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Post by shieldmaiden on Nov 9, 2005 12:54:05 GMT
Yeah, I just got around to checking.... my stats are totally screwed up. My newest story that I have up there has more reviews than hits. And Eggo- thank you for your kind words. To answer your question, the last time I tried to submit to them was probably last winter. I wasn't able to get a clear answer from most of the reviewers on why it was rejected though, so I wasn't really sure what to do to fix it, and I was kind of preoccpied with grad school at the time, and, well, I just haven't tried again since.
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Post by lindahoyland on Nov 9, 2005 22:35:46 GMT
I will never know now how many people read my most angsty chapter and I pay for the service !
I hope you will get in HASA,SMOR,you deserve it.
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Post by Raksha on Nov 9, 2005 23:03:46 GMT
Hmmm. Shieldmaiden; which story did you submit to HASA? Did I review it? I know I would have liked to review it; but I don't remember doing so, and can't find it in my saved reviews...I think the quality of your writing is certainly good enough for HASA.
RAKSHA
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Post by eggowaffles on Nov 11, 2005 0:57:11 GMT
And Eggo- thank you for your kind words. To answer your question, the last time I tried to submit to them was probably last winter. I wasn't able to get a clear answer from most of the reviewers on why it was rejected though, so I wasn't really sure what to do to fix it, and I was kind of preoccpied with grad school at the time, and, well, I just haven't tried again since. Let me know if you try again! I'd certainly be happy to vote for you ;D I've gotten mostly positive responses to the fics I've posted on HASA, but there are always one or two people who will vote "no" without bothering to fill in any comments. Which strikes me as somewhat discourteous (I mean, what happened to constructive criticism?), but oh well... My stats are finally working again! Am interested to see that I've had nearly three times the number of hits to my Borific in the past twenty-four hours than I've had reviews since I started it. I should come up with a mathematical equation for this...
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Post by lindahoyland on Nov 11, 2005 2:06:19 GMT
i average about 20 reviews to 500 hits,but I was always bottom of the class in maths,so making that a percentage is beyond me.However,most of the comments are posted for the first 200 hits, which I suppose are the most enthusiastic.You deserve lots of good reviews, Eggos, being able to make people laugh is a great talent to have.
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Post by eggowaffles on Nov 11, 2005 14:51:41 GMT
i average about 20 reviews to 500 hits,but I was always bottom of the class in maths,so making that a percentage is beyond me.However,most of the comments are posted for the first 200 hits, which I suppose are the most enthusiastic.You deserve lots of good reviews, Eggos, being able to make people laugh is a great talent to have. Thanks . My reviewers are wonderful... I just get curious occasionally about all those mysterious invisible readers . What do they think? I don't like getting feedback so much because of the numbers (though those are always fun, too!), but because I really have no way of gauging how funny something is while I'm writing it... and it seems the more I dislike a chapter, the more everyone else likes it, so my sense of hilarity must be wired strangely...
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Post by lindahoyland on Nov 11, 2005 22:55:37 GMT
My reviewers are great too, though sometimes I worry about disappointing them.They are begging me to update,so I must put my writing nose back on the grindstone now. ;D
I wonder who the invisible 400 or so are too.I often find the feedback helps me decide what to add to the story and explore in more detail.
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Post by shieldmaiden on Nov 13, 2005 16:35:07 GMT
Hmmm. Shieldmaiden; which story did you submit to HASA? Did I review it? I know I would have liked to review it; but I don't remember doing so, and can't find it in my saved reviews...I think the quality of your writing is certainly good enough for HASA. Thanks, Raksha. It was one of my older stories, To Hope's End and Heart's Breaking( www.fanfiction.net/s/1904904/1/), which I had thought was one of my better ones at the time. From what I could gather from what the reviewers who actually left comments said, a big part of it was that I was writing it from Eomer's perspective and had said that Eowyn was dead (because at the time he thought she was), and then at the end it wasn't. Some kind of AU-that-doesn't-work issue. I ended up changing that. But then there were several people who said the characterization was bad, and didn't say why, so I honestly didn't know what, if anything, I needed to clean up there. Like I said, I was really busy with school at the time, so I didn't even bother trying. Oh well. I think the stats on ff.net are fixed now on mine too. I totally agree with you on this, Linda and Eggo-- I really wonder what those people that read and don't review think sometimes.
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Post by Raksha on Nov 13, 2005 18:49:33 GMT
My reviewers are great too, though sometimes I worry about disappointing them.They are begging me to update,so I must put my writing nose back on the grindstone now. ;D I wonder who the invisible 400 or so are too.I often find the feedback helps me decide what to add to the story and explore in more detail. It doesn't surprise me at all that you have an invisible 400 who hit your story but don't review it.
If I remember right, my hit counts at SoA per ficlet seem to exceed 50 before I get a single review, and eventually exceed 100. I certainly don't get 100 reviews! More like 3-10 (and only one got 10 reviews) per ficlet, at least in my Divers Drabbles series.
I don't have a paid account at ff.net; so I've never worried about, or counted, my hits there.
Don't forget the sheer volume of people who read Tolkien fanfiction. At ff.net, there are over 38,000 separate Tolkien fanfic stories (and that's not including the Silmarillion category) - there's got to be a good-sized readership to sustain them all. And of that readership, there are many people, probably hundreds, who open up the summary, and perhaps the first chapter, of a story, and generate a hit count statistic, but go no further; they just don't see something there that makes them want to commit to reading it. Of the others that do read the chapter, or story, there will always be many who do not review. It took me many months of reading Tolkien fanfic before I got up the courage to review. There are probably loads of readers who think they aren't good enough to review, or that one should really be a writer in order to review, or just plain don't like reviewing.
Then there are folk like me; who will go back and reread a chapter, or a story, two to twenty times but review it once (or, in some cases, never - as in that Dark Lord's Consort Aragorn/Sauron slash story).
Linda, with the amount of reviews you get on your stories at ff.net, I wouldn't be worried about hit counts. People are reading and liking them.
And reviews aren't always a measure of quality, either. One of my favorite tales, a beautifully written short Faramir and Pippin story, only has one review at SoA - by me....(Fever Dreams, by Gwynnyd, www.storiesofarda.com/chapterlistview.asp?SID=2946)
RAKSHA
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Post by lindahoyland on Nov 13, 2005 19:31:56 GMT
It sounds as if we both get a similiar amount of hits at SOA, Raksha.
I found out one night when chatting with a friend online and experimenting, that a repeat visit to a page on ff.net registers as a hit.Also many readers,those not on alerts, always acess the story from chapter one,which does give one hope that the difference between the hits for chapter one and the rest of the story aren't all disappointed readers who can only endure one chapter which I used to think.
I too have seen some excellent stories with hardly any comments and very nondescript ones with 40 reviews a chapter ! I've readers who told me it took them a time to find the courage to review.
I'm another who glanced at "Dark Lord's Consort" without reviewing. I don't read slash but that was just such an outrageous premise, I had to see if it meant what I thought it did !
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Post by lucidity on Nov 13, 2005 19:54:06 GMT
Thanks for the link Raksha! It was a beautiful story!
There are loads of people who read and never review, for whatever reason. I used to be a lurker, until I started writing and then I changed my lurking ways.
In the Harry Potter fandom certain types of fics will get loads of reviews, even if they stink on ice. One of that kind of fic is called a Severitus challenge fic, where Snape is Harry's father. People review fics of that type like crazy!
Are there any types of fics in the LOTR like that? Maybe the Legomances?
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Post by lindahoyland on Nov 15, 2005 14:40:11 GMT
There is a writer who writes Aragorn and Legolas adventure stories who averages about 40 reviews a chapter! They are fun to read but not exactly full of food for thought.I think Aragorn and Legolas friendship stories are the most popular,the type where they are captured by Orcs, horribly tortured,make a miraculous recovery and and an equally miraculous escape !I think once you write,you do tend to review more as you know how much you like reviews yourself !
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Post by lindahoyland on Nov 18, 2005 2:14:33 GMT
FF.net are playing up yet again as I cannot access anything properly other than my profile.I wanted to update WOT but can't,or even read a story as just one paragraph shows up of one I have an alert for !At least I didn't post prior to the latest glitch !
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Post by Raksha on Nov 20, 2005 6:19:18 GMT
I just noticed that ff.net now has a Denethor character category - pass it on to whoever has a Denethor-centric story they'd like to post there.
RAKSHA
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Post by eggowaffles on Nov 20, 2005 21:10:44 GMT
Yay! And, look, now they've got a PMing system, too... or has that always been there?
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Post by lucidity on Nov 20, 2005 23:26:41 GMT
The PMing thing is definitely new, but I'm not sure how new. Maybe it's a response to complaints that it's a pain to try to respond to reviewers? I don't know.
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Post by eggowaffles on Nov 21, 2005 0:47:49 GMT
Well, I hope it encourages some of my email-shy readers to talk to me more often ;D
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Post by lindahoyland on Nov 21, 2005 1:00:22 GMT
I'd never seen the message thing before,Eggos, I've just tried it out on you to see if it works ! It should be great for contacting my readers. I've just sent another e mail to thank a reader for the lovely poems she writes,as her e mail wasn't available.
Thanks for telling me.Thanks,Raksha for mentioning about Denethor, I don't plan to write any stories about him,but I see they have Eldarion too,who does appear in my stories.
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Post by lucidity on Nov 21, 2005 14:52:29 GMT
Hey guys! FF.net has this on their homepage as of today:
November 21st, 2005 -- New features added. Private Messaging: Registered members can now message each other without revealing or needing one's email address. Messaging link is displayed at the top of every member profile. Messages are delivered via email like our review alert system.
Review Reply: Authors may now reply to signed reviews via a link provided in updated review alert or using the "reply" link displayed next to each signed review. Please note the reply is not displayed on the site but emailed to the reviewer. Only one reply is allowed per signed review. Putting "review responses" within story chapters is now unnecessary and more importantly, not allowed.
I checked it out and now below each reviewer's name is a 'reply' option. I guess the PMs are separate! How cool is that!
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Post by eggowaffles on Nov 21, 2005 19:56:59 GMT
OMG SPIFFY! Heheh... sorry 'bout that
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