Regarding Demographics... · 4:49am Dec 14th, 2015
I'm trying to wrap my head around a specific situation: the reader demographic of HiE romance stories. I see a lot of stories getting popular that have terrible human characters, out-of-character ponies, and wish-fulfillment (clop) themes.
Am I doing something wrong? (Other than not writing new stories or updating old stuff)
I like to have my human characters be realistic and relatable to the real-world characteristics of people in general. Characters who are disgusted by the idea of having intercourse with a talking horse; characters who show real emotions caused by situations that people like you and I would experience in our lives; things happening to normal people that change them for the better or even the worse.
I'm not a psychologist, nor am I a skilled writer with years (or even decades) of experience. I'm a simple-minded person who wants to tell a good story with characters that people can relate to, love or even hate. I want my readers to be immersed in my story for the story, not because the human character eventually gets to bang the reader's favorite pony (which is good too, but not my ultimate goal).
So I have some questions for you, my readers:
1) Why do/did you read (and enjoy) my stories?
2) Do you feel that realism in the HiE romance genre adds to the enjoyment of a story, or does it detract from it?
3) Do you think that the "wish-fulfillment clop" theme of some of the more popular HiE stories is what most readers of the genre want?
Dude...the entire HIE is more or less wish-fulfillment.
If it's one thing I've learned about this writing biz is that to make as big a splash as possible, you need to do something safe and marketable. Yes, these HiE clopshits get a lot of views with little effort, and it's because the audiences expect shallow characters and fourth-grade level writing. Why?
Because those things are inoffensive and unchallenging, which is what people gravitate to. Trying to break the mold is simply not easy and almost never rewarding specifically for this reason. You can have the most eye-catching writing style, but if the general themes or plot are too complicated, they don't want any.
I don't think it's accurate to say that. It's more like it's what gets attention from most of the readers of the genre.
I honestly have very little experience or knowledge of this genre, but I do know that readers who look for a romance tag probably want to read some cheapshit smut. Whereas readers who don't want to read that kind of thing, actively avoid the romance tag, precisely because they've come to expect nothing but cheapshit smut from it. So here's a thought: write a story without the romance tag. It can have romance, no one will stop you, but see to it that there is more to the story than just romance (some plot of some kind of drama, comedy, or slice of life, not matter how small it is), maybe leave out any sex that might happen (or at least have it happen off-page), have your romance, and then maybe you'll attract a different type of reader. One who's open to romance, but not looking for jerking material.
Just a thought.
There's really a bimodal distribution on HiE romances. You have the smaller group, which wants good stories that may or may not contain some quality clop. The authors writing those have smaller but dedicated groups of readers. Then you have the HiE wish-fulfillment clop, which gets flash-mobbed with lots and lots of likes and reads, but the audience doesn't stick around afterwards.
I'm here for the long stories, myself.
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So I should keep true to my writing style but make the content more "dumb" to pull in more readers?
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Don't make the concept dumb. Make it simple. The original Star Wars movie had a simple plot, easy to follow, easy to get into and easy to jump out of, and it was still a good movie. Writing a quick short story would help the simplicity.
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So one of my one-shot clop stories would be good for that, although I'm better at doing multi-chapter works since it allows me to develop characters better.
If you have any suggestions on how I can develop characters and a narrative in a short amount of words, I'd be grateful for your help.
3617601 No? I'm saying... have your romance, keep the sex strictly off-page, and ditch the romance tag. Otherwise do everything else as you normally would.
Again, I'm not against sex being in the story, but if you're striving for a better class of reader, and a wider range of audience, losing the romance and mature/sex tags would probably be a good place to start.
I guess I read for the sake of reading? Does that even make sense?
As for realism I can't say it really changes anything for me with or without it. 
Wish-fulfillment is fine but not really what I look the most for. 