Random Ramblings CLXXVII · 7:15am May 10th, 2017
IN WHICH I AM FRUSTRATED
This is a quick post. I deleted the original #177 as it was too redundant. But I noticed that SSSQ's dislike ratio is inching back up. This frustrates me to no end. What did I do wrong to make that my most-hated story? And why won't people grow some balls and just tell me what's wrong with my work? I tried hard on this one (though not as hard as on its sequel), and I wish it could get some more love.
This may surprise people, given my volcanic temper (it's part of where my handle comes from), but I'm actually very receptive to criticism IF it's constructive. Leaving a red mark -- or a donut, as I call it -- and then farting off is just rude. I'm generally willing to explain to an author why I downvoted their story. As Skeletor says, "It's common courtesy!"
I may have disagreed with much of Moth's critique of H&L, but at least he explained himself and gave what turned out to be extremely valuable advice on my stories going forward, although it took me a few weeks to admit it. His criticism of Aria…Burrito, on the other hand, is completely fucking wrong and I will NEVER apologize for killing off Donald Trump. Posh, the inadvertent progenitor of SSSQ -- whose latest featured story I cannot read because I don't want to even consider the possibility of accidentally swiping his ideas -- has written long critiques in the comments of some of the Recovery entries; he makes great points and I take them seriously. I may rebut some of them, but at least I can have an adult discussion. I acknowledge the Recovery Arc isn't perfect. I've made mistakes, some of which I didn't think about until readers pointed them out to me.
I'm trying to get to sleep as I'm seeing the midday matinee of Guardians 2 and can't oversleep my alarm again. So yeah. Peace out y'all.
PS - I've created the pagespace for Rarity Reveals… but I'm not ready to make it public yet because (1) I have yet to create its page image, and (2) its word count isn't a number ending in 0 yet -- yes I care about that because I have become very OCD about it of late. Have y'all not noticed that, with the exception of Reconciliations, nearly all of my later stories have had word counts ending in either 0 or, more rarely, 5? I do that on purpose because it makes me satisfied. I'm actually very tempted to temporarily take down Reconciliations to re-edit it so each chapter has a word-count ending in 0. Then it will be even and I will be satisfied. Not happy; I'm never happy.
I got myself an editor, planned most of the story out, polished and polished... And published. Chasing eternity. After one month it has 345 readers and a rating of 24/2.
One week later, out of pure frustration and annoyance that nobody loves me, I wrote the piece of shit that is "Fluttershy takes it up the butt". No editing, just publish. The result in one month? 1.823 readers, 134/17.
I get your frustration. I wish I could help, but there is no good answer to that one. except that sometimes... it just Won't work. Oh, and write a piece of smut and hope it feels better? Doesn't work...
4526999 - My most popular story, by far, is one that I literally wrote in less than two hours while on a manic (and possibly sugar-induced) high with no editing whatsoever except for the addition of one word right before I submitted it to moderation. Its enduring popularity inspired me to create an entire series from it.
My most-commented-upon story is one I wrote after getting frustrated at a certain infamous writer on this site -- let's call him "Todd" -- and wanting to create a badfic in response. It only took four-ish days to write (that's fast by my standards) and intentionally flouts basic grammar rules by having no commas whatsoever. It also fails Storytelling 101 by coming to a sudden stop when a character breaks the fourth wall and leaves the story. However, I failed at making it truly bad; most readers got the joke and liked it, and a couple of popular authors shouted it out.
Go figure. Unfortunately for me, I don't write smut.
At least readers liked my "Sunset Is Suicidally Depressed" stories, where I really tried.
4527020 Sometimes the best stories are the ones written on a whim. But only sometimes I guess.
You are referring to the writer that, had he been a musician been known as "the songwriter"? I read that one, and I liked it very much. I heard of it when estee gave you a shoutout.
I'm gonna get a bad reputation for saying variations on the theme of "downvotes be discouraging but keep your head high."
For what it's worth I have stories that I'd love to get up to 400+ views and 40+ upvotes. So I dunno, of course it could've done better but it's part of the overall arc and it makes sense. I think your arc and your interpretation of Sunset is starting to permeate a bit more widely, too, and it's hard to put real numbers around that.
And just to offer a view from the other side, I tend not to downvote much stuff, but usually when I do it's because the story has left a sufficiently bad taste that I don't feel like engaging with the author is going to be a positive experience one way or the other. Most of the time if a story just isn't my thing, I'll walk away without voting. I'm probably most likely to comment/critique when I actually like a story. Now I think most people don't do it that way, but then that's the problem: it's the people who have more of a knee-jerk downvote reaction who are going to have an outsized impact on those numbers. And people who will leave detailed critiques of stories they don't like or think have issues are the rarest breed of all
Also, I've seen the effect that 4526999 mentions. It's not always the masterpieces that draw the most eyeballs. That's irritating but I think that at least being aware of it is helpful. I mean, I think about all the time I've spent on stuff since my one "breakout hit" like a year and a half ago... which I took from concept to completion in probably 2 weeks or less. I haven't been able to touch that kind of writing speed or viewer response since. Maybe I never will again.
What is my point? Heck if I know.
The best way to feature box every time seems to be if you're already starting from 1k+ followers, and/or if you're writing SunLight (and if you've got both you are made). But that leaves out a lot of interesting and creative stuff on here, as well as what interests me from a creative perspective. I mean, just to put one example out there, I kinda hate that this monstrosity crashed and burned, but it was fun and I don't have a ton of regrets in the grand sense.
Oh, shoot, you deleted that post. I pulled that up yesterday on my computer and was trying to post back just now but I couldn't cuz he's dead, Jim. Here's what I typed:
Lotta stuff in this post. Feel like I'm gonna miss something...
For the art, I thought you had a piece that inspired RR in the first place? Is that viable or is it NSFW? If it's not viable, there's gotta be something suitable out there. And I'd probably focus on Rarity in the art, not the two of them together; the story doesn't go there.
For the rewrite, I think the site does allow things like that if you've changed enough of it.
For posting time of RR, I will point you back to a source of information that's aging but still the best I've seen presented on the topic.
For tags... I dunno, I agree it's not the easiest one to tag. Equestria Girls/Sad/Slice-of-Life might be the way to go?
4528248 - Sorry. I deleted that post because I reread it and realized it was redundant even by my standards.
I do have a pic that inspired RarRev. It's Suggestive at worst, so I can easily use it with a little creative cropping. I just wasn't thinking. And you're right, I probably shouldn't try and find a Sunsarity pic to use. Currently the pagespace does have the Romance tag on, but I can easily remove it since it might give people the wrong idea. The other tags I have enabled are EQG (natch), Sad, and Slice Of Life. I've noticed most of my stories tend to be difficult to tag. Spider Queen especially. What was it? It was funny yet its core was rather dark and depressing; it was random yet not a crackfic; and then there was an undercurrent of romance, especially in the epilogue – Rarity did indeed kiss Sunset on the cheek while Sunny was passed out. She also touched Sunny's forehead to move that little front-curl and held her hand. I think it was pretty obvious from the subtext, especially considering Rarity wrote "my darling" in her note before thinking better of it and crossing out the "my". That follows from other characters (Flash?) pointing out in earlier stories that Rarity acts unusually possessive of Sunset. None of that was by accident. I've been building up to this for awhile. It's why I asked for your help to make sure RarRev really hums.
That link you posted. If it's the one I remember, it says the best time to upload is on Sunday. But I don't really know if that's true anymore; SSSQ was uploaded on a Sunday morning. Probably if you're writing a story keeping to current canon, Sunday is best, but for a writer like me who is behind the times, I'd just get swamped. I've seen popular authors known for ongoing stories tend to upload on Monday or Wednesday.
I don't think I've changed enough of Anon-A-Miss to justify trying to post it here. It'd violate Rule #2 – I intentionally kept much of Anderson's dialogue, although the narration is entirely mine; I also add a bit of my own dialogue to fix plot holes and reconcile the comic with how I depict Sunset. And of course I alter the story to remove Twilight entirely. To me, this is an exercise in fix-fic'ing and creating a valuable flashback source for the actual story I'm writing. Once it's complete, I'll put it on Gdocs (I'll be happy to send you the link, probably others as well if they ask), and I might consider pulling a P.D.P. and posting it chapter by chapter on this blog; turns out novelizing a 48-page comic takes a LOT of words. I'm barely halfway through it at this point.
4528340 Man it's been a while since I really dug through Ocalhoun's analysis, but I think the tl;dr is more like 1pm-5pm Pacific time on Mondays or Tuesdays is the sweet spot. Sundays and Wednesdays are decent fallback days as well. Fridays and Saturdays can work, but they're higher-risk/higher-reward. But I can also attest from personal experience that posting much earlier than those timeframes doesn't really work out super-well. I tried that with some stories recently and I haven't been able to scare up the big viewcounts in a while now.
4528789 - I appreciate that, especially coming from you. I enjoyed writing it, especially Sunset's "whacked-out-of-her-gourd" dialogue, most of which I developed in the middle of the night while sleepy.
It was suggested to me that readers may have disliked how out-of-date her slang is. Well, as a Southerner like myself puts it: I ain't no spring chicken. And in my universe, neither is Sunset, so it works.
My next entry in the saga is very different in tone and marks the first time I used outside help. It may or may not be your cup of tea, especially considering I wrote its first draft before SSSQ, but know that I tried my best.
4529317 - So that's 3pm-7pm for me, since I live in the Central Time Zone. Y'know, I've noticed more and more of my Recovery stories are slow burns. Reconciliations wasn't terribly popular at first except with my loyal followers who clicked on it immediately. Over time, more people read it and liked it. I think THE GUIDE played a big role in giving exposure to my older entries -- except H&L, which seems to have its own momentum.