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Hi, @Desiderius Price Reviewing what I read would be easier if I was finding time to read anything.The AFF exclusive story, after being neglected for over two years, got 14 chapters since February 8th. These are not small chapters. They also included a three chapter flash-back, the breaking of the “inner fourth wall,” the change from the regular first person perspective to the first person perspective of another character and back, making major changes in the life of one of the main characters, the introduction of a former off-screen villain as an on-screen semi-hero who is much more closely related to one of the main protagonists than previously known, completely changing the character of an off-screen event by presenting a different perspective… I suppose you get the idea, and none of these chapters were small or easy to write, even though they further fleshed out the characters as well as telling a story. I did submit one review. I won’t name the author or the work, though I’m sure you could figure it out easily enough. Their ideas were fascinating. Their execution was exactly that—you watched this “author” use third-grade dropout prose to hang their ideas by the neck until they were dead. My first piece of advice to that author was to delete my review after he read it, because it was not a nice review. The author deleted it after a day or two, so, hey! At least the author could follow some of my advice! Thanks.

It’s been ages since I posted anything on FFN, and I honestly don’t remember if they did have data on individual chapters. I refuse to post on AO3, at least until they start enforcing their ToS on an impartial and non-gaslighting basis, so your guess would be far better than mine as to how they track data. We don’t have anything in place to track hits on individual chapters on AFF at this time. I’m not even sure if our archive code would be able to do that, not being even remotely capable of writing code myself.

Moving the discussion on flashbacks with @Wilde_Guess here.

I know I had offered at one point, however, that faded and I’ve been focusing more on my own world-building software assistant (ie, database + wiki + cool analytics). Not asking for new features, simply illustrating how I use the existing features to try to crack that same question. That is a can of worms, I’m not of fan of canceling/scrubbing-from-history of things I don’t agree with. I’ll err on the side of over-tagging instead of under-tagging. Though I’ll now categorize the tags in the opening of the story, noting which ones are more (CYA) and which ones are “features”/main-themes. I’d love to say I write fine in a vacuum, but I don’t. I do need that occasional pat on the back, the kudos, to keep the motivation. Otherwise, I’ll drift away with “got better things to do at the moment?” which morphs into “why bother?” and I move along. Thus, I record my dragon prints every so often, which helps, to a degree. What *does* help is that as I’ve been squeezing on the finances, it keeps other distracting hobbies at bay.

Trust me, if I was able to write code, I’d be working on a few projects for AFF, based on the number of people who are asking for the same thing: recognition that their stories are being read. Part of the problem with reviews, and I’m opening a can of worms here, I know, is the ever-popular cancel culture mentality. It’s unfortunately the case that some writers do NOT respond well to anything other than a complete squee. If you aren’t gushing about their cleverness, or the adorableness of their characters, or the genius of the pairing they chose from their fandom, the reaction to the review will be either a deletion of the review, a huffy author’s note mention of people who can’t accept artistic quality without complaining, or a combination of both. Even the mildest of questions can provoke a fit of pique from these writers, and after a time, most reviewers will quietly move on to another story. For myself, I adore constructive criticism. Tell me what didn’t work for you, because that’s how I can continue to hone my own writing. Squeeing about my work tells me bugger-all. On the other hand, we have reviewers who, quite simply, can’t write a review. A personal attack on the writer is not a review; it is a personal attack on the writer and deserves deletion of the review and quite possibly the reviewer’s account as well. A review berating the inclusion of something that was quite clearly covered in the story tags, tags which the reviewer managed to overlook in their entirety, is not at all helpful to the writer, and only serves to highlight the reviewer’s own lack of mental acuity. As an example, I detest scat. If a story is tagged for that particular content, and I read it anyway, I have NO right whatsoever to berate the author for having scat in the story. I’m the idiot who ignored the tags, so shame on me for being feckless. The biggest issue for me is always going to be the motivation for me to write. Do I write to collect dragon prints, or hit points, or kudos? Or do I write because the stories in my head won’t go away otherwise?

I might be the odd man out here, but I actually just want to know if people have reacted to my story at all. I don’t care if they don’t love it, and I’m generally not surprised if people hate it, but I’d love a reaction. Back when I had more time, I tried to read more and I’d make a point of reviewing when I read. (Thanks to a hiccup, my account was inadvertently deleted, which left all my old reviews anonned, but hopefully that won’t matter to the authors I reviewed.) Sometimes when I was sweeping in the archive, I’d come across a new story in a fandom I might not normally have pursued for leisure reading, and I’d make a point to go back, read properly, and review. I’m fairly specific about fandoms, however, and I have my personal squicks which I will avoid diligently for leisure reading, so I might not get around to reading everything. I’m hoping I’ll be able to find more time to just read again, and when I read, I review!

Once you said “three chapters of flashbacks”… sounded like a backstory spin-off was a good idea. And might still be... even if only to help with writing the flashback scenes. (Also means you don’t need a complete story in the flashbacks either… the reader can go off and enjoy those backstories too.) However, the flashback format can be good when you’ve got a character reflecting on their emotional state at the time, and the implications to the present – which I did for that holiday story. Not saying do “X” or do “Y’, simply food for thought.

Hello, again. In my story, I’m putting the flashbacks where they are because that is when the lead protagonist learns of them. The flashback sequence I sampled leads directly into a confrontation between two of the secondary protagonists, and a very major change in their relationship. The second flashback goes back twenty-four years earlier, but also informs the lead protagonist that an off-screen villain, while generally villainous enough, wasn’t actually their villain, but just a villain. It also reveals that this character was much more closely related to the lead protagonist than they thought. The flashback also gives the lead protagonist new insight into his own relationships, and how those relationships were affected by events that took place nine years before he was born. One of the secondary protagonists actually tells this person, “You’re not my dad, but you might not be a total asshole, either.” This starts off in “witnessing a conversation,” and transitions to change of first-person voice, with an occasional break to the main “story-time” of 1982. Behind the internal fourth wall, the year is 2032, and many of the named characters have died of either natural causes, or “otherwise.” The lead protagonist is writing the story for the print and online addition of a major magazine. recounting the months leading up to, and at least for a while shortly after the first of several musical groups the lead protagonist’s younger brother and he started first achieved fame and wealth; denying false scandals, but admitting to much more embarrassing real scandal, which had mostly been kept quiet. Thanks.

In my original story, I didn’t quote, so less apparent. And it covered the backstory to the main characters. However, went really fast and skimped greatly. Thus it became *way* better to spin it off into separate stories. As I was in fact doing several “flashbacks” to a lot of the characters, I realized spinning them off, make each character’s (or small group) backstory a separate story would do the whole thing justice. However, you’re right, doesn’t always work out that way. Now, you *could* still do the above as a separate backstory, in full. So, when the character needs to talk about themselves, you can cut it down to the essentials, or the like. Alternatively, a take I use in my potter fanfic, I basically start off… (small excerpt) Or, in one of my holiday oneshots, I did it as a flashback, the MC discussing a sin of his past to another. So for that, it’s dialogue back and forth as that other person asks questions.

“Don’t try this at home. The police will have questions.”

Hi, @Desiderius Price The three chapter flashback is quite literally one of the main characters relating the events of a very traumatic day in front of most of the other main characters. This scene had already been described from the viewpoint of a different character. But different people have different perspectives. Here’s a “quick” sample… “I made my way back to the punch bowl for cups six, seven, and eight. I was starting on number nine when an older girl that looked like the electric piano player’s older sister grabbed my wrist and made me pour the punch on the ground. “She told me ‘Go. Away. Now. Twerp.’ “I didn’t realize then just how drunk I was starting to get. I knew I wanted to say something to get her just angry enough to follow me away from the punchbowl so I could lose her in the crowd and come back for just one or two more. What I actually told her was ‘Great boobies, honey pie! My lower intestine is full of spam, eggs, spam, sausage, go fuck your mother on a merry-go-round, and scram!’ “The look of shock on her face told me, even as drunk as I was starting to realize that I was, that she would enjoy breaking my nose so much more than she ever enjoyed Monty Python’s Flying Circus. So, I twisted my wrist out of her grasp before she recovered and walked away at almost a run. “She stopped following me just a few yards later, but I wisely kept going. I could see my busted and bloodied nose in her eyes, and I wanted it to stay there, even if I did deserve it for my rude introduction to her. I grabbed another Italian Beef along the way and almost inhaled it. I looked at the punchbowl, and didn’t see her, or anyone else guarding it. The biggest pain with those chapters is getting the stacked quotation marks in the right places—and I’m still finding ones I missed. Thanks.

Three chapter flashback? I tried doing something similar in my original and got everybody confused (including myself), so I’m still in the process of breaking it apart into multiple back stories (it’s now nearly eight years in the making). A reviewer noted the confusion, and that’s when I realized I’d do better justice breaking the stories apart. Drawback is the main story’s languished since then, because I’ve been busy going down the proverbial plot bunny rabbit hole showing how messed up the society is. Do I regret this choice? No. Each story is pretty strong on its own, though there are characters common to all of them. Some are stories-stories outright, others are episodic serials, and some have become fodder for the Halloween & Holiday oneshots. Though I might’ve crossedthe line when I threw that nun into a woodchipper…. (in one of the backstories, not real life). I tend to not read much anymore, I’m much more of a creator than consumer, feels more fulfilling to me. Though I’ll try to review when I do read.

That’s the question that even published authors have difficulty answering. If you have fans writing wikis and fanfiction based on your stories, then you’ll know you’ve got an audience/fan base (or at least had one before going on homophobic/transphobic rants on twitter). Movie deals help Per chapter & month does help, a bit. Simply cause you know they’re at least hitting “next-chapter” button. My main potter fanfic on FFN, for instance, has 420 views & 39 visitors so far this month. Of that, I see 48 views/29 visitors to the first chapter, while subsequent chapters are 3-8 views/3-5 visitors. The day-day histogram shows that about six bots came through, drowning out the metrics (or humans clicking next-next-next w/o reading or doing very-fast-skimming). I do know, though, many of the “hits” come from people finding a link to the story, maybe from another author’s favorites, and deciding to move on (or bookmarking it for later). AFF & AO3 only have the whole-story hit counters. By recording these daily, I know that a recent post can generate one to two hundred hits/day, but it’ll settle down to the single-digits per day within a week or two. However, as they’re only whole-story, I don’t know if it’s something browsing the first chapter & moving on, vs reading the whole thing & enjoying it. AO3 has Kudos and number of bookmarks/subscriptions available, so that helps measure some level of interest. FFN has the favorites & alerts, also relevant. But, when it comes to knowing that readers enjoy the story, reviews are that golden ticket, the best measure. However, maybe one reader in a hundred will leave a review, if that. (My *HIGHEST* review count here on AFF is NINE, the average is around 2-3 per story. My biggest is that main potter fanfic on FFN, with 180.) Moral of the story, if you want to trend set, try to always review when you read.

Hi, @BronxWench and @Desiderius Price FFN does have the “by chapter” hit counter visible to the author. They also figured out how to monetize the eyeballs out of content from unpaid authors. I have no idea what AO3 has. AFF has more responsive tech support to the authors, particularly since no one is getting paid to work on it. Deleting or splitting and shifting chapters will ‘break’ your metrics if you try to watch them going back ‘forever.’ It isn’t quite as bad if you make notes of if, when, and to what degree you up-end your story because you had a near-catastrophic continuity mess-up, and the only way to fix it was to put in several entirely new scenes, and seriously flesh out a couple more. “Whole story” counters are better than no counters at all. But it still comes back around to the original question, or at least my version of it; How do you know if anyone likes your story? Thanks again.

“Dragon prints” is basically the “hit count”, to your story. AO3 has the same metric, as “Hits” whole story. However, FF.net does have the per-chapter breakdown, which is more useful (that is until you start deleting chapters...) Not only per chapter, FF.net breaks it down per MONTH, by day within that month, and by (most likely) country of the visitor. FF.net’s breakdown is how I can tell bots are the primary readers of my stories there

Hi, all. The “dragon prints” are fine for public display. Being able to track individual chapter hits, visible only to the author would be more helpful, since the “typical” reader doesn’t seem to leave a review. So, your dragon prints are going up. Are the readers actually trying to read the whole story, or are they just seeing “Chapter 1,” and running away in fright? If you update frequently enough, your story will always be on the first page of your “fandom,” and will get hits for that alone. But, absent reviews, you don’t know if the reader is making it beyond Chapter 1, especially if you only see the total hits for everything. If I have 2900 dragon prints for a 32 chapter WIP, did I get 91 readers reading everything, or 2850 hits on Chapter 1, with only my proof-reading and editing even making it to Chapter 2? Thanks in advance.

It’s actually as everyone was thinking, a benign place holder and easily fixed. Kind of a carryover from the very old stuff.

Thank you, @manta2g!

Pen names restored, took a few hours since there are a ton of members. if they aren’t current feel free to edit them. The attack didn’t get far, only managing to change pen names, user sensitive data is all encrypted so don’t have to worry about it..

Yes, i can restore pen names from a back up. However, I am working a series of splits, so don’t have a whole lot of time at the moment.

We actually have never tracked hit count data on individual stories, but I think you are correct in thinking it would get ruined by manipulation if we did.