Ah HA!

[blamebrampton]

FANFICCERS!

Worried about lack of reviews?

Sad that everyone is reading everyone who is not you?

Depressed to see teenagers who don't know how to spell frottage and cannot accurately gauge the bendability of the average penis with thousands of ffnet reviews while your finely crafted and beautifully edited masterpieces are lucky to garner 23?

FRET NO LONGER!

THE SECRET IS REVEALED!

''People say it isn't good quality but you have to remember Fifty Shades started as fan fiction and as fan fiction you have to have action,'' Hayward says. ''You have to have a sex scene in every chapter because that's how you get your reviews. The amount of people who review per chapter shows popularity, that's how your ratings get up. In fan fiction every chapter has to give you something to keep you reading it.''
(From an SMH interview with Amanda Hayward, the really rather brilliant publisher of the not as brilliant book.)

So there you go! You lot who've been telling me to porn it up were right all along! (I mean, obviously I'm not going to, but that's for the best. The Bad Sex Awards longlist is already inches thick.)

I thoroughly recommend the article, which is interesting and respectfully written, without being actually nice about bad writing. It includes this gem from The London Review of Books' Andrew O'Hagan, which I had previously missed: ''It's not that Fifty Shades of Grey and E.L. James's other tie-me-up-tie-me-down spankbusters read as if feminism never happened: they read as if women never even got the vote.''

Comments

[fragrantwoods.livejournal.com]

I should totally go back to each chapter and add "And then they had sex" and see what happens :-D

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I laughed so much when yours was the first thing I read on my flist after I posted this.

YES! I myself have been thinking that I could totally up the reviews on For the Public Good by having Boris and Mandy hooking up, and then Pressers and Brown, but probably not Tony and Cherie: I think that might end badly …

[fragrantwoods.livejournal.com]

Glad it was entertaining :-P I apparently woke up with a bad case of dumb-ass this morning.Entitled dumb-ass, at that. Nobody wants one of those!

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Nah, I don't think it's a dumbass position. And it's very minimally entitled.

'Entitled' has become a really bullshit term in the hands of the internetarati, because EVERYONE actually IS entitled: it's the human condition. And a lot of it is perfectly reasonable. I am entitled to ride my bike without getting run over, children are entitled to not know things until someone teaches them, writers actually ARE entitled to hope there might be some sort of engagement with their work.

It's not an outrageous position to say: 'Here are 30,000 words I slaved over, it would be lovely if you could respond with perhaps 30 if you really enjoyed them.' Only on the internet would it be suggested that you're somehow a bad person for thinking that's reasonable.

And while one could advance the position that few people respond to professional writers, that would be false, because reviews and word of mouth are major publicity avenues for published fic, the writers of which are also paid. For fanfic writers, reviews are not only reviews, they are also our word of mouth and our payment.

So I think that your position is perfectly valid! I occasionally feel the same way, before I remind myself that they are obviously just too awed by my genius. Rampant egotism can make life better!

[chamekke.livejournal.com]

Ooh! I'm gonna add gratuitous sex scenes to all my gen fics, repost the lot to AO3, and watch the kudos roll in!

Seriously, I'm sure it would work. *sigh*

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Nooooo! I love gen and will one day have time to read all the fic I have queued! (Runs off to squirrel away your pre-pornified versions for later reading!)

It's such a Catch-22, because once we start writing for readers, we stop writing for ourselves, but without readers (who we know exist, comments and reviews being one of the major ways of knowing that), it can sometimes seem a bit pointless to write.

Personally, I try to rise above the whole thing and remind myself that no matter what the review count, the readers I connect with most are people I like and respect. And on on the few occasions when that doesn't work and I have a pout, I take refuge in the fact that I have AWESOME hair.

[chantefable.livejournal.com]

I think the readers who respond in this case primarily appreciate the writing, and not the 'and then they had sex'. Of course wish-fulfilment and fantasy stimulating body responses can be immensely satisfying. The refined writing is naturally a) awe-inspiring and leaves people humbled and unable to type a review, b) may have a smaller audience - more people are looking to unwind with a light story than are seeking deep and meaningful prose. I reckon.

Ah, I am sick and not eloquent. I JUST WRITE TO SAY I LOVE YOU.

[chamekke.livejournal.com]

Never fear, I was just joking! I can't imagine twisting a story to make it more popular/attract more comments.

I do write primarily for my own satisfaction, and I have received some lovely feedback from readers *hugs them all*. That said, I also want to feel that my predilections are part of the fannish spectrum. It's not just a matter of review count, it's also whether there's otherfic for you to enjoy as a reader. As someone on another comm observed, it's no fun when your best chance of reading the kind of fanfics you crave is to write them yourself. (Which isn't uncommon, especially in small fandoms and/or fandoms that focus on a single pairing.)

Anyway, never mind me, I'm a bit hormonal at the moment. Who does your hair? *admires it*

P.S. Sorry about deleting the other comment, I suddenly had a flash of how a similar thread went and felt it might be better to spare us a repeat ;-)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

This made me wish for the awful like and reblog buttons.

I don't quite agree about the formula - in fact not at all, because there are different tropes at work - but it does boil down to fan service anyway.

I saw someone read it today. Just as I expected, a middle-aged woman with a mouth downturned into a horseshoe - actually the rest of the visual description would limit this to superficial sexism but I so wanted a photo when she put one short leg on the bench, the other still down, and the book lay between her thighs as she read on with unmoving face.
I still think it's worst that those who mock Sheds love the same thing just in different clothes but that's me, who used to dream of equality.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

I seriously wondered now if they haven't come up with a way to transplant that egotism but I also want the energy and talent and charm and what not. Keith Richards survived with other peoples blood, why can't I have some of your stem cells? Brain matter? I don't know what, infiltrate me, this should be possible by now!

[nenne.livejournal.com]

If I ever take up writing I'll keep it in mind. ;)

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

As a reader, I'm much more inclined to read fics that have NC-17/Explicit or R/Mature ratings. That's just what I want to read. It's not that I won't read a PG or a gen fic, but because time is limited and there's so much fic out there, it really has to be something that was recced to me or something written by someone whose work I already know I like. So maybe that makes me shallow, but yanno, IDGAF really. ;-)

Sure there's a lot of bad porn out there, but that's true of fanfic in general. It's hard to find stuff that's both well-written and suited to your personal tastes, and narrowing your list of likes down to a few things you know you'll enjoy is one way of coping with the sheer volume that's out there. It's my way, anyhow.

I write a lot of sex scenes in my fic. A LOT. I don't consciously try to put one in every chapter or whatever; the sex is there or not according to whether it works in the scene. If there are eight possible ways I can think of to move the story or the character development forward at a particular moment, and if one of them does it through sex, I'll pick that one. I guess the point is that I write it because I like to write it, and apparently some people like to read it too, which is cool with me.

I know you're not porn-bashing here, but I just wanted to throw in my perspective that lots of sex scenes =/= bad storytelling automatically.

[leemarchais.livejournal.com]

I don't think sex defines the quality of a fic, either. There had better be a good plot and story. I've read your stuff and it's lovely. But there's no sex... Some people are truly idiots.

[sinden.livejournal.com]

People want bang for their buck -- or, you know, porn for their time investment because that is their emotional payoff.

Also, I concur that it would be really nice to actually have some feedback for the hours of time I spend writing the damn thing. It maintains an interactive dialogue between the author and reader. Kudos on AO3 drive me nuts because I don't know the context they're being used in -- I kudos everything I read, or only the things I liked or my finger slipped, oh well. WHAT DO YOU MEAN? Ahem.

[mrsquizzical.livejournal.com]

i enjoyed learning that they created that space to write and review together and had no idea where that story would end up. thanks for linking that article. :)

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

Guess that's where I've been going wrong too. Latest book not selling very well. Should have sexed it up more.

[oakstone730.livejournal.com]

I forget which romance writer tweeted that she was going to throw in some BDSM in her next book just 'cause what the hell it is clearly what people want.

All my stories (with one exception) are lime. Everything is off stage. Even without *it* though I still get reads and reviews. I did have one person posted a rec of my story with the caveat (paraphrased) "good story but isn't NC-17 so not many will read." Which is fine. Since I don't feel comfortable writing the NC-17 stuff, although I've no objection to reading it.

So many stories are NC-17, and very few write it well that I tend to skip it anyway. I like Fragantwoods idea of just adding "And then they had sex..." add in a slap and a tickle and we'll all be rolling in the reviews.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I don't think it does: Calanthe is one of my fave HD writers and she writes LOTS of sex!

But I do think that the idea 'Oh, I want reviews! Right, insert sex scene!' is both risible and likely to lead to bad writing.

Sure there's a lot of bad porn out there, but that's true of fanfic in general.

I think you could accurately substitute 'writing' for fanfic :-) The main reason I don't do much at all in the way of actual sex scenes is that I grew up in the 70s and 80s when every third book was 'And now, watch me do my best DH Lawrence bit for the sales!', which were of course all avidly passed around between young girls. If only the Bad Sex Awards had existed back then! But the annual long list would have been too large for the judges to get through.

Knowing about fandom would have been super helpful in those days. I remember being 15 and reading the trashy book du jour and saying, 'I find it very unlikely that this character suddenly feels entirely better about everything because she just had good sex! Did you not READ the preceding chapters?' Which would have been SO much better as: 'Healing power of cock? Oh, please!'

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I totally have spare ego! You could definitely have some.

I'm very lucky in that I was raised by bonkers people who had a lot of very correct ideas. I'll never forget being a young girl the year after Dad died and just being in a miserable funk and moaning bitterly about something inconsequential and saying 'It's no wonder people just kill themselves!' (which was a melodramatic turn of phrase, not any sort of intention) and my grandmother saying, 'I always wondered about that, because those people are almost never the problem. Surely the better plan would be to murder the people who ARE the problem, and then you'd have a few years in a nice psychiatric asylum to sort everything out, come out feeling much better and with one less evil bastard in the world?'

Alas, my charm mostly works on old men with dogs or large vegetables, and you would end up rather short!

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I'm good, darling! We've had two things conflate in the comments here because fragrant was having a perfectly reasonable grumble elsewhere and was sniffily informed that was not encouraged to grumble on such topics and that she could take that grumble elsewhere, thank you!

Here is a grumble welcoming zone! I think it's perfectly fine to want to have a grumpy mutter or even a full-on whinge about things now and then.

One of the big problems with doing that in fandom has been the trigger-happy responses you sometimes get. A lot of these are based on philosophical errors, like false syllogisms.

You know: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man.

Socrates is mortal = true syllogism
All men are Socrates = false syllogism

I've lost track of the times I've seen this happen in fandom. I remember one big witch hunt that came in response to someone saying 'Bah, I've had it with all the bloody fests, I miss it when people used to post their own stories regularly and there were big ongoing things being written by more than one or two stalwarts.'

This was whipped up into 'She hates fests! She hates all the people who write for fests! She thinks that fest writing is totally inferior! Boo! Hiss!'

Which was not only inaccurate, but totally failed to address the underlying issue: how many fests can one reasonably sized fandom handle? Put-upon first person was 'Fuck it, I'm a-going over here and you can just play by yourselves'

About six months later, a lot of fandom went 'Gee, there's a lot of fests, maybe we should rationalise the numbers?'

As for me personally and reviews: I love the people who like my stories and would not have things any other way! I love you loads! GET WELL!

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I agree about the need to have a spectrum of fic. I'm the worst person in the world about helping it along, though: I'm not just bad at reviews, I'm bad at actually reading the things I have bookmarked. I should just stick them on my ereader and be diligent about going back to the source to comment later.

Writing for ourselves is the only guarantee of happiness, because even if it goes Pffft on the popular reception front, we can give honest answers to that little internal critic that asks if it was our best effort and if we're proud of it. That's worth a surprising amount!

And it's done by Furr in Newtown. They do lovely work! I've only had layers once before in the 80s and it was grim, but these are just choppy and modern, and the pink stripe is both fun and a flattering colour, even though I would never have picked it myself. It lifts the hair more than the old red stripes and is less harsh than the white stripe I was thinking of :-) Admittedly: totally Punk Lite.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Fan service is OK in itself: I mean, people love Coca Cola and it tastes like caramelised acid (because it is) and can't be good for you, but as part of an overall healthy diet, it's really fine.

What worries me is the impact of a big success like this on everything else, which is like people who drink more Coke than water and wonder why there's suddenly a worldwide epidemic of dental cavities. I don't think for a moment that Amanda Hayward is saying 'Do this and you'll have my sales figures', because she seems very sensible (so does EL James). But I've noticed a lot of serious publishers saying 'Oh, the ladies like the porn! Who knew? Right, what do we have?'

Which will be FINE as long as it results in just a raft of hilarious sex writing that will keep my work friend saying 'It's so bad, I'm ashamed to enjoy it, but what the hell!' It just won't be fine if it results in only that sort of book dominating new releases, because fan service is all about responding to things you already know, whereas good books and films and TV show us new things and make us want to see the world in those new ways.

The woman you saw would have made a brilliant photo. But maybe she's like my work friend and having a bad divorce, so it's fun to dream of men who can be Redeemed By Great Love. (Personally, after my one bad break up, I would have liked to read a book about men who can be fed through garden shredders and how to clean the parts thoroughly afterwards …)

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I love that she's so matter-of-factly 'Of COURSE it's mercenary and competitive! You were expecting a women's love-in?'

I genuinely think she's something of a genius, but I worry about how everyone else will respond in terms of what books are brought up over the next few years.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Ah, Amanda Hayward's OK, I sort of love her mercenary 'You want the reviews? Here you go!' formula, and it is true: higher ratings do attract more reviews in general. But I agree with you wholly on the need for good plot and a story. I feel much happier about Calanthe, or pushdragon, or mirabella who writes exquisite tension, having loads of reviews than I do about Fifty Shades outselling Harry Potter!

[leemarchais.livejournal.com]

I keep hoping I can get that perfect sex scene where it all just fits together.... it's quite possible I'm just not cut out for it.