Niche player · 4:19am May 31st, 2018
I’ve come to the conclusion my stories just aren’t going to set the world, or at least Fimfiction, on fire. It took a nearly a year and a half to break two thousand views on one story and a thousand views on two other stories, with the rest trailing well behind. As of the time of writing, only one of my stories ever appeared in the “Featured” box, and that was a guest-writer short set in Rose Quill’s main story arc rather than one of my own. I haven’t broken a hundred followers. The absolute number of votes is very low—but the upvote-downvote ratios are amazing. As the old saying goes, for people who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.
I think that last point is the rub. I don’t write crowd-pleasers. In fact, what I write appears to be pretty much the opposite of what most people seem to be looking for on Fimfiction. I usually don’t, and won’t, write broad comedy, with only a couple of debatable exceptions. I don’t, and won’t, produce porn (though I have nothing at all against it). I don’t, and certainly won’t, “ship” canon characters, at least in my own story arcs. (For my “fifteen years later” setting, the Campus, I’m more willing to indulge that particular vice—especially since even show staffers were doing it in the later Equestria Girls stories!) I don’t, and definitely won’t, use second-person narrative. I don’t, and absolutely won’t, cross over with anything.
Another major element, I suspect, is age: I’d bet the few people who are attracted to my writing tend to be much older than the average for Fimfiction, just as I am. The relative infrequency with which I post also may be a factor, though in all honesty I doubt it makes a significant difference.
Whatever the underlying causes are, however, I’ll keep plugging along. I’m here to present the sort of stories I want to tell—and to read. My writing tends to be low-key and fine-grained; it may come as no surprise I enjoy authors such as Lois McMaster Bujold, David Weber, and Tom Clancy, practitioners of dense, cerebral, highly detailed storytelling full of strong world-building or, in Clancy’s case, world-explication.
In any case, I deeply appreciate the promotional efforts of FanOfMostEverything, PresentPerfect, Singularity Dream, and a few other folks. I’d like to think they’ve helped at least a little, and I want to thank them again for their kind words on my behalf.
One thing I notice is that most of your stories are sequels, which can scare away people.
At any rate, name a story that's not too long and I'll review it.
Not that anypony actually watches my reviews...
Good to hear you're not getting discouraged. You have a wonderful, possibly unique take on the material, one that I wanted to see explored in this level of detail and accuracy for some time before finding your work.
I do what I can. D: You keep plugging away!
I'm so glad you're gonna keep working away.
4873312
Hmm. Interesting. I confess that hadn’t occurred to me. I may tweak the story descriptions to emphasize each stands alone and doesn’t require knowledge of the others.
4873314
I’m not sure what your definition of too long may be; if you have more specific criteria in mind, let me know and I’ll zero in on the best candidate. “The Farmer in the Dell”, “Conference”, “Oops.”, and “Pig in a Poke” are one-shots that definitely qualify by almost any standard. Lectern’s is an anthology series. None of my stories reaches twenty-five thousand words, which is short by novel standards. The two stories I’m most proud of at this point are Amphorae (~17,500) and Foreign Nationals of Unusual Importance (~24,600).
4873393
That pretty much is exactly what inspired me to start writing the sort of work I’m posting. The cool reception is discouraging, though not primarily due to the lack of ego gratification. Certainly I’d be delighted by big numbers and popularity, but more frustrating is that I have things to say in my writing I think more people should hear. You in particular have an excellent sense for what some of those things are.
4873413
And I thank you for them! Anything folks can do to get the word out is welcome.
4873480
Since this is a hobby for me, I can’t give it the priority some other writers, working by commission or micropatronage, are able—nay, obligated—to. That’s part of why my posting is irregular and somewhat infrequent, but I don’t have any plans to stop.
Well, with two out of four bookshelves in the "Library" section of my profile being named "Read Later" and "Read Later #2" and with them containing around 1.5k stories each I haven't even managed to read all your works here yet. Still those that I have read are fairly interesting and a good read in my opinion. It is rather nice to read about details and 'sides' (not sure about the correct term here, don't know English well enough to, well, know, and too tired to spend more than ~3 minutes trying to look it up at the moment) of worldbuilding rarely if ever addressed in other fics I encounter on this site. And it is also nice to hear that you don't have any plans to stop writing.
Anyway, if you would ever want to try gathering statistics on the average age of your readers in order to test your hypothesis - I'm 26 at the moment and you now have at least one data point ;p
Wish you good luck, inspiration and time, I suppose.
All I see here is you writing words that isn't in one of your stories. Chop chop!
I kid, of course. I look forward to your stories quite a bit and part of me kinda likes them not being the most popular thing around.