Why You No Comment?

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So I feel like talking about this subject is pretty much just beating a dead horse, but I'm going to talk about it anyways. By the way, isn't the expression "beating a dead horse" just a really weird one? I was like thinking, This is super weird. Am I sure I wanna put this in the blog? and then I was like, well... whatever.

ANYWAYS...

So comments!

They're wonderful! They're awesome! They're what a lot of us strive to get from our readers!

My question is, why don't we all comment more? Like, honestly, I feel like the lack of comments is kinda crazy. I know this probably makes me sound like a greedy comment whore or something (trust me, on occasion I can be lol), but I'm serious!

Maybe about a week or two ago, I was going through my old stories. I mean, my old stories from when I first joined and when Mibba was still pretty small. Like... my old stories were pretty crap (or at least that's how I see them), but some of them got over a hundred comments, which is like an awesome sort of feat.

Hold up, I'm going to go look for the one with the most comments...

So I have two that are around 150 comments.

THAT'S INSANE.

I'm not trying to brag or anything, but not a lot of people get that many comments nowadays on here. In fact, I know of a lot of older stories by other Mibbians that have passed the hundred, or two hundred mark. Hell, Overflowing Ashtray's Prince Harry story The Thrill Is Gone surpassed A THOUSAND.

But really, now... I barely see people getting anything from anyone. If I'm lucky, I can get one or two people to comment on a newly posted chapter. Three if I'm extremely lucky. Four if Mibba trolls me with a double post or two.

And whenever I see a giveaway blog, it kinda makes me sad in a way because I know that everyone's going to jump at the chance to get a story comment (if they're even available) because that's probably the only way some users are even able to get them. Not to mention that sometimes there are only a few spots for story comments (not trying to call anyone out - I do this too).

The sad thing is... it really isn't hard to just comment if you're already reading a story. Like, I was just on FanFiction and read the first chapter of a story that wasn't really going anywhere and I commented on it. It didn't even take me like ten seconds.

I literally put:

"Blade is absolutely feisty, isn't she? She's totally sassy, and I'm totally loving it.

While there wasn't much to go off from this chapter, I thought it was well written. I think you got X's personality down and I really want to know where this is going so I'm going to go ahead and follow this story.

Keep it up and I hope that I can see more from you soon! :)"


Now it's not the best comment in the world, I didn't go into depth or anything, but seriously, I think (and hope) that this comment at least made the writer feel good about her writing. I mean, to me, a comment is there to encourage others into wanting to write more. Of course, everyone says that we should write for ourselves, and yeah that's true too, but getting a comment is like super awesome and can make someone's day.

I think everyone should be encouraged to comment. You don't have to comment all the time, but give some feedback to the author. This person is writing a story and you're reading it. Why not show some love for their work and the effort they've put into it?

If you don't know what to comment on, here are some ideas that I took from my old, other blog, The Mibbian's Guide to Story Commenting featuring Batman.

To leave a decent comment, here are some things to consider:
- What parts of the story/chapter did/didn't you like? Why?
- What were some of your favorite quotes or pieces of dialogue from the story/chapter?
- Did you like the way the author described the setting?
- How did the author's writing make you feel?
- Could you relate to any of the characters?
- Did your favorite character have enough time in the chapter?
- What do you think is going to happen in the next chapter?
- What do you hope will happen in the next chapter?
- Did you notice any grammatical errors in the text that you could point out to help improve the quality of their story?

If you pull a few of these out while writing a comment, you'll definitely be leaving something for the author to read. Trust me, you can just start off with one of these, and then you'll be typing and typing and you'll end up with a longer comment than expected and be like, "Oh, wow, I didn't know that I had all of that in me."

If all else fails... EXAGGERATE. Seriously, pour it on. Use all caps, extra exclamation points, really focus in on one part of the story. Exaggerating can really hype up an author.

Anyways, I'm pretty sure I've written more than enough and I need to do some other things and fix up my Sims game so yeah.

Y'all should comment more.

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October 2nd, 2015 at 10:59am