Surveying Webfiction Feedback

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

haikujaguar tipped me to this fascinating article on why people do or don't comment on weblit.

Comments

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to pay for a paid account on DW (where Wonder City Stories (http://wonder-city.dreamwidth.org/) is hosted) and start putting up little polls at the bottom of the posts. Maybe people will tickybox. I keep getting the impression that I have a bunch of silent readers.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I think a bunch of people are reading it. I keep recommending it and seeing other people recommending it too.

Hmm ... this would not work for most webfics, but yours is unusual. What about hosting separate topical discussions? You are dealing with heavy, controversial topics that most writers never touch; and your characters have dense representation of groups that rarely get shown. So people who read that stuff are probably used to getting squelched when they try to talk about those issues, and may be less likely to pipe up. But if you picked up a thread from the story and linked in a couple of supporting articles, then pitched out a question or two, that might spark a discussion.

Frex, the last several episodes involve a comatose character waking up and obsessing over his wife, who doesn't want him anymore, then he grabs her and beats her up and trashes the city. So you might talk about caregiver issues or domestic violence. What do people think about the portrayals in fiction? Does that help get people thinking about the real issues? What parts of "Wonder City Stories" do the readers resonate with?

There are lots of webfics that have gay characters, or trans characters, or people of color, or strong women, or handicapped people, etc. etc. but not many that mix those -- and WCS is the only one I can think of that is just a kitchen-sink combination of all kinds of under-represented groups. It's wacky but it works. It's like a real city that way. So there has to be some way of getting the readers to talk about it beyond: "Why isn't anybody writing about X?" "Oh, you should read Wonder City Stories."

Re: Yes...

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the kind words and the recs!

That's a good idea! I'll have to think harder about how to formulate questions and potential discussion.

Re: Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Let me know if you need a hand with this. If nothing else I can help break the ice with a comment -- I'm used to talking about a lot of the issues in Wonder City Stories.

[zeeth_kyrah]

I think the problem isn't lack of tickyboxes (and you have to have an account for many journal platforms if you want to participate in polls there). For me it's lack of view tracking, so you can count the people who read what you're writing, even if they choose not to identify themselves or otherwise participate. Often you have more readers than are subscribed.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

This is another reason I'm thinking of the paid account at DW -- paid accounts can hook up to Google Analytics, which would give me some idea of the hits.

Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

That could very useful, yes.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

You beat me to posting this... I was going to do it in the evening. :)

Oops...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Sorry. I didn't mean to scoop you. I'm trying to get more people to post here, so it's not always just me talking.

[stryck.livejournal.com]

I posted about this on my own LJ (http://stryck.livejournal.com/808005.html). Unsurprisingly after that article, several people have clicked answers on the poll, but nobody has commented yet.

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

More discussion is good. I commented.

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

I saw hakiujaguar's post about that, too, and thought the comments (ironically!) of that post were particularly useful. I've opened the topic at Torn World (http://tornworld.net/) to see what people would like there.