Young Writers Society

So if you look at the Literary Spotlight for January 2017, the top 10 overall is essentially just the top 10 poems.

That got me wondering, how can we promote short stories and other kinds of works?

As just one idea, one thing I've looked at is making 1 like equivalent to 1.5 likes for short stories and other works. But, it's not an idea that I like because that's subsidizing short stories at the expense of poems instead of promoting them.

Hm...it's an interesting conundrum. I'm guessing poems get the most "likes" because they're short.

A contest involving writing/reviewing short stories might be a short term boost. Like in order for your submission to be considered "valid", you have to read/review at least two other entries.

I know that unless I'm looking for something specific to review, what I read and "like" has a lot to do with what shows up in my People tab. So maybe a hashtag focused on short stories could encourage people to read them. Like maybe I'd say "The Greatest Story Ever by @freakforchrist is my pick for #shortstoryoftheweek because it brought tears to my eyes." Bam, more people see it, more people can read/like it.

*goes off to actually find a short story to read*

I think this has a lot to do with what @niteowl said about poems being short. You can read a poem quickly even if you don't intend to review it, and give it a quick like.

I also think that the poets on YWS currently have a stronger community than prose writers (something I'd love to see change!). I'm sure poetry jams, and related activities, have a lot to do with this. Plus, I think prose on YWS tends toward novels more than short stories. It's harder to motivate yourself to read along with a novel, and if you missed the first chapter you're less likely to catch up just to read/like chapter seven. Even short stories tend to get broken into multiple parts to make it easier to read/encourage reviews. So there's an easy consume-ability to poetry on YWS that doesn't quite exist for prose.

I definitely agree with @niteowl- it's a lot to do with that poetry is shorter than short stories! And, I mean, novels too; I've been even AVOIDING reviewing novels lately because it takes a lot of effort to read/review novels (not saying it's any easier to review poetry and short stories, it's just different!)!

In all honesty, I tend not to read works for the sake of reading works on YWS unless they're my friends stuff!- Which sounds kinda bad. So mostly the works I read I do so to review them- so I think there's a lot less works I "like" then I should! I'm not thinking very cohesively right now to say what I want to say.

Here's a thought that might be incredibly difficult to do but I really wouldn't know; what if there were two spotlights. One for prose (because c'mon, novels want love too 8D ) and one for poetry. There's also just WAY more poetry on the site, I think, because poetry tends to take less time to write than prose in my experience, so people post more poetry- even I post more poetry than I do prose it seems these days, and I'm not a POET! XP But back to the two spotlights idea: the prose spotlight doesn't even have to be that fancy... that seems a little unfair but honestly it would make me giddy if there was just a side-thing in somewhere (like the "works by new members" thing in the green room) that was a spotlight for prose. But that's just my thoughts!

Holysocks wrote:
Here's a thought that might be incredibly difficult to do but I really wouldn't know; what if there were two spotlights. One for prose (because c'mon, novels want love too 8D ) and one for poetry. There's also just WAY more poetry on the site, I think, because poetry tends to take less time to write than prose in my experience, so people post more poetry- even I post more poetry than I do prose it seems these days, and I'm not a POET! XP But back to the two spotlights idea: the prose spotlight doesn't even have to be that fancy... that seems a little unfair but honestly it would make me giddy if there was just a side-thing in somewhere (like the "works by new members" thing in the green room) that was a spotlight for prose. But that's just my thoughts!

A simpler way to do this might be to have the current spotlight rotate between poetry and prose. But that raises the question about the other lesser-known categories. "Lyrics"could be lumped in with poetry, but what about the amorphous "Other" and "Art"? Should scripts and articles be lumped in with prose? That said, I like the concept.

I've always viewed "lyrics" and "art" as more poetic things- that really depends sometimes though, but I think they'd fit more under poetry. And yeah I feel like "articles", "essays", "scripts" etc would probably fit better under the prose category, but that's just my humble opinion.

What do you mean about rotating it though, @niteowl? How would that look? I think that's an interesting idea.

@Holysocks I meant like how right now we have the "top 5 overall" in the literary spotlight, which is mostly poems a lot of the time. I was thinking we could instead have two top 5 lists, and they could switch between poetry and prose, kind of like how the big title/picture thing rotates now. Note that I don't really know how feasible this is coding-wise. This might still put a lot of spotlight on poems, but prose would have more spotlight too. Essentially, it would be an attempt to remove the competition between poetry and prose that currently exists for the literary spotlight. Does that make more sense?

Yeah, that does! I think that's a good idea but yeah no idea about how hard that would be to do or anything.

Yeah, I remember this being an issue during my last time on this site. It would be great to correct (or at least, improve) the problem, and I really like all the suggestions here.

For me personally, I try to always 'like' the short stories/chapters I read that are really well-done, but there are times when I forget to do that and the main reason is because, if a piece is on the longer side, by the time I've finished reading it and finished my (usually longish) review, I've forgotten all about the 'like' option. It's kind of an "out of sight, out of mind" thing. For that reason, I think if there was a little reminder at the bottom of the piece (near where the reviewing box is) that said something like, "Don't forget to 'Like' the works you enjoy if you want them to make the Literary Spotlight!" it would be easier for people to remember to do that after they've finished reading or finished their review.

Some other ideas:

*Flashfiction writing contest. I'm not particularly well-versed with all the YWS competitions, so forgive me if this has been done before, but I think some kind of contest that encourages people to write really short stories/flashfiction pieces may be a good way to get over the main hurdle, which is that people tend to 'like' shorter/easier-to-read, quick-to-digest pieces.
*More points for reviewing shorts/chapters (or some other incentive)? I was thinking something along the lines of 10 extra points for shorts, 20 for chapters. Or you could earn more points based just on the length of the piece rather than its classification, which could be a nicer, fairer way to do things.
*Rating system. I've always liked the idea of being able to rate a story along with my review, like with the usual 1-5 or 1-4 star system. Maybe instead of putting pieces in the spotlight based on likes, pieces (or at least, chapters and stories) could make it into the spotlight based on how many positive reviews they've garnered in a short span of time (so if they've gotten four reviews that each ranked the piece four or five stars, and they've gotten those reviews in a short span of time, the piece would then make it into the spotlight).

@Noisette I'm also guilty of forgetting to "like" pieces, whether poetry or prose. I like the idea of a reminder! More points for reviewing longer works also seems like a possibly good option. A flash fiction contest also sounds like fun.

As for the rating system, I think YWS had one once many moons ago. If I remember correctly, you could rate without leaving a review and vice versa. I don't think it was connected to any sort of spotlight/feature since the Literary Spotlight didn't exist back then. I think the current stars/likes system replaced it. Personally, I'm not a fan since reviews are so subjective and I'd have trouble condensing my thoughts into a number. I'd also feel bad giving anyone a low rating. I'm also not sure it would tip the poems/prose scales.