I find, personally, that the feedback I’ve gotten from a few people is too vague to be helpful.
They’ll say something like “I don’t understand what’s happening” for a part, but then not expand on that. Is the whole chapter confusing, just that one scene, the whole story?
I will say, if you aren’t open to the idea that your story isn’t perfect, you might not want to share it.
I think the two of you have highlighted a great point here - criticism should be constructive. If it’s not, then it’s not helpful. And if it’s not helpful, then why?
Maybe there is something to be said for provoking such an intense feeling in someone that they feel compelled to insult you or complain. 
Is the only bad publicity none at all?
Really, everyone’s tastes are different, so what doesn’t work for one person works wonderfully for another.
Unless you are giving feedback on spelling, grammar, and alerting the author to errors. Objective mistakes can be fixed, everything else is subjective.
Maybe I’ll bite the bullet and throw in an orc. And scat. Orc scat. Give the people what the want. Try to please everyone and please no one at all.
It really differs from one story to another. Some “stories” that I write are done with the mindset that they’re short and a “get off” tool for me. Most of the caption stories I wrote on Tumblr were like that. I don’t plan on making sequels for these, but when there’s popular demand for it, I am more enticed to rework the sequel drafts into proper stories (for instance, my third instalment of Bear_mkr).
When I have in mind to write a series, I make up a few excel sheets with the chapter contents, character stats and personalities and such (to prevent discontinuities). Before starting the story (or while I’m writing the first chapter), I also make a side document where I write grossly everything I have in mind for every chapter, no matter how bad, corny, clumsy, lousy or brief I write it. It’s just to get the ideas out and to reorganize them. I keep this document on the side when I’m writing and I change the draft font color to red with each scene and thing that I’ve added (like a checklist). I usually wait to have a few written chapters before I upload the first (like at least 3), just to have nice publishing pace at first for the readers.
For me, the storyline plot does not differ between my rough draft and the story itself (until now at least). Some scenes or actions in my draft doc never get changed to red because in the end I don’t add this element to the story. Some are moved between chapters, some are added. I’ve never had to “kill” (as in “to scrap”) a character yet. Actually, I tend to often add more lol. Sometimes, when a chapter feels too long or short in comparison to the others, I tend to move scenes around the plot line. It might not have been the case in “one of us”, but I often tend to make bigger and bigger chapters toward the end of a story as the suspense and everything builds up, whereas the first chapters are often on the shorter side lol.
So yeah. Unless it’s a veeeery long one-shot story, I usually don’t go to such lengths. Still, I (almost) always reread and reedit the story a couple times before hitting the posting button. Since recently, I also ask a reader or an editor to give it a read before posting it just to have an idea if something is off with the pace, consistency or such.
That’s dedication! I take a few notes here and there but nothing as formal as what you’re describing.
I’ve had one or two bits of discontinuity in Dalton Creek but it’s a story about a man’s memories being changed so it worked out for me
At the very most I am one chapter ahead. As for pace, I just upload on Wednesdays!
That’s not enough of a buffer for me! I like to be three or four weeks ahead. That way I don’t feel pressured. I like to consistently publish on same day, too – usually Friday for me.
It’s usually not enough of a buffer for me either. About half through the series, I usually catch up and then the last few chapters aren’t posted on schedule. Oh well.
But pressure makes diamonds!
I will say, being pretty new to this, I haven’t felt pressured to upload when I wasn’t ready. Typically I’ll write on Sunday/Monday, reread on tuesday, upload on Wednesday but there was a time at the start when I was uploading 2 chapters a week
For a short story under 5000 words, my first draft is the final draft, barring some substantial issues. I’ve never found revision more than some editing to be that rewarding to me–if there was a problem with the story, I either don’t publish it, or I push it out and move onto the next one, lesson (hopefully) learned. In this genre, folks appreciate quantity over quality, so long as stories are at least readable. But I’ve been at this long enough that I know how a short story is going to come out once I have a synopsis written up for it.
That said, as soon as I’m working on a longer story, all bets are off. I’m a heavy planner, and have been using trello a lot to keep track of characters, background stuff, chapter arcs, and that sort of thing, which helps a lot, but again, I tend to have a broad plan in place before I even start writing the first chapter. Then, all bets are off, honestly, because once the story breathes a bit, and the characters start developing, my initial plan usually has to suffer some substantial modifications midstream. Sometimes that means abandoning entire chapters I’ve written to head in a different direction, or sometimes it means writing different versions of the same chapter over and over to get the plotting and character right. But none of that is really “revision”. It’s throwing writing in the trash and starting from scratch, again.
There was definitely more pressure to keep with a schedule when I was on tumblr more, and posting something five days a week. Quite a few stories suffered, because I started publishing them before I knew where they were going, and once it’s on the internet, you can’t quite throw it out and start over, like you can if its in your drafts folder. At this point, I don’t usually publish a piece until all the parts are at least drafted out to completion.
That’s the joy of not planning for me, to see where the story goes on it’s own. I guess I’m sort of a planner, I rarely sit down and have NO idea what i’m writing but I just let the muse take control for a while and see where we end up.
I LOVED your tumblr stories, I haven’t logged on in an eternity.
I don’t mind leaving things a bit more freewheeling on occasion, but I do a lot better generally if I have an end point in mind. Otherwise, I find that stories tend to only add complications without much in the way of resolution. Like a bad improv skit, with too much “yes, and…”. Sometimes you just need a “yes”, sometimes you need a good old fashioned “no”. That said, if you become too committed to a plan, it stifles everything and bogs down the process. It’s a fine line between seeing the path while also letting it wander about a bit.
I have a whole plotting process! But then, once the characters start interacting, I discover all kinds of wonderful nuance that may shift the direction.
Interesting. I’ve always chosen the other way around, and I regularly get comments about how well-written my stories are. I guess you tend to attract the audience you write for.
This brings up a fascinating point about intent and the ambiguity of text because it’s not clear to me what tone your taking. I will say at first glance it’s a bit smug and aggressive, which you almost certainly didn’t mean.
In the same way, criticism might SEEM rude but that was never the commenter’s intent.
In either case I’ve very much been enjoying hearing all of your different perspectives.
No, it wasn’t intended as criticism at all. I realized it could be read that way and tried to avoid it, but apparently I failed. All I meant is that the people who prefer quantity over quality, as you say, will probably be drawn more to authors like you, who put out a lot of stories, but will probably complain about authors like me, who write infrequently enough that you have to go back and skim previous chapters to remember what the hell was going on. (Which itself is another issue…I tend to write convoluted enough story arcs that you need to go back and figure out what was going on at times.)
In the end, each writer has different priorities and skills, and I think they’ll tend to draw the audience that appreciates those the most. I hadn’t actually thought of that in those terms until you got me thinking about it.
That’s a really nice way to think about it.
I think the quality/quantity debate is a bit of a minefield in text form, because of the implication that publishing often means its not as good? We have to be precise with our language.
Ideally people post great stuff often
On a similar note, how do you find people being ‘willing to put in the effort’ with stories? 
Dalton Creek is a long story and I know a lot of people are put off by the length. (There’s a joke in there somewhere). For example, if I made a reference to something that happened in chapter 2 in chapter 19, who would be willing to go back and read it? It’s like easter eggs in movies, some people love the hunt, others could not care less.
Not through any particular effort on my part, I assure you! 
I’m really curious to learn more about this. I’ve been working on some longer stuff this year, particularly inspired by your work on Pholus, and book-length plotting is something I’m still trying to figure out.
I’ll admit that at first I read it as a swipe at me, but no sweat at all. The number of times my own tone has been misunderstood on the internet is astronomical.
I mean, there has to be some sort of balance, at the end of the day, it’s not an either/or proposition, and in all honesty, I have shifted quite a ways away from the quantity side of things over the last few years–I am not, for example, posting 5000 words a week over on tumblr anymore. That sort of constant output ends up hampering the kinds of stories I could tell, and so once tumblr died, I used that as an opportunity to rethink how I wanted to write my stories, and how I wanted them to be read. It also allowed me to branch out into other formats–twine stories, longer novellas, video content–that I would have never had time for if I was still keeping up with the tumblr schedule.