I felt like I put a lot of effort into my latest (and completed) story which I titled "Spike the Brave and Glorious". However, after waiting some time, I have hardly gotten any feedback at all.

I know that my writing is far from ideal, even ignoring any grammatical errors that I might have missed in editing. I am simply asking for some meaningful feedback on the quality of my latest story. If any one is interested in giving it a review, feel free to be as hash and critical of my writing as you see fit. I am looking for ways to improve my writing, and any meaningful commentary is welcome.

If the story I suggested does not invoke interest, consider my previous story, which I titled, "Spike's Greatest Endeavor". I would also equally appreciate any commentary on that story too.

I mean, part of the problem is posting all twelve or so of your chapters in a single day,

Nonetheless, I don't think I have ever seen a story with no likes or dislikes that hadn't just been posted.

7965122
The upvote/downvote counter shows up publicly once the story has gathered 10 votes (up/down). Given that stories at this stage often tend to receive one vote per ~10–20 views, it's not really surprising that a story sitting at 112 views doesn't have enough votes yet.

7965151
Huh, I've been on this site for a while and I've never noticed that, huh.

You learn something every day.

7965158 It wasn't always like that. This feature has only been in place in the last few years.

7965121
I don't think it's anything personal. One, Spike simply isn't that popular a character and 39kwords of C-grade main character doesn't get a lot of eyeballs. Two, the short description isn't distinctive. It's descriptive, sure, but doesn't set this apart from one thousand other adventure stories on the site. Three, the cover art doesn't "pop."

Sorry, but you're fighting an uphill battle for eyeballs here.

7965151
it isn't true

7965121
self advertising, right? curious that you have so many answers. Maybe Spike is more popular than he seems.

About your story... I'll keep an eye on it.

7965166
Did anyone mention the unattractive cover? UHMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

I thought that making your own drawings added value to your fanfic work, but it seems more like something circumstantial to criticize. Anyway.

You draw better than me. I give you one point for that.

Thank you everyone (or every-creature if that is preferred) for the feedback. The main take-away I got from this is that my lack of reviews was not a result of bad writing, but how I failed to display my story. There is a common saying to not "judge a book by its cover". However, when one considers making any kind of investment of any material or media, the subject in question must be judged before it can be fully evaluated. This most certainly applies to stories on this site. Any user (who is not a paid moderator) would only bother to read any story if the information from the title, listed categories, description, and thumbnail image appeals to them. I see that this is where I failed, and why I got so little feedback before posting here.

7965122

I thought uploading a completed story all at once would be good idea. No reader wants to read a really good beginning of a story that will never get finished. The completed story label promises that I, the writer, intended that not to happen. However, I will certainly consider the tactic of spreading out my uploads, instead of uploading a finished story all at once.

7965166

I like writing stories focused around Spike, as he happens to be the character that I both enjoy and relate to the most. However, if stories centered around Spike tend not to be very popular, then I suppose that such stories would only be interested by a small audience. This problem might be somewhat worsened by my story's length, as few readers would be willing to invest the time to read something over 38000 words long. If my writing would only be interesting to such a small population of viewers, then perhaps getting little attention could not be avoided. I must have over estimated the number of willing audience members that would be attracted.

I aimed to be thorough in my full description of my story, and brief in my short description. I feel that there really is no way for a short description to be notably distinct due to the highly limited character count, so I only really have the opportunity to be expressive in the long description. I suppose a comedy adventure of Spike saving Rarity is rather a generic scenario that had been done before, even if I added a few unexpected plot twists. However, if my long description did not appear to be unique, despite being thorough, accurate, and not containing any spoilers, then perhaps I should have attempted to put more thought into making it contrast from the descriptions of other such stories. When I first published my story, I did not think that this was not a problem.

7965183
I wanted to give my story some cover art that included Spike in black and red armor. There were no good pictures that were already out there, so I drew my own picture with pencils and colored pencils, took a photo of it, and uploaded a cropped, downsized version. I thought that an unimpressive thumbnail was far more attractive than not having one at all. However, I will consider other options for thumbnail images in the future. Perhaps a thumbnail that is unappealing is worse than not having one at all.

7965180
It is, actually. Look at the new stories feed on the front page, there is no fics with a visible rating that have less than 10 ratings.
7965782
I honestly find the cliche 'don't judge a book by the cover' to be kind of strange. Everybody judges books by the cover; if I see a book with a muscular shirtless man on it, it is unlikely to be a story I would be interested in, if it has multiple shirtless men, I know it is a story I am not interested in.

The fact of the matter is that there are over 2.5 billion words of fics on this site alone, far more than anyone would ever be able to read. As such people prioritize on what stories they read. Cover art is the first thing people see, so it can very quickly turn people away from the story. I'm sorry, but the crayon drawing is not a good look.

People's willingness to read incomplete fics aside (and, most readers are absolutely willing to read incomplete fic), by posting your entire fic in one day, you only get one chance to get people's eyes on it.

Spike is kind of a one note character, he is far from the most popular.

I'm sorry to burst your bubble but 39k words isn't long, there are 61 fics on this site that are over 1 million words, many of which are some of the most liked stories on the site.

7965793
I feel like a significant portion of the site's users would be dissuaded by stories more than 20000 words. I know I would, if the description did not seem intriguing, or if there are some notable problems with the writing itself at the start. The term "long" is relative, and I used the term to imply a contrast of 38000 words with the story lengths I commonly see on this site. Just 50000 words is short compared to the stories that are well over 1000000 words in length, but could be considered long from the perspective of the expected length of the average new upload. From this, I realize that perhaps the word count is not as big of a problem as the other problems I listed.

As for the cover art, I will aim to do better next time. I have no experience with digital art, so using colored pencils on paper was my best option for a custom cover image, despite my lack of illustrative abilities. Maybe next time I will include images of several muscular men in skimpy clothing on my cover (I am not actually going to do that, or ever write about that).

Overall, I hope to eventually receive evaluation on the quality of my writing. But before that happens, I need to make my covers more appealing first.

7965793
In my personal experience, it is not true, I have had ratings before I had 10, and they don't even have comments.

7965833
The author always sees the number of ratings, even below 10.