Chapter 15 of Basements of Doom is up! I reach a milestone, and I have a question for you. · 8:00pm Jul 1st, 2015
It looks as if you all got the alert this time, but I'll announce it anyway. Chapter 15 went up last night. This is by far the longest chapter I have even written. It's about twice my usual chapter length, and actually longer than all my one shot stories.
I didn't set out to do that. It didn't seem that long in my outline (which is just a list of bullet point to myself, really). I just had a lot of stuff to write that fit under the chapter heading theme (which is the definition of how you should organize chapters, I think). I toyed with the idea of breaking it in half once I saw how this thing was growing (Chapter 15 Good Dogs/Bad Dogs Chapter 16 Bad Dogs/Good Dogs) but discarded that as a bit silly.
I'm sorry this update is a week late. I can't blame the chapter length in all honesty. It had more to do with the fact that work has been kicking my ass. If that continues, and that seems likely, I won't make goal. Some of you will get to ask me at Bronycon how it ends, because it won't be finished.
But it is coming to an end. I've wrapped things up with a couple of antagonists, and now we are on the downhill run to the big finish. Quiz just has to face Bowser (and his customer). Um...that might take a couple chapters.
I have noticed that Basements of Doom's readership has fallen to about a quarter of what we started with. I have two theories for this. Maybe readers are waiting for it to be finished before continuing reading. Or maybe I've alienated my former readers by farting around and not finishing and now they've given up on me in droves. I'm in a good mood right now, and so I lean towards the former. Really. My insecurities aren't going to ge the best of me (twitch) and I refuse to think my readers have turned their backs on me (twitch, twitch, twitch).
Chpater 16 is all in my head (yeah, I've said that before) and just needs to get onto the page. We'll talk again soon.
For me it was just a mix of general reading laziness and waiting to see if I should download it to my Kindle or wait for the next update first.
I'll see about reading up on some of it this weekend and hopefully get myself to leave a comment or two, too.
And just to make it clear, let it be said that there can never be too much Quizzical Greystone (or wordplay about buttes
)
How are you judging readership? Is it possible to see each individual chapter's readership, or are you just using the total views for the story by date?
Could it be less that readers are abandoning Basements, and more that they're abandoning fimfic in general? You did start back in 2013, and that strikes me as having been a lot more of a boom year for the fandom than 2015.
3197952 Yeah, I look at individual chapter views. and all the updates this spring, starting with chapter 11, have struggled to get to 300 views.
I eagerly await the completion of this story, so I can download it and read it on my Kindle, as FSM intended.
3198061 Oh, gosh, I hope not! I don't think so. I have noticed that when I update Basements Quizzical and the other Quiz stories get a little bump. You may be right, but it seems more about readership being more diffused by more content to choose from. But nothing will ever get the popularity of Past Sins ever again.
But I had over 1000 readers, and now I don't.
Still reading. Still loving your OC. Gota remember your fan base ages just like everything else. it may just be a lot of them have gotten busy in life or pressured into giving up reading MLP fics now that there "older".
Ah well, my wife teases me for reading these... not gonna stop me.
3198142 Ah, the joys of having a non-brony spouse. This is actually the only fandom my wife and I don't share - we're both Trekkies, Star Wars fand, Brown Coats, Whovians... But she thinks the annual convention we're going to this August should be for Phineas and Ferb, and she contends in an alternate universe she drags me to P&F fan events.
3198083 I can't seem to figure out how to view individual chapter readership after so many redesigns!
3198184 Chapter views are at the bottom of each chapter, just before comments begin.
Everything has dropoff. Bad Horse has a very nice blog post somewhere on Reader Retention Ratios that explain it better, but just for a thumbnail rough sketch, I'll list two of my popular fics, the old Monster in the Twilight and the new Changelings, Love and Lollipops.
Title - First Chapter reads/ Last Chapter Reads -> Retention Ratio
Monster - 18,000/8,300 -> .45 (which is really good)
Changelings - 4,400/1300 -> .29 (not as good but not bad)
Quiz - 26,000/3600 -> .13 (it may look bad, but this is still twice what Changelings held onto)
Basements - 1400/320 -> .22 (just slightly worse than Changelings, BUT still incomplete and reads are still popping in. Many people will mark a story but not start it until it's done, so this number should rise over time.)
In short, don't worry. Write what you like to write and have fun with it.
Oh, that reminds me. I was looking over your listing on Equestria Daily for Quizzical and noticed you don't have Basements of Doom on there. Are you waiting until it's done?
Also, I couldn't get this search string to work to pull up a listing of all of your stories on EqD. (and I have no idea how I came up with it in the first place, so I don't know how to fix it.)
3198520 Yes, I'm waiting until Basements if finished, and I do one last good editing pass, before sending it to EQD.
Oh, and you don't look at last chapters (some readers skip to the end without reading everything) you look at the chapter with the lowest reads. Quiz doesn't have twice what Changlings has, it has less than half - a drop rate of worse than one in eight.
Never gunna give you up/
Never gunna let you doooown/
Never gunna run around and desert yooooou~
Yeah I'm waiting for it to be finished, though I might forget about it for a while due to other distractions.
Assuming the question is why have you stopped reading, if you have. For me, it's a case of several emotional stress resulting in seeking comfort in familiarity and so not being up for reading anything new for now. It's still on my list and I do hold hopes of catching up, but it's not currently in the cards.
As a reader:
I came close to adding this to the "When completed" list. Or just move from it awhile back. But it was such a fun story I just had to see if there was going to be any hope of it being resurrected. Nothing hurts a reader more then an abandoned fic after all. Not to mention I've been getting distracted by other projects outside of pony and the biggest of all, life offline, tends to take up most of my time.
It's certainly been a joy to see it come back to life and get more regular updates. Last chapter was the perfect size for me and it really felt like a proper push to getting things down that had a fantastic finale to some pretty mean mongrels there while opening up the gates to the final boss level, so to speak. And that adorable dual character growth for Silver and Diamond was cute. Little bit of backstory added to them. Always a plus for me.
Chapter Length:
1k-1.8k is honestly a drop in the bucket to some. So it was refreshing not having to wait another who knows how long to get that other half out. Unless the other parts like how the foals in the mines were doing, Scoots and Sweetie Belle, and parts from the Reader and Foal Brigade there were cut from the chapter to be next chapter's release, I don't think the buildup would have been as effective and leave an invitational cliffhanger for the next chapter. You really kept the ball rolling.
View counts:
Sadly fans come and go. The more active people you follow, the more groups you get into, the harder it is to catch updates sometimes. I should know, I've lost a few updates that got buried pretty deep a few times during days I was away from the site or people got super busy posting updates and new stories. So even if some people stop reading fiction or found a new fav story that just happens to be taking their time (I just caught up to what once had a completed tag on it called Theory of Harmony and still finding time to catch up to another 40'ish chapters of a story I started mid last month'ish called "Re:Harmony") so yeah, many people probably forgot what the story was about. Possibly.
That small detail:
OH! Maybe~! and this is a good possibility~... maybe you might want to have used the actual story you updated as the tag for blog posts to let those who probably only favorited the Basement of Doom story and let them know you updated! D:
(Not to mention it helps them not dig through your log of stories to see the actual updates! People can be pretty lazy so be sure to toss them a bone! xD)
In General:
Pretty sure your readers are still out there. And feel free to use The Diamond Cutters to update people on Basement of Doom. I'm pretty sure some people there might have missed the updates. Not sure how other groups are with story promotions. But I generally encourage people to make one single post and update the thread if they have relevant stories to promote. I'm pretty sure there were some readers there for this story.
If anything, you have my consent as a mod of the group to do so at your leisure.
Overall Dip in Active Readership:
Ah, but yeah. if you're just talking views? It's likely because a lot of people, most anyone who reads fiction, hardly use EQD as a source for fiction anymore. It can still give a nice boost, sometimes. But site traffic is not what it used to be back when you first released Quizzical. Rare are fics these days that garner 26-27k views, very few. https://www.fimfiction.net/stories?order=views&published_timeframe=4
Current state of fiction:
It gets harder and harder to find an interesting story each month. Word of mouth and having buddies willing to help spread word of your stories and you do to them is a must these days. Stay strong, those that are here still very much appreciate and love that this story is finally seeing a conclusion soon enough.
Incomplete stories that hook readers and get abandoned only create bad blood and lowers reader morale. I know I've been zapped a lot by that one. I thank the many friends I've made here that kept me going as long as I have.
3200514 I'll give using the Basements of Doom tag a try (though the Quizzical tag has twice the reach, and it's hard to imagine anyone tracking Basements who hasn't also faved Quizzical or is following me). Doing the obvious often has surprising results.
I'm taking you up on your offer, and have started an update thread on Diamond Cutters for Basements. Thank you.
3199808 I am very sorry you are feeling such stress, and I encourage you to do anything that makes you feel better.
Also, very perceptive of you to notice that I never actually asked a question - it took me a day to realize I'd done that.
3202949
I'd say that if it weren't for the most recent basements updates, I might never have gotten into the Quizzical works. Despite watching the show pretty early on (between seasons 1 & 2) I didn't get involved in anything fan created until around season 4ish. I saw the basements update on the front page here and... wow am I glad I did. I am just now catching up on this story, only a few more to go before I'm up to 15.