I'm curious, how do people go about reading new stories? How do you choose which stories you will read? What do you look for, and what puts you off of a story? For me, I'll usually take a look at any story that either has a title that catches my eye, or has at least five chapters of depth. At that point, after taking a quick look and reading the intro, I'll bookmark it for future reading if it looks interesting. I dont typically start reading a story until it has at least 10 chapters in depth, and a couple of branches.
A catchy title or a cool cover picture that catches my eye does help me choose. I'm more put off by stories that are very deep in chapter threads than shorter ones. I'm actually much more apt to read a story that is only one or two chapters deep than one that is 200. In the Chyoa format, I find the long stories very daunting. If I like the story or see promise in it I'll favorite it and like the chapters I found most entertaining. I'll also put up a comment. I find, as an author myself, that likes, favorites, and comments spur me on to work through any block or malaise I might have so I treat to treat other authors in kind.
Wasn't even thinking of that when putting this thread together. Yes, stories that are over +75 chapters deep can become somewhat daunting to me as well if I'm not in the mood to be reading for quite a while. Additionally, when I see updates to a story I enjoy, I tend to wait until there are a minimum of 2-3 new posts in a thread before I actually come back to read it again, . . . less than that tends to be, . . . anticlimactic.
There's a few things I'll look for. The first thing I look at is whether it's something that'll grab my interest. Either the title or especially tags. After that, I look for whether it has a fair bit of depth or total chapters. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of linear progression, so I value number of chapters nearly as much as depth. Although depth is something that I do heavily take into account. Several times, I've read stories that have had many chapters and not many depth that just haven't gone anywhere and conversely I've read stories that have many many chapters, but all of them on the same branch. Assuming all of that lines up, I then take a look at the first few chapters to make sure that there's actually substance there. Occasionally you run into stories that have chapters that are only a few paragraphs at most, or just lack any real detail. It's possible that these stories may get better later on, but first impressions are important.
I look for favorite authors as well as topics/concepts. I'm starting to get cover picture envy for mine. Tags are funny, since they get put on a chapter but accumulated on the story, so they might or might not be representative of most of the story.
Title and subtitle are probably most important for the first impression. They have to explain an interesting concept in just a few words or have to be kind of cryptic. Then it usually depends on the concept. Usually I like it most, if there is a quick jump into the action, without introducing any character. The description of the character and the explanation, how it came to that situation, can happen along the way. (also with flashbacks) If the story is unlogical, unbelieveable or unreadable, I stop reading very fast. Else I bookmark and like the chapters I read. (Like gcrinehart2223 said, feedback can be very important to maintain the writers motivation. If some threads get no vote or a dislike, I have to suppose, that it was too bad. If I don't get some attention with the first threads, I may abandon the story, although I still have a lot of ideas...) I appreciate a slow story telling, much details in erotic/sexual scenes and also between. I don't mind story depth or branches, though it depends on the kind of story. (Well... huge stories or fast-growing stories can be daunting) Novel-like story telling may be quite linear, while game-like should have a lot of branches. Thread length also depends on the kind of narration. Novel-like stories should have longer threads, while game-stories can have threads with even just one sentence to give the reader more control of the character. (In my current story I have a medium long introduction, which branches out into a lot short threads for the first sexual scene.)
That may be, but it does give some idea of some of the things that may be involved in the story. It's at least a good place to start, if you have an idea of what kind of story you wish to read. It also serves as sort of a warning when dealing with fetishes. I would certainly want to be warned if a story is going to involve something like watersports or scat before I get to that part and on the other end of that I would be unhappy if someone complained about the non-consent parts of my story considering it's a tag right on my story. Personally i feel tags might be more useful if there was a more visible place to see chapter tags while you're reading a story. Perhaps marked under the choices, or right below the chapter title. The problem with that is when there's many long-winded tags, it would become unwieldy.
Some really great feedback guys, I wan't sure how much of a response this thread would generate, but I've been pleasantly surprised by both the quality and the scope of feedback so far. Its really interesting to see the diversity of positions on this particular subject.
Grammar can be a killer for me. I'm not anal about it. If you miss a few commas, have some dangling participles, or end a sentence or two in a preposition I'm not going to swear off you or your story. I'm talking about about when sentences are so damn clunky I scratch my head thinking what the hell, or when the dialogue sounds like it would be spoken only by restarted robots. There's one of the more popular stories whose grammar is this bad so that makes me feel like I'm in the vast minority on this peeve.
I would be lying if i said that I don't think i have this problem. However, I'm pretty sure I do...although to what extent is not really for me to judge(As my initial reaction to whatever i write is largely negative, but people seem to like it, but I digress). Certainly when I'm writing, I find the biggest challenge in writing compelling dialogue. I have a hard time finding the line between overly dramatic and monotonous and/or repetitive and I have a tendency to lean towards the latter.
Yeah dialogue can be a stickler. I recently kept deleting one characters lines over and over because they came across as very cliche. By the time I was satisfied with them I was ready to slam my head into a wall.
One thing I sometimes do when I feel like I'm not conveying the emotion of a situation through dialogue: Insert a thought segment into the middle of it. Thought segments are good ways to insert some character perspective into the segment where simple or short dialogue simply does not adequately express their personality in a situation. Or at least that's what makes me feel a little better about my writing when I feel the character's voice rings a little hollow.
