What makes a story successful?

As a writer of F/M stories for the vast majority of the time, I realize that many on site are not reading my stories. That is not a problem as I write for my happiness not anyone else's. That said I cannot say at times when viewing other Author pages it does not bug me to see hundreds more reads and a lot more comments than I ever get.

So I know as a statistical type person how I judge a story to be successful or not. Besides the fact just getting the story on this site is a success in itself. Regardless of the type of story you write, what do others look at when deciding if their stories are what they deem successful?

CS

I'm one of your frequent readers, CS. Keep up the good work.

When considering a series, how many readers continue to the end, rather than giving up part way. My current series 'A Spell for Switching' (shameless plug!) has 192 readers of part one, but only 72 who read to the end. Not that I'm bitter, or anything - but you 120, you know who you are!

Good question !

I'm always flattered to see people clicking the "favorite" button for a story of mine. I suppose the number of favorites as a percentage of the number of readers is a more demanding metric.

I'm gonna guess that this is commonplace with one-shot stories too, it's just that you don't see the hard numerical evidence for it in front of your eyes. Because even people who open a story and just glance at the first few lines and then close it again are counted. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, if you're hunting for stories that will engage you, and you have to click on ten of them before you settle on one you want...)

So, I'd say be happy: you don't have to wonder if only 3 of the 192 actually read your story, you can tell yourself 72 people definitely read all of it for sure!

Getting to your actual question, CS... ;)

As someone who hated creative writing in high school, got C's and D's in it (for anyone whose schooling didn't use letter grades, that means "you suck"), and then never took another writing class in university, I'm still in shock after 6 months that anyone wants to read my stories at all.

Still, I write a lot for my day job, and there are surprisingly many similarities to posting stories on here. Few readers, usually, for any one article, peer review instead of reader comments, and once in a blue moon a happy message from someone saying 'wow, this is exactly what I was looking for!'.

So how do I consider my real-job writing successful? Not by the number of readers, probably, because it's always gonna be small, and that goes for everyone except really famous researchers who get published in Nature and places like that. So, I guess I think it's successful if it's good work, and original and interesting, and if the results are somewhat deeper than just superficial tinkering with already commonly known facts.

And same goes for posting here, I suppose. If it's solid work and not sloppy, and original, and not just plugging in new names into an old storyline, I guess I think it's a successful story. For my own sake anyway.

Also, if it was fun to write. I never expected it to be so much fun, once I got started. Sometimes I snicker smugly to myself for hours about a particularly clever turn of phrase. Small pleasures...

This is the main reason why I do very few series. They are a lot of work and if one looks at the stats they rarely pay off in the numbers category. However some stories just seem to demand a follow up and I write it regardless of knowing few will read the following stories.


In some ways I agree, as at least the number shows a reader has taken a liking to the particular story. But favourites are rare and if I based everything on them, I would have quit writing years ago.


Goes along with my writing for myself rather than for others as far as the numbers factor goes. Trouble with original stuff is that there are only so many reasons to spank others and so many ways to describe it I think with over 27K plus stories, there is doubt in my mind anything I write has not been written before.

Thanks for the comments.

CS

Don't be dismayed cs - you've had almost 105,000 views. That's not small by any means. If I wanted to be successful in writing spanko stories I would keep to the theme of uppity young women from the Wild West being tamed and falling in love with a hard-handed cowboy. Think McLintock, think True Grit. The 50SOG stories are very successful and they're quite frankly crap in just about every way - style, content, character, believability and authenticity, they're way below par compared with just about everything in the LSF yet look how they've sold. I personally think a good spanking story should still be a good story even if the spanking were removed.

You cannot compare yourself to others. Your drive and passion is what keeps you going.

As a reader, a good story is one I enjoy reading, and I would say for you, the writer, a successful story is when you feel good about it after it is written.

For me, having one of my stories added to someone favorite list means a lot because it tells me that, for them, it stands out in some way from the many thousands of other stories available on the site.

Comments are great too. I enjoy it when I can tell from a comment that I was able to get across the idea that I had in my head when I was writing a story. Another thing that often happens when I get comments is that they give me ideas for a follow-up story or perhaps even a completely new story of some type.

I have noticed is that my challenge entries seem to get more comments than my non-challenge stories. For, example, all six of my previous challenge entries are on my top ten list list of most commented stories. If you like getting comments and have never submitted a challenge entry, that may give you the motivation to send in an entry.

Of course, in order for a story to get a comment or be designated as a favorite, it has to be read first, so views are also important. I'm still trying to master a way of increasing the number of views I get for my stories, and I suspect titles play big role since my top three stories in terms of views all have the word "naughty" in the title.

Finally, I don't necessarily think that F/M stories are unloved as conventional wisdom says they are. Only 25 % (19/75) of my stories have a strictly F/M orientation, but they account for 7 of my 10 most viewed stories, and they account for 45 % (57/134) of the "favorites" I've received. In addition 4 of my 5 most favorited stories have a F/M orientation.