Effort · 7:06pm Sep 1st, 2015
So I set up this little experiment a few days ago. The results have been interesting, but I'm not sure what to do with them.
You see, I've been feeling like my efforts here are inversely proportional to the reception that my stories receive. Most of the things that I've spent the most time on are less popular than the things that I've just pumped out.
For example, I spent quite a while on The Carrot Dog Fight. Not that popular. I spend next to no time on Cheerilee's Thousand. Quite well received. I spend five months writing Resolution on and off. Not much interest. I wrote Apple Ninjas and Other Vital Concerns in about a hour and a half. It was nearly the top story of all time at one point.
It was in that mindset that I wrote Second Birthday. Since I'd just put out Resolution the week before, I thought it would be interesting to see how an idea that I just let flow out of me with minimal tinkering was received. And it did pretty well, though it certainly has a greater percentage of downvotes than I normally get. There are a few comments in there basically saying that things weren't resolved well enough, and there is probably some truth to that. The whole point of that story was just to throw it together and see how it performed, so it's not as tight as my normal stuff. I do feel a bit guilty about that, but I wanted to see the results. I'll probably re-write it at some point because it will bug me.
Anyway, what I'm left with is uncertainty. On one hand, the results were what I generally expected. I think there is something to be said for the purity of an idea that comes out all in one or two writing sessions. It's very fresh in your mind, so it's hard to lose focus and let the story meander. On the other hand, it is a silly comedy about the Mane Six and Spike, so the chances that it was going to do well were pretty good. Maybe I should have thrown up an off-the-top-of-my-head dark story to compare against Resolution.
But I'm still left with this generally feeling that the more I try to clamp down on a story—the more I tinker and smooth—the less people end up liking it. It leaves me wondering if the ideas get too muddy or watered down by all of that work. Or is it a case of digestibility? Are stories that are more raw and simple just easier to digest, and therefore get more interest? I dunno. It's probably not any one thing, really.
In the end, I'll still write what I want to write, regardless of how I think it will be received. I mean, if that was a main concern, I certainly wouldn't have spent half of this year writing a dark story about Adagio. But it is a little disheartening to spend session after session writing something that you know people aren't really going to be into when you could be churning thirty ridiculous stories about Twilight having a secret second birthday. There's nothing for it, though. In the end, popularity here is a very hollow thing, though it doesn't stop me from wanting to have my stories loved. I've been to the top of the Fimfiction mountain a few times, and you know what? Ain't nobody remembers it but me. I try to keep that in mind when I'm writing. In the end, all there generally is as a record is your stories. Maybe all that care and attention turns people off and maybe it doesn't, but at least I'm left with things I'm generally proud of.
A lot of us have the experience of tearing through something on a whim and having it rise confusingly high in peoples' estimation. I've got my tea story, for one, which continues to boggle me. Is there something infectious about the slick, unrehearsed passion of the one-off story that attracts wide appeal where deep, thoughtful pieces don't? Is it merely that these pieces are likely to be short and thus less off-putting to viewers? Is it that fast pieces tend to be random or randomesque comedy, which plays well? Boogers if I know.
I know that feeling very well. Fortunately for me, I have no quality standards for about 70% of the stories I write, so, yeah. I'm not really sure where I was going with that. All I know is I guess release to really stupid stories today and expect them to do poorly, but I don't even care anymore. But I do have a few stores in the works that I actually want to be good and will actually pay present perfect to edit.
3362956 I often wonder if it's about expectation. Fimfiction seems to really reward stories that give them exactly what they were going in looking for. I think that's easier to achieve with a shorter, more simple kind of story. I mean, there's only so many places a two thousand word short can go. That longer, more crafted story could take readers down paths they don't want to tread, so they skip it for the much-more-likely-to-be-enjoyable random comedy.
It's simple. People have short attention spa-
SQUIRREL!
On a rather lower level, I get that feeling too. Although I certainly don't think It Doesn't Matter Now is bad, most of it was written in one evening. I was completely blindsided by the reaction that one got. And This Fragment of Life is not much more than a crackfic, and the bulk of it took almost no effort to write. Those are my two most-viewed stories, and by some distance. Also, lots of readers like familiar characters. My two least popular stories (in terms of readership) star Fancy Pants and an OC respectively. I'm almost certain that if I'd written basically the same stories with Rarity and Twilight in starring roles, they'd have more views. (And all the stories I've referenced are sub-2k one-shots, so the length thing doesn't apply here.)
I've always said that if you want eyeballs, you should be writing incest porn on Literotica. (Hell, if you really want eyeballs, by far the most notice I've ever gotten online was when someone uploaded a text message about how I threw up in a trash can.) At some point, you have to consider whether you want to actually say anything with your writing.
3362956 I'm not sure how you'll take this, but the first chapter of Princess Celestia Hates Tea feels similar to the style and attitudes of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon. Sun Princess in particular is certainly a more heartrending and memorable story, but it's not the kind of story I think of when I think of cute cartoon ponies. (Then again, I'm one to talk after all the darkfic I've written.)
I almost wonder if your more thoughtful stories would get more notice in a hypothetical fandom for Yes, Minister. That's certainly a closer style and attitude to your non-pony works.
Yeah, I hear you. My mini-epilogues and Slice of Life stuff seem to get a lot more attention than my epic adventures and mysteries. Don't know why that is, but I don't particularly care, either. As long as someone out there is reading what I write and enjoying it, I'm satisfied.
3363252
Well, since I remain a fan of the show, I will take that as a compliment!
Looking over quotes and such from "Yes Minister" (a program I have not myself watched) I would find it hard to believe that GhostOfHeraclitus is not a fan. If he is not, probably someone should point him at this show immediately.
I think a lot of it is that everyone can enjoy a short comedy and the Mane Six and Spike, if they didn't they wouldn't watch the show, but a much smaller part of the fandom can enjoy a dark world building story. Some are very popular, but they're typically either very long, so they can build up momentum, or were written earlier on in the fandom, where everyone in the niche would have to read it if they wanted to read a dark world building story. Stuff that's in the feature box is the type of thing, just judging by the description, everyone would think is a good idea(excluding clop and some HiE self-inserts, which have an unusually large niche.)
I think you got the balance pretty right.
Write what you like, do it how you like, when you like and hopefully it'll go well. Jeray2000 is probably pretty on point too. Adagio is more or less a fringe character (albeit a pretty popular one), so a story that is world building for a secondary character isn't going to appeal to everyone.
I know what you mean though, it's like there is just something about those projects we just seem to glide through that do better than the ones we really tinker with. I think the key to a successful (more specifically, popular) anything is to keep it strictly simple. Simplicity done well is key. Relatable, spacious and easy to 'listen' to for most people.
Do your best, try not to over think it and have fun with it
At any rate, I've always really cherished your stories. Keep up the good work
Hey, I know I'm late to the party, but I figured I'd toss my two cents in.
To me, the difference between fluffy low-investment stories and would-be magnum opi is the difference between a stick of chewing gum and a $200 sit-down dinner; nobody's gonna complain about the stick of gum, but a lot of people will be disappointed in the dinner if it doesn't meet their expectations, even though nobody would say the stick of gum was better.
The thing is that, in food, we distinguish between those two things with a price tag; the gum costs a nickle a stick (insert "your mom" joke here), while the meal costs about as much as 800,000 pigeons in first edition AD&D (assuming the standard 1gp=20 USD conversion metric). Heck, in paid fiction we do, to a lesser extent; when's the last time you saw something that aspired to nothing more than vapid fluff (as opposed to something that aspired to more and failed) get a $30 hardcover release?
But in fanfiction, we don't have that. We just have a bunch of people saying they liked or didn't like something, sometimes via comments, sometimes via voting, and when "thanks for the stick of gum" can't be separated from "a more appropriate pairing for the sea bass would have been the 2007 Handley Pinot Noir"--or rather, when the two ideas are being communicated with equal weight--it can be frustrating.
Sorry if I don't have a magic solution for that. But just knowing what the score is helps, I think.
3364826
3363662 It's just this nagging feeling, you know? Even in Cheerilee's Thousand, the chapters that take me a few session to write get a lesser reception generally than the ones that come out all at once. That's within the same story, and roughly the same number of words. Most of the chapters that took me a while to right got fewer upvotes, comments, etc. That's not really an issue for my satisfaction with the story or anything, but it just baffles me. You'd think fans of that story would be digging the chapters that took more effort, but it seems like the opposite is true. That's what makes me wonder if my own fussing is actually making the story worse, or if there's a sweet spot that I'm consistently overshooting when I write a longer story/chapter.
3364416 I had to give up the idea of being popular around here some time ago. I just write about too many fringe characters to be a Fimfiction superstar, though I've done pretty well, I think. Now my goal generally is to be accepted in the "These Stories Are Really Good" kinds of circles, like The Royal Guard and EQD. That's where I make my impact.
At least I'm experienced enough now not to get crushed by story reception. Since The New Crop didn't really have that large of a readership in comparison to my other stuff, I was pretty sure Resolution wouldn't, either. It's a depressing thing to know when you are writing a story, but it does save you some heartbreak when you turn out to be right.
3363070
3363536 I just think it's an interesting phenomenon. I often tell my wife that I operate intuitively because I trust that part of my brain a lot. People ask me why I did this or that in a story, and often times I don't know. I just did what felt right to me. So in this, I'm exploring how I feel about that situation. I have this nagging sensation that I'm spoiling something about my stories by overworking them. It's going to take a few more exploratory ventures like this to really know.
Part of the issue, too, is that I have several skilled people look over my stuff. That's a good thing, but I think it also comes with consequences. Everyone has their own opinion of what constitutes a good story, and when you have six people's views, I think your own can get lost in there sometimes. Tweaking a story back and forth for these pre-readers/editors fixes little problems that they had, but stepping back, I think sometimes I messes up the overall tone of the thing. I wonder sometimes if that is what readers are feeling.
I dunno, but I'm going to keep digging.
3365013 This is the type of thing that makes me want to believe in the supernatural, because in that case I have no idea why this happens, yet it seems to be a recorded factor that many authors experience. Or maybe it's that in the cases where little-effort stories get little attention and big effort stories get lots of attention it isn't noticed, so it isn't made a big deal of, so it's not counterbalanced and no one notices it.