Popular, its all about Popular.

What makes a story popular?

I suppose the most important part is that it’s a good, interesting, well written story. However, you could write the best story ever and if no-one reads it no-one will know. So what makes you want to read a story in the first place?

This all came from my own stories. I set my bar rather low, I consider a story a success if it get 20+ up votes and if I ever get 100+ up votes I’d consider that I’ve made the big time (well big for me). However, the popularity of my stories doesn’t really match how good I think they are. Pinkie and Bluie is my runaway success currently at 90 and I consider it only a bit above average, to my utter surprise Trixie’s lover is my second best story at 26 even though I think it’s my worst story. I consider Monster to be my best story and that’s only on 19 making it not even a success by my measure.

So I’m going to look into what attracts me to a story before I read them.

1) First of all is probably picture and description, personally I tend to read whatever appears on the front page and skim this info so a catchy description is likely to get more people to at least think about reading a story which is probably half the battle. When it comes to my stories I’m not good at this, none have pictures and the descriptions aren’t amazing.

2) Category. I think this probably has a bigger effect than many people think. There are some category’s which a fair proportion of the population just turn off from. Human, Anthro, Sex, Cross Over, Human in Equestria, etc. Personally I’m not very keen on Sad, Dark and Crossover (Despite having written stories in these categories), basically a story needs to be extra attractive for me to read if it’s in one of these categories and I guess others are the same. To me a comedy or romance story is a fairly safe choice to read. My top two stories are both Romances so I think that’s part of the path to success.

3) Length. Another thing which I think has a bigger effect than others may think. A story with 1-3K words represents about 10 minutes to me so I can afford to waste that time on something that turns out to be poor. >10K is probably an hour or more I’m only going to start that if I think the stories going to be good. This is why I’m generally splitting my more recent stories into chapters even though I write them as single blocks. I’d be more likely to read the 3K first chapter of a story that’s 30K long than a single 30K chapter. I don’t think Pinkie would be as popular if I’d kept it as a single 15K chapter. Time after time is probably effected by this with 10K+ chapters it’s not something people just dip into.

4) Being part of a good group. I’d don’t think most of my stuff would be as well read if I wasn’t part of the Lunaverse and Cadenceverse. The trick is probably getting the right sized or focused groups. I’m only a member of a few but I guess the larger groups are so big you probably get several stories added each hour which probably makes them useless for actually finding stories due to information overload. The same for small groups as they probably don’t update very often although when they do you would probably find that you wold like the story particularly if the group has a very thin focus.

5) Further work from the same author. Once I’ve found an author I like I’m much more likely to read the rest of their work. Fairly self-explanatory but probably breaks the previous rules, I’m more likely to read a dark fic if I’ve already read a comedy form the same author even if the new story of 15K long. So in a way persistence will probably get you more readers, if someone likes one of your stories they’ll look at the others.

6) Finally, once a story is popular it’s more likely to get more popular. The feature box is a fairly good indication of a reasonable story so if you hit there you’re probably going to stay there for a while. Generally I don’t read a story until it has about 100 up votes (So I wouldn’t read any of my own stories) unless there are other factors in play. Pinkie was apparently briefly featured (although I missed it) so that might explain part of its popularity. Word of mouth is also important but that's partially linked to groups, so see above.

So that’s the factors I think make stories popular or not and how they relate to my own writings. Hopefully this doesn’t seem too self-indulgent and I’d like to see what other people look for in stories before they actually read them.

For you interest below is the order of my stories based on up votes vs how good I actually think they are from best to worst

Actual
Pinkie and Bluie
Trixie’s Lover
Pokey’s holiday
A Tale of Two assistants
Time after Time
Monster
The race that ate friendships
Training Day

My opinion
Monster
Time after Time
Pinkie and Bluie
A Tale of Two assistants
Training Day
The race that ate friendships
Pokey’s holiday
Trixie’s Lover