I dont post these here for an ego boost, I have no ego to boost.

My biggest theory was that episodes were too long, but having seen a few stories that are longer than the ones I've just been uploading I'm thinking back to my old theory. That is FV is and always will be that crazy, parody series with a weird, nutjob villain and OTT extra characters. I have tried since the second season to make more serious storylines, it came more naturally to me than the craziness.

I am pretty proud of a lot of my stories, I know there are a few people who enjoy the series which is why I keep doing writing it (and I want to be able to finish something). My spirit is usually stomped on when I notice how much it's shunned here and there, if people are reading it and enjoying it fine, I'll continue uploading the episodes here. However if people here just can't understand it, then I wont bother. There's a link to the official site, go nuts.

I am only making this post as I need to get this out. A certain user is a fan of another, well written AU series and reviews that constantly. Fair enough, but why on earth should I have to read criticism of any kind about my own series on someone elses reviews? For all I know, users are backstabbing it on loads of other place.? For all I know, people are saying it's great elsewhere. I don't know, how the hell am I supposed to know? There are probably millions of stories on this site, am I supposed to just check every one for a comment? I'd not mind as much if this user had actually said this to me as well, but they didn't. I had to find out elsewhere. I do remember a review for one episode in particular that someone didn't understand, but not a review of the series as a whole.

As I said, the only feedback I tend to get is a response to the "funny" bits. I think of FV as more than just funny, it is nice that I make people laugh, but it's not hard for me to actually write the stupid stuff. All the work I've put into this series is the stuff I want feedback about. I don't like to demand so I'll leave it as this: if you read FV, and you have any opinion that isn't basic like "that was good", "that was crap" then please, PLEASE review it. If you find FV confusing or just an episode confusing, say so. I wont bite your head off, I only plan to do that to people who do what that other nameless person did.

Anyway this is the deciding point. Does Fifth Voyager continue here, or should I just let people find the official site on their own? There's plenty here to get somebody into it. I need some second, third etc.. opinions. Discuss, again I say please. You're all mostly writers here, so you do understand my problem.

What am I doing wrong?

Should I just keep posting and accept the problem?

Should I just leave it at that?

Am I right to be mad at that user who didn't actually have the backbone to criticise to me, and left it in someone elses review?

Again, discuss please.

--- Marill ---

Now, I get to the bad news. I'm going to be honest, but my goal here isn't to be overly harsh. The stories are completely different from what I would expect after having visited your site. Your stories as they're written are difficult to follow because I'm not sure what I'm reading when I click on one of your stories. Are your characters watching Voyager on t.v. or are they actually characters watching themselves, or what? Maybe you explained it in your early stories, but it's hard to make sense of what you've written.

I think one of the main problems is the sheer volume of episodes and seasons. It's overwhelming to someone who's just discovering your stuff, and they may be put off. But truly, this is less of a problem if people feel drawn into the series. A good story can draw people in, even if it's a fandom that they wouldn't usually be interested in. Voyager is one of my favorite shows, and I read A LOT of Trek fanfic, but I just haven't had much incentive to read your stories all the way through. Your summaries do an excellent job of making me click on your story, but I start reading, and I'm left wondering when the actual story will begin. I guess I just don't understand it.

I do have a few suggestions, and you can take them or leave them. I know that you've put a lot of time into this series, and believe me when I say that I know what it's like to pour that much of your time into something. You mentioned that many of the other stories here have reviews. Have you looked at them in an effort to figure out what makes these stories more reviewable than yours? I can tell you one think off the bat - the chapter length. People feel overwhelmed when they see that a story with one chapter is super long. You should try breaking your stories up into smaller, more digestible chunks. I ran into this problem, too, when I first started posting here. I've taken those stories down now to edit them. Before coming here, the only stories I'd ever seen were these long pieces that were posted to the Trekiverse.org archive. I never had a problem reading stuff that long, so I figured no one else would either. I was soooo wrong. People here like chapters. As a rule, I try not to keep my chapters at around 2,000 words. Sometimes they're longer; sometimes they're shorter.

You've got so many new characters in your stories, and I think that also drives people away from reading because they don't know who these people are, and there's very little explanation. Again, I guess this is one of the pitfalls of having a fan series with so much history, and I'm not sure if I know how you could fix it. It's just one of the things that I view as a potential problem.

When I read fic, I usually gravitate toward the stories that have good writing. From what I've seen of your stories, it's mostly dialogue with very little character action or thought. What is this character thinking? What's the scene like? What's going on? Give us some description, some character insight.

I understand your frustration. What I've learned in my time here is that you kind of have to write for your audience. I'm not saying you should bow down to everyone else here and only write what they want you to write; but a good rule of thumb for any writer is that one of your goals should be to make the reader comfortable and make their task a little easier. Give them shorter chapters and plots that are easy to keep up with. And yes, you're right to be mad at a reader who doesn't even have the guts to criticize you directly, but don't let it eat you up. There will always be boneheads.

I hope this all makes sense and that it helps. I'm not a writing expert (yet), but I do have a lot of experience, and I was just throwing my two cents in.

I didn't realise that the root of the confusion was the characters themselves. Yeah I admit there's too many to work with fyi, that's something I've always wanted to fix. The characters are simply in the show with the ones you know, with the exception of three (another thing I got rid of in later seasons; the outside characters Marill, Raichu, Vulpix etc..).

The suggestion about the chapters I have considered. I could easily do that for the next episodes I submit. As for the older ones I have the individual files I use for this site still, and could do that to them though it could be time consuming, and I've really neglected writing new material lately.

That suggestion is the most applicable to me now. Unfortunately there is still a season and a half already written to submit here, though I did from Season Four try to cut out a lot of the characters I didn't do much with.

When I read fic, I usually gravitate toward the stories that have good writing. From what I've seen of your stories, it's mostly dialogue with very little character action or thought. What is this character thinking? What's the scene like? What's going on? Give us some description, some character insight.

There is three simple reasons for that I'm afraid. I understand what you mean, I do really want to write like that someday, I just don't find it applicable to FV (well one of them anyway)

1. The series is meant to be just that, episode like. I did try to write what the characters were thinking, it didn't really work for the style of the series. The character action I'm trying to work on, that and describing people is one of my biggest faults I'm afraid.

2. Like I said above, my biggest fault is describing what's going on well. I just delete most of what I do cos I feel it's not good enough, and it just ends up basic and horrible. Then there's point 3.

3. Recently I had a go at my latest project, which is what I plan to publish (ha, good luck me) and I did find that in some ways, I can write properly.. an introduction scene to one of the characters turned out to be several pages longer than I would of done with FV (which would of been a paragraph if that lol). A lot of my more recent works, and some of my older ones are, as you say, too big for this site. If I wrote the way I do for my book, then they'd be on the 500kb limit (or is at 1mb here, not sure) for this site.

I hope this all makes sense and that it helps. I'm not a writing expert (yet), but I do have a lot of experience, and I was just throwing my two cents in.

It does, and thank you again. I really appreciate the help. :)

The first episode Caretaker was split into 8 parts:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1102811/1/B4FV101_Caretaker

Come to think of it, it has two reviews, very few episodes of mine do. Anyway does that have good size parts, like you said? I might have a go at sorting through the episodes tonight, I'm in a working mood. That makes a change lol.

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