Story length vs "reads" in contest

I thought I noticed a relationship between story length and "reads" in the contest, so I did a bit of statistical analysis last night (Yep, nothing better to do). Sure enough! There is a positive relationship, but not a terribly strong one. In short, for each 161 words you add to your story, you can expect one more "read". Of course, "reads" are not votes. Guess; the relationship can probably be explained by readers who don't have time to read the longer stories in one sitting, and so access long stories a second or third time before they finish.

Just thought someone might appreciate that bit of useless information

(It's normal for social scientists to attempt to reduce all human behavior to mathematical formulas, so they insisted on cramming this stuff into my head in college)

You could be right, though I think story title has more to do with the amount of views.
I hope I'm wrong and your mathematical conclusion is correct.
Though that dosen't say much about our attention span.

If thats true, only one or two people managed to work their way through my story. lol I certainly hope not.

So No sense in writing a story is what your saying unless it has a three thousand or more words in it? I shall keep that in mind as I'm not good at "long stories".

JC

Not at all! One explanation for the few extra "reads" on longer stories is some that folks simply can't read them in one sitting, so they get accessed more.

Just because a story gets more"reads" does not mean it will get more votes.


I have exactly the opposite problem. I worked hard to trim my own entry down to 2000 words.

Guy

Guy is probably right about the mathematics part - I know there were a few stories in the contest which I read in parts. Not so much b/c I have a short attention span (though that may also be true - what was I saying here? Oh, yeah), but b/c I was interrupted halfway through, and had to return to it later or the next day.

Having said that, I actually thought I noticed that, in general, the stories listed first were read more often. I know there was a function by which one could sort the stories randomly, but the list of stories seemed to default to the order of when the stories were submitted/posted. So, if you were the first to get your story posted, you were listed first. If you were the last (as I almost was) your story was listed last. Nothing really wrong with that, since they have to be posted one way or the other, and that way was as good as any.

As far as the votes went, I suspect that M/F stories generally received more votes than F/M stories. I lean the other way, and my own votes went more towards the F/M stories. But I think I am in the minority; there seem to be more members who lean towards M/F than F/M. If that's the case, I think the M/F stories would likely get more votes. Makes sense to me anyway.

And I do agree with Runcy that the title of the story has something to do with how many times a story is accessed. I think that is true with any story, not just the ones listed in the contest. If you've got a bunch of stories to choose from, you are naturally going to go to the one which sounds the most interesting, based on the title. Which is why JP Barnum got a lot more people interested by saying "This way to the Egress!" than "Exit this way."

I envy people who can write a good story of less than a thousand words. Like Guy, I labor to keep my stories shorter than novella length. When I try to write something slimmer, it always seems as if I am just getting started. Its hard to write a good, tight story. I think it was Mark Twain who said something like " I was going to send you a short letter, but I didn't have the time, so I'm sending you a long one instead." I share Mr. Clemens' need for editing.
The length of these comments alone is proof of that.

Come to think of it, "This Way to the Egress!" might make a good title for my next story.

Actually the opposite was true, the default sort order was random and if you wanted the stories listed in the order they were loaded you had to select that option. The default random facility however was only added a couple of days after voting had started.