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I actually changed a story I was publishing because my editor thought it needed some things to make it more, I don’t know, appealing, or relevant, or engaging. I forget the word exactly. But the changes never felt right to me, and now that the book’s been accepted for republication, I went back and deleted all the stuff I added at that editor’s urging. The thing is, I never really got feedback from readers non this book, so I have no real idea if they liked those bits or hated them, but I’m much happier with the manuscript without them, so… I’m taking a deep breath and going with my gut.

Absolutely, lack of feedback makes me change stuff! Sometimes the change is as simple as pulling the story. Sometimes it gets more complicated as I attempt to read the minds of readers to figure out what the problem was. And seeing as how I’m a pretty shitty psychic, I end up changing a lot of things in a panic until the story is unrecognizable or just not what I wanted to begin with soooo either way it’s usually a terrible decision on my part lol. But doubt does that to me. Makes me make terrible decisions.

Alright, so, as the title says, does a lack of feedback affect your stories? (Ie while you’re writing, does the lack of feedback make you change things, doubt things, et cetera, et cetera? And vice versa, does a lot of feedback affect you? Do you change things that you probably wouldn’t have based upon those words?) This is probably a question that’s been asked before, don’t throw the pineapples (they kind of hurt), but… As for me, so far I’d say not really (in terms of changing things that otherwise wouldn’t have been). The lack of feedback on a lot of mine does make me question certain decisions, as I’m sure everyone does when faced with that same thing… For example, I know people are reading them (...unless they’re accidentally clicking into it and getting out of there as fast as possible… I’m going with the former, though), but lately I’ve been debating the… slow burn of one of them… Introducing and trying to create likeable characters that everyone wants to see survive through with the interactions that ring true necessitated the long fuse to the dynamite, and it’s been making me question that length. I’m sure everyone has something like that.

Absolute lack, nothing to go on. However, when it comes to dragon prints, or lack thereof, I’ll use those as reason to look at something again. I reverted a story split awhile ago because of it, and overall, I think it’s stronger if I look at it from the original point of view, a never-ending sort of thing.

I don’t change things due to lack of feedback. I just meander away, unless I stop. Stopping with me usually doesn’t have to do with whether I get feedback or not and is for lots of other reasons. I may feel like stopping, but that’s different too. So lack of feedback – no effect whatsoever. I will change a story due to feedback. Not because of complaints. The things I’ve written, I’ve developed a pretty tough skin as far as that is concerned. People with complaints can take a running jump. But… if I’m getting positive feedback, and I can sense the readers want something to happen, and I don’t mind going that way/writing it/taking a minor diversion then I’ll do it happily. I let the Elrond story go into incestuous slash, and I didn’t mind that at all. I enjoyed it too. I did a lot of Torchwood stuff on request for the forum I was involved in back then. I’ve got a chapter lined up for the Ai o Juten story that was written on request for a christmas present for someone. I have changed the ending of my current story to make it happy, though I still intend to go to the dark place. That is NOT up for negotiation. The only time that didn’t really work out was for the S&M story. I tried for a happy ending there. But it was impossible. He just… went back. I mean, obviously, I knew for a while he would go back, but still I had to write it out. To show it. Long story short. I like to make people happy who make me happy. In fact, that’s when I like fanfic best, because it feels like it’s not just me. It feels collaborative. I’m just the writer, but lots of people are having input into the story/stories (whether they know it or not), and it’s kind of magical.

Feedback use to effect me and how I would write a story. I had one work called ‘The Gates of Heaven and Hell’ and it ended up with two split timelines – one that the readers seemed to like then the one that I originally envisioned. Needless to say that the “favorite” version was never finished. I lost interest even though readers seemed to like it because I wasn’t as invested in that storyline as I was in my original one. That taught me an important lesson. I think it’s a Catch-22. It’s hard to find a balance between what you enjoy writing and what readers will enjoy. If you aren’t happy then chances are the work won’t see a conclusion. Plus, you have those readers who are ardent followers of a writer and will read anything and everything said writer publishes. My process is different now. I tend to write several chapters before I consider posting any work, and most of the time it doesn’t see the light of the internet. LOL. Saying all that, I do have one work where I have had lots of reviews and that has encouraged me to continue writing, though things don’t get put out there as much. And I do work collaboratively with other writers and readers. There have also been suggestions (some in reviews and some emailed to me) that I have taken into consideration and even implemented into the work. I believe that it’s based on a “case by case” scenario. There are some stories that you create and don’t want to see major changes and then there are some that you feel free enough to take those risks. I think it depends on how you feel about a work as to how it progresses, whether that is the pace of your writing or the plot of your story.

I agree it’s kinda on a case by case, IMO. @Tcr mentioned lack of feedback, which is feedback itself, however, the lack is much harder to discern because there’s a TON of reasons for lack of feedback, and AFF readers, in general, tend not to give as many reviews per view as other websites. In the absence of reviews, the dragon print counter is the only feedback I typically have, so I kinda measure “interest” by how much it jumps after I post. In the case I mentioned, I tried splitting a story, based on a setting change, and the dragon prints kinda hinted that wasn’t a great move, so I backtracked. As @BronxWench mentioned, though, sometimes a revision based on feedback might not be best for the story (and in that case, editor feedback carries more weight than a reviewer). So, guess the moral is to take feedback with a grain of salt. Some feedback, like grammar or ambiguity can be better to heed, while others (ie. the mating pairs of characters) might be better to simply thank for the feedback but otherwise not worry about. In the absence of feedback, that’s when you should consider soliciting another opinion before completely rewriting or even pulling a story. That’s my $0.02 worth.