What gets a story read?

[Shagbark]

I'm going over the new titles on fimfiction.net. Some get hundreds of views; some get tens of views. I'm not talking about what makes a story good, or popular; just what gets people to click on it and give it a chance.

The biggest thing is getting a story recommended by the editors - meaning it gets a few seconds on the banner on the top of the page. A recommended story gets maybe 10 times as many views. A story has to have a picture with it to get on that banner. That's all I can really tell. Silent Ponyville 3 is there now, and I'm flummoxed as to how that could have gotten chosen over A Heart's Warming Eve. Shipping Goggles is probably the best recent story and it did get recommended, so there is some justice in the world.

The next-biggest thing is having a picture. A story with a picture gets about 4 times as many views as a story without a picture. I don't know why this is. I also don't know where people get the pictures for their stories. Do they hire somebody to draw a picture?

Being grimdark is either really bad or really good. Some grimdark stories get almost no views; some get a bunch.

Telling people your story is bad (which some authors do) also lowers view count. So do grammatical errors in your description.

Having a short description seems to be very bad. This is counter-intuitive to me. I would have thought that the shorter you can make your description, the better. Apparently not.

Any other ideas?

Lots of puzzles here. "The Knights of Chaos", "The ShadowBolt's Redemption", and Supahsnail's new story all had very few views, although their descriptions sound interesting. Why did "thIsstOrywIllmAkEyOUsAy"WAT!?"!" get 94 views when it has no description, a nonsensical title, and almost only bad reviews? Similar question for "Stuck in Equestria, problem? :trollface:". The Dwindling Sanity of Terry Smith is pretty good, and very well-written, but was nearly ignored - does the title just sound pretentious? En Fuego has 445 views and 35/0 up/down votes, and is just okay. Not the first time I've seen a story with foreign words in the title get a lot of views.

[RBDash47]

In broad terms, for me it's word-of-mouth, and if I've read an author's work before and liked it. I have a list of roughly 50 stories I'm planning on reading because they're highly rated, recommended to me by authors/readers whose opinions I trust, or both.

The biggest thing is getting a story recommended by the editors - meaning it gets a few seconds on the banner on the top of the page. A recommended story gets maybe 10 times as many views. A story has to have a picture with it to get on that banner. That's all I can really tell.

There's no human intervention involved there; the banner selection is algorithmic. From their faq: "Featured stories are completely automated. They are calculated on a mix of a few things. The number of likes a story has received, the proportion of likes to dislikes, the total number of ratings, how frequently it's being viewed and the time since it was approved are all factored into the equation."

The next-biggest thing is having a picture. A story with a picture gets about 4 times as many views as a story without a picture. I don't know why this is. I also don't know where people get the pictures for their stories. Do they hire somebody to draw a picture?

I guess people judge fanfics by their covers too. And usually people either commission custom art, or find existing stuff that matches and ask permission/credit the original artist... hopefully. I guess otherwise they're just stealing.

[BronyOfSteel]

well for most of the authors on the featured list it pretty much has to do with working your way up the ladder, and by that I mean writing enough that people start following YOU and not just your story, being on EqD also helps.

images do have an impact, particularly ones that have a custom image it shows that author is probably more invested in the story which means better plot/writing/continuation.

as for anything else, low word count, short/bad descriptions and grammatical errors will cause people to just pass over your story.

also anything remotely near HiE will be avoided like the plague unless you're really good at writing it.

[Shagbark]

I have five stories, all up on various sites. One of them is tagged "mature". I keep track of the rate at which they all get pageviews. All stories get a lot of hits the first day or two you put them up. The one with the 'mature' tag gets the most views per day.

Is that because of the 'mature' tag?

This one gets the fewest views - less than half as many as the others: Friends, with occasional magic
Maybe the title sounds boring?

Maybe the description sounds boring? "The lives of Lauren and her friends aren't perfect. Lauren and her friends aren't perfect. But she can see what they could be - and what she can't say in words, she manages to say with brightly-colored ponies."

[RBDash47]

Sex sells... even with ponies. The explicit section of the PFA gets roughly twice the traffic of the main section, even though it has less than half as much content.

[Spike2011]

also anything remotely near HiE will be avoided like the plague unless you're really good at writing it.

I know about that as I wrote some HiE fics and those got ten thumbs down.

[Knackerman]

Sex sells... even with ponies. The explicit section of the PFA gets roughly twice the traffic of the main section, even though it has less than half as much content.

On that note, so does violence. As you mentioned, Grimdark can be hit or miss, just like conventional horror. People like to be scared on occasion, on others they just have a thirst for blood. You don't even have to make a story frightening or 'grimdark'. If it has sufficient bloody violence people will flock to it. It's the same basic formula that make Action movies such a sure thing every summer and the reason why cheap, low budget movies like paranormal activity are so popular.

Tell someone they're gonna see tits and you'll get a 50/50 reaction (either interested or not). Tell them someone important is going to die before it's all said and done and don't tell them who it is, even the most jaded individual will be drawn in out of little more than morbid curiosity.

Of course it's not the 'if' that makes them hungry. It's the 'how' and the 'why'. You can completely glaze over one or the other, so long as one of them is strong, you'll get some decent word of mouth going.

And if you fail, well...that's why some grimdark has no views at all. That's why so many action movies are completely forgettable.

Do it right though...and you can have a little piece of someones mind all to yourself until the day they die.

Sex sells, but sex fades away. Blood stains forever.

[Shagbark]

Do it right though...and you can have a little piece of someones mind all to yourself until the day they die.

Sex sells, but sex fades away. Blood stains forever.

Interesting, and well-said. Also, PLEASE DON'T HURT ME.

[Ezn]

Putting your own spin on stuff that people are already familiar with, or (shockingly) doing HiE with at least some attempt at a twist. When I wrote "The Humanification Bureau", a reversal of the infamous "Conversion Bureau" (which spawned a whole subfandom of people trying to do the concept better), I got thousands of views within a few days.

That or getting on EqD. EqD gets you a lot of traffic.

Or if you want to get on FIMfic's feature bar, you could try writing something very short that panders to a specific audience via cuteness, randumb internet humour, or wish-fulfillment fantasy (but rather don't do that). Or joining a collab with enough members that everyone in it will read and upvote everyone else's stories (but that's kinda cheating).

Having a picture is important. Look on Ponibooru and contact authors of pics you'd like to use, or get a friend to draw one, or draw one yourself, or just use a screencap from an episode.

Although in the end it doesn't really help to worry about getting views and reads. I like to think that I write for fun and if anyone wants to read my stuff, that's just a bonus.

[HeavyMetalCommunist]

Being an avid fanfiction reader, I know that a captivating summary and title get a fanfiction read. It's a tricky deal honestly, But After a while people should read your story.

[Shagbark]

Sex sells... even with ponies. The explicit section of the PFA gets roughly twice the traffic of the main section, even though it has less than half as much content.

And yet, the most popular stories on FimFiction are never explicit. Never. I checked.

[RBDash47]

Interesting!

Possibly because the PFA has always welcomed explicit content, so we got a direct feed from sites like Clopssort...

[Hazencruz]

Being an avid fanfiction reader, I know that a captivating summary and title get a fanfiction read. It's a tricky deal honestly, But After a while people should read your story.

I think this is true for a lot of fanfics. That and a picture that draws you in. I notice fics with pics before I notice fics without.

This kind of sucks, as I am really bad at summaries. =[

[Arcainum]

What governs the popularity of a given fic is simple: WIZARDRY. I know this because I slightly obsessively require the knowledge of how popular I am at a given point in time and can NEVER FIND OUT.

But, seriously, there are too many factors to count, really. And often, those factors affect each other as well. Description, what time it gets posted, your cover image, whether or not it's been featured on EqD (and that has another, entirely seperate set of factors!), how well-known you are already...

As for the recommended box, that really is black magic. There are fics with 100 and 4 likes views that will show up in the last two slots when they update (the slots that don't have the time-lock on them), pushing out a fic with 80,000 views and 500 likes. It's insane.

But every single one of these is modified by the one constant. Luck.

[Shagbark]

As for the recommended box, that really is black magic. There are fics with 100 and 4 likes views that will show up in the last two slots when they update (the slots that don't have the time-lock on them), pushing out a fic with 80,000 views and 500 likes. It's insane.

I hate the damn featured box. "Some people are still reading stories that weren't written by famous authors. How can we stop this? I know - we'll put an eye-catching rolling marquee at the top of the page to make the most-popular stories even more popular! And we'll leave stories up there for days at a time."

[Arcainum]

I hate the damn featured box. "Some people are still reading stories that weren't written by famous authors. How can we stop this? I know - we'll put an eye-catching rolling marquee at the top of the page to make the most-popular stories even more popular! And we'll leave stories up there for days at a time."

I think they've hit the best compromise they can with it so far until they come up with something entirely new. The first three slots work based solely on the aforementioned black magic "popularity" algorithm, but factors in time-since-posting. This makes these three slots HEAVILY favour troll one-shots, because people read them, say "ha" and like/fav it. Then, because of the nature of the fic, it gets MORE likes/favs because it's in the Featured. Repeat for a week until something else arrives.

The last two slots work on the old system, which is the popularity algorithm but without a time-lock and taking into account updates. So this one favours longfics by well-known authors who update frequently. I personally prefer this one, if only because I've seen a lot of fics that I wouldn't class as "popular" (my own, Harpflank and Sweets, isn't in the top TWO HUNDRED Most Popular and I still get featured when I update) get attention when they update, so people who missed them the first time can catch them. I've picked up quite a few fics from those last two slots.

To be honest, the thing about FiMFiction is that it is an almost perfect example of Sturgeon's Law. I will give absolutely anything a chance (I read that R63 Spike fic, for the love of Pete), but so much on FiMFiction is, I'm afraid to say, utter dreck. The Featured Box (or, at least, those last two slots) is just a way to remind people that certain fics exist, and its net is a lot wider than it looks.

It's definitely flawed though, particularly in those first three slots.

[AQD_Robert]

Keep it really short. Use pictures. Make the main characters lovably flawed, neither perfect nor boring. Write about the Mane Six before introducing your original character. Review previous fan fiction stories, then look for the good in the story, then review with inspiring criticism.

Have fun!

Robert