3 reasons why I’m not going to read your story

Dansak

Dansak

Really Really Experienced
CHYOA Backer
This is intended to be helpful, but it maybe a bit of a rant too!

1- No cover photo.
This is just one of those things that bugs me. I get why people don’t have photos in the actual story itself, but it’s so easy to source a pic and plonk it in the cover photo box. You don’t need to mess about with hosting or anything. And contrary to popular belief, books are judged by their covers.

2- Poor Editing
I’m terrible at editing, I hate it. But it has to be done. We all miss some typos and stuff here and there, that’s to be expected. But some stories look like they’ve never been checked for even the most basic and obvious of mistakes. Doesn’t matter how good your story is, if it’s riddled with typos then it’s not going to be an enjoyable read. Just put it through Grammarly or something similar, you'll at least catch most of the obvious issues and vastly increase the chances people will read your story.

3- The first paragraph
This is a big one for me. So many stories with great potential are ruined because they explain in a few sentences what could otherwise have been a great opening chapter. I've lost count of the amount of stories that start with variations of the following - 'You are John, a college student who suddenly wakes up with the ability to (insert reason for free use/mind control/transformation here). "Wow" said John, "Now I can fuck who ever I want!" '.
I know why this happens, you have a great idea and just want to get to the good bits. But taking the time to introduce your characters and the setting makes them so much more believable and endearing.

I would guess that these three things make 75% of the stories I come across unreadable for me before I've even got past the first page. It's sad, because a lot of the stories have real potential.
 
ah, presentation, my favorite subject

While it is possible to make a succesful story without a cover,you are really giving yourself a massive handicap by doing so. Just slap something in there!

I join in with some pet peeves as well

-when the about section is just loaded with text. Dude I don't care! This is your synopsis! Keep it short and sweet!

-new story with only one or two chapters. This is almost always a sign that the story will be abandoned once the initial excitement wears off, so I don't even bother starting reading it. If you don't want to give off that impression start your story with enough content that readers aren't done after five minutes. Start publishing with at least 5 decent sized chapters or more

-accidental game mode, this is an easy mistake so it doesn't ruin a story for me but it still shouldn't be there
 
Gambio said:
-new story with only one or two chapters. This is almost always a sign that the story will be abandoned once the initial excitement wears off, so I don't even bother starting reading it. If you don't want to give off that impression start your story with enough content that readers aren't done after five minutes. Start publishing with at least 5 decent sized chapters or more
Click to expand...

Building off of this, stories where the Owner just flatly expects other people to do the writing for them bug me endlessly. So many stubs are just "You are dropped into your favorite [X] Universe" and its just lists of characters they want others to highlight.
 
Dansak said:
This is intended to be helpful, but it maybe a bit of a rant too!

1- No cover photo.
This is just one of those things that bugs me. I get why people don’t have photos in the actual story itself, but it’s so easy to source a pic and plonk it in the cover photo box. You don’t need to mess about with hosting or anything. And contrary to popular belief, books are judged by their covers.

2- Poor Editing
I’m terrible at editing, I hate it. But it has to be done. We all miss some typos and stuff here and there, that’s to be expected. But some stories look like they’ve never been checked for even the most basic and obvious of mistakes. Doesn’t matter how good your story is, if it’s riddled with typos then it’s not going to be an enjoyable read. Just put it through Grammarly or something similar, you'll at least catch most of the obvious issues and vastly increase the chances people will read your story.

3- The first paragraph
This is a big one for me. So many stories with great potential are ruined because they explain in a few sentences what could otherwise have been a great opening chapter. I've lost count of the amount of stories that start with variations of the following - 'You are John, a college student who suddenly wakes up with the ability to (insert reason for free use/mind control/transformation here). "Wow" said John, "Now I can fuck who ever I want!" '.
I know why this happens, you have a great idea and just want to get to the good bits. But taking the time to introduce your characters and the setting makes them so much more believable and endearing.

I would guess that these three things make 75% of the stories I come across unreadable for me before I've even got past the first page. It's sad, because a lot of the stories have real potential.
Click to expand...

I agree with you.
 
Gambio said:
-new story with only one or two chapters. This is almost always a sign that the story will be abandoned once the initial excitement wears off, so I don't even bother starting reading it. If you don't want to give off that impression start your story with enough content that readers aren't done after five minutes. Start publishing with at least 5 decent sized chapters or more
Click to expand...
Yeah, I agree with this one too, I hardly ever start reading a story that has only got a few chapters, unless I know the author and trust them to publish more chapters. Most of my stories are open ended and quite long and I find that after around 80 to 100 chapters the numbers of readers and likes drops off a cliff. My stories are all linear and chapters are min 1k words so it's a lot to read. I suppose the sweet spot is around novel length of 75k to 90k words.
 
Dissonant Soundtrack said:
Building off of this, stories where the Owner just flatly expects other people to do the writing for them bug me endlessly. So many stubs are just "You are dropped into your favorite [X] Universe" and its just lists of characters they want others to highlight.
Click to expand...
Yes, I very much agree. I've seen a few like this had potential but then the author did nothing with it and left it for other authors. I'm like , man you had a great idea then did nothing with it!
 
If we talking about authors, there is one name, that met all the examples of story that is unreadable.

"Littleprincespanties1" is in the first row, one sentence story, without any grammatical supervision.

If i been her editor, i denied everything until it's being readable, becuase in these days with translators, zero knowledge of english language isn't excuse.
 
Walls of text. As soon as I see anyone not using proper paragraphs I close it without reading.

Going too wide with branches. I tend to go wide myself but when you have a dozen of 3-5 chapter branches... no thanks.

Long linear story. I may make an exception if you hook me up with the first chapter but more often than not I am out as soon as I open the tree and see the only 50-chapters branch of the story. Chyoa is not the place where I am looking for a novel.

Overreliance on images, especially porn gifs. I prefer text porn, otherwise I wouldn't be there.
 
Everything above, yes. I am particularly boggled by one-sentence chapters that have dozens of likes on them. How is this nothingness getting any positive attention?

Hvast said:
Going too wide with branches. I tend to go wide myself but when you have a dozen of 3-5 chapter branches... no thanks.
Click to expand...

I'm curious what you mean here. Does "going too wide" mean having too many options at the end of a given chapter?

I never know what to think when I see a dozen options at the end of a chapter. I can't imagine that the creator(s) have really figured out TWELVE possible variations on "what's next?"
 
It's more an issue with first chapters, which tend to have one or two longer branches, and a bunch of stubs - sometimes dozens of stubs.

Vaguely related to too many choices: while it's less of an issue on CHYOA than on other sites, it's kind of annoying when the first 3-4 chapters are basically trying to set up the story viewpoint/subject - e.g. stories with titles like COMIC WOMEN TRANSFORMATIONS and then the first choice is MARVEL or DC, then the second choices are a list of characters, and then the third choices are a list of transformations. I grok the mindset, but I'd much rather a more focused story, like how Gorel says "Okay, Marvel and everybody's turning into Wendigos, here we go!"
 
Me: You pull a bait and switch. You say the story will be Mind Control, but you launch into a description of the male antagonist's female relatives' bodies because you're writing an incest story that has MC elements.
 
wicker said:
Me: You pull a bait and switch. You say the story will be Mind Control, but you launch into a description of the male antagonist's female relatives' bodies because you're writing an incest story that has MC elements.
Click to expand...

Is that a bait and switch though?

It's still a MC story, but it takes place in an incest setting.
 
Also, a story can have more than one genre. Mind control can be mixed with pretty much everything.
 
The main one for me is that if it's a male main character fucking women for a harem story, that's fine and all, but it's not really a female protagonist story then, is it? But it will be 100% tagged as such anyway.
 
Hvast said:
It is an incest story AND a mind-control story. There is no exclusion.
Click to expand...

I think it's more an question of which genre it should be first.

Is it a MC story with the most convenient (in the same house) targets, the family members?

Or an incest story, where the protag can only "seduce" them via MC?

Both elements are there, but the line between MC and incest got blurry a little too early in the story.
 
Impregmaniac said:
I think it's more an question of which genre it should be first.

Is it a MC story with the most convenient (in the same house) targets, the family members?

Or an incest story, where the protag can only "seduce" them via MC?

Both elements are there, but the line between MC and incest got blurry a little too early in the story.
Click to expand...

Because the answer to the question of which category it belongs is actually - to both. Also, they don't even collide in any meaningful way. Mind control is what type of sex, incest is with whom.

It is like complaining that the fantasy story about lesbian Amazons is wrongly in the Fantasy category... or in the Lesbians category.

Sure, a person looking for mind control may dislike an incest theme. I won't read a vore-focused sci-fi story or something like that. But neither I will complain that I was baited and switched
 
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