On Tue, 17 Jun 1997 20:02:54 EDT, Trevor Hamilton wrote:

Sorry, Trevor -- nothing personal -- but this attitude is exactly what
makes me *not* want to read someone's story. I'm tired of reading part
ones of stories and then being left hanging as they get abandoned; and I
for one am not going to beg anyone to finish a fic.

Well then. . .if I may suggest that you give them a bit of ego boosting
feedback, then maybe begging off a fic would become unnecessary.

Fine, that is a good idea and I try to do it when I can, especially for
new authors. But if I'm gonna read part a story and comment on it, I
would like the writer to be committed enough to not just abandon the
story halfway through.

It all comes down to whether *you* have faith in your own idea or not.

Yet faith diminishes quickly when you post to a group of some odd 400 and
receive. . .4 replies, one having nothing to do with the story itself,
does it not?

No, because you did not post a fic or even part of a fic. Again, nothing
personal, but we see a *lot* of teasers and idea posts around here, and
while I've nothing against these, I don't usually get excited about them
because statistically speaking most of them don't get written, and you
usually can't really tell whether or not the story will be any good from
the idea post alone. Write your fic and THEN look for readers.

My idea becomes absolutely meaningless without a reader. What good is an
unread story?

If you don't, why should we? 

On the same token. . .if there are no readers or listeners, why tell a
story?

Who is saying that there will be *no* readers for your story? Most
everything on the list I think gets read by *someone*, especially if
it's in a popular series such as Ranma. But you are asking for readers
before you've written your story. That's backwards IMO.

If you think your storyline has potential,
then commit to writing the whole thing. When you have a quality finished
product, readers will come around;

If I may ask. . .how? Through reposts?

Through the original posts.

Reply with comments? Surely that is what any writer appreciates from a
reader. The highest form of feedback.

Agreed.

That they use word of mouth and say "hey, read this. Its good."? That's
rather optimistic, in my opinion.

This happens more than you evidently think. It's one reason why people
post public C&C on the FFML, to point out a good story that might be
missed.

To gain popularity? . . .how repugnant.

While I wouldn't go so far as to say that popularity is repugnant, I
agree that it is a poor reason for writing.

My words are mineand not of Colliding SYmphonies--yet I feel unble to
further ignore our own hypocracies. So I am forcing all of our members to
begin to publicly give C&C to every fic in our archive. If we don't do
your story then we don't have it.

That's very good of you all to do, I'm sure the various authors will
appreciate it. You can get any of my fics off my web page if you don't
have them.

My apologies, Gary, for we share different views.

This is nothing to apologize about; however, with my being a potential
reader, I think my views on this matter will be of interest to you, as
yours are to me.

Gary Kleppe
kleppe@execpc.com, Home page http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe
My fanfics and the FFML map are on my comics/manga page,
       http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics