Story authors

Hey, just wondering if people have an opinion on what the best way to build engagement with your stories is — post a long, multi chapter story in a single batch, or space it out over a longer period of time.

The one I’m working on now is about 60,000 words, so approaching novel length. I’ve been posting 4 or 5 chapters a week, trying to stop on cliffhangers or interesting places, but that doesn’t seem to be doing the trick.

I’m not finished with it, I probably have another 10-20,000 words to write, but I wouldn’t be opposed to releasing a big chunk if that got people interested.

Also open to the possibility that my story is just not engaging 😅

I am very curious as to how many views you expect to have after only being here a week.

It’s not total views as much, because that takes into account bots and scrapers, it’s engagement. But even going by views, is 1 comment for 3500 views good engagement or would it be better if I changed the posting schedule? Does that make sense? What do other authors find works best

Don't write based on how you THINK people will react, write what you want about. If it's good, people will come.

Well I’m not writing that way, if I was this story would be very different. I’m just wondering if different authors had more or less success with different posting schedules. Like if they find that their audiences prefer serialized content or prefer to binge read.

I’d like to add some of the things I’ve noticed in my experiences.

I have two stories that I’ve written (both unfinished). One of them was already available on deviantart before I became more active of FF. As a result I posted the chapters on this story very close together. (I’d have to check but I thinks it’s around 30 chapters) I noticed that this story didn’t get a lot of engagement and also less views/likes than what I expected, based on how it was received on deviantart. In comparison, the second story I wrote, there was more time between the chapters because I am just posting what I have finished. This second story is a lot more popular on this site than the previous story. Personally I think that posting with some time in between had this effect bc the story shows up more when people filter on ‘recently updated’. But I’m by no means an expert. It’s also important to notice that the first story was about female weight gain and the second about male weight gain, which probably plays a role it the popularity. The strange thing is that the male wg story is more popular on FF, but on deviantart it’s the female weight gain story that is more popular.
Another advantage of leaving time between chapters is that people might be discouraged by a long story and don’t want to put in that much effort. But if you upload your story more sporadically, people will start reading it and get hooked and will keep following it even if they normally don’t read longer stories.
Again, this is just some thoughts of mine, it’s definitely not proven in any way, but it might help you to consider these ideas.

Thank you, great insight!!

No need for modesty; your post was spot on.

To add to your points, FF's stories page is generally a bit trash imo. The search feature is missing some pretty necessary options. What makes it even worse is the monetary aspect of it all. People spamming and clogging up the results pages with stories that you have to pay to read, and by constantly fighting for the spot in "Most Recent" by editing, like, two words in the who piece and calling it a "revision" lol. Not going to outright bash people here for putting their stories behind a paywall, though, since I do it too -- but at least I present readers with the option: either pay 2-3 bucks for a formatted, neatly-presented version of my story on Amazon Book store as an eBook, or read the story for free on FF and Deviant art's yucky layouts lol. It's just fetish fiction after all. Plus, not to be rude or anything, but I'm not going to pretend I don't think there are some examples of fetish fiction that is not written to a standard high enough to deserve being put behind this site's paywall.

In any case, OP; what other users have said already is true. I'm sure your story is engaging, especially if you've spent this much effort writing an almost novel-length piece.

Space the chapters out in such a way that your story spams up the most-recent page. Try and make sure the thumbnail picture for your story is balanced somewhere between classy/interesting and cheaply erotic lol. From what I can see, the pictures you've chosen to use are classy, but they don't tell the average browser that there's anything involving: weight gain, bellies, eroticism, or anything remotely to do with blubbery adipose tissue to begin with. I wish this WASN'T a problem... but it is. People can't help themselves but judge books by their covers -- simply due to there being so much damn content on the web. Human beings aren't meant to be quality-colanders. What I'm trying to say is: add a belly in your story's cover image, somewhere, anywhere, and I'd put a bet on your story getting a higher engagement ratio.

Also, perhaps you could even just outright insert a "note" at the top of the very first chapter asking for readers to comment and like if they enjoy the story. The more comments and likes a story has the more it seems to be promoted and viewed.

I relate completely to your grievances about story engagement on this site. Looking briefly at your two stories, I can already tell you're a talented writer. It's NOT a problem with your craft, I can tell you that much. Honestly it's just this whole site being a bit scummy, a little diseased with bots, and very "lowest-denominator". Same goes for Deviant Art, which is saved only by having a larger userbase and therefore a different nature of engagement.

A bunch of interesting points. Thank you. I’ve thought more than once that my cover picture might be holding me back. I almost want to go in the other direction and make it like an ARG with images in my photos page that have breadcrumbs to follow and help with the mystery — but that probably won’t help get new eyes on it either!

Thank you though!

Just my opinion, but... post the entire thing in one go, or don't post it at all. Don't add chapters over time. You might be thinking.. why? Don't TV shows release new episodes once a week?

TV shows do release once a week, but often times the story and plot line of every episode may very well be determined before the season premier. Then it's a question of the actors and set staying on script.

Alternatively, you could write the entire story in one go and post new chapters over time like a TV show, but not everyone is able to release new chapters reliably, like clockwork. Life happens, there's schedule problems, some folks are just too busy, technical problems, or you just forget about it. I don't know if you'd be able to post new chapters on a schedule reliably, or not.

TV shows are different, since that's the entire point of the company. They will release the next episode, so you know it's coming for a fact.

There's also the risk of writer's block, which is why I'd recommend against writing the story as you go. There's a very creative aspect, and I don't believe this can be rushed under pressure.

Why do I say this? I don't read the stories very often, but if there's anything I really, really dislike and leaves a very bad taste in my mouth, it's an unfinished story that the author forgot about, and it's been weeks or months. It's about 100 times worse if there's a serious cliffhanger at the end that never gets resolved. A cliffhanger at the end of a TV episode, particularly a multi-part extra long TV episode, I don't mind because I know the conclusion will come.

I don't know if you've ever played the game Half-Life 2, but if you have, you'd know exactly what I'm talking about, and the very bad feeling that was caused. Eventually, it got so bad one of the story writers basically posted the plot of what would have been the third episode (with changed names to dodge copyright laws) just to give fans some sort of closure, since it was obvious Valve had no intention of releasing another game to complete the story line. It's probably a good thing Valve Software basically doesn't make games anymore, and only really administers the Steam platform, since I'm pretty sure they burned any good will they might have had. It's really too bad. Whenever they did release something, it was a very high quality product by the standards of the time.

I'd recommend using each experience, and any feedback you might get, as advice on what the next story might be like. I know one thing I like, is when an author writes multiple stories in the same universe, particularly when any one of those stories can stand on their own. You don't necessarily have to read the others to understand it. I think this would provide a lot of engagement.

I'm asking you to consider an approach similar to what most large YouTube channels use. Each uploaded video includes the entire video, and the author builds upon the feedback he gets and takes it into consideration for the next video, and so on.