[NONFIC] The Importance of Being Stroked

Dedication
It's been mentioned that Sunday October 24 (1999) is Beta Reader Appreciation Day (or Feedback-Giver Day) — whatever it might be, this one's for all the fanfic readers out there. Without you, we may still write, but it would be a whole lot less fun!

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I was catching up with my newspaper reading one recent Sunday afternoon when I came across an article about a progressive "real-life" author who had set up a website for herself to facilitate communication with her readers. It was implied that this was a rather novel way for writers to promote themselves. (This I found rather amusing, considering how many of us "non real-life" fanfic authors consider websites a necessity of life.) In the interview that followed, Mary Doria Russell offered the following when asked, "What did you hope to gain by being so accessible to readers?"

Honestly? Lavish praise. I was hoping to be stroked and petted and fawned over. Any author who tells you different is lying.

Hmmm... does that mean that we web-savvy sorts have really embraced the idea of being stroked? Do we all do this to receive tremendously ego-boosting words of praise from total strangers who admire the way we can weave together a paragraph? While I'm not sure that this represents a clear picture of the entire landscape, I won't say that Ms. Russell is wrong either. The power of feedback is undeniable. In the rest of this interview, Ms. Russell answered questions dealing with the nature of the emails from her readers, how many "hits" she's gotten on her site, the sort of criticism that comes in, whether or not she responds to every message, and what sort of "weird or strange" comments she's received. All of it was very fascinating, and prompted me to undertake this little study of my own within the X-Files fanfic community.

I posted a message to various places including the alt.tv.x-files.creative newsgroup asking for fan fiction writers to answer five questions relating to the feedback process. What follows here is a summarization of my own opinions as well as those of the helpful individuals who responded to my survey. (And before I go any further, let me just say that this was the most unscientific of surveys ever — there's nothing here that's promised to be correct or within five percent nineteen times out of twenty or some such thing!)

Feeding the Addiction

For as long as there has been fan fiction, there have been authors addicted to feedback. I'm sure none of us started writing because we thought, "Oh, I want to write this story because then I'll get oodles of mail from readers who want to worship at my feet." No, I'm pretty convinced that all of us were inspired to write our first stories by something totally unrelated to the potential for reader feedback. As has been made clear elsewhere, I wrote my first piece because what I saw on screen didn't quite "do it" for me. In general, that probably describes the majority of cases out there. But once that first message comes in — like a drug that enters our system under mysterious circumstances — we are hooked. I don't think it's something that others can fully understand or appreciate until they've experienced it for themselves. This may be why authors periodically bemoan the lack of feedback... and why readers don't change their behaviour in terms of dishing out more. Perhaps what follows can help us bridge the gap.

Remembering the First

So what are the feelings evoked by the "first time" feedback? Realize that most of us — at that point — are simply amazed that anyone would take the time to write. Add to this the fact that the person is expressing his or her delight in the work and you have the potential for quite a hodge-podge of emotions, from tears to laughter and all the way back. Therefore, one of the questions that I asked was, "What was your response to the first feedback email that you received?" My favourite answer to this was the following:

I responded to a two-line positive feedback with a massive discussion of all this stuff I wanted to have going on in the story, and every subtext I tried, and this, and that, and the other thing. I was stunned that anyone cared, on one hand, and on the other, I vastly overrated the degree to which they cared...

I can totally relate! Sometimes that's exactly what I think when I'm replying to feedback and find that I've been going on for two or three paragraphs. Chances are, this person isn't going to care that much!

Responses on the tearful side of the spectrum include the following:

Gushing [snort] tearful thanks that probably embarrassed the poor feedbacker.

I cried, then I wrote a lavishly raving note back to the girl telling her how much she'd made my night.

Weeping, laughter, turning cartwheels. Really, I was just incredibly grateful, thought it was pretty groovy that anybody read much less bothered to write back. Said as much.

My first feedback email ran me through a similar gamut of emotions. But the one thing that completely blew my mind was the fact that anyone would ever thank me for writing something. I mean, I knew the story would touch certain people who felt the same way as I did, so being carefully anticipatory of a certain type of response wasn't beyond me, but when I received several sentiments of "thank you for this story", it really put me on Cloud Nine. Thank me?? Thank you for reading and telling me you enjoyed it!!

All in all, the world is home to some pretty amazing folks who can be unknowingly generous to the fanfic writer. So if you're a reader, remember that the next time you enjoy the work of a first-time author. Send that feedback, because who knows — you might be the one to provide that unforgettable "first time" feeling!

Most Disturbing

The world is also home to some pretty strange beings, and some of them can also read and write. While most of the respondents claimed not to have had any disturbing feedbacks to speak of, there are some interesting stories behind the ones who have had the pleasure.

By the way, I'm not going to cover the concept of "flaming" here. I am not personally familiar with it and any threads I've read on newsgroups and such where massive burnings were taking place were not fun spots to visit. From what I understand, the mob mentality contributes greatly to public flaming and specific individuals' personalities contribute greatly to personal flaming. And that's all I'm going to say on the subject.

Back to the topic at hand, I hope I speak for most when I say that writers would never classify anything with respect to constructive criticism as disturbing. (And while I'm on the subject, neither are some of the so-called "reviews" that permeate some areas of the FanFiction.Net site. You know the ones — disgruntled individuals' attempts to knock off Top 20 stories. A review that says in essence, "This sucks; I give it a 0" when it follows six other reviews that have rated the story a 10 for various reasons, well, it's annoying but not disturbing. Just for the record.) Yes, sometimes the feedback is weird — the reader who suggested to the author that Scully should have slapped Mulder because she prefers to read about that sort of behaviour — or negative — "I don't know why people like your stuff so much, you're pretty over-rated ..." — but disturbing really goes beyond that.

So what is disturbing? Well, to step back a bit, I think that in order to write good fanfic, the author must — at least for the duration of the writing process — live somewhat in the minds of the characters. I have claimed to "hear" Mulder's and Scully's voices in my head whenever I'm deep in creation. But understand this: I know they're not real people. For me, disturbing is when the feedback person demonstrates that he or she obviously takes the show way too seriously. (Getting back to Ms. Russell, she says that some of her readers should "try dating" or "seek full-time employment". Her words, not mine!)

Of all my stories, I'd estimate that I received the most feedback for Soul on Soul. And of course, in this world, whenever anything has mass appeal, the interest can also cross over into some questionable areas. I received a very interesting, lengthy — and yes, somewhat disturbing — message from someone who basically wanted to ream out my Scully, telling her (via me, I guess) that she should "make up her mind and quit teasing the poor guy". She finished off her extended rant by saying that, "You are really making a pathetic wimp out of Mulder. ...and CC had better get on with it too...I'm sick and tired of waiting." Truthfully, I was concerned for her sanity, given that our good friend CC is more than likely quite happy to keep thwarting her!

On a different level of disturbing, I don't write NC-17 stuff and I've rarely ever read it, but I've sometimes wondered what sort of intriguing feedbacks those writers might get. For example, are there potentially disturbed sorts who might confuse the content of the fiction with the author's real life tendencies and interests? One respondent in this exact position reveals that, "I've received a few emails that imply that since I've written an NC-17 fic, I want to continue discussions in a similar vein via email or chat. This is, of course, almost never true."

Kipler's somewhat amusing contribution to the disturbing feedback category was the following:

I got a feedback once on a "character dies" story for which I didn't write a warning — figuring it'd pretty much give away the story. Anyway, this e-mail basically told me that I needed to seek professional help about the "issue" that was made obvious to him due to my lack of a summary.

There's just no pleasing some people... don't they know that just by writing this stuff, we're already demonstrating a need for professional help?? (Hey, I like to believe that TXF fans have a sense of humour.)

Most Memorable

Perhaps to no one's surprise, many authors cite their first message as being the most memorable. From simple statements not extending much beyond "I liked your story" to lavish and eloquent descriptions of how the story affected the reader, one's first feedback is always going to be remembered.

We can probably fit most of our memorable feedback messages into broad categories, the first being the catch-all for the "loved your story" sentiment. As writers, of course, our ultimate "high" is when someone — particularly someone we happen to respect as a writer — overwhelms us with some long flowing tribute to our talents. As in, why did they love the story? It's always nice when something more is added, such as a comparison of our work to [insert name of favourite classic fanfic story]. Or a comment like "I've been reading fanfic everyday for five years and this is the best I've ever read." Usually these types of feedbacks surprise us with the amount of insight that the reader has managed to glean from our work. We are amazed that what we intended to convey was actually picked up on by the reader.

Yahtzee63 describes a particularly successful story that generated her most memorable feedback:

My best was for one of my slash stories -- I had a gay man praise the story and then ask why a gay man such as myself wrote under a female persona. (To clarify, I AM female.) That was an incredible ego boost -- I felt I had really succeeded at portraying an experience totally foreign to me.

Other responses of most memorable feedback in this category include the following:

What was so wonderful about her feedback was that she caught on to the twists and turns of plot I had carefully constructed, and commented on the points I was particularly fond of crafting. I really was impressed by how much attention she paid to my story, and touched. I wrote back and told her that her reply was the only incentive I'd ever need to keep writing.

I learned that she is a writer herself (professionally!) and loves poetry, and I was so AMAZED because she told me (and keeps on telling me) how eloquent my writing is and how well I can express myself and how well I can characterize Scully and Mulder... and she even told me she thought I had a much better grasp of language and words than most American writers! (I'm German)

Category two is the message from the reluctant feedbacker. Someone writes and says something like, "This is the first time I've ever written feedback..." or "I hardly ever give feedback but...". Just knowing that we may actually possess the only piece of feedback this reader has ever written gives us a bit of a buzz, because of course, that must mean that the story really had an impact. Closely related is the disbelief feedback, as in the following:

I get a lot of "Oh my God! I can't believe I liked this!" feedback, those are fun.

Category three is the indirect tribute feedback. You "hear" about it from a third party or you just happen upon it while surfing somewhere. These are usually recommendations posted on the newsgroup or various message boards. In any case, I've always been amazed (for myself anyway) at how enthusiastic and effusive these feedbacks can be. If I were to offer any suggestions on this type of feedback, it's that I wish the people would cc the authors on the various postings because they're easy to miss if — like me — they don't hang around message boards that much. And most of this stuff is too good to miss! One of my most memorable feedbacks was a public post to ATXC for my first story,Crossing Lines. The first five lines of the post were the following:

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, WONDERFUL!

Anyone who hasn't read this yet, go read it NOW!

Wonderfully *real*, adult conversation.

Wonderful UST/RST.

Wonderfully cathartic, *true* emotional breakthroughs.

And it just got better from there! (By the way — if you happen to be reading — thanks again, Pamela!)

I think we can add another category of indirect feedback: things relating to what I like to call entering the lexicon or infiltration into RL. For example, someone out there first came out with the "Ice Queen" nickname for Scully — look how far it's gone in terms of being used by others. I had one of those moments of my own when I came across an author who referred to my PFR term (promise of future romance) in her summary notes. That was neat.

Here's an example of something from fanfic entering into real life:

[I heard] that a bunch of fanfic writers had gotten together for a weekend, and that among other things several of them had gotten new tattoos one afternoon. Apparently a quote from one of my stories relating to new tattoos was making the rounds that evening... that absolutely made my month, it's just amazing to me that they liked it enough to remember.

No matter what category the feedback falls into, the most memorable is likely to be a big ego boost. After all, we should tell it like it is, right? Here's a good example:

I CANNOT wait for you to be published, I cannot wait to put your books on my keeper shelf. You are such a wonderful, wonderful writer — I have no doubt that it will come (I don't yet think the publishing industry is so stupid it would pass you by....) Anyway, I just wanted to let you know you blew me away.

And if I may quote from another memorable feedback of mine to close off this section, nothing has given me as much of an ego boost as the following:

Your series format and mode of giving that dreadful yet wonderful suspense is so much like the actual scripts of the X-Files that I secretly wonder if you're one of their writers.

The potential for that comment to be taken in a slightly backhanded way has not escaped me either, by the way!

The Feedback Files

So the big secret is out...authors generally keep their feedback email messages! (What a surprise.) Out of all the responses, one said that she essentially didn't keep them (having saved only her most memorable one), while another regrets the fact that she didn't. A few others are selective in what they keep. The two respondents who described it the best for those of us who keep all of our feedbacks, however, answered the following to my question of "Have you kept any or all of the feedback emails that you've received?":

Every bloomin' one of them, and a copy of my response, too. I always write back. I got a nice feed once and my reply was bounced back to me as undeliverable about ten times by the feeder's e-mail server. I still feel bad that she might think I didn't bother to write back. ::guilty look::

I did, and still keep my feedback replies, and use them to help me see what is successful in my stories, and what isn't. And they make for a great morale booster when you have writer's block.

I know the feeling. I copy all of my feedbacks (including summaries from fanfic archives and any other goodies I happen to find, like those elusive recommendation posts) to a text file for ease of reading. And yes, I find that it does quite a bit for the morale to read through a collection of stuff that essentially says, "You are great." How could it not??

Feedback Friends

So how frequently has the feedback process resulted in long-lasting relationships? "Often and rarely" would seem to be a suitable answer. Casual correspondences that come and go are fairly standard. Some have developed email relationships into telephone and — yes — even dating relationships. Some have one or two steady email pals. But others say that for various reasons, nothing has persisted with respect to long-term correspondence. In any case, for the number of feedback emails that we get, permanent relationships are not common occurrences.

My own experience mirrors the above findings. I've had on and off correspondence with people who have sent me feedback, but with only one exception, I don't have a steady extended "friendship" type of bond with any of them. I don't think that's any great surprise, however, given that it takes a certain combination of individuals to build any sort of relationship, virtual or otherwise.

That said, the ones that do grow beyond casual are no less significant than any other relationship that one might have in everyday "real" life. As one respondent put it, "The common bond of fanfic is always a good starting point for a friendship." And ain't that the truth!

Keep Feeding the Addiction

The last comment from Ms. Russell was in response to the interviewer saying that he assumed she got a lot of praise from readers. She replied, "Yes, and sometimes they apologize for it! They'll say 'Oh, I'm sure you hear this all the time and are really sick of it, but I loved The Sparrow and here's why.' And I think, 'The day I get sick of hearing someone tell me they loved my book, I should contact Dr. Kevorkian.'"

So dear readers, keep that in mind when you read a story that was written in 1994 or some such thing. If you enjoyed it and would like to let the author know, by all means do so. The appreciation for feedback never grows old and unlike the song, the thrill is never gone! And who knows — maybe you'll make a friend.

Thank You!

My thanks to all those who answered my survey and expressed their heartfelt opinions on this fascinating topic. Without your feedback — hey, there's that wonderful word again — I would not have been able to pull this off and have any people be interested in the results. With that thought in mind, I'd also like to extend a public thank you to everyone who participated in the alt.tv.x-files.creative "Most Memorable Feedback??" thread.

Some of the respondents requested anonymity and to them I've passed on my personal thanks; you know who you are, in any case. To cover the rest, I'd like to thank the following (in no particular order) for contributing to the entire study: Toniann, Jane Endries, Nadine, drovar, Erin Lewallen, Jeannine Ackerson-Trevizo, Eliza Bennett, Lucy Garner, Nicola Simpson, and Kim (JourneytoX). Thanks also to anyone whose name has been mentioned directly in the above article.

And after all that, if I've missed anyone, my apologies!

Post Script

So after posting this for my contributors to look over, I sent an email message to the one and only Ms. Russell herself about the article — since I was quoting her left, right and center! She read it and then responded back with kind words of support and best wishes. See how well this whole process works??