Coincidentally, on the CHYOA fan discord we had a conversation today about comments and interaction. I mentioned how I’m sometimes a bit embarrassed at how much I personally comment on stories I like, but I know how much I love comments so I try not to worry that I over do it. I also, when I do comment on a chapter I just read, try to think about specifically what I enjoyed and felt while reading it. Not every comment has to be a giant wall of text (like mine sometimes are I’m afraid) and just saying “this is fun!” is totally valid and worthwhile imo. But going in a bit of depth about the things in a story I especially love helps me realize what I can do in my own writing as well as increases my enjoyment of the story I’m reading.
Engagement with comments and favourites are great but likes are the measure of popularity of your work and its really frustrating to put a lot of effort into a chapter and get 2 likes, especially when some less well crafted work can get much more. That being said, I'm sitting with a few (extremely lightweight) chapters at 95+ likes but none over a 100. I'm almost at the point of stopping people in the street and asking them to read (and like) them!
Likes are important and I care about them a lot more than I should, but I'm *trying* to get better. I used to pay more attention to them, but thank god when I started writing more niche (or simply much worse?) stories that were obviously not as popular I was able to slowly ease off on noticing raw stats with likes and views. Also, I'm saved from myself because CHYOA doesn't make it terribly easy to look at your stories popularity, and the fact the hugely popular (and/or oldest) stories will always be top of the lists helps too. So instead I started just looking at my own stats, using my average number of likes per chapter I've published, to see if my stories are, over time, slowly reaching more people. It's healthier for me to just focus on not comparing my work to others. Bookmarks and favourites are less important to me as I never used them to gauge interest in my stories, so I disabled notifications for those a long time ago.
I try to remind myself that likes only mean something is popular not good, but it's very easy to lose interest in a thread that gets only one or two likes per chapter. One thing I particularly enjoy is when a new reader finds a bit of my writing and likes every chapter they read. Not only does it make me feel like that thread is some pearl they just discovered, but I get to see the order of chapters they read. It's really great to see which path they took and when they jumped back to try a different fork.
Yes, but I just dust myself off and move on. I've had to deal with worse. Also... ...we have a Discord?
It's unofficial (not maintained or overseen by Friedman or any CHYOA moderators), but yes - https://discord.gg/dQ3enbwz There's also an older, less active server that's more broadly intended for interactive adult fiction in general - https://discord.gg/NVp4SZWb
I could not agree with you more. Seeing a user discover a thread and go like happy is always super rewarding. Plus if they track down my other work and like that or even follow me, I'm always tempted to send them a message telling them thanks.
