On the writing of porn for attention-getting purposes · 3:37am May 27th, 2017
[Obligatory horse noises][1]
So SPark wrote a blog on the oft-repeated maxim that you get popular on Fimfiction / in fanfiction / in life by writing porn. Specifically, she breaks down the reception on two related stories of hers: one cloppy, one not.
The short take-away: porn gets you more eyeballs and it gets your story on more bookshelves (though most of them are private because people don't like broadcasting their porn-reading habits)[2]. It also gets you a similar number of likes, proportionally more dislikes, and noticeably fewer comments. SPark takes particular exception to the decrease in comments, because clapping keeps Tinkerbell alive writers who care about their work generally seem to live for comments. (I concur with this. There's nothing better than getting good comments; and as nice as the approval of a feature-boxed story is, commentless feature-boxing pales in comparison to having two or three good readers go through your story and leave detailed comments about their experience.)
I think there's an important part of the "write porn for followers" maxim that people don't discuss, though—despite the fact that it may be the single most important part of the whole situation.
A fanfiction writer isn't just a miserable pile of secrets collection of random story- and blog-products with a given mean level of quality. A writer is a brand, and I wonder if people sometimes fail to realize this. Followers aren't interchangeable. There may, potentially, be more easy followers available for the writing of clop, but there's no sure-fire way (and arguably no way at all) to translate these followers into followers for non-clop product.
Anybody who's been around pony fiction long enough probably remembers the story of darf/NTSTS. NTSTS was an accomplished and respected writer, but his clop account went like gangbusters. Eventually, he decided to focus his attention on that account, because it had around 8x as many followers (3200 vs 430), and try to bring more of his interesting writing in over there.
The result? Despite having a huge number of followers, very few people paid attention to his serious work posted on the darf account. People followed darf for clop. When darf produced non-clop content, when darf went against brand, people didn't much care. The stories languished, in spite of all the newsfeeds announcing them.
SPark's anecdote does reveal what most of us suspect (and what I might actually be able to show data-analytically if I weren't just being lazy tonight and typing a quick blog post): porn gets you more views. But not all views are equal, and there's more to that than just the lack of comments and the worsened downvote ratio.
Selling out is only helpful as an artistic tool if (1) you intend to keep selling out in perpetuity, feeding off the love of views and upvotes and occasional featureboxing to keep your fairy self alive or (2) if you can do it in a way that allows you to retain crossover appeal (which is, frankly, a huge pain in the butt and not worth anybody's time). It's a good way to get your name seen and become recognizable. It's a bad way to get respect, or to get anyone to engage with the stuff you really care about writing[3].
If you want fame and glory, well: (1) good luck with that; (2) your actual best bet has nothing to do with porn or writing good material, it has to do with publishing regularly (and better still, on a schedule).
Writing well is still advantageous in a vacuum, but inasmuch as quality holds you back from frequent publishing, it'll hurt your ability to make a name for yourself. On the other hand, quality allows you access to things like: (1) story-boosting services like Fimfiction review groups, EQD, RCL, Seattle's Angels, etc; (2) major reviewers like PresentPerfect, Chris, and fuck-it-there-are-too-many-of-you-guys-now-so-I'm-only-going-to-mention-PP-and-Chris; and (3) good word-of-mouth from people around the community who get listened to.
So, Bradel's quickfire cheat-sheet for attaining fandom popularity in the writing department:
1) Porn gets you views and followers, but very poor branding
2) Frequent publishing gets you views and followers, but takes more work. People will actually care about what you write, though.
3) Quality stories and blogs (probably unlike this one) will get you views and followers at a much slower rate, especially at first—but you have access to a lot more helpful tools once you build into a higher skill-level, and the following is a lot more devoted.
I mean, hey, there are actually people who are going to read this blog post, and I haven't posted anything on my account in 10-and-a-half months. I promise you, Route #3 really does work. Even if it means nobody's ever going to shut up about Bell, Book & Candle until you finish it.
[1] Yes, I'm still alive. No, I'm not dead. No, this doesn't mean Bell, Book & Candle is finished yet. Yes, I still haven't given up hope of finishing it. Yes, I do intend to keep writing. No, probably not right now, because I need to finish my dissertation by November so I can take up a new job as an assistant professor. No, I did not have sex with that woman. Yes, officer, I do know how fast I was going. No, I have no bananas today.
[2] Some of us have full-fledged clop accounts, which makes the porn-favorite demarcation problem much easier, and allows for the generous notification to authors when we find their porn acceptible/creditable.
[3] I am assuming here, of course, that you don't really care about writing porn. If you do, oh my God, go write porn. Go write good porn. Write all the porn. So much porn. Persons of the appropriate gender/orientation combination will fall at your feet and worship you. Like Val Kilmer in the movie "Real Genius", you will be plagued with the pickle dream. This blog is only intended for people who would be writing porn to sell out. Use at your own risk.
The lines get a little blurrier for shippers. It's a lot harder to get the benefits of quality stories and blogs in shipping, which I talked about in my own blog recently, though shipping by itself does have a somewhat similar-to-porn dedicated audience who are happy to shoot your follower count up quick and read what you write -- as long as it's related to one of their pairings of choice. The interesting thing is that most of these readers will also be attracted by porn of their pairing and happily move between porn and romance fics.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that there is a crossover appeal between porn readers and shippers. If you're a shipper with a speciality in a pairing, making porn a part of your brand is a fine way to diversify that keeps your readers happy. (bats being a good example of that.)
I actually considered addressing "brand" somehow, but the post seemed long enough, and I don't think I can talk on that subject, because my brand is very, er... I'm not sure I have one. My stories are all over the map.
4548563
I'm somewhat similar on that, I think. I've made a concerted effort to write stories that use different tags and different characters instead of focusing in anywhere. But I think, to some extent, branding is kind of inescapable—even if your brand isn't immediately clear from your writing. Ferinstance, one of the first mental connections I make for you is: "Oh, the plushie writer". Has nothing to do with your writing, but it's a memorable feature about you.
Someone like bookplayer (high-quality shipping) or Bad Horse (literary theory and disturbing litfic) has a much stronger brand that ties into their stories, but at the same time that makes the brand harder to escape since it's so heavily connected to their work product. To some extent, off-writing branding is handy because it makes you memorable without tying you down to a particular type of product. Also, if you can get one of those rare reputations for "quality", then it's a little easier to stay on brand—at least as long as your skill level doesn't slip too far.
4548570
Nailed it.
Back in the early days, I noticed the world of ponyfic had names associated with Romance, with Adventure, with Comedy, etc. but none with Horror. I wanted to try branding as you describe it. What John Carpenter is for movies and Alice Cooper is for music, Horse Voice would be for ponyfic: A name synonymous with Horror.
And it worked. Scarlet Weather's first "Season of Spooky" blog mentioned that the fandom only had one dedicated Horror writer, and everyone immediately knew who she was talking about. Chris coined the term "Horse-Voician" while reviewing one of my one-shots. PresentPerfect has said things like, (paraphrased) "It's pretty scary, but what else do you expect from H.V.?" It's all very flattering.
Trouble is, now that I've worked out the emotional baggage I was basing my stories on, I want to re-brand as a Comedy writer. For the reasons you mention, I don't know if I can pull an audience with it.
By the way, are you ever going to finish Bell, Book... Um... Moving right along.
4548562 Then you have writers like me who *can't* write anything higher in the alphabet than "Almost R"
I blame my diverse relatives, and the fear that someday one of my eighty-year old cousins will walk up to me on Sunday right after Lutheran services are over and ask, "Are you the one who wrote that pony story with Twilight Sparkle and that really strange body warping spell?"
4548593
Well, in my case I totally don't have an account where I post most of that stuff. I did have to make an exception for Maidens Day, because I was too proud of it.
Of course, I happen to know my mom reads my blog fairly regularly. I have to assume she's at least caught the implications about Maidens Day and the account I don't have, but I sincerely hope that she's wise enough to keep Mature stories hidden and not go looking for them.
Have clop alt, can confirm all above points.
Good stuff! I've long suspected much of the same for quite some time. My follower count is nowhere near the top of the heap, but I'm constantly astounded and humbled by who's on that list. Either way my aim is write good stories, and hope my definition of good continues to align with that of others.
…
Although in terms of raw numbers, the stories that've gotten me the most views and followers primarily involve Twilight sitting on some guy's couch.
This, actually makes pretty much all of the sense. Everyone else can go home now, Bradel cracked the code.
Congrats on getting an assistant professor position! I definitely agree that not all followers are created equal, and it is much more important to find the right audience rather than to find the largest audience.
Yeah, feedback is often thin when it comes to porn. Certainly when it comes to genuinely constructive feedback. Heck, I go on silent running, with very few exceptions.
The branding aspect is definitely important to keep in mind as well, to say nothing of balancing output and quality. I'm definitely feeling that particular crunch given my much-reduced writing time.
In all, an excellent blog. Thanks for dropping by.
4548710
Honestly, that may be my favorite thing about having a clop account. I hardly use the thing—but when I read good stories (and some clop does, certainly, qualify), I find it difficult not to leave detailed feedback. Having an obvious clop account not tied to me makes it pretty easy to do so without feeling embarrassed about it.
On the other hand, it probably makes my super-secret clop account a lot less secret—going around leaving long, Bradel-similar feedback on clop stories that I think are especially well-written.
My brand is: that one shitty random comedy guy who occasionally writes something decent.
You're gonna finish BB&C? :O Wow!
I contest the "fewer comments" bit. Comments depend upon the complexity and depth of the work, and its ability to be critiqued; not the existence or absence of pornographic content. My only M story (so far) has garnered more than two thousand comments. Yes, it's already novel-length, but still, ponies comment largely in order to debate the morality of the characters, to discuss the complexity of the plot, to explain things to each other, and because they have lots of theories on what will happen next in the story.
What I'm trying to say here is that a "porn" story doesn't have to be total porn from start to end. In fact, it's usually a lot more enjoyable (in both senses) if it isn't (the story I mention doesn't even have any pornographic content for the first twenty-six chapters, though most of the early chapters are tiny). There's something to be said for suspense and expectation and payoff.
That said, even poorly-written minific porn seems to get a lot of comments these days. I'm not even sure if it's true for that case.
4548562
What I said in 4548822 might apply to shipfics as well. A shipfic doesn't need to be focused so heavily on the ship that there isn't an interesting story encapsulating it. Granted, you can't do this if your story is too short, but it's very possible to trick ponies who don't like shipping into reading and enjoying shipfics, as long as the story is about substantially more than the characters' relationship(s).
4548822
...well, I'd kinda tend to say that you're not writing porn at that point. I mean, to me, the "porn gets you views/likes/followers/feature-box" stereotype is largely about writing 5000-word, cut-right-to-the-chase, sexual encounter stories. I think there's a heavy distinction between writing mature stories (which may or may not contain sexual content) and writing porn.
Heck, most people wouldn't call the Game of Thrones TV series porn, but it sounds like it's probably a lot more needlessly sexualized than your 26-chapters-before-anybody-gets-some-action Mature story.[1]
That doesn't speak to your secondary point that even the PWP stories get more comments these days, but I do think it's worth pointing out that you and I may be defining porn very differently here.
[1] Sidenote: I went over to your page to look at the story in question, and spent a minute or two looking around like, "Wait, nothing here is M-rated with novel length and 2000 comments..." Then, belatedly, I figured out that I had "view mature" off. Good job, Bradel. Write a blog about porn, and don't even presently have the mature filter off. (I don't really care much about the filter one way or the other, except to occasionally aid in sorting stuff; I'm honestly kind of shocked I had it sitting on off.)
I am very bad at leaving comments on stories. I've tried to get better at it but most of the time all I'd leave is something along the lines of "Cool story bro/sis/nondeterminantgendernoun" and while part of me knows that a short "I liked it" comment is better than no comment a larger part of me feels that if I'm going to make a comment I should make it at least somewhat worth the ten or so seconds it takes to read so if I have no real constrictive criticism or can't point to any one thing I liked over anything else I just... don't comment.
I'm trying to be better about that.
Some points:
- Maybe 20 people read my first story, "Friends, with occasional magic", the day it came out. I got people to read my disturbing litfics by first posting 4 comedies that got me most of my followers: Behind the scenes, Twilight Sparkle and the quest for anatomical accuracy, Sisters, and Dark Demon King Ravenblood Nightblade. It totally worked. I still write comedies--Do That Again, Breaking Peeved, Twinkie--and they still pull in more new followers than other stories.
To be sure it worked, I'd have to keep track of who followed me for which stories, & then know which other stories they read. Unfortunately fimfic doesn't tell me that.
- darf is a well-known but bad example, bcoz (a) a lot of his non-porn stories were either depressive stuff he wrote fast, didn't edit, and told people wasn't good, or weird high-modernist concept stuff, not normal stories that are fun to read, (b) a lot of people read his stories, just not as many as read his porn.
- PresentPerfect reviews porn. I think he likes porn better than he likes my stories.
4548587 People will definitely read comedy if you post it and it's appealing, regardless of your brand. Most fimfic readers won't stay away from it bcoz it says "Horse Voice" bcoz most fimfic readers are not part of the circle of people who even recognize the names Horse Voice, Bradel, or Bad Horse.
How can I be sure you're really not dead? I mean, they could have Internet in the afterlife, how would I know? Can you prove you're alive? Hmmmmm???????
4548835
That depends what you mean by "more going on." I agree that most people won't blink as much at a romantic subplot in an adventure fic, but any fic that focuses primarily on the relationship, even the ones that thematically have a lot going on, is a hard sell to a lot of people.
There are other variables, I admit. Non-mane six ships (or one mane six ships) and nonstandard ships do have an easier time from what I've seen.) An established lit person slumming it in shipping will also have an easier time than a shipper trying to make something with lit appeal (though romance stories by non-shippers almost never rank highly among shippers.)
It's possible, but it's sure as hell not easy.
BELL BOOK & CANDLE WH-
Oh. You've addressed this already. Well, now I feel silly.
Hm. Reading this I feel that, like most things, I somehow managed to completely miss the proper order of things.
I'm another of those alt account pornographers. I wrote porn in the first place just to prove to myself that I wasn't prude. Only one serious story came out of it. Yes, it was more popular -- the only thing I've ever written to get over 200 likes. And yes, it did have a higher proportion of downvotes.
But ... honestly, I'm very satisfied with the comments it has. Looking back over them now, I see loads of detailed comments offering thoughts on the characters and the plot. Part of that might be that it sort of turned into a shipfic and dragged me along for the ride. (I ended up spending far longer wrangling over points of characterisation than I planned to) In which case, I guess 4548562 's observation has something to do with it.
Then there's the fact that if you want to do some deep characterisation, sex is really useful tool to have in your, uh, box. I suppose most porn writers don't take advantage of it, but it's there.
Looking back, I rather wish I'd just girded my loins (sorry) and put it on this account. I'm dreadful at branding anyway, so adding a bit of porn wouldn't have made my offerings much more jumbled.
Also, this reminds me that I should follow SPark. Which I'm going to do *now*.
4548957
I agree (sorry, I got a little sidetracked). Stuff like TSJ is clearly more than just "porn". But short stories written intentionally for clop purposes can cover more terrain than the vulgar.
It's weird for me (and my opinion is not as relevant) because I don't read a lot, and also when I write clop (or anything else) I still have a firm message in mind I want to convey. In a long story I might write a chapter that's solid clop, but even then there's a larger context the events are progressing. And again, you can do this in short stories, too. A tight word limitation plus a clop focus doesn't prevent an interesting story from being embedded within the narrative. (I don't even think it's hard to do, necessarily.)
Imma guess from your response that typical clop on Fimfiction is almost always vacant of ideas and meaning, and if that's the case, it's pretty unfortunate. Everything is better with substance to it. A climax isn't satisfying if you haven't built up to it. Just as with fiction aimed at a higher ear, I think a clop reader should feel like they're right there in the story, trotting in one or more characters' horseshoes and experiencing feelings that extend beyond simple arousal. But I'm probably praising Luna to the choir at this point.
There is something important I want to say here, though. One of the most useful things about porn (or similar sensitive content) is that it allows you to select your audience in a surprisingly precise manner. You can use it to control who receives the message of the story.
So if you do want to write porn for popularity, be selective about what you write. Aimed properly, clop will attract an audience that will be receptive to your other works. You can then trick (or 'train') those ponies to read non-porn pony lit... and enjoy it. 
4549063
As far as what I write, The Clarity of Darkness is an example of a very short story that ships TwiJack as hard as possible—yet the point to the story isn't about those specific characters. The romance is bigger than the characters are: the feelings, the gradual understanding, the deepening commitment shining through in the face of maximal duress. Maybe I don't succeed well at it—I'm certainly not practiced. Most of the shipping I do is within TSJ, which isn't exactly a ship story and is also designed for a very limited audience. So I most assuredly defer to your judgment on the vicissitudes of shipfics.
I'm admittedly curious whether you'd consider my novella Broken Symmetry to be a shipfic or not (note: I'm not asking you to read it). Every part of the story progresses the TwiDancer relationship, but the underlying structure of the story isn't about shipping at all. It's more of an adventure story with lots of confusion and science. But every part of the story is pushing the characters together (and/or growing them individually).
tl;dr, I have no idea what I'm doing when I write ships.
But I still enjoy doing it!
...and none of you bastards can stop me muahahaha
Have edited much porn for alt accounts. can agree. also this is not the blog you were supposed to write you git.
4549013
That's very reassuring... but shoot, now I'm running out of reasons not to come out of semi-retirement.
Holy fiery dragon dildos, you're alive Bradel!
...Don't suppose you got any old smut you wanna share with me, yamgoth the moth, a dashingly deplorable debonair? Adevourer of delightfully dirty delectibles of all shapes and sizes? Except for the ones that're too big and long. They take too much time
Purdy please? 