On fanfiction and feedback

[nuraicha]

Hello!

Today I stumbled across this post on Tumblr and I thought some of you would be interested in reading it. It's about the importance of leaving feedback to the writers so they can know people are reading and liking/disliking their stories. It's mainly applied to Tumblr (and frankly, I've tried Tumblr as a fic platform and I think it's *awful* for interacting with the writer, so I can't understand why this post has been made in the first place because, if I wrote something like this, the first thing would be: read/write in platforms that allow you/the reader to have easy means of giving you feedback... But well, that's another matter alltogether), but it has several points that I agree with and I find interesting. I especially like the point about specific feedback; yes please! There isn't anything better that knowing *exactly* what worked for each reader. Of course, you can't ask each reader to give you a complete and thorough analysis on your style (god knows I don't do that as often as I would like) but, if there's something you really liked and want to talk about, do it!

However, on the specific feedback matter I don't agree with this line: "Want to influence our next fic? Tell us what you liked about this one and I bet you it will keep showing up!". That sounded to me like if you *have to* write the things as your readers like them. Yes of course, many things can influence in your writing, but just by telling me "I loved X thing" doesn't mean I have to include it the next fic if I don't think it worked. After all, it's our story, isn't it? We can't be complete slaves of our readers.

And now I want to quote the last paragraph fully:

"We can’t do this writing thing without you guys. So thank you so much! Without readers, we’re just talking to ourselves. We love and appreciate you for reading- but we need to know you’re doing it. We need feedback like we need air. Don’t let your favorite writers suffocate! :)"

Opinions and thoughts? I would like to see what my flist thinks of this. And yes, I know I have like tons of messages in my inbox and some are comments here in my LJ that I have to reply, and some PMs, and *hides in shame* I'll get to them, I promise. I'm so sorry for being so absent and not coming back to you at all, but I usually check LJ on my phone and I don't like writing there, so I always tell myself to wait until I get to the laptop to reply to things and... Not enough time to do so. That's the reason why I mostly just read fics (and not many, sorry MS friends) and leave very short comments, because 95% of times I'm on the phone. I'm really sorry, but as you know I graduate in June *maniac laughter of horror* and I'm SO stressed.

Hope you are all okay x

Comments

[snowgrouse.livejournal.com]

It's really funny, because I've told my mum about my stories and have read her the plotty and not-too-porny bits of some of the Jaffar/Princess ones, and have said that they aren't nearly as popular as the evil incestuous murdering nugcase ones, and she has been baffled. But people want dark titillation and fuckage-uppage, and I guess with ToB, it requires more knowledge of the canon, whereas the Devilry ones can be read without knowledge of the movie (although people will miss *so* much if they haven't seen how Torsten moves and speaks and sluts). It really is the kinks and/or a big fandom that bring in the hits and it's very sad that the whole culture of commenting and discussing fic is almost completely dead, now, because the current atmosphere makes way too many allowances for badfic. When everyone can write whatever and nobody tells them their spelling is shit, fewer people are even pressed towards becoming better writers. But I always feel like my audience deserves better, you know? I hate it if the writer thinks I'm stupid or thinks that I'm okay with shitty spelling or horribly unrealistic sex scenes, because I bloody well am not okay with that. So I write the sort of things *I* want to read about, which... well, you've seen what it means: lots of kinky and queer-flavoured het because there is so little good het out there.

But ah well. At least you do care for things like these and it's great that you even bother to talk about them. *HUGS*