AO3 Stats Mem

[paulamcg]

Snagged from delphi – but done here in the standard way, or perhaps just something closer to that. I suppose the median fics would represent better what I've written in the past twelve months, but as this is my first time using the statistics like this, I'm listing both those fics with the fewest and those with the most kudos and hits.

I really started posting fics on AO3 only in late 2019 – having posted just one fic in 2007 and one in 2009, and only last year did I post almost all the fics I'd written in 2005 – 2010, before the eight-year hiatus. I've now got 95 works on AO3, and only four of them have more than 1K hits.


The five fics with the fewest hits
Gifts (Luna, General, 12 words – a haiku)
New Joys (Amelia/Molly, Molly/Arthur, General, 1331 words)
Enough to Get Through (Lavender/Mr. Weasley, General, 447 words)
Festive Mood (Amelia/Molly, Molly/Arthur, General, 1090 words)
Finding Direction (Remus, General, 200 words)

These are fics with no pairing tag or with a pairing nobody else has posted on AO3 – Lavender Brown/Mr. Weasley (and even if I added the first name which I want to keep a surprise, my fic would be the only one with the tag) and Amelia Bones/Molly Weasley (combined with Molly/Arthur, though). All of them with the lowest rating. Besides, four of these fics have been on AO3 only for a month or a few months, the fifth since last June.

The six fics with the fewest kudos (because the fifth and the sixth are even)
Enough to Get Through (Lavender/Mr. Weasley, General, 447 words)
This Little Oyster (Sirius/Remus, James/Lily, Mature, 11061 words)
To the Sensational Jaws (Sirius/Remus, Teen, 3116 words)
What's In His Heart (Sirius/Remus, Teen, 5205 words)
Better Stick Together (Peter, General, 884 words)
New Joys (Amelia/Molly, Molly/Arthur, General, 1331 words)

The second, the third and the fourth in this list have a popular pairing tag, which is used perhaps 60 times a day. These fics were posted outside fests, and in late 2019 and early 2020. And I believe another important factor is that in each of them – like in the fifth one, too, which also has no pairing tag – I've used my old favourite first-person-and-present-tense technique. Besides, the POV character in the third one is a house-elf, and in the fourth one it's Peter.

The top five by hit count
To Admit What Is Not More Illegal (Sirius/Remus and James/Lily, Teen, 3917 words)
An Endearing Portrait (Sirius/Remus, Teen, 1207 words)
A Stranded Wizard If Ever There Was One (Sirius/Remus, General, 2859 words)
It’ll Be All Right (James/Lily, Mature, 4420 words, Underage)
Precarious Treasure (Sirius/Remus, Mature, 3541 words)

The top two were posted at the Remus Lupin Fest last year, and I suppose that the popularity of the second, shorter and sweeter one made people click a lot on the longer one after the reveals. It must be thanks to the kudos and the comments that sweet one got back then that more people picked it in the fest collection around the time the fest was running again.

The third and the fourth in the list were posted outside fests in December 2019, and I've found it hard to understand why they've got more and more hits. The third one perhaps because of the tag Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse? The fourth one because there's a warning for Underage as James and Lily are seventeen?

The fifth one was a treat at Remus/Sirius small gifts and got no attention at the fest, but perhaps here, too, the hits are due to Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, as well as PTSD.

The top six by kudos (because, again the fifth and the sixth are even)
An Endearing Portrait (Sirius/Remus, Teen, 1207 words)
A Stranded Wizard If Ever There Was One (Sirius/Remus, General, 2859 words)
Another Anniversary (Sirius/Remus, Draco/Harry, General, 200 words)
A Stranger Change (Neville/Harry, General, 100 words)
Nicholas from His Dark Creature Course (Sirius/Remus, Teen, 1002 words)
His Face Shines in the Gloom of My Parents’ House (Sirius/Remus, Teen, 3934 words)

That short, sweet fest fic has now a bit more than three times the number of kudos that the last ones in this list of six have. And the fifth one is perhaps somehow similar in tone and not only in word count. The non-fest fic in which I refer to Sirius being abused sexually as a child has always had clearly more kudos, too, than any other fic by me, except that sweet one – but never got a single comment! The third and fourth in the list must have got readers due to including other pairings (besides Remus/Sirius), the Neville/Harry fic also because it was one of the very shortest in a Harry's Birthday event.

A surprise here is the sixth fic. It was written in 2005 and posted on AO3 a year ago. This fic, too, has got no comments (after 2010), and the kudos are not from people who know me. Above all, I'm happily surprised that some people have read my Sirius's first-person voice (in this case without any past abuse announced in the tags) and liked it. Perhaps it actually helps that the title reveals the first person?

Comments

[delphi]

An interesting read! And four fics with over 1000 hits is definitely something to celebrate. That's like a whole auditorium of people who checked those out. I literally have hundreds of stories, some of them rattling around AO3 since the very beginning of the site, that haven't lured anywhere near that number of people into clicking.

I think at the end of the day, you just never really know what's going to take off. Sometimes you happen to post something at the right time or date: a statutory holiday somewhere, or when an actor from one property has just hit the entertainment news for landing another big role, or when someone else's fic or social media post puts a lot of people into feeling nostalgic about a certain character. I'm always intrigued (and sometimes a little maddened) when I start getting a steady trickle of kudos on a story years after it's posted because I know that something has happened.

You're also, I think, facing the extra little bump of difficulty of so many of your stories being part of a series. Posting them that way totally makes sense for the kind of universe-building you do, but I know that when I'm browsing a tag, something that's midway through a series or even just kicking one off has to really be catching my interest through the ship/tags/summary for me to click on it - because I feel like I'm committing to more reading than I might feel like doing in the moment. So again, the fact that you're getting dozens of hits at the lowest end on later entries in a series is a sign that your work is appealing to people.

[paulamcg]

Thank you for all your kind words! It's lovely that after you've worded – in your journal – your delightful assumption that 'extra' hits are from people … happily re-reading, you give me the idea that I've really got a reason to celebrate when some of my fics have been checked out by enough people to fill a big auditorium.

I now find it amusing how it's been typical of me to make negative assumptions – even to wonder if some people (particularly those who have no works or bookmarks in the HP fandom) have clicked the kudos button by mistake. :) I must stop that now, and doing this meme has reminded me of how fruitless it is to dwell on the scarcity of (new) feedback on my old fics. I must have talked to you a lot about my frustration a year ago. I'm glad you've still found this post interesting, even though here I go to such detail about these results, and go on about my first-person stories. (And although I used to say I'd continue to write in the way I like best, I haven't used first-person POVs since last spring – except when rewriting an old story, in which I've enjoyed polishing my old favourite technique.)

I guess any sudden surprising flows of kudos on a particular fic are more likely to take place when you write in several TV fandoms and fandoms with open canons. I seldom get several kudos in a row on the same story.

It's more common that I get kudos on several fics from the same reader around the same time. I think that's due to my series. Thank you for pointing out that it can be an additional problem, too, that people don't want to read only a part of a series, or the whole of the series either. However, I arranged my pre-1981 fics, past-OotP fics, Amelia fics and Luna fics into four series only a month ago. Before that none of the bottom six by kudos, and only one of the bottom five by hits belonged to a series.

Instead, three out of the top six by kudos and one of the top five by hits have always – or at least for about a year, I think – belonged to series. I think some of my Neville Drabbles as well as PoA-era, OotP-era, Lost-Years and LLAL fics have got hits, kudos and even comments thanks to the occasional reader clicking to other parts of a series. I state in my profile – and sometimes in the notes, too – that each fic works separately. Of course, I add a fic to one or more series only after a fest is over. The random Lavender story from Firewhiskey Fic is the only one I couldn't fit in any series, and even that one can be set in my “universe”.

I'm glad you think it makes sense to have these series. And whether it helps people to choose and like my fics or not, you've helped me remember there's a good reason to smile whenever I see that someone has shared and enjoyed any part of the big story I continue to develop.

[delphi]

I understand that negative urge really well. Fandom stats can be both a blessing and a curse, and I went through a period or two where I got hung up on them like they were performance metrics instead of interesting trivia. In my case, what changed my mind was that I sometimes found myself a little annoyed by what kept coming up on top - because at least half of it wasn't the work I felt proudest of or most connected to. I mean, I'm very glad it was out there for people to peruse and hopefully enjoy, but I was also obviously feeling some satisfaction with my stories that outweighed having a lot of people read it. And then when I turned it around and thought about the stories I like as a reader - the stories I love - so many of those haven't racked up huge amounts of hits or kudos either. They're not for everyone, but they're for me, and I adore them, and I'm so glad I read them.

So, while I do still try to improve my writing and tag it in a way that will help it find the right audience, my focus is off the numbers and more on how I feel about the story and how I hope some ideal reader now or in the future is going to feel about it.

I guess any sudden surprising flows of kudos on a particular fic are more likely to take place when you write in several TV fandoms and fandoms with open canons.

100%. One of my most kudos'd fic was written years ago for a tiny rare fandom that only had five other stories at the time. I stopped following the canon right about then, and the fic sat at maybe ten to twenty kudos for over a year - before suddenly blowing up. Apparently not only did I write the first fic for what turned out to be the fandom juggernaut when the fandom finally took off, but then that ship became canon. That story's no better or worse than any other rare fandom fic I've written, or any big fandom fic for that matter, but it was just in the right place at the right time.

[paulamcg]

Thank you so much for still replying! I try to keep my focus off the numbers, and it comforts me to know that there are others for whom it hasn't always been easy. But it is nice to see that what I was told early last year is true: the hits and the kudos accumulate gradually. I'm happy about each single kudos, and now I've got the habit of going to look at the statistic almost every time I've got one. :)

While I hope that more people noticed my work and gave it a chance – and my dream is that someone would like the way I write and my universe enough to continue and read more of the big story (even regardless of the tags) – I know that my fics can't be for a big audience. The fics I like best (e.g. at a fest) are seldom the most popular ones.

[kelly_chambliss]

Fascinating list! I have a lot of fics that aren't even close to 1000 hits -- the perils of writing old-lady HP rare pairs, I guess. I'm fine with that. . .people should read what they want. I do wish they'd leave comments rather than just kudos, though. As Delphi says, you often don't know which fics are going to take off with readers. You can make some reasonable guesses -- Harry/Draco will always get more hits and kudos than Minerva/Augusta, for instance, and I'm not surprised that I don't have many readers for my Aberforth/Wilhelmina fic -- but sometimes something will be surprisingly popular, and I don't know why.

[paulamcg]

Thank you! I think, however, that lists of my median fics by hits and by kudos could be more fascinating as such. There must be too many Remus/Sirius fics in all of these except in the bottom five by hits, even though my Remus/Sirius is not always very ordinary. And it seems to still be hard for me to be fine with people not appreciating my first-person voices (even though, after all, I stopped writing those about a year ago).

I suppose it's clear that it isn't always easier to get feedback on a fic with a popular pairing than for a rare-pair fic. I certainly have a lot of Remus/Sirius fics which have got hundreds of hits in a year or so but fewer kudos and comments than most of my rare-pair femslash fics have got in a shorter time. Yes, I, too, love comments best. I guess that's one why reason why I've started writing more femslash and looking for such fests at which people still comment.

Thank you again for this kind comment! <3

[moongoddex]

Ooo, this is interesting!
I've always found the whims of what receives attention and what doesn't on AO3 interesting; sometimes tags that draw people in can put others off, and it's difficult to know which it'll be when you hit post.
I hold a special place in my heart for alternative POVs and unconventional formats, too, so it makes me quite happy to see them!

[paulamcg]

Oh, thank you for this comment! I'm so glad to hear you've found my meme post interesting.

Two years ago I was fresh from an eight-year hiatus and simply enjoyed writing again and posting a couple of fics a month into the void of my deserted Livejournal friends' list. And it's taken me some time to start getting used to how AO3 works. When including the sexual abuse tags in those fics that have now made it to the top five/six, I did it as a warning, not realising how the tags – any tags – could draw people in. Now I guess I can be happy that more people have given a chance to those two fics, and some of them ended up liking them, even though perhaps for different reasons, as the way I refer to the abuse is subtle.

Now you make me wonder if I should show any unconventional features in my fics more clearly in the tags. I've sometimes shown the alternative POV (other than the characters' in the main pairing) only subtly by making the POV character the subject or the main focus in the summary line, and placing that character first in the list of characters. For instance, it would be hard for anyone who'd particularly like Peter's POV or non-linear narrative to find To the Sensational Jaws in the sea of Wolfstar fics.

I didn't comprehend how huge the number of fics – and just new (Remus/Sirius) fics daily – was, and how a fic could go completely unnoticed, and how easily people having clicked on something that turned out unexpected could click back and choose something else. That's why I thought I'd better even stop revealing the first person in the titles, so that some people would click on and read my fics and some of them realise that there could be such a thing as a well-written first-person fic.

Thank you also for this chance to ramble – although I should stop dwelling on the response to my first-person technique, which I haven't used in new fics for about a year now. :)

Have you got some unconventional HP fics you'd like to share? How about doing this meme? <3

[moongoddex]

I always find it interesting to read other writers 'ramble' about their work, it's fantastic fun <3

Livejournal vs AO3 is definitely a lot different!
I reckon there's folks who want to see their favourite characters get hurt, and folks who want to see them healing from the hurt, and there can be overlap, and there can be division in there. Ultimately, I figure it's all some manner of catharsis. It's good to have the warnings as a genuine warning for those who want to brace themselves or avoid it (no matter how subtle), but it's good to signpost for those who seek it as well.

I have seen '[Non-pairing Character] POV' tags before that have intrigued me and been rewarded with fascinating fic, so it might be worthwhile as an experiment! Again, it could have the dual purpose of drawing in some and sending away others.
Personally, there are some styles of writing that I struggle to parse and have to skip over no matter how clearly well written it is, which is a shame because I enthusiastically encourage people to experiment with how they work. Everything can't be for everyone, though, which is fair! I do think it's always worth giving something new a chance, though, because something different can have such a marked impact- or it could be the only way to tell a story and do it justice.

It's possibly also worth remembering that some of hits on lesser kudos'd works might be people hitting 'Mark for Later'. My for-later list is packed with stories that I know will take a little bit more focus to read, or things that look good enough I want to savour, or if it's something new I want to give my full attention. Maybe that's just me! But I'd wager there's a good few others that have to be in the right frame of mind.

I can't think of any HP works off the top of my head unfortunately! Thought if I remember any or stumble across them I'll be sure to fire them your way <3!
And y'know, I might just do the meme too ;D

[paulamcg]

Thank you for the more than kind further reply! It's wonderful to know that you enjoy reading my ramble. And rambling about fic is always even more fun when it's interaction, right?

Yes, there's a big difference. On Livejournal and the forums before that it was – at least for me – more about writers finding and discussing each other's work. Perhaps that's why I've still somehow focused on the goal that some people (good writers) would admire how well I've done something about my stories, and guide me – also through their fics and our discussion on them – to write better and in new ways. I should accept that in fandom the goal must be that some readers find some of my fics, and something they see about the characters in these fics gives them pleasure.

Thanks to your views, too, I've know added POV Peter Pettigrew or POV Multiple to the tags of some fics. I could consider if some more fics should be tagged for implied abuse. I still haven't decided to advertise/warn for a first-person narrative, even though I've learned that's a “style of writing” that makes a lot of people click back immediately.

I did once experiment with the first person – in some one-shot fics I wrote back in 2004. But while I continued and finished my chaptered fic, which was a third-person and past-tense narrative (with the exception of some autobiographical letters by the single POV character), in 2005 – 2010 I wrote all my short stories with a first-person and present-tense technique, which I just kept polishing and varying a bit according to the character's voice. Only after finally connecting with people again in late 2019 and early 2020, and seeing ever more open bias against the first person, did I decide to experiment with a third-person and present-tense narrative in my short fics. These stories are usually full of intimate interaction between a couple of characters of the same gender, and I still feel the stories could flow more elegantly as first-person narratives. But I've found it an interesting challenge to construct the text so that there is no need for too much repetition of the names. (I could never include any “other men”, “taller witches” or “green-eyed Gryffindors”, and those make me click back immediately. :)) And now I enjoy developing my first-person style further only when rewriting one of those fics from 2004. Otherwise, after all, I now try to write in a way that won't put people off when they see the first pronoun (outside of dialogue) in the text.

Thank you for suggesting a positive reason for the lack of kudos – or for extra hits, as delphi put it, positively, while offering another reassuring explanation! <3 I guess my fics can often require some more focus or a different frame of mind than a lot of others e.g. at a Wolfstar fest. I'd like to believe I can always give something new a chance when the text looks like it's been written and edited carefully. I've read some fic even when I haven't known the canon, but I admit I've become a lazier reader again – besides having always been a slow one.

In any case, I'll be happy if you want to self-rec something to me – or I'll be looking forward to links in your meme. <3