Welcome to Gaia! ::

Haha no worries. I took no offence. I never do. It is quite alright. Where would we be if we couldnt poke fun at ourselves and our own mishaps? biggrin

One thing I myself have noticed throughout my ff.net career. Little kids review more. I use that term loosely. I know I myself am still considered a kid by most of the others in this guild, but I am talking 10-12 year olds.

When I was 12 and started posting. Each time I would update I would get 7-10 reviews within the first few hours of posting. This is because my earlier chapters were directed more to that age group and appealed to them. (Looking back now they are pretty well written but admittedly LAME)

Now whenever I post, which is fewer and fewer as my life gets busier, I am lucky to get any reviews, save for my loyal followers, who have also started to get busy and stop reviewing.

So what I am trying to say. If you want a lot of reviews. Write to the younger set of readers in your fandom. If, however, you want to build a simple fanbase on your own and let the reviews pile up as your story gets larger. Continue on your chosen path.

Yeah I was going to get at that but I figured it would be obvious. You want a lot of reviews write to the younger set. However, know that they arent going to be very intelligent or helpful. I cant tell you how many one word reviews I got in the beginning. 'Good." Like an ogre wrote it or something.

On he other note. Dont do that. I took no offense from the beginning. My typo was laughable, as are most of the ones I make due to my luck. You see humor, feel free to point it out. Just hope I dont get there first to poke innocent fun at it smile

My biggest problem leans to how I write. I write how I think. I often discribe what is scene and done and sometimes use passive tense. It isn't incorrect to use it the way I do, but it does tend to throw off some readers. It isn't something I feel I have to change for the story to be good. I always reread my stories and edit as I go through them to write more, if something is off and doesn't read smoothly I'll change it, but I have no problem with the tense jumps because some passive tense just happens in a natural way of speaking/writing. But then, that is a something I consider now that I'm aware of it when I look at the views to reviews ratio.
Not sure if I'm the only one who does this so I'm putting the idea out there.

Ah, I wasn't sure before but thank you for clearing that up. Sadly....ff.net, unless your writing falls under the attention of some more intelligent readers most of us are doomed to deal with the average praise and begging for more. It is nice to see that at least here the desire for constructive criticism to writing in progress is appreciated.

I have a friend who writes like that (not for ffn or those sites. Mostly blogs.) It can be a very engaging style if you listen to what the author is saying.

I'm sometimes bad about using passive voice, but a lot of times, when I do, it is because it sounds better in the fiction or it fits with the voice I'm writing with.



I write all of my stories (save for the occasional random one-shot) on yellow legal pads. ^^ [yellow paper is just so...inspiring to me somehow]that way I know I go through it at least three times. Once when I try to remember the last thing I wrote (one of these days, I'm going to hook up my scanner and scan one of these pages. I write notes in the margins and cross out words and make every all messy. its fantastic], once when I type it, and then when I edit it myself.

And that's also what I got a beta for. 3nodding She's very good at what she does, she just is busy and hasn't got the best memory (Stormie if you read this don't be angry. I love you to death really). So when I get my documents back, not only have I had someone else's eyes on it to check, it prompts me to print it and check it myself [I have bad eyes so staring at the computer to attempt to edit is sometimes tiring].




Aha. Yes, Umi, I do it as well. I actually have printouts of the stat sheet dating back to late 2005/ early 2006 when they opened that option to the general members. I'm not a huge fan of stats and statistics, but I love looking down through these lists and such. Its interesting to see, for me at least, that even my oldest story (which was posted before the stat page was upgraded) is still getting hits (my fourth top story in number of hits, actually). I also like watching my one-shots.

Off topic for a moment, Umi, did you get your pretty 'writing is in my blood' icon?



There's not really any way you can force the number of reviews you get. As was mentioned by a few others, depending on your fandom, the crap piles in over anything that might be readable. I don't even look around the archive for my fandom anymore. I hate where its gone.

Umi had a good point about review/hit counting. I average between four and eight reviews per chapter (depending on the story) and between eight and twelve reviews per one-shot. And most of these people are the same ones. A following is a little different, if that's what you want. I would say I have about five people I can almost always count on to review to something I've written. I would work more for something like this. Become friends with your reviewers and such and they tend to come around again or you can get chatting by email and such. At least three of my really good online friends were made that way. ^^


But the best thing I can say is don't get impatient with it. When that happens you get the people who are pigheaded and say they won't update until they get X number of reviews. Reviews will come in time as your general writing skill grows and such. ^^ You can never stop improving.

I always wonder why people ask for "good reviews". If they don't want critical or helpful feedback, then why, why ask for anything? Why even post a fic?

I see a lot of the "great story, post the next chapter up soon!" reviews and they bug me when that is ALL they say. Sure say that but then tell them that in the third paragaraph they are missing a "the". Be helpful - if you notice something is wrong or strange when you read it, let the author know. I hate stories with 20 + reviews and I end up being the first person to tell them they have errors. Yes, I review errors per chapter and yes the comments can be very long - but I would hope that the authors take them and read them because I'm trying to help.

How is "Wow, great story. loved it. Update soon!" going to help anyone? Sure it makes you smile once, but do you as a writer actually feel better about your writing improvements or are we all just feeding the ego monsters inside us now?