making it easier on readers
Jan. 8th, 2017 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have read a few times a post going round tumblr basically begging for more feedback from readers
and that is very reasonable
except my attempts to do such a thing lead to panic attacks and woe spirals
but probably there ar a lot of readers who are not mentally ill
probably.
But, writers: sometimes, you do not make it easy.
I have no idea how to interact on tumblr
so mostly I'm following tags on Ao3
(anyone who does not tag: what are you doing how do you expect anyone to know you wrote that thing zomg some writers so frustrate)
the first hit on a multipart story is just me pushing Mark for Later.
Then I will hang out checking my 31 page Marked for Later list to see if you update.
If it goes a year with no updates then I'm very probably umarking it unread. which may be another hit. depends which button I use.
some fics? are not actually a single multipart story. some fics are what that writer does with any short story they write.
writers, I am begging you, do not do this.
one, the tagging is a nightmare. the story either has all the tags or none. it is every AU, it is canon, it is every obscure thing... or they don't bother to tag anything and Choose Not To Warn. the odds of it hitting one of my squicks just in the tags go up exponentially with each part. and how can you decide if you want to read the thing? it's a weird looking frankenthing.
and it is *never finished*
those of us waiting see this weird random update schedule and no end to the tags and never dive in.
and last but most relevant to current discussion, we can only kudos it the once.
could we comment on every chapter? sure. but you know fewer of us are gonna.
and if we do kudos it, it will sit there as a kudos for the whole endless saga.
do we want to kudos every part of it? unlikely. the high school au tentacle porn may have a much smaller audience than you generally get. some of them will be embarrassed to leave their username on it. or maybe they're into tentacles but not the mpreg curtainfic. you don't know. you can't find out. for all feedback is sitting there attached to all stories, and if they're waiting until the end to write it, that's a whole lot of random to comment upon.
Just post the fics. I don't care if they're short. we can see the wordcount right there. if it's a tumblr prompt fill you can tag it as such. if it's not betaed you can tag it as such. tell us what they are and give us choices and see how many turn up for each. it's perfectly reasonable. I have actual drabbles posted separately. drabbles. one hundred words precisely. and some of them I think have kudos. which is rare anyway on my ancient fic.
but I can't return the favour on some writers works because they've got a 120K epic unfinished with the world's weirdest tags, and it's a lot of commitment to dive into that even long enough to figure out it's their grab bag.
and that is very reasonable
except my attempts to do such a thing lead to panic attacks and woe spirals
but probably there ar a lot of readers who are not mentally ill
probably.
But, writers: sometimes, you do not make it easy.
I have no idea how to interact on tumblr
so mostly I'm following tags on Ao3
(anyone who does not tag: what are you doing how do you expect anyone to know you wrote that thing zomg some writers so frustrate)
the first hit on a multipart story is just me pushing Mark for Later.
Then I will hang out checking my 31 page Marked for Later list to see if you update.
If it goes a year with no updates then I'm very probably umarking it unread. which may be another hit. depends which button I use.
some fics? are not actually a single multipart story. some fics are what that writer does with any short story they write.
writers, I am begging you, do not do this.
one, the tagging is a nightmare. the story either has all the tags or none. it is every AU, it is canon, it is every obscure thing... or they don't bother to tag anything and Choose Not To Warn. the odds of it hitting one of my squicks just in the tags go up exponentially with each part. and how can you decide if you want to read the thing? it's a weird looking frankenthing.
and it is *never finished*
those of us waiting see this weird random update schedule and no end to the tags and never dive in.
and last but most relevant to current discussion, we can only kudos it the once.
could we comment on every chapter? sure. but you know fewer of us are gonna.
and if we do kudos it, it will sit there as a kudos for the whole endless saga.
do we want to kudos every part of it? unlikely. the high school au tentacle porn may have a much smaller audience than you generally get. some of them will be embarrassed to leave their username on it. or maybe they're into tentacles but not the mpreg curtainfic. you don't know. you can't find out. for all feedback is sitting there attached to all stories, and if they're waiting until the end to write it, that's a whole lot of random to comment upon.
Just post the fics. I don't care if they're short. we can see the wordcount right there. if it's a tumblr prompt fill you can tag it as such. if it's not betaed you can tag it as such. tell us what they are and give us choices and see how many turn up for each. it's perfectly reasonable. I have actual drabbles posted separately. drabbles. one hundred words precisely. and some of them I think have kudos. which is rare anyway on my ancient fic.
but I can't return the favour on some writers works because they've got a 120K epic unfinished with the world's weirdest tags, and it's a lot of commitment to dive into that even long enough to figure out it's their grab bag.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-10 03:51 pm (UTC)you can contact me any way you want
(not that I've written in many years)
but also no pressure to do so if you don't feel like
"I have no idea how to interact on tumblr" well I don't either in general terms but if you want to contact me I'm now using the message system because my email is temporarily dead , and for other people there's the messages or the ask feature