Mindless rambling...

[ostarella]

Just taking a little break from my rewrites, and I was thinking about Forest, and I looked over at the ten stories I have over at ff.net. So strange. Forest is one of my personal favorites, along with the Randy set, but that doesn't seem to be the case over there. The hands down favorite is Neverness. Forest comes in at number 8; Changeling is dead last (and by a *huge* margin), and Mon Bell Ami is 6th. Covenant, thank goodness, has been coming in 2nd for some time now; I'm almost having a competition in my head between that and Neverness  :D

It's just odd, I guess. Thinking about what my favorites are, versus what readers (at least on ff.net) seem to prefer. And why they prefer the ones they do.

Makes one have a little more sympathy for publishers.  ;-)

Comments

[billy-shriner.livejournal.com]

I think you should write your bunnies as you have them in your head, but obviously consider what's going to be interesting to a reader, to keep them reading (twists and turns in the plot etc. especially with longer stories) They are your bunnies. Obviously, if something gets *flagged* in the WIP / Draft stages, that isn't sitting right with the majority of the readers (this is good when you have quite a few comments from different readers on the ATSB) then, you should look at the *issue*.

That being said, the writer should be at least keeping them in character etc. etc. etc. otherwise, technically, it's not A-Team fanfiction ;o)

There are so many different readers out there with different tastes, so I think your story is going to be liked by someone (hopefully). If it's a good story, well written etc. etc. then it will get read. But I do wonder if the word count is an issue.

FW's has over 1400 hits on the first chapter, then it drops off to 100-200 there after. Looking at it at the moment, chapter 27 has 71 hits...so do I assume 71 people have read it all the way through. It amazes me how some chapters have more hits than chapters before...why would you do that?

[ostarella.livejournal.com]

I wonder about the "hit count" per chapter myself. It amazes me how many people will read the first seven chapters, than skip four and start in all over again with chapter 12 LOL But yeah, I don't think it's unusual for the first chapter to have mega hits, and then see the next chapters drop off dramatically. As I said earlier, if the first chapter doesn't catch them, most likely they won't read further. Which if fine - that first chapter tells them whether it's a story they have any interest in reading. I think I'm going to revise my comment about the first chapter catching them, in that if the second and subsequent chapters drop down to almost nothing, then you know you have a problem. So maybe it's the second chapter that's more telling than the first.

Oh, I'm getting a headache! Too much analyzing!! LOL

[beckyblack]

I think on fanfiction as well, unless you remember to hit the >> thing to go to the latest chapter, then you have to go to chapter 1 to get to the rest of the chapters. And unless you're always up to date with a new story you may not want the latest chapter, so would go to 1 to get to the dropdown menu. So it would e normal to see a much bigger hit count on chapter 1, then a big drop. It doesn't mean that all those people stopped reading it!

[ostarella.livejournal.com]

Hadn't thought of that. Duh...

[billy-shriner.livejournal.com]

Neither had I! doh!