The Curious Incident of the God in the Night-time ...

[speaker_to_customers]

I knew when I started posting my stories on fanfic.net that it would probably depress me and I was right. It has done.

Comments

[elsewards.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. I'm sorry. What did the imbeciles do?

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

Like the dog in the nighttime; nothing.

[thomasina75.livejournal.com]

See, I have yet to get the courage to post at ff.net. There are some excellent writers posting there, but the majority of the people there just frighten me. ;-)

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I think if I'd chosen ff.net as the first place to post my fics, rather than getting a site of my own and then LiveJournal, I'd probably have given up altogether months ago.

[violethamster.livejournal.com]

How heartbreaking it is not to get any "OMG ur a gud writtur! 111!!!11!".

Just remember that fanfic.net is the Bizarro World of fanfic. Feedback is in inverse quantity to the quality of the story.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I sincerely hope so.

[rahirah]

Psst! It's only a model.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

And the lights in the sky are scenery.

[danceswithwords.livejournal.com]

I know a lot of writers post there simply because it's the easiest way to the widest audience, but (to be blunt) the ratio of crap to quality on the site is so overwhelming that I find it totally unusable. A couple of writers I beta for have had problems with really ignorant and functionally illiterate (but still hurtful) flames from there too.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

Oh, I haven't had any flames. Or, in the case of my most recently posted story, any other reaction whatsoever. It just vanished without trace, without even any despairing radio messages to the control tower.

Sins of the Father Spike/Connor R

[janedavitt.livejournal.com]

I have fics there with zero or two f/bs that were well enough received elsewhere. It's a scary place.

Ff.net Doesn't Count when it comes to f/b. You'll get some good, intelligent con crit or encouragement now and then but it's either non-existent or woefully missing the point a lot of the time.

I sort of treasure the one I got after posting some drabbles, which, from memory, went something like,

'OMG! I usually like your fics, but now you're posting all these - what are they, they're not long enough to be real fics. Please write more proper stories!'

Re: Sins of the Father Spike/Connor R

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I only post on ff.net as tasters hoping to lure people to my site for the rest of my fics; it isn't really working. I get 10 referrals from kantayra's site for every one from ff.net.

I was thinking of posting the drabble epilogue to "It's Got To Be Perfect" there, but decided against it; perhaps that was a wise decision. 'OMG itz onely 100 w0rdz!'

[http://users.livejournal.com/opalescence_/]

I really don't know how that is possible. They don't know what they are saying.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

In the particular case I'm moaning about they're not saying anything.

[waywardchilde.livejournal.com]

Ya know, FF.net is the only place I get reviews. People here tend not to review my stuff. Of course I thought it was a good idea to start posting my stuff as soon as X-mas started. Maybe it has to do with the holiday's? Or maybe i'm the worse writer ever...(starts to hyperventilate.) Well Hieiko likes my writing and Hieiko likes Speaker to customers writing and speaker to customer is a really good writer, so everything is fine. (Hugging self rocking back and forth) Everything is fine, just fine.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I hadn't read anything of yours before yesterday. I'm making a point of doing so now. Loved the Santa Claus/Faith one!

[diabola79.livejournal.com]

On a positive note, maybe the people with enough brain to apprentice your fic's already read them elsewhere, and that's why they don't comment at ff.net...

Personally I just look that page over, checking for new authors. Later I bookmark their homepages or lj's if they link them.

As wonky as ff.net sometimes is with the updates (I've seen disappear stories regularly) it's simply too confusing to read there...

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I know there are people who only read at ff.net; presumably they are akin to my mother-in-law, who keeps her TV permanently tuned to the BBC and never watches any other station.

I've been hoping to reach that audience, and maybe tempt them to broaden their horizons, but it's a bit of an uphill struggle. ff.net making it impossible to post actual links except on the Author page doesn't help.

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

I don't get many there either, but LJ is the only place people seem to comment to me anyway. I frighten people with big words and actual paragraphs!

[hesadevil.livejournal.com]

Yeah - the big words and paragraphs does it everytime - scary

That and taking the story places the readers don't want it to go - More Bangel!!!111

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Oh, I feel your pain. If you don't say "SPUFFY!" in the summary, or it's not shippy, then readership is sparse. The market for gen fic there just doesn't really exist. The most reviews I've gotten for anything besides the drabble collections is for "Soulless, Evil Things," and I only got 22 for that. Most of my reviews are in the single digits.

That being said, I know I'm (probably) getting read, even if I'm not getting reviews, because my stats say that I'm on the author alert watch list of (what I think is) quite a few people. Sometimes I'm tempted to get a paid account just to see my hit count as well, and then I say "Nah." Maybe I'll do that for a month when I post my next fic... Really, I use FFN as a repository for now. I'll get a site up and running sometime. I will.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

The setting of 'character one' and 'character two' is limiting; there are people who only even look at stories with specific entries in those categories, which can be a nuisance when the story is a multi-ship fic or an ensemble piece in which the ships, whilst there, are not the main focus of the story.

I suppose I could have got more attention for the story in question by setting it as Spike/Buffy, but that wouldn't have been fair to Wesley or Glory!

Of course that set of people will never even see your Spike series that follows Buffy's death. Their loss, I suppose.

[aphelant.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. FF is so fun for reviewing. I get them for the strangest things. Like, 10 for a drabble and 5 for a 6-chaptered fic. I don't get it.

And I've gotten a way better response in the Enterprise fandom - perhaps is the amount of crappy Buffy fics that are there that deter our fandom from haunting FF? While there are relatively few *really good* Ent fics, there are millions of really shitty Buffy fics. *shrugs*

Just give it time. I still get reviews occasionally for fics I wrote ages ago. It's hit and miss. There's no sanity there at all. ;)

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

While there are relatively few *really good* Ent fics,

Treebeard folded his arms and frowned at the viewscreen. "Hoom, hoom. Saruman's orcs have entered the neutral zone."

"What shell we do, Keptin?" Quickbeam said from the helm.

"You are always so hasty, Quickbeam. Accelerate to Warp Factor 0.01, hoom, and arm the photon torpedoes."

[megan-peta.livejournal.com]

Oh no. What's happened? Sorry haven't been in touch for a while. I was REALLY sick over christmas. How are you?

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I'm fine. Hope you are feeling better.

It's nothing big; I'm just feeling a bit disappointed that I've had absolutely no reaction to "And Glory Shone Around" after putting it up on ff.net. I was using it to pimp enigmaticblues' holiday ficathon as well as my usual self-promotion, but it just seems to have slipped unnoticed beneath the waves.

[ezagaaikwe.livejournal.com]

Well, we read you and comment. What are we, chopped liver? We WUV you!

What about some of the LJ fic communities?

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

And I wuv you back!

But there's no point in only preaching to the converted.

[fer1213.livejournal.com]

I agree with danceswithwords, as I usually do. Things at ff.net are very wonky. I'll get a few reviews from people who seem to be very intelligent and well-spoken and then I'll get seven from the !!1! crowd. My favorite was from someone who didn't bother to read a revised chapter and just smacked me down for not posting something "new". Heh.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I read that review; what surprised me was that it was reasonably articulate, not one of the !!1! crowd at all, and yet (s)he had completely missed the point.

I would have thought it was easy to spot the difference between Anne and The Immortal, but obviously not for everybody.

Aaargh! Plot bunny! Just what I don't need!

[treacle-a.livejournal.com]

ff.net is a nightmarish place. It's like a baptism of tepid porridge - in that the criticism is rarely constructive and the reviews are generally weak and half-assed - but I will be forever grateful to the folks at the BC&S spoiler board for pointing me to it. For new ficwriters it's like a beautiful revelation to find that there's a huge site devoted to this weirdness. They revel in the instant crack-high of the reviews and live for the moment every morning when they log-in to see those ff.net notices in their Inbox. Then (about a year in) they discover the sparkly lights of LJ and leave ff.net like the sick, one-eyed hick-town we all know it really is.

::is only very slightly bitter::

Having said that...I still post there. I see it as a kind of virtual doffing of the cap to my roots :)

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I love the imagery of a baptism of tepid porridge.

"I name this child Scott Oats." *spludge*

ff.net reminds me of AOL in a way. Everything gathered up in one place so that it appears to be easy, ruthless censorship imposed, and every possible barrier erected to stop you leaving once you realise that the wide world outside is a far, far, better place.

Or is that East Germany before 1989?

[denny-dc.livejournal.com]

Had to jump on this bandwagon...I love feedback, and am shopping my stories (well, at least one) around to every archive or site that will take it I can find. But damn! It gets a tad bit (understatement here) annoying when you get reviews like as follows: Well i only hope it will get better than this its kinda messed up bcuz Buffy really didn't yearned or missed Spike that much for all i know but its your fic. looking forward to see what happens. Okay, my story is Spike/Buffy, but what? And yeah, this site automatically rates stories based on reviews - I had about four really good ones, and then this one hit. I now have a three-star rating (I don't really care about the rating as much as it will discourage others from giving the story a chance.). And out of pure curiosity - I checked out my reviewers stories, I will not bash, but okay...very nice rewrites of Buffy/Angel scenes from season three. Her stories average about six stars and chalk up an avalanche of reviews.

I just won't bash a story because of its OTP. I just can't. Never know where my plot bunnies will lead me. True, I'll pair Spike with most anything...but I'll also read most anything, and if it doesn't work for me, I don't review it! Okay, I'm ranting now. But even with this all said and done, that review mentioned above - prompted me to rework the first chapter of my story because I thought maybe I should try and see her point. And to the extent where I decided the Buffy/Spike interaction in that first chapter may have been heavy-handed or at least too much too soon in a story meant to un-peel the characters' ultimate desires, not slam them down the readers throats. (Okay, complete turnaround or what? But still...)

I'm out. This got way longer than planned. But thanks for this thread. It's a topic that's been stewing in me as well, and it's good to get it out!

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

One archive I know has the default setting for reviews at 5 stars, and has to be manually adjusted to a lower figure. So the stories that appeal to the sloppy and superficial receive unadjusted reviews and get straight '5' ratings, whereas superior stories with slight flaws get careful, considered, and deserved '4' ratings and rank below the trash.

[quinara]

I agree with all the ff.net bashing, but the fact is, I swear it used to be good. When I first got into fanfic, which has to be at least three years ago (I think it was the summer before season 6 aired) there was some really good stuff up there. When you browsed the first page you wanted to read pretty much everything, and there were only updates to it every few days.

After the NC-17 ban, howeever, a load of good authors boycotted the site, taking their vast supplies of good fic with them, making the quality a lot lower than it was. Then there was the invasion of the dross, which meant all the good readers left - meaning that it very quickly became a wasteland. The only decent stuff that survives now is the well-written versions (ie. with less plot holes, better grammar etc.) of the gloop everyone else writes, or the stuff that's sequelled from fics that were there previously.

That's my view, anyway. It could, of course, just be the nostalgia talking.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I remember when ff.net was good, too. It's where I discovered several really good authors for the first time, and I used to check it every day. I rarely bother more than once a week these days.

The NC-17 ban is indeed a bit of a bugger. I can't post my 'Nirvana' stories there because there is no way I could rewrite 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' to make it acceptable without taking out all the punch from it. Their definitions of PG-13 and R are a bit off-putting, too, and the default setting of the index to exclude R stuff probably cuts down my audience there. I don't do G; my characters fight vampires and demons, get naked, boink, and use naughty words. It would be easy to edit out the naughty words, but if I took out the rest there wouldn't be much left.

[shallanelprin.livejournal.com]

I used to read stuff on ff.net. Then I discovered that people actually write really good fiction and have their own sites or an LJ and I didn't have to wade through tons of crap to get to the few good stories. I'd just give it time, and if you don't get reviews, at least you're getting a few referrals to your site. A few is better than none :)

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

The referrals aren't in proportion to the extra work required. I'd probably have been more productively occupied in writing more fic. Or indeed in loading the dishwasher.

[appomattoxco.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain to date the most reviewed story I have there is for "Like Old Times" a Angel/Spike thing I did for a ficathon it's gotten 9 reviews from 9 different people. My Bunny fic got 4 reviews from only one person.

I can't even say my stuff is too good for the readers there. Maybe it's not Spuffy enough.
I've just given up posting anywhere but LJ. I have no idea how to build a site.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

"Thank Goodness It's Not A Bunny" deserved much better. I didn't add a review of my own there because I felt that would be unethical, as I did give you a hand on one chapter; but what the hell, they're not going to know that, I've stuck one up now. I see Zanthine Girl is no longer the only reviewer; although as the other one is ladycat713 we're still in LJ territory.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Well, I've set the last two in that series as Spike/Dru, and there are a few people that search that--and then if they click the author link they'll see the rest. When I finish my Christmas Spillyria fic I'm going to buy a month's membership (it's $5) and see what kind of hit count I'm getting as opposed to reviews.

Keeping your name at the top of the list can get you noticed too. If I have a multi-chaptered fic, I post one chapter at a time over a few days. That way, the people who casually surf FFN are more likely to see it. *evil grin* The drabble collections are good for that too.

I just took a look at your Christmas fic, and I think I may see why it didn't get any reviews. 12K words, one chapter. People are intimidated by that; if you'd chaptered it and fed it to them in smaller chunks, you might have gotten a response. It's a funny place, and you have to know your audience. I'm not saying dumb it down by any means, but 12K words in one big chunk is something I myself generally won't click on, just because of the time investment required--and I'm a fast reader. I can only imagine a fangirl response to it. Lyke OMG thats sooo loonnnnngggg!11!!!!!!11!one!

It's all about headology...

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Oops! *blushes* How did this comment wind up way down here? Argh...

Must get more caffeine.

[pfeifferpack.livejournal.com]

Why?

I start writing a couple of years ago and only posted on the fanfiction section of Buffyguide. Then I put it at my favorite yahoo group files fanfiction section (We Band of Buggered), only in the last few days have I posted anywhere else. I put all I have completed on my LJ and am working on a goecities site.

My work is not beta'd (except by my husband, poor lad), but satisfies my creative urge.

I am always hungry for comments (save, "stop writing") and my only disappointment has been the near complete lack of comments from anyone. I feel like I am speaking in an empty room (or have that age old fear left over from my mother saying,"If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all".)

I have an "account" on fanfiction net but have posted nothing there. Why the disappointment?

By the way, I have only read your drabbles thus far and I think you are quite gifted! I love the humor and playfulness you put into them. I am going to be reading through all of your writing I can find as time passes.


I love these shows and characters and my fondest hope is that good writers will continue to let them live as long as I do, at least! Keep writing!

Regards,
Kathleen
PS.....as you are on the Isle of Mann....is your icon a tailless cat????? (just joking here, my husband asked me when I showed him your icon and location)

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I suppose I'm spoiled. I'm used to getting lots of feedback on my stories, whether I put them up on my website or on LiveJournal. I post on fanfiction.net occasionally, primarily trying to attract new people to the website, and I recently posted a story there and have had no feedback on it whatsoever.

The way the indexing works there stories always get most attention when first posted and the chance of them being noticed steadily drops as time goes by; rather like releasing a movie, which has to make a big splash at the box office in the opening week, otherwise it will be regarded as a flop and dropped from screens.

I wouldn't care all that much if it wasn't that I keep seeing other stories getting lots of reviews and they are dreadful; badly written, full of errors, hackneyed plots with little content, unrecognisable characterisation, and so on. Often there is nothing to indicate that the writer has ever seen the show at all!

Still, I shouldn't let it get to me.

I haven't read any of your stories yet; I'm following a few WIPs at the moment, and catching up on waywardchilde's and hang_nga_79's fics, but I'll get on to yours soon.

No, my icon is not a tailless cat. It is a Kzin, a warrior alien with a superficially feline appearance, from the 'Ringworld' and 'Known Space' stories of Larry Niven. My screen name is inspired by the Kzin hero of some of the stories, 'Speaker to Animals'.

[elisi]

You certainly opened the floodgates with this one! As someone fairly new to the whole fandom thing (I've only been reading fanfic for about a year), I have to say that when I first started looking around I came across ff.net, but it never appealed to me. I think the first place I found was BAPS, and then allaboutspike, which is still my favourite - the stories are well chosen, and the index exemplary! Then after a while I discovered LJ and... well, the rest is history! And as someone said before me, LJ has much nicer interaction!

But from a very casual standpoint, ff.net never interested me. I might go look up your stories though, since I've been meaning to read something of yours - anything you can recommend?

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

Yes, LJ does have much nicer interraction. The next best thing to sitting with each other and discussing things face to face, probably.

I might go look up your stories though, since I've been meaning to read something of yours - anything you can recommend?

That depends what you like. The funniest of them are probably 'Pyromania', 'I am the Walrus', 'Merry Sport' and 'When Glory Shone Around'.

'Smells Like Teen Spirit' is not in the least funny. In fact avoid that one, and therefore the sequel 'Come As You Are', unless you can cope with extremely disturbing events. Some people say it's the best thing I've done; others hate it.

Why not just go to My main fiction page (http://www.speaker-to-customers.me.uk/buffyverse/fiction.htm) and take a look and see if there's anything you like the look of?

[spikeverse.livejournal.com]

I would have commented, but I already read your stories on your website.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I'm reading your Spikeverse scenario outlines, but slowly. I'm writing a ficathon story about a Slayer in the early 11th Century at the moment so ideas for the normal Buffyverse setting aren't as relevant to me as usual.

responding not to the post but to the title

[shadowscast.livejournal.com]

I read the Strange Case of the Dog in the Nighttime over Christmas break. Liked it lots. :)

Re: responding not to the post but to the title

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

My wife has it (or rather The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, I had the quote in the title slightly wrong and have corrected it now!) and has pointed out to me a similarity between the main character and Violet Elizabeth Bott in my BuffyBot stories.

I was referencing the original Sherlock Holmes quote in my title rather than the Mark Haddon book, however.