe that the problem with 'good' writers is that in the exploration of new things, they always have about them an aura which is hard to penetrate by a crowd looking to get their base needs filled, almost as if there were a Maslow's Hierarchy of Fimfic Needs somewhere.
Perhaps it's not about good or bad that is the real culprit, but more of our unwillingness to escape our comfort zones. To try that new burger. To taste the new ice cream.
I also somewhat feel that maybe it's not fair to just claim that badness exists simply because an author wants to write stuff in similar veins, also writing within a level of their own personal comfort.
But at the same time, I think that's the safe route, for safe writers. But some of us prefer to innovate. To make those delicious new burgers. To try to create a recipe that expands upon the old. Everyone loves the old burgers, and there's nothing wrong with that. Everyone loves the tried and true recipes. Nothing wrong with that. But it's a problem in trying to introduce the weird artisan burgers and having people say 'Um... maybe not'. And this is probably where the original point comes in.
It's just that unwillingness to taste the new that gets in the way of what is potentially amazing. If people can make a damn good burger that's just a good version of an old recipe, there's nothing wrong with that. But it's still going to be that old burger. And that's all it ever will be.
Well, to clarify in all seriousness now, I don't actually hate on the old burgers for being what they are. But I have made a conscious choice to innovate on recipes. People not enjoying them is just part of the deal. I have forgone being part of the comfort food crowd to try to make waves. And I think hating on that shows a certain lack of willingness to grow, for readers and writers alike.
But that is just an opinion, and in the end, I find that some days I like that weird ass burger with strange combinations, and some days I like a regular old McDonald's churn. But I find it sad that people are satisfied with their McDonald's as their bar of excellence. So maybe in the end, people just don't like good things after all.
2905806
I know you and I have hashed this out once upon a time, long ago, but I'm taking a little umbrage at your pity party here.
This specifically:
and:
and:
Now, I agree that good stories bring something new to the table. But why do they need to explore convention and type and form and style? Have we run out of characters and emotions and combinations thereof? Settings and world building? Situations? Futures and pasts? I'm not buying that that's all been done.
You can write a story that brings something new to the table in a comfortable way. A story that goes deeper or wider or from a different direction, instead of throwing out the format. And if you want to challenge people with something new or different, starting with what they know and building to something new or showing them something they love in a way they didn't expect is the way to do that that will reach the most people.
It's one thing to say that your stories are good despite being not being popular, but I firmly disagree that your stories are unpopular because they're too good. If you don't want to figure out how to take people in a new direction, that's fine, but you're limiting your audience to people who are looking for a new direction. But that doesn't mean no one else is going anywhere new.
2905948
You know, I still can't believe that until now you still think I'm actually serious anytime I gripe about my personal standing on this site.
2906160
I don't think you're seriously concerned with your personal standing... sometimes I'm not entirely convinced about how much respect you have for other folks though. (Not talking specifically about me here, I know several great writers who write in more traditional genres that I'm not sure you'd classify as "good.")
Though I admit it's hard to tell.
2906199
Let me be brief, and I don't meant to derail here, with apologies to RedSquirrel, but my level of respect for others is pretty much the same as everyone else and their own levels of respect for the things around them, based on their personal opinions and views. There's really no need to specifically highlight me in this manner.
Maybe you take me a different way, but I really am not here to explain myself. If I've offended anyone, then I'm sorry. Genuinely. All I am is a person with opinions, and opinions are all I'm stating. And please be sure that 'I'm disliked because I'm too good' is not one of these opinions, and I honestly find that charge pretty ridiculous. I can't both have a huge ego and such low self-esteem at the same time.
Please excuse me for starting such a kerfuffle in this thread.
2905253
2905806
2905702
Bookplayer nailed it on the head, though I think there are other ways of becoming popular than making great hamburger.
The thing is, if you want to do something like make a game where someone is walking through a world which is coming into being around them as a smooth narrator talks to them, or shoot portals at walls while escaping a psychotic AI, you have to work for it a lot harder. You have to push to be recognized. You have to make a big enough push to get people's friends to play it and love it, so that THEY will tell their friends, and so on. And moreover, you actually need to make someone people want.
I don't think people were like, "You know what we really need? A crossover between My Little Pony and Fallout 3," but kkat figured out how to make such a story that was appealing to a ton of people.
The other thing is to strike while the iron is hot - do something right at the right moment. This is why there is always a slew of holiday stories around the holidays, but it doesn't have to be so obvious. The Collected Poems of Maud Pie never made the featured story box, but got thousands of views via word of mouth and people recommending it to other people. It was hugely successful, and it was precisely because it was something which was clever, done at the right time, and which hit the right chord with people. I don't think thousands of people were thinking that they really wanted Maud Pie poetry, but once they saw it, they knew that they wanted it right then.
You don't have to just make hamburger. You can make a lot of things. But if you want people to read what you write, you need to figure out how to strike that chord, and if you're doing something offbeat, you need to figure out how to promote your story and make it visible to enough people that they all tell their friends to read it. Indeed, one can view the featured story box as basically this - all of our invisible compatriots on the website are reading this story, so maybe you should go check it out as well.
But anything you do, if you want to reach a lot of people, you need to know how to do it. Maybe you're really good at making hamburger, and you get a reputation for great hamburger. Maybe you get a reputation for doing a wide variety of things, and just being an excellent writer in general, so you can write just about anything and people will read it because it was written by Obselescence or Short Skirts and Explosions. Maybe you are good at jumping on the train at just the right moment, and putting out the story that hits the spot for people. Maybe you write lots of random comedies which are short and make people chuckle.
WHO KNOWS. But people DO like quality. The thing is, if they don't know you, or don't know your story exists, there's no way that they're going to read your story. If you want to write a story about Spike dealing with his personal issues via his draconic instincts, there's a market for that story - but you need to find enough people who will tell their friends about that story for it to actually spread anywhere past the first iteration. You have to reach outside.
Or have friends who are willing to try and promote the hell out of your story so you meet with success.
And there's nothing wrong with making amazing hamburger and steak and french fries and milkshakes, either. Originality isn't a bimodal thing, and just because an idea is new doesn't mean that it is good, or that you're going to do it well. If someone hits it out of the ballpark, it doesn't matter if they're still playing baseball, they still did a great thing. Writing the very best TwiJack story on the website is not a bad thing, and it isn't by necessity inferior to writing the best story about two original characters falling in love, or an experimental existentialist story about cutie marks. In fact, it is likely to be better than the latter.
The Writing on the Wall is a great story, it is a story that no one knew that they wanted, and it is a story that people continue to do things to promote randomly. I wrote it a TV Tropes page and did a bunch of Wiki magic, and it directed 1,800 people to the story - more than came there from Equestria Daily. I doubt most of those people went on TV Tropes in hopes of finding that story, but once they heard about it, they had to see it.
This actually is making me reevaluate how important it is that I don't spoil things that are likely to make people enjoy a story in my reviews. I had always thought that spoiling stuff in reviews was awful, but seeing how many people came to that story because of the central plot twist in it, I have to wonder if maybe I'm doing the people I'm reviewing a disservice.
Being able to get it now is good. I have been putting off reading a 30,000 word shipfic because I've been in the mood for quicker fare. But when I get a craving, I'll read full novels - I decided a few months ago that I really wanted to re-read American Gods, and did so inside two days. That's how it goes.
Sometimes I have a craving for immense numbers of ponywords, and nothing can satisfy that craving but reading them all. And if you stick something in front of me right then, I'm more likely than not to read it.
Heck, I was thinking about feghoots today, The Ponytrician was like "I've written some of those," and now I've read five stories by him in one day. Other people ask me to read their stuff and I put it off, but because it hit my "now" button, I went ahead and read them all. They may not be the best Feghoots on the site, but they were right there in front of me, and they were good enough.
So if someone wants hot pony-on-pony action, and there's a story in the featured story box which is exactly that, then they're likely to just go there. A significant fraction of the readers on the site are here for the porn (or at least, lean heavily towards the porn). I barely read it at all. Sometimes I WILL go and read some, but mostly, not so much. And I've read some random featured story box porn just to see what the big deal was.
But if someone wrote a really awesome pornographic story, I bet it would get featured too, and people would eat it up. It is easy for bad porn to get featured; I'd imagine that good porn would have an even easier time of it.
Effort is irrelevant. This is actually one of the most important rules that you learn in economics. Why do I care how hard you worked on something, if what you produced is crap or uninteresting to me? I've spent huge amounts of time on art that doesn't look great, and the nicest pieces I've done took me less time to do. What matters to people is how much value the work gives to them; how much it took you to make it doesn't matter to them at all.
Here are my most viewed stories. In order:
The Stars Ascendant was written within two days.
Apple Shampoo was written within a few hours.
Shotgun Wedding's first chapter was written in 45 minutes.
The Collected Poems of Maud Pie was written in a single evening.
Temptation was written in a day.
Complaining about it is futile. The reason it happened is clear: Shotgun Wedding had a great hook, Temptation is delicious RariJack crepes, and the other three all came at the right time.
Also, I think there's an element of inspriation to them; when you get a really great idea, it becomes much easier to actually just burst it out. That's how most of my writing goes - I don't do anything, and then randomly barf out several thousand words in a single day.
Maybe that's just me, though. But I don't begrudge people for it; I mean, I'd like my other stuff to be more successful, but clearly I didn't do a good enough job of promoting it, or it just wasn't quite good enough to catch on fire, or it just had too narrow of a target audience.
Sometimes my stories do whiff; Dawn was something I felt should have been a solid hit, but it only barely got featured (though its middle-of-the-night release time didn't help; I suspect with better release timing it would have done better, but maybe that's just my personal vanity speaking). Better Lairs and Landscaping and We Can't Turn Back Time were both victims of bad marketing, though Better Lairs was always a longshot anyway. And The Butterfly's Burden was mistimed; had I come out with it when I knew I should have finished it, rather than months later, it would have been much more successful. (I also screwed up by releasing it as a single 10,000 word chapter; I'm going to be editing it up for Equestria Daily at some point, and will probably break it up into three chapters when I do so).
But I knew that Apple Shampoo was going to be a hit even before I put it out, and I thought that The Stars Ascendant was likely to do well as well. I wasn't expecting the runaway success of Shotgun Wedding or The Collected Poems of Maud Pie because I was new then, and didn't understand things as well as I do now.
I don't always do the best with my stories. I sit on them too long and I am lazy about releasing them. But I do at least have a good inkling when I have a good idea on my hands.
The Legend of Falling Rocks, Buffalo Brave is probably my best story that no one cares about; people just aren't that interested in the idea. Compare that to Ruin Value, which did okay on release, and then got a ton more viewership out of Equestria Daily. Some stories are just more interesting to people than others are. "Celestia wanders through a ruined city" is just a better hook than "Buffalo mythology".
I also pulled a trick with Ruin Value; I noticed that everyone was ignoring all of the More Most Dangerous Game contest entries, and so I deliberately didn't advertise the fact that Ruin Value was even in that contest. It did better than most of them did in terms of views. In fact, if you look at them, only a small handful of the entries got more views than Ruin Value; only Plural Possessive, A World Without Kindness, and Happy Birthday, Dear Twilight beat it out. And Ruin Value didn't even make the finals!
Sometimes, hiding stuff which marks a story as bad is as important as showing stuff which marks a story as good.
I mean, let's use RedSquirrel's examples of stories HE didn't get:
Huggled: Every single pegasus in Ponyville is randomly hugging everyone else. The premise is ridiculous and funny and the story's description reinforces that.
The Magical World of Button Mash: Two OCs do... something? I don't even know what this is really about. Them living in Ponyville?
The former has a strong hook, the latter doesn't (and features a character with a hatedom, AND doesn't really say "this isn't your typical Button Mash story"). There's no great mystery there; the first one told me I should read it (and I did, a while ago, and liked it), the latter doesn't tell me that I need to read it at all. And, consequently, even though I follow you, I never did.
I mean, why SHOULD I read The Magical World of Button Mash? It sounds unappealing to me. And I follow you! I know you write good stuff. It just said "This is a story I don't need to read" to me.
I have read everything that bookplayer has ever put out because about 90% of her stories sound appealing, so I'm willing to gamble on the other 10%.
I have read everything HoofBitingActionOverload has ever put out for the same reason. I even read his porn!
I have read almost everything Bad Horse has put out; I'm still missing his two least-appealing stories, but I am going to read them because it is Bad Horse, and every other story that I've been like "Ugh, really?" has actually turned out to be alright. (Ironically, Keepers and Moments, both stories which SHOULD appeal to me, are the stories I like the least out of anything he's written, while Friends, With Occaisional Magic, a story I never would have thought I would have liked, was actually pretty okay).
But most people don't fall into that category. There's about a dozen people who I will read anything that they put out immediately, but for most anyone else, it will only actually be read if it strikes my fancy. Otherwise it is likely to go and rot in my "Read later" lists unless someone says "Hey, you should read this!"
That level of trust is hard to establish. And so, you need to hook us. You need to hook even your followers.
If you don't, it will just molder away.
When people add my stories to their "read it later" lists, I'll actually go to their page and say "Hey! I saw you added my story! I hope you enjoy it when you get around to reading it!" Sometimes, I'll randomly go and stalk someone who faved some of my stories and recommend some other stories of mine to them.
And it works! People listen. But if they aren't told that they should go looking, they probably won't.
Sorry if that was long and rambly.
TL; DR: You need to tell people to read your stories. It needs to either be intrinsically appealing by promising them something specific that they want (a particular ship, a laugh, whatever), OR it needs to have a strong hook that tells the person that even though they didn't know they wanted it, they want it now, OR it needs to get word of mouth and have people's friends drag them into it.
It doesn't matter how good something is if no one knows why it is that they should read it; it took four people explaining JediMasterEd's story's appeal to PresentPerfect before I came across the right way of telling him "You should read this". And he did, and he liked it. But if no one had found that right way, he would never have read it.
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Well, that's just what I've been saying all along, isn't it? People don't look for "quality" or "good" things, they look for what they want, and if it happens to be a quality thing, then it's secondary to the fact that the reader believes they got what they wanted.
I mean, seriously, people are "hooked" on premises much more vague and stupid than "Button Mash does stuff in Ponyville," as weak as the synopsis for that story may be, and regardless of the actual quality of the product, they will still call it good because it's what they wanted at the time. It doesn't matter what kind of lure you're using if you're dangling it in front of the wrong fish; I just miscalculated that people wanted a good Button Mash story, or that they wanted one at all. Are we really going to say that Beneath your Feet, What Treasures actually got to the featured box purely on recommendation, and not also because it was a Sparity story which people love? Button Mash was recommended by Rainbow Bob and Bab_Seed, both popular, visible authors who people flock to for both comedy and quality. Yet it never got more than a hundred views or so each from either.
If you ask me, people clicked on What Treasures primarily because on the surface it was a Sparity story, which a lot of people want regardless of other trends in ponyfic. That it was recommended by several authors probably helped, but what makes people actually read it is that it appeared, on the surface at least, to promise them what they wanted before they even saw the recommendation.
So really, we're back to Mercury Zero's post and that ethereal quality of luck.
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No, it isn't the same thing at all. Indeed, what bookplayer said was pretty much the opposite of what you said.
They are looking for quality. But they're looking for quality in the genres that they like. That's completely different from what you said.
Moreover, if we just take a look at what the most popular stories are, we see an extremely eclectic collection of stories. A few ridiculous darkfics. Self-insert human on self-insert pony porn. Brony wish fulfillment. A weird SS&E story. A Lyra-in-the-human-world adventure. VinylTavia romance. A parody of the show as a harem anime. A choose your own adventure. Celestia's day off. The CMC learn about sex. Celestia banging Twilight with a terrible joke at the end. AppleDash porn. The list goes on.
It is a pretty freaking random list of stories, plus porn.
Indeed, the bias towards quality stories in both rating and popularity suggests rather strongly to me that people DO appreciate quality, even out-of-genre quality. But if there is a story outside of their primary interests, they have to know it is worth reading. There are a ton of random stories on FIMFiction. How does everyone know to read Hard Reset or Background Pony? Because it (and others) tell them to. Same goes for stories like Eternal, Sunny Skies All Day Long, ect.
Define "purely". I pimped that story out SO HARD. You don't even know, man. You don't even know!
I made two forum posts, did some stuff on TV Tropes (which did nothing), promoted it on Reddit, promoted it in my blog, pimped it on Skype, had Omnipresent add it to a ton of groups, added it to a number of groups myself, and personally exhorted folks to read it. Several prominent folks - Bad Horse, Ghost of Heraclitus, ect. - promoted it.
No one would have seen it without us promoting the hell out of it.
And it isn't really a Sparity story, anyway. I mean, it is about Spike's feelings towards Rarity, but it is not like he gets the girl. Heck, it got removed from the Sparity group for not being a Sparity story. The subject matter helped, but... well, I think that a lot of people recommending it made a very, very, very big difference.
And by pushing it so hard, we managed to get it into the bottom slot of the featuerd story box, where it was visible enough for more folks to see it. We also get some secondary word of mouth via various external websites.
I got it north of 100 views. I may have gotten it as many as 200 views.
That sort of pimping makes a big difference when you have a very small number of followers. I'd guess that if any one of the people who had promoted it had not done so, it would not have been featured. That's why we did it - we wanted people to see it, wanted TheJediMasterEd to get some recognition (as he is a good writer and it was his first story), and we liked it.
People ascribe to luck that which they don't understand. If you methodically pimp out your stories, you can raise your odds of getting featured immensely. It just requires a lot of effort. And you have to do it right.
I mean, you don't think that companies spend millions of dollars on ads for no reason, do you? Product awareness is a huge reason for advertisement. Ads don't really tell people that something is good - they tell them that it exists. Sure, they promote the product, but in the end a lot of advertisement is about showing people something that they want.
Sure, not every story is featured story box material. But that's okay.
Once it actually became visible, its other attributes helped it stay visible. So yeah, it having that cover art, and romance tag, and Spike and Rarity probably helped... but, well, they're not enough on their own. Without initial visibility, it is much harder for something to get featured.
Also, frankly, given the fact that I had to reassure people that it wasn't a Sparity story to get them to read it, I don't think being a Sparity story is necessarily as much of an advantage as you think it is.
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But if you have to tell someone "read this story, especially against your better judgment/what you normally go for," that says right there people aren't looking for it in the first place. The mere fact it was seemingly a Sparity story may have prevented people from taking a second look without them trusting you that it would be something they liked; and separate from that is how much cheap schlock is still consumed precisely because of recommendations rather than if the stuff is actually good. We're still back at the point of people regarding what they like or want as more important than how good something actually is. I admit they like quality when they find it, but my point all along has been that they don't look for quality first. We can go in circles all day arguing the quality of any number of highly viewed and rated stories, some of which are as reviled now as they were beloved back then.
In any case, I get the feeling we're going to start repeating ourselves soon.
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They spend tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars advertising the next Call of Duty game every year, despite the game's devoted fanbase.
Why?
I feel like I should be quoting this far and wide.