Kudos, comments, bookmarks

[kathleen_dailey]

A recent Reddit posting asked "what makes you kudos [sic] a work?"





The responses were interesting! Readers have widely varying opinions on the value and purpose of kudos. Of the many replies to the question, this one came closest to describing my feeling:

For me, it's usually a combination of technical skill, and the deft handling of the story itself. Or, an original, creative idea.

I'll usually click the kudos button if one of those attributes is present; if all three are present in a single story, I'll leave a comment (always in words, not just an emoji).

If the story is exceptionally well written, well plotted, and well characterized, or if it's creatively pathbreaking, I'll also bookmark or download it because I know I'll want to reread it. One commenter phrased it succinctly:

I kudo fics I like, bookmark fics I love, download fics I need.

In the past, I've given kudos for early installments of a story, only to find, as the story progresses, that it's turned into something I wouldn't have praised if I'd read it in its final form. These days, I tend to wait until a complete work is posted before I comment or give kudos.

Some authors dismiss kudos as unimportant or even meaningless. As a reader, I try to make sure that clicking that button means something to me--"I don't have any detailed comments, but I enjoyed the story and I'm glad to have read it." And as a writer, I'm appreciative of kudos whenever and for whatever reason it arrives.

(And I did mean to say "it" above: I will probably never be able to get on board with construing "kudos" as a plural noun--or, worse, as a verb--even though I realize that I'm part of a very tiny minority.)

Comments

[kitarella_imagines]

I generally like: an interesting idea and well written. The interesting idea generally trumps the well written but not always.

However I always comment on my favourite fics. Sometimes I forget to kudos, but I want to comment on what I like about the story. I only get replies half the time though, so I'm not sure if authors even like comments anymore.

The one thing I can't stand is a wall of text. My eyesight is not good enough now, if it ever was. I recently marked for later 3 fics, but didn't kudos them. The author randomly changed paragraphs every 5 lines, whatever was happening. So you can imagine- different people were talking in each paragraph, the scenes kept changing in each paragraph, it was hard to follow at best.

I didn't want to offend the author though so I didn't say anything. I've advised an author before about this problem, but only because I knew them well, and luckily they were grateful and edited the fic, it looked so much better!

[kathleen_dailey]

The one thing I can't stand is a wall of text. My eyesight is not good enough now, if it ever was.

Same. I've noped out of a couple of otherwise promising fics because there were no line breaks between paragraphs. One in particular was a chaptered story (and the chapters were long). It was just too much for my increasingly bad vision to cope with.

[kitarella_imagines]

Yeah...it's too much isn't it.

I feel like I go the other way however, with too much dialogue so the fic looks 'liney' with endless one line paragraphs. I've got to change that somehow because it's probably just as bad 😕