Chapter Vote Scores (Patreon)

Although I'm never sure just how much stock to put into the voting scores on Lit, they're, as always, fascinating to look at. I want to say there's a correlation between the sex content and the individual scores, but that's hard to see--and sometimes I think the scores relate more to the chapter length, but that's not always clear, either.

Was Chapter 5 scored lower because of the lack of sex content, or because it didn't satisfy the expectations readers were building with the characters and situations from the previous chapter? Most of Chapter 8's success is certainly because of how the preceding chapter arranged and built expectations.

I'm starting to think introducing and satisfying reader expectations is a more critical factor in writing erotica than the sex scenes themselves are. Which is of course, difficult, and in some part, wildly subjective from reader to reader. Great food for thought, though.

From last year around this time, all of the older individual chapter scores have also risen. Chapters 2 and 6 even climbed high enough to receive yellow H "Hot" tags, long after their fifteen minutes of fame in the Most Recent Entries lineup.

Ch 01 4.29 -> 4.36 Before the Convention

Ch 02 4.46 -> 4.54 Gijinka Capture

Ch 03 4.30 -> 4.43 Wolf, the Sheep, and the Shepherd

Ch 04 4.57 -> 4.63 Painting the Roses Pink

Ch 05 4.30 -> 4.35 Fighting His Past

Ch 06 4.48 -> 4.54 Flight from the Poisoned Oasis

Ch 07 4.69 -> 4.75 Effort and Opportunity

So in conclusion, chapter vote scores matter. For what, exactly, I have no idea. I've heard that many readers won't waste time clicking on something with a less than 4.5 rating, and stuff heading into a 4.9 will make it into toplists, that in theory attract many more readers. But at the same time, a compelling story needs to have ups and downs--giving myself an obligatory sex content quota per chapter would be a terrible idea.

The really great Lit authors have, of course, solved that problem entirely by consolidating their writing into larger chapters. That way the slower parts building anticipation aren't separate, lower scores from the portions that are satisfying those expectations built. Still kicking myself for not realizing to organize my chapters that way back then, ugh.

In the meantime, I've been whittling away Chapter 10's mountains of problems into molehills of problems. Most of the chapter is done and ready, but there's a lot of transitions, pacing and dialogue in the last quarter that just feel too feeble right now--even more so because tireless repetition and brainstorming of earlier segments of the chapter have made them impressively robust.