Movin' Along · 5:57pm Jan 15th, 2017
Thus far I have been pleased with the results of my new writing methodology. I was able to write a few thousand words this week, including work on The Silence, Derp, and Order of Shadows. While I didn't write on them, I was able to do copious brainstorming for Life of Pie and Bulletproof Heart (enough of the latter to probably start working on the first chapter), and did some editing work on Songbird. The only story I failed to touch at all was Needs of the Few, but only because my Thursday was unusually active beyond regular readings and posting my review blog. Overall, it was a decent week of work. I have hope for my literary future once again! Maybe all I needed was to change things up.
Speaking of change, some of you may have noticed that the "Authors" and "Collection" tabs have been removed from my review schedule spreadsheet (yeah, I see you poking your noses in there). Fact is, there was a fundamental flaw in my Author Scoring setup: anyone could earn a follow just by continuously pumping out stories of at least 'Worth It' quality. It would take some work to do that – most notably getting me to read that many of any one author's stories – but it feels a lot like rewarding mediocrity. Thus, I decided to change the system up, and put the author scoring system in an entirely new spreadsheet while I was at it.
The new Author Scoring spreadsheet can be found here.
The "Story List" tab lists every story I've read/reviewed along with its author, rating, and the location of its review.
The "Author List" takes every author and determines a score based upon the bookshelves in which I've placed that author's stories. The basic score is just like my old system: 4 points for "WHYRTY?", 2 for "Pretty Good", 1 for "Worth It", and -1 for "None" ("Needs Work" earns no score at all). The spreadsheet then determines the average score for the author ("overall score" divided by "number of stories"). To earn my follow, the author must achieve an average score of 1.9 or higher. I could have made it a flat 2, but realized that authors earning a "Worth It" or lower grade would have a pretty hard time making up for the fact. There is also a quantity stipulation: I have to read at least 5 of your stories before you can be followed. This was done to keep people from immediately getting a follow off of writing just one "Pretty Good" story.
Overall, this makes it much harder to earn a follow. Knowing this, I'll probably be more relaxed and start following people who I feel have earned the attention outside of the scoring system. Think of it not as a die-hard "I must get this or Paul won't pay attention to me!", but instead as a milestone achieved by very few. I may change the labeling just to emphasize that point.
The system does have one minor flaw: apparently GDocs can't use my equations to locate authors with numbers for names. This applied specifically to authors 314 and 8686, for whom the spreadsheet kept returning errors while working for everyone else. I think that's because it was looking specifically for a text string instead of numbers. I adjusted it to look for _314 and _8686 to account for it, but it's still a nuisance.
"Hey, what's that 'RiL' column on the far right side?" Glad you hypothetically asked. One of my little rules is that I don't want more than one story per author in my RiL at any given time, this being done to provide some control over how big my RiL gets and keep me from reviewing the same authors again and again over others *coughSS&Ehack*. I've been pretty lax on enforcing that rule in the last few months, though. So, the RiL column is a list of what stories by a given author are already in my RiL, so that I can check at any time and make sure before I go adding that author's latest big hit to the list.
The only other issue now is updating the doc. Sadly, I stopped paying much attention to author scoring for a while, and now its a few months behind. I aim to update it a little bit at a time until it's finally caught up, but I don't know how long that will take.
What's that? You think I'm already failing my resolution to not stress myself out? On the contrary! I'm one of those weirdos who enjoys setting stuff like this up. I find it kind of relaxing, actually.
Yes, yes, I know. Let the Twilight Sparkle-derived comments commence.
Well, I'm hoping to start work on the third chapter of Songbird today, so I better end this here before I get carried away on some other topic. Until Thursday!
PS – The setup below has way too much white space. Anybody know a way I can align those into some sort of tabled structure here on FIMFiction?
Story Progress
*Status bars are borrowed from L3Moon-Studios.
Songbird
Chapter 2: Editing
Chapter 3: Rough Draft
The Silence
Part 2, Chapter 3: Rough Draft
Derp
Rough Draft
No Heroes: Life of Pie
Brainstorming
Needs of the Few
Chapter 1: Editing
Bulletproof Heart
Brainstorming
Order of Shadows
Book V, Chapter 1: Editing
Book V, Chapter 2: Rough Draft
It's good to hear that your new system is working out for you. My wife is the same way about making plans, schedules, and goal tracking methodologies. Me? Not so much
I seem to work best with simple rule sets and the occasional cross-dimensional visitor.
DUDE! THOSE METERS ARE LEGIT!
4384129
I'm imagining Shakespeare's best friends saying that
Wow, there are so few authors who qualify, just because for as long as you've been at this, you've only read 5 stories by the same author maybe a half-dozen times. And for not being steered toward an author's best work, it would appear in several cases.
Jeez, my score sucks. Got killed by a 0 on a story that was more "I'm not the audience for this" than "this had serious problems," which isn't the same thing, and then a 1 on a story that was unedited and not meant to be anything literary. Now I can get up to a 1.9 average if you give 26 straight stories a "pretty good." or 2 straight WHYRTYs. Or 1 WHYRTY and 5 PGs.
Yeah, I'm doomed.
Ah. So, I mean, I've already earned the follow, but you've only read like 4 of my stories. I suppose I should fix this fact and write another one that I deem worthy enough to be judged. Good thing I have one in the burner. Brb.
Ooh, a new author ranking system!
Yeah, I'm good with this.
4384685 Only cause you get to keep your follow
4384766
Hey, like Paul said, the last system could reward simply pumping out words—it was a ranking that put a bit more weight on quantity than quality. The new system rewards authors putting more effort into polishing individual stories rather than simply moving on to the next one. Now that Paul has switched his system over, a writer needs to show more than just a willingness to throw words on paper as quickly as possible to catch his eye. Instead, they have to throw words on paper, then polish those words, then make sure that the next project is even more polished.
If that's not something someone wants to do, well, it is the world of fanfiction. And it's not like that's going to stop other readers from finding and pouring over something. But what it really comes down to is Paul to change-up his standards a little bit to better reflect what he's interested in drawing the eye to. Even if I hadn't kept my follow, I'd still have been okay with it, because personally I think it's a good direction to move, especially as the numbers of stories he's reviewed climb.