Thoughts on reccing and feedback

[halfdutch]

Chiming in on crazydiamondsue's post about the importance of reccing.

As someone who runs a rec comm (sawyerficrecs), did a month at crack_van and who regularly recs fics in my LJ, I just wanted to add something. The missing ingredient, if you will.

Feedback.

Comments

[foxxcub]

Awww. I'm glad you said something and let me off the hook, heh. :P

I don't understand writers who don't respond to feedback. Sure, if you're some humongous BNF in, say, the HP fandom, like with shoebox_project and they're getting 500+ comments on each installment, then yeah, responding might be time consuming. But really, it doesn't take but a second to tell someone thank you. :)

[halfdutch]

Hee. And we'll see if it did any good at all. OH WELL. I tried. We may know what's in the hatch now but we'll never solve the mystery of feedback!

And yeah, if someone took the trouble to read your fic and something nice about it, then the least you can do is say 'Thanks,' in my book. *nods*

And wow, I don't have a clue who's in your icon!

[foxxcub]

LOL, it's one of several pretteh new Jason icons I acquired last evening. :)

[eponine119]

You make a very good point with this. I think rec'ing is important -- it's kind of essential to the viral nature of fanfic/fandom, especially when it's community based like on LJ -- but feedback beats being rec'd almost every time. Being reccomended will get you more readers, but if none of them say anything...how will you even know?

Though I'm way guilty on some of your other points. *still feels guilty about uneven feedbacking on the noir fic*

[halfdutch]

That's so true, LOL. Recs are like the tree falling in the woods if no one ever leaves feedback!

Aw, don't feel bad about the noir fic. Or, no worse than foxxcub and I do for not ever finishing it!

[isis2015]

I'm glad you mentioned just a simple 'Thanks I really enjoyed that' would be nice, because I've read some fics that I really wanted to write some feedback about, but I couldn't think of anything eloquent to say. I'll defiantly remember that in the future.

[halfdutch]

Yay! ;-D Than I feel like my post did some good. And you've already left me lovely fb by the time I'm getting around to responding to this.

So thanks again! Much appreciated!

[philomel]

And conversely, it's not just readers who should be leaving feedback. In my mind, there's nothing that takes the steam out of your sails like leaving a glowing rave about someone's fic and then never hearing back from them.

THANK YOU! Hee. There are quite a few writers in Lotrips (I haven't really seen this within the Lost fandom, fortunately) who never, absolutely never respond to feedback and it pisses me off. Or, conversely, if they do respond, it's seemingly random... though, upon closer inspection, you can tell that they've only bothered to respond to their personal friends and ignore everyone else's comments. Bad form. It takes all of--what?-- .003 seconds to type a little gratitude in response. I understand being short on time and not getting back right away, but not ever responding is just plain rude and, ultimately, smacks of enormous ego. No matter how big they are in fandom, they're still just fanfic writers not friggin' Laureates; they could use a little humility.

And amen on the giving feedback notes as well.

[halfdutch]

I agree, it is rude to never respond. And it robs everyone of that lovely back and forth dialogue that leads to lasting LJ friendships! It's one of the reasons why I mostly post on LJ, for the community. Sure, you can respond to reviews on Lostfic.com (which is back up, yay!) but not at fanfiction.net. So it feels like you're sending things out into a void, kind of. I love getting to know my favorite authors and readers. ;-) I wouldn't have the friends I have on LJ otherwise!

*hugs you and everyone on flist*