Moments You've Started To Read A Story And Found Yourself Backing Out Quietly...

#1
I haven't encountered a story yet that was so bad that I felt I had to give it a 0.5. That's probably because I actively seek out to read the good fiction on here and the stuff that I encounter that I don't like just isn't worth me giving it a low score. I'll occasionally talk in the comments section if the story is decent and I think the author may have made a misstep with his plotting but usually if I really don't care for a story I'll just back out quietly and look elsewhere for an interesting read.

Whenever I've silently judged a story it is usually in one of five areas:

  1. Character. So many ways a character can go wrong. Either the character is boring with no compelling backstory or personality or the author has made choices that contradict how they describe the character (i.e. a genius scientist constantly doing stupid stuff to move the plot forward or a character being an idiot in an unentertaining way that makes it to annoying to continue reading the story.).

  2. Description. I do read a lot but I'm not a literary snob. I have a high tolerance for the sometimes amateur description you find on here. Clarity is way more important to me than purple prose and poetic turns of phrase. As long as the plot is interesting to me it rarely bothers me. The few times I've stopped reading a story because of inadequate description was because the writer described the main characters view point so poorly that I was completely confused and constantly getting lost while at the same time the author also managed to describe a fantasy setting in a way that was startlingly boring.

  3. Plot. Pretty self explanatory. Sometimes, whatever problems the main characters are getting into are simply not something I'm interested in.

  4. Grammar. The free Grammarly program is great. One of the reasons I started posting on here was so that I could run the story through it and then correct my copy on Scrivener. I'm not an insane grammar snob. My favorite litrpg story on here, Loser Of Tarinath, often forgets to put periods at the ends of his sentences but the story is gold so I can ignore it. But when combined with any other errors it just makes it easier to disengage with the story.

  5. Plot/synopsis mismatch. When the synopsis says litrpg yet there are no elements of it in the story. Or when I suddenly find myself involved in an unexpected vore scene (i.e. I'll admit that the one time this happened I found myself continuing to read the story because it was good. I just kept skipping the parts where the vore occurred. Weird.).

Anyway the reason I've been thinking about all the reasons I've silently stopped reading a story is because I'm wondering if I should put something like a poll at the end of my prologue to find out why people stopped reading the story to make it easier for people to critique it? Also if there are any silent reasons why you've stopped reading a story that are different from the ones I've listed I'd love to hear about it.
An Urban Fantasy Set In A Unique Universe
Eight God Engine

RE: Moments You've Started To Read A Story And Found Yourself Backing Out Quietly...

#2
You've hit all the points that determine when I back out of a story too, lol.
The poll thing is a really good idea, it'd probably work best with people/friends/beta readers that you know will at least reach the end of the prologue.

It's inevitable that you'll lose some readers over time, to no fault of your own. Sometimes people pick up a story because they like the premise and will read it for a while, but eventually they attach certain hopes or expectations that you won't meet because they don't fit the story. Like I was reading this really well-written novel about a man who goes back in time to relive his youth. It was deep, it had emotion, it had the feeling of reminiscence... but I hated it. It was really good, and normally I LOVE second chances and do-overs, but I just couldn't relate to the MC - and therefore the entire novel's premise of following his second life just became a chore. Some people loved the story because it spoke to them. Some people couldn't. There's nothing the author could do about that.

For me, the main character is really important. They're the ones carrying the story on their shoulders, so they have to have the appropriate shape and strength to do so. The way that the main character feels about what's happening in the story is integral to how the story progresses. If the main character doesn't care about anything, why should I care? If the main character isn't likable, then the plot and premise have to be really strong to keep the readers' attention.

Oh, and another thing is the voice of the writing. The quickest way to hook me into reading something is if the characters are clever and the author even cleverer. A good balance of witty banter and quips with actual plot and character development shows that the author is at a pretty high level. The plot might still be bad, but the characters and narration might just be strong enough to carry you to the end anyway. That doesn't mean that the characters have to be great at delivering jokes (though that helps), but that they have to be able to think well enough to surprise me. Surprise and anticipation are what hook readers into continuing their reading, so if every other scene or dialogue can surprise the reader and make them curious about how that affects events further down the line, then you've made something that no one can put down.

For example, with romance, people keep turning pages because they anticipate when and how the characters fall in love and eventually get together. If you write a generic bodice ripper then people who've never read one might be intrigued by it, but people who've read a lot of them will just drop it because there's nothing in there that will surprise them, or add anything to their lives.

So I guess the question to ask is not "why aren't people reading my story", but "why WOULD people read my story?"
Does your story fill any hole in the genre, does it explore something that other stories haven't explored yet?
What is something that makes your novel different from others, and who do you think has been wanting it?
If your novel is about your personal fantasy world that you've spend years developing, then you need to appeal to people who like worldbuilding. If your novel is about social politics in a fantasy world, you need to appeal to people who like political scheming and drama.
Basically - if you can satisfy a niche that no one else has, then that's how you get loyal readers. Or at least that's my experience from being a long-time reader.
Japanese web/light novels are really good at exploiting this question. They put the answer right in the title. "You should read my story because it's about this weird premise that you've never seen before!"

I took a quick peek at your novel - (sorry that I don't have time to read fully right now, I'm part of the problem!) but one thing I'd suggest that you work on is the rhythm of your sentences. A few of the sentences in your prologue run long and without pauses, especially the ones bogged down by adjectives. That makes them harder to understand, and harder to visualize. It's not dealbreaking - you've got a lot of good things working so regardless most people will keep reading (as they already have I'm sure), but it might be a good place to push for improvement.

I wrote for way too long, so it's in spoiler here.

For example, this:
Quote:The monk in the room with me sat on the first long wooden bench of the watch room staring into the window that looked down into the narrow resurgence chamber.
Could be split into two sentences, like so: "The monk in the room with me sat on the first long wooden bench of the watch room. She stared into the window one that looked down into the narrow resurgence chamber."

Another thing is that you're including a lot of detail which doesn't necessarily add anything to the story, and which might even make it harder to read. Not that you should be dumbing down your work, but you should be aware of what details are important and which are not.

"The monk sat on the first long wooden bench of the watch room." My first question on reading this is, 'the first' bench? How many are there? Where are they in the watch room? Are they lined up like pews in a church or against the wall, or?

Obviously you shouldn't be putting all those details in, but the way that you specifically point out those characteristics of the bench implies that there's some importance to it. However, we don't actually get told the importance, so the description instead becomes white noise that dilutes the intention of the sentence - which is to introduce the monk and where she is.

So, my suggestion would actually be something like this: "The monk sat on the first bench in the watch room, far from where I sat at the other end of the room. She stared out a window into the narrow resurgence chamber below."

I think you establish the protagonist's motivations and emotions pretty well in this prologue, so it's just a matter of making it easier to read by editing your sentences. Add commas, break apart run-on sentences, and remove details that disrupt the flow of the action. If the detail is really significant to you, find a way to mention it elsewhere. "First, trading knowing looks with each other, the older monks drew on the hoods of the brown cowls they wore over their black tunics and left." is another sentence that is difficult to read, specifically because of the bolded part.

Overall though your writing seems really solid, and the premise is intriguing. You've got that lineup of 5 star ratings for a reason :D

RE: Moments You've Started To Read A Story And Found Yourself Backing Out Quietly...

#3
'ars' pid='830736' dateline='1512456116' Wrote: You've hit all the points that determine when I back out of a story too, lol.
The poll thing is a really good idea, it'd probably work best with people/friends/beta readers that you know will at least reach the end of the prologue.

It's inevitable that you'll lose some readers over time, to no fault of your own. Sometimes people pick up a story because they like the premise and will read it for a while, but eventually they attach certain hopes or expectations that you won't meet because they don't fit the story. Like I was reading this really well-written novel about a man who goes back in time to relive his youth. It was deep, it had emotion, it had the feeling of reminiscence... but I hated it. It was really good, and normally I LOVE second chances and do-overs, but I just couldn't relate to the MC - and therefore the entire novel's premise of following his second life just became a chore. Some people loved the story because it spoke to them. Some people couldn't. There's nothing the author could do about that.

For me, the main character is really important. They're the ones carrying the story on their shoulders, so they have to have the appropriate shape and strength to do so. The way that the main character feels about what's happening in the story is integral to how the story progresses. If the main character doesn't care about anything, why should I care? If the main character isn't likable, then the plot and premise have to be really strong to keep the readers' attention.

Oh, and another thing is the voice of the writing. The quickest way to hook me into reading something is if the characters are clever and the author even cleverer. A good balance of witty banter and quips with actual plot and character development shows that the author is at a pretty high level. The plot might still be bad, but the characters and narration might just be strong enough to carry you to the end anyway. That doesn't mean that the characters have to be great at delivering jokes (though that helps), but that they have to be able to think well enough to surprise me. Surprise and anticipation are what hook readers into continuing their reading, so if every other scene or dialogue can surprise the reader and make them curious about how that affects events further down the line, then you've made something that no one can put down.

For example, with romance, people keep turning pages because they anticipate when and how the characters fall in love and eventually get together. If you write a generic bodice ripper then people who've never read one might be intrigued by it, but people who've read a lot of them will just drop it because there's nothing in there that will surprise them, or add anything to their lives.

So I guess the question to ask is not "why aren't people reading my story", but "why WOULD people read my story?"
Does your story fill any hole in the genre, does it explore something that other stories haven't explored yet?
What is something that makes your novel different from others, and who do you think has been wanting it?
If your novel is about your personal fantasy world that you've spend years developing, then you need to appeal to people who like worldbuilding. If your novel is about social politics in a fantasy world, you need to appeal to people who like political scheming and drama.
Basically - if you can satisfy a niche that no one else has, then that's how you get loyal readers. Or at least that's my experience from being a long-time reader.
Japanese web/light novels are really good at exploiting this question. They put the answer right in the title. "You should read my story because it's about this weird premise that you've never seen before!"

I took a quick peek at your novel - (sorry that I don't have time to read fully right now, I'm part of the problem!) but one thing I'd suggest that you work on is he rhythm of your sentences. A few of sentences in your prologue run long and without pauses, especially when bogged down by adjectives. That makes parts of your writing harder to understand.

I wrote for way too long, so it's in spoiler here.

For example, this:
Quote:The monk in the room with me sat on the first long wooden bench of the watch room staring into the window that looked down into the narrow resurgence chamber.
Could be split into two sentences, like so: "The monk in the room with me sat on the first long wooden bench of the watch room. She stared into the window one that looked down into the narrow resurgence chamber."

Another thing is that you're including a lot of detail which doesn't necessarily add anything to the story, and which might even make it harder to read. Not that you should be dumbing down your work, but you should be aware of what details are important and which are not.

"The monk sat on the first long wooden bench of the watch room." My first question on reading this is, 'the first' bench? How many are there? Where are they in the watch room? Are they lined up like pews in a church or against the wall, or?

Obviously you shouldn't be putting all those details in, but the way that you specifically point out those characteristics of the bench implies that there's some importance to it. However, we don't actually get told the importance, so the description instead becomes white noise that dilutes the intention of the sentence - which is to introduce the monk and where she is.

So, my suggestion would actually be something like this: "The monk sat on the first bench in the watch room, far from where I sat at the other end of the room. She stared out a window into the narrow resurgence chamber below."

I think you establish the protagonist's motivations and emotions pretty well in this prologue, so it's just a matter of making it easier to read by editing your sentences. Add commas, break apart run-on sentences, and remove details that disrupt the flow of the action. If the detail is really significant to you, find a way to mention it elsewhere. "First, trading knowing looks with each other, the older monks drew on the hoods of the brown cowls they wore over their black tunics and left." is another sentence that is difficult to read, specifically because of the bolded part.

Overall though your writing seems really solid, and the premise is intriguing. You've got that lineup of 5 star ratings for a reason :D

@ars This is really beside the point of the thread, but I had to compliment your post. It was very insightful and detailed. And I think everyone could learn from your suggestions, well, at least I learned something. So kudos! 

To an extent, it actually makes me quite jealous of the well-written feedback for OP. xD
Please, check out my game-element, fantasy novel: CENTIFIRE
https://i.imgur.com/pU3DTvf.png

RE: Moments You've Started To Read A Story And Found Yourself Backing Out Quietly...

#4
'Rainli' pid='830738' dateline='1512457281' Wrote: @ars This is really beside the point of the thread, but I had to compliment your post. It was very insightful and detailed. And I think everyone could learn from your suggestions, well, at least I learned something. So kudos! 

To an extent, it actually makes me quite jealous of the well-written feedback for OP. xD

Hahahaha thank you!!
I was going to go play a game but before I knew it two hours had passed...
Glad that it ended up revealing some nugget of insight for you. That makes the time spent worth it! \o/

RE: Moments You've Started To Read A Story And Found Yourself Backing Out Quietly...

#5
'ars' pid='830736' dateline='1512456116' Wrote: I took a quick peek at your novel - (sorry that I don't have time to read fully right now, I'm part of the problem!) but one thing I'd suggest that you work on is the rhythm of your sentences. A few of the sentences in your prologue run long and without pauses, especially the ones bogged down by adjectives. That makes them harder to understand, and harder to visualize. It's not dealbreaking - you've got a lot of good things working so regardless most people will keep reading (as they already have I'm sure), but it might be a good place to push for improvement.

I wrote for way too long, so it's in spoiler here.

For example, this:
Quote:The monk in the room with me sat on the first long wooden bench of the watch room staring into the window that looked down into the narrow resurgence chamber.
Could be split into two sentences, like so: "The monk in the room with me sat on the first long wooden bench of the watch room. She stared into the window one that looked down into the narrow resurgence chamber."

Another thing is that you're including a lot of detail which doesn't necessarily add anything to the story, and which might even make it harder to read. Not that you should be dumbing down your work, but you should be aware of what details are important and which are not.

"The monk sat on the first long wooden bench of the watch room." My first question on reading this is, 'the first' bench? How many are there? Where are they in the watch room? Are they lined up like pews in a church or against the wall, or?

Obviously you shouldn't be putting all those details in, but the way that you specifically point out those characteristics of the bench implies that there's some importance to it. However, we don't actually get told the importance, so the description instead becomes white noise that dilutes the intention of the sentence - which is to introduce the monk and where she is.

So, my suggestion would actually be something like this: "The monk sat on the first bench in the watch room, far from where I sat at the other end of the room. She stared out a window into the narrow resurgence chamber below."

I think you establish the protagonist's motivations and emotions pretty well in this prologue, so it's just a matter of making it easier to read by editing your sentences. Add commas, break apart run-on sentences, and remove details that disrupt the flow of the action. If the detail is really significant to you, find a way to mention it elsewhere. "First, trading knowing looks with each other, the older monks drew on the hoods of the brown cowls they wore over their black tunics and left." is another sentence that is difficult to read, specifically because of the bolded part.

Overall though your writing seems really solid, and the premise is intriguing. You've got that lineup of 5 star ratings for a reason :D

Thanks for the great critique! I had someone look at my work the other day who said that they really hated the prologue but they couldn't articulate why. Sounds like going back and simplifying the sentence structure like you suggested would be a strong start. Thank you so much!
An Urban Fantasy Set In A Unique Universe
Eight God Engine

RE: Moments You've Started To Read A Story And Found Yourself Backing Out Quietly...

#6
All these posts are interesting to read, actually. I looked at this as I wondered about the motivations of zero-bombers (which fortunately, I've only had two of, compared to twenty odd 5's, so its all cool).

Though I guess in my case, it's probably because some people see what my novel involves and instantly have a jump-scare reaction. XD
"If the world's a stage, and the people actors, then who the f**k has my script!?"

Yuusha Isekai! Youjo Suki!
Read my Isekai Parody novel above!

RE: Moments You've Started To Read A Story And Found Yourself Backing Out Quietly...

#9
'SJ Reaver' pid='830784' dateline='1512576334' Wrote: Rape. I still remember the night where the random button brought me to three fictions in a row, all if which had the MC randomly raping someone in the first few chapters.

Whoa! That's crazy. If I ever encounter that I'll be giving out my first 0.5 on here.
An Urban Fantasy Set In A Unique Universe
Eight God Engine

RE: Moments You've Started To Read A Story And Found Yourself Backing Out Quietly...

#11
'SJ Reaver' pid='830784' dateline='1512576334' Wrote: Rape. I still remember the night where the random button brought me to three fictions in a row, all if which had the MC randomly raping someone in the first few chapters.

That is not an immediate "silently backing out thing" for me , but it better be hella important to the character building, and not just some random gratuitous violence. 
Rape can be incredibly off putting, and putting it early in a story will cost you lots of readers if they haven't had time to get invested yet.


'batotit' pid='830787' dateline='1512579939' Wrote: lol, in my experience readers don't back out quietly. They will tell you full on why they are dropping your story and why you lost him.

I've yet to have that happen. Is this something that people only do if they are already well invested in the characters? 
I personally feel that my reader retention is pretty low when I look at my story's stats, But I have very few comments actually criticising my work. even tho I actively engage with, and have made clear that I welcome it so I can try to learn from it.
My fiction

Cheers!

RE: Moments You've Started To Read A Story And Found Yourself Backing Out Quietly...

#12
'Antice' pid='831074' dateline='1513544746' Wrote:
'batotit' pid='830787' dateline='1512579939' Wrote: lol, in my experience readers don't back out quietly. They will tell you full on why they are dropping your story and why you lost him.

I've yet to have that happen. Is this something that people only do if they are already well invested in the characters? 
I personally feel that my reader retention is pretty low when I look at my story's stats, But I have very few comments actually criticising my work. even tho I actively engage with, and have made clear that I welcome it so I can try to learn from it.

I think that usually you would get those sort of heated comments when the reader feels like you've betrayed one of the expectations they had for your story. For example, if you promise that you have an OP protagonist who'll nab a whole bunch of girls, yet in the actual story the protagonist never follows through, you're bound to get a bunch of angry comments.

Or, if you were setting up a plot arc that promised specific things like adventure, mystery, heavy action sequences, but then change your mind and go another direction - the readers would notice that and might call you out on it.

Readers will only tell you why they dropped if they feel really strongly about it, after all, so there does have to be something compelling in your story that the readers think you aren't doing justice (though whether they're right or not depends on what the author wanted to do).

In most cases, though, losing readers is simply a case of them moving their mouse up and clicking X.

If you're worried about the views stats on your story, then it's very common in every media that the first parts of a series gain the most views, but the middle and last parts have the least. No matter how great a series is, it's pretty much impossible for each part to have a 100% retention rate. If you check out youtube/lets play series for example, "Part 1s" typically have maybe triple more views than "Part 4s".

What's more important is if you have a core number of minimum views (loyal readers) for each part. Even if some chapters get 2,000 views, and some get only 400, as long as there's consistently at least 400 views on every chapter then you can be assured that those are 400 loyal readers. I noticed that when you add descriptive names in your chapter titles, more 'random' readers are attracted to buzzwords like revenge, battle, god, date, etc etc that signify that some exciting event happens in that chapter. However, the setup chapters that are equally or more important than those climactic ones may get lower views, even when they're directly preceding. So, in that case, it's simply that there are some errant people that only want to see some cool explosive scenes and don't actually care for the whole of your story - and you can ignore them.

However, a bigger issue would be if your first few chapters have maybe thousands of views, but the later ones barely break through the hundreds. That would mean that you do have a retention problem.

If people aren't saying why they stopped reading, then that would usually indicate a pacing problem in the story. In other words, the story is delivering exactly what the premise said it would, but it's either doing it way too slowly or in a way that's not interesting enough.

It's very common that when you first get an idea for a story you think up of all the cool things that go into the introduction, but when you near the middle you've run out of interesting details to add, so the events and dialogue get shallower and slimmer. The things that happen might drag out longer because you're adding filler to make up for not knowing what should happen next. By that point the reader's interest will also wane, and they will eventually stop reading and look for something that can deliver a satisfying arc more quickly.

I'm looking at your fiction page now, and it looks like you're doing very well with consistent and face-paced releases. To be honest I feel like you should just keep writing and not worry about reader retention; it's more important to have a finished story that you enjoyed making.

If improving your story as you go is more important than getting it out there, though, then I suggest either finding an editor to help you check grammar and paragraph structures, or that you try using something like Grammarly. With a quick glance I can't judge the contents of your story, but it might be worth trying to improve the visual appearance and readability. When there are spelling/grammar errors, the reader might stop to think about whether the word/sentence was written correctly, or the error might even cause them to not know what the sentence is supposed to mean. That's a big distraction that can pull people out of the flow of your story, and it's something that's relatively easy to fix compared to the hard task of imagining and creating the events that happen in your book.

RE: Moments You've Started To Read A Story And Found Yourself Backing Out Quietly...

#13
Editing. Man oh man, editing. I don't need sentence structure to be perfect (English is a pretty loose language, after all), and I don't even need the author to speak English as their primary language - but if words are constantly misspelled (or even missing), it throws me. When I finish the stories I'm working on, I'll look into hiring an editor regardless of how good a job I THINK I did, for that very reason :) Moving on though...

Characters that don't learn their lesson and continue to make the same mistakes or - often more bothersome to me, continue to cause or be involved in the same misunderstandings, have caused me to back away with a sigh plenty of times. Love Triangles often play a part, and I am tired of those for other reasons, but there are always misunderstandings with those.

Don't get me wrong - making mistakes (even more than once, depending on perspective and situation) and dealing with misunderstandings can be a good mechanic for storytelling - but when the MC never learns? I'm out. I'm a logical individual, and when I make mistakes, I strive to learn from them and not repeat them. When I am engaged in a misunderstanding, I don't just let it go - I confront it, and work with the other party to resolve it.

I can let some of my own logic go for the purpose of a story, but only so far. I don't have time for MCs that waste my time with consistent repeats of those tropes.
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RE: Moments You've Started To Read A Story And Found Yourself Backing Out Quietly...

#14
Excessive narratives at the beginning of stories, or, "info dumping", usually makes me quietly bow out.  I understand that many stories take place in fantasy settings or other worlds which may require time to build in the reader's mind, but some writers seem to think that the definition of "prologue" is:  "Explain everything about the story ahead of time because I'm too lazy to explore it gradually as the story progresses."  I'm not interested in being bombarded by history lessons before a story begins, unless, the history itself is engaging and treated as part of the "present" story.  I prefer to be thrown into a tale that isn't immediately buried beneath loads of information that isn't relevant yet, making the pace of the story like slowly hiking through a swamp before I'm introduced to characters, plot, etc.  Too much "explaining" at the beginning is like starting a race where the story momentum is so painfully slow that your storytelling has already broken down on the side of the highway.
Author of Don't Feed The Dark - an apocalyptic serial novel. 

Former member of The Order of Phantasmal Architects - a collective of unusual, excellent and diverse stories