Concerned About Ratings

[TrutherP]

Recently, my new story "April Doesn't Exist" has gotten around 3-5 ratings. They are all 5 star and i even gotten a review.
Im very grateful. But I recently asked for advice, on this forum and other sites, and people have be pointing out so many things wrong with the story grammatically, plot-wise, prose-wise, everything. And im okay with that. But multiple people have said its so bad they'd never read it if i didnt ask for a first chapter review.

So are ratings like false gratification that trick you into believing you're doing fine when your book is ass?
So now I’m wondering are ratings just false gratification, or is my story simply very hit-or-miss with no middle ground?

What should I fix? What if i fix something that people like and it becomes ass.

Do i just gigachad max and trust myself to my downfall?

Genuine question

Im a new writer any opinons are helpful
-https://www.scribblehub.com/series/2263911/april-doesnt-exist/

 

[JordanIda]

Ratings have nothing to do with quality. Do you give readers what they've come here for. That's it.

What's both intriguing and cool is that your book isn't smut. I leafed through it, expecting that. But I was presently surprised to see that you're pulling in readers without loading it with gratuitous sex. Very cool. Whatever you're doing, it's working.

Four people like it. Maybe more. You won't satisfy everyone. Be happy with what you have.

As for asking people for advice? In e-pub forums like this one? You're not getting advice from readers. You're getting advice from other writers, most of whom are crotchety, cantankerous, miserable, embittered, and rabidly jealous that your trash is getting more likes than their trash.

I'm a very critical reviewer, and I'm kind of vicious. (I've been banned for it elsewhere.) But you haven't asked for a review, and from a pure popularity standpoint I think you're doing awesome. Just keep writing, don't try to please everyone, and slowwwly improve your formula without wrecking whatever secret sauce is working now.

 

[NotProudofmySmut]

I have no idea what to say other than: Your stories Cover is sick af. Nice job.

 

[Intermundium]

Keep writing, ratings and opinions are subjective; personally I got mine trashed by another author, whilst getting praised on the other side. It being called trash or not worthy to be read for reviews, those are just people trying to bog you down. Ignore it.

 

[LastMinami]

Recently, my new story "April Doesn't Exist" has gotten around 3-5 ratings. They are all 5 star and i even gotten a review.
Im very grateful. But I recently asked for advice, on this forum and other sites, and people have be pointing out so many things wrong with the story grammatically, plot-wise, prose-wise, everything. And im okay with that. But multiple people have said its so bad they'd never read it if i didnt ask for a first chapter review.

So are ratings like false gratification that trick you into believing you're doing fine when your book is ass?
So now I’m wondering are ratings just false gratification, or is my story simply very hit-or-miss with no middle ground?

What should I fix? What if i fix something that people like and it becomes ass.

Do i just gigachad max and trust myself to my downfall?

Genuine question

Im a new writer any opinons are helpful
-https://www.scribblehub.com/series/2263911/april-doesnt-exist/

View attachment 48475

Readers don't care if it's well-written; they come to read, they don't expect a masterpiece (though I'd love to give them one). Anyway, your story resonated with your audience. Congratulations on that great achievement! By the way, an author once butchered my second novel, and I wrote this one to distance myself from that genre.

 

[Arkus86]

Ratings are a poor indication of quality. Not a worthless one, just not very good, especially if you only have a few of them. Most readers give 5-star ratings or nothing, and of the few that give other ratings, many limit themselves to either 5 or 1 only. As a result, most stories have overall rating well above 4.

If you get a 5-star, it merely means you probably scratched someone's itch - or someone saw a 1-star rating and decided to "compensate" without even reading your work. If you get a 1-star, someone does not like your story or you personally. There's rarely more to it.

 

[Ellie_in_Pink]

So the other people here gave some good answers to a lot of your questions. But since you were also looking for feedback, I thought I'd offer some ...

crotchety, cantankerous, miserable, embittered, and rabidly jealous

... as I may be ;)

Firstly, I see why people like your work. You paint clear pictures with your words, instead of leaving it to guesswork. You definitely have a nice narration voice. I could go on ... but I would like to focus on giving tips for the bits that have room to be polished out.

First, you use bold font for emphasis. And it can feel a little ... disjointed? Almost like the narrator is yelling a few sentences per paragraph. I would use punctuation and paragraph formatting instead. It'll just make everything flow a little more nicely.

Second, you fluctuate between past and present tense. For this kind of story, I always suggest past tense, but that's ultimately up to you. Just make sure it stays consistent.

Your paragraphs ere on the too-short side. You could definitely put more together. Including attaching dialog tags to the actual quotes. A paragraph should usually be 3-5 sentences. With some exceptions for variation and pacing. That will also help you with not needing to rely on bold font so much.

Next issue is your POV. You can have an omniscient narrator who sees into everyone's thoughts. But it's generally more effective to stay with the thoughts and views of one character per scene. I'm looking at the first chapter, it seems like the son is the Point of View character, but then suddenly I'm in the mom's thoughts with no warning. It can create a bit of whiplash for the reader.

Lastly, when the action starts up, I feel a bit blind as the reader. Again, a bit of a POV issue. Because we don't know where the "camera" is, it's hard to imagine the scene. One moment, I feel like I'm inside the mother's body, experiencing everything with her. But then she is at a 90-degree angle, and I ... have no idea where I am as the reader.

You could do a top-down view, sticking with the experience from afar. You could stay in the mother's POV, but then she won't be able to see her own body contort like that. You could stay in the son's view, in which case you will have to be very clever in order to keep the sudden change in pace as a surprise. Or you can do a scene break. Make a little symbol that will always cue your audience in that your POV character has changed. However you decide to do it, sticking to a POV will make everything a lot clearer for the reader to imagine.

Anyways, I hope some of that helps, and I'm so glad that you are having a positive experience with your writing,
Best of luck!

 

[TrutherP]

I have no idea what to say other than: Your stories Cover is sick af. Nice job.

thank you so much king I drew it myself

Ratings have nothing to do with quality. Do you give readers what they've come here for. That's it.

What's both intriguing and cool is that your book isn't smut. I leafed through it, expecting that. But I was presently surprised to see that you're pulling in readers without loading it with gratuitous sex. Very cool. Whatever you're doing, it's working.

Four people like it. Maybe more. You won't satisfy everyone. Be happy with what you have.

As for asking people for advice? In e-pub forums like this one? You're not getting advice from readers. You're getting advice from other writers, most of whom are crotchety, cantankerous, miserable, embittered, and rabidly jealous that your trash is getting more likes than their trash.

I'm a very critical reviewer, and I'm kind of vicious. (I've been banned for it elsewhere.) But you haven't asked for a review, and from a pure popularity standpoint I think you're doing awesome. Just keep writing, don't try to please everyone, and slowwwly improve your formula without wrecking whatever secret sauce is working now.

wow this was really well put together, thank you. As writers sometimes it feels like we gotta be gigaconfident but hearing this most def gave some good reassurance, ill keep working hard

So the other people here gave some good answers to a lot of your questions. But since you were also looking for feedback, I thought I'd offer some ...

... as I may be ;)

Firstly, I see why people like your work. You paint clear pictures with your words, instead of leaving it to guesswork. You definitely have a nice narration voice. I could go on ... but I would like to focus on giving tips for the bits that have room to be polished out.

First, you use bold font for emphasis. And it can feel a little ... disjointed? Almost like the narrator is yelling a few sentences per paragraph. I would use punctuation and paragraph formatting instead. It'll just make everything flow a little more nicely.

Second, you fluctuate between past and present tense. For this kind of story, I always suggest past tense, but that's ultimately up to you. Just make sure it stays consistent.

Your paragraphs ere on the too-short side. You could definitely put more together. Including attaching dialog tags to the actual quotes. A paragraph should usually be 3-5 sentences. With some exceptions for variation and pacing. That will also help you with not needing to rely on bold font so much.

Next issue is your POV. You can have an omniscient narrator who sees into everyone's thoughts. But it's generally more effective to stay with the thoughts and views of one character per scene. I'm looking at the first chapter, it seems like the son is the Point of View character, but then suddenly I'm in the mom's thoughts with no warning. It can create a bit of whiplash for the reader.

Lastly, when the action starts up, I feel a bit blind as the reader. Again, a bit of a POV issue. Because we don't know where the "camera" is, it's hard to imagine the scene. One moment, I feel like I'm inside the mother's body, experiencing everything with her. But then she is at a 90-degree angle, and I ... have no idea where I am as the reader.

You could do a top-down view, sticking with the experience from afar. You could stay in the mother's POV, but then she won't be able to see her own body contort like that. You could stay in the son's view, in which case you will have to be very clever in order to keep the sudden change in pace as a surprise. Or you can do a scene break. Make a little symbol that will always cue your audience in that your POV character has changed. However you decide to do it, sticking to a POV will make everything a lot clearer for the reader to imagine.

Anyways, I hope some of that helps, and I'm so glad that you are having a positive experience with your writing,
Best of luck!

POV's are the bane of my existence, i need to do more research find one and learn to stick to it. Instead of jumping all over the place just being passionate

 

[Ararara]

Its kind of that 5 star rating is default for "im reading this, I like it", and is the most common rating on the site. then the 4 stars "ehh there's too much problems i cant quite give it 5 stars but it's okay", or the 1 stars by offended readers who dropped the story after something they hated happened. They have some meaning, but mostly in greater numbers. Like a super popular story with thousands of ratings - if it still has 4.8 or 4.9, it's probably a masterpiece with both great quality of writing, great plot, great worldbuilding, and great characters. But in smaller number of ratings it's hard to tell, a bit too random. Some of them may even be from forum people trying to be nice / cheer you up. (When asking for reviews/feedback, if the other person leaves a star rating it's almost guaranteed to be a 5 star one. Kinda common courtesy I guess)

Not many readers ever leave star ratings in general. Out of a 100 people who leave and stop reading, maybe a few of them will leave a bad rating as they go. Or a person who spends 2 minutes on the first chapters and says "meh, not for me", they usually just close the tab and never come back. It's the more invested readers who end up leaving ratings I think!

I've certainly left plenty of 5 star ratings where there were 10 things that could be massively improved. But I still liked the story and had fun reading it. If I was more "honest" then maybe a 3/5 rating would be more "fair", but that's not how the ratings are used widely by others. So adopting such an "objective" way of rating only ends up punishing the stories you read.

Long story short, the couple of ratings certainly aren't proof that the criticism/feedback you got was invalid and that your story is a 5.0 masterpiece. But yes, it probably means you have some readers who liked your story as it is! But also who knows, if it was better, maybe you'd have even more of them. (And maybe not! Some people polish and rewrite their synopsis / Chapter 1 for weeks and months, making it godlike quality, and still it doesn't get them any extra reads. You never know )

 

[Eldoria]

Recently, my new story "April Doesn't Exist" has gotten around 3-5 ratings. They are all 5 star and i even gotten a review.
Im very grateful. But I recently asked for advice, on this forum and other sites, and people have be pointing out so many things wrong with the story grammatically, plot-wise, prose-wise, everything. And im okay with that. But multiple people have said its so bad they'd never read it if i didnt ask for a first chapter review.

So are ratings like false gratification that trick you into believing you're doing fine when your book is ass?
So now I’m wondering are ratings just false gratification, or is my story simply very hit-or-miss with no middle ground?

What should I fix? What if i fix something that people like and it becomes ass.

Do i just gigachad max and trust myself to my downfall?

Genuine question

Im a new writer any opinons are helpful
-https://www.scribblehub.com/series/2263911/april-doesnt-exist/

View attachment 48475

To be honest... when I read your chapters, I encountered many narrative structural errors. But I ignored them. As the saying goes, "if the customer likes it, so be it."

That's why I don't leave many comments. I let the general reader decide. Because if I dissect your chapters too clinically, your chapters will likely lose their uniqueness.

Now you're at a crossroads:
Are you willing to accept constructive feedback based on general writing principles?
Or will you stick to your current writing style, which stands out and is unique from other works?
That's up to you.

 

[Shorgoth]

Well, I took a quick look at page 1, and I could immediately see that you are working with experimental stuff. Experimental has a cost and a weird U-shaped distribution of likes and dislikes. I would know, my story is highly experimental as well. You have those who will reward the creativity and those who will shun it from the get-go. Yes ratings are a bit of a crap system from the start. I tend to deactivate seeing my own ratings personally because they tend to be pretty meaningless in cases where the author is trying something new. I'd focus on constructive criticism if I were you and forget the number games.

Ultimately, when you go experimental, focus on those who do like your stuff and ignore the rest... It doesn't have to work for everyone to work for some, and it's those some you want to cater to. Now for the text itself, I haven't looked; I only immediately saw the structure and visual experimental elements within the text, so I can't speak for the rest, but just that will have some people start attacking you for sure.

Since you are experimenting with the visual of the text, you might want to read "House of Leaves." It is well known for this sort of experiment, where the way the text is placed on the page is part of the experience. Might give you some ideas.

 

[Rosica]

What should I fix? What if i fix something that people like and it becomes ass.

What is the difference between a king and a horse?

The answer is instinct.

Use it. Unlike most authors here, your story actually have a unique identity. It's not bland.

If you fix something, make sure to retain the core of your story. What make your story yours.

Fix the writing fundamentals first. Then decide what to fix next with your instinct. Place yourself as a reader, your target audience and ask: what can be improved?

The authors point of view is often narrower than the reader’s.

 

[TrutherP]

What is the difference between a king and a horse?

The answer is instinct.

Use it. Unlike most authors here, your story actually have a unique identity. It's not bland.

If you fix something, make sure to retain the core of your story. What make your story yours.

Fix the writing fundamentals first. Then decide what to fix next with your instinct. Place yourself as a reader, your target audience and ask: what can be improved?

The authors point of view is often narrower than the reader’s.

Rosica, your soo cool. I'll do my best.