FortySixtyFour
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Chapter Vote Scores
🕑 Added 2017-07-09 07:41:52 +0000 UTC Although I'm never sure just how much stock to put into the voting scores on Lit, they're, as always, fascinating to look at. I want to say there's a correlation between the sex content and the individual scores, but that's hard to see--and sometimes I think the scores relate more to the chapter length, but that's not always clear, either.Was Chapter 5 scored lower because of the lack of sex content, or because it didn't satisfy the expectations readers were building with the characters and situations from the previous chapter? Most of Chapter 8's success is certainly because of how the preceding chapter arranged and built expectations.
I'm starting to think introducing and satisfying reader expectations is a more critical factor in writing erotica than the sex scenes themselves are. Which is of course, difficult, and in some part, wildly subjective from reader to reader. Great food for thought, though.
From last year around this time, all of the older individual chapter scores have also risen. Chapters 2 and 6 even climbed high enough to receive yellow H "Hot" tags, long after their fifteen minutes of fame in the Most Recent Entries lineup.
Ch 01 4.29 -> 4.36 Before the Convention
Ch 02 4.46 -> 4.54 Gijinka Capture
Ch 03 4.30 -> 4.43 Wolf, the Sheep, and the Shepherd
Ch 04 4.57 -> 4.63 Painting the Roses Pink
Ch 05 4.30 -> 4.35 Fighting His Past
Ch 06 4.48 -> 4.54 Flight from the Poisoned Oasis
Ch 07 4.69 -> 4.75 Effort and Opportunity
So in conclusion, chapter vote scores matter. For what, exactly, I have no idea. I've heard that many readers won't waste time clicking on something with a less than 4.5 rating, and stuff heading into a 4.9 will make it into toplists, that in theory attract many more readers. But at the same time, a compelling story needs to have ups and downs--giving myself an obligatory sex content quota per chapter would be a terrible idea.
The really great Lit authors have, of course, solved that problem entirely by consolidating their writing into larger chapters. That way the slower parts building anticipation aren't separate, lower scores from the portions that are satisfying those expectations built. Still kicking myself for not realizing to organize my chapters that way back then, ugh.
In the meantime, I've been whittling away Chapter 10's mountains of problems into molehills of problems. Most of the chapter is done and ready, but there's a lot of transitions, pacing and dialogue in the last quarter that just feel too feeble right now--even more so because tireless repetition and brainstorming of earlier segments of the chapter have made them impressively robust.
Comments
CharleyHorse
Let me chip my voice in as just a general encouragement. I was delighted to see the next chapter drop on this series and pulled much more out on the second read of the previous. In general - this is the type of writing that entertains me and I applaud your effort in putting it out there. Thank-you.
FortySixtyFour
I imagine that's the case some of the time, definitely. Mind Control category stories seem to fare better than most in that regard, though, as in Lit's overall top ten by ranking, five of them are from the relatively very small Mind Control category. It definitely seems to have a more general appeal to the wider Lit audience, less likely to be 1-starred into oblivion for simply not appealing to their tastes. Although, having a high chapter count can also make your story somewhat immune to those downvotes, as uninterested readers may not keep clicking through and downvoting past the first several chapters--they'll just go find other things to read, leaving later chapters unscathed.
Timtom12
I don't know how much of a problem it is, but I wonder if getting a story into a hot list causes it to drop, as people read it because it is in that list and not because they were searching for that kind of story and so give it 4 stars or less, which can drag the score down again.
