What Is A Vocal Top Story?
How Does A Story Become A Vocal Top Story?
Introduction
These are just some of my thoughts on Vocal Top Stories and the effects of getting or not getting that bonus and recognition can have on Vocal Creators.
Last year I published this and it actually got a Top Story, which was unexpected:
And this is how Vocal supposedly curate their Top Stories
So My Thoughts On Top Stories
My Top Five most read stories were not chosen as Top Stories, though the Gail Collins Pappalardi, The Cleaner, the Michael Moorcock ones have crept up slowly and are still getting daily reads from somewhere, so the implication is that for Vocal the stories are not good enough, but the read counts say otherwise.
I've said it before and I will keep saying it, I hope that we never find out hat makes a Vocal Top Story. I love seeing writers I have never seen before getting Top Stories and we highlight some of them each week in our Vocal Social Society Community Adventure and you can see one here and see the shared stories on the thread:
My problem is while I love seeing my friends getting Top Stories, it must be disconcerting for Creators who keep seeing the same names (including mine) on the Top Story carousel, if they never get a Top Story.
I also find it a bit jarring when I see just published stories with Top Story status. How has anyone had time to evaluate its worthiness?
Then I see stories as Top Stories and Challenge Placements with virtually no Vocal engagement at all, but they may have lots of non-Vocal reads that we are unable to see.
I do think that Top Stories and Challenges give Vocal Creators something to look forward to, as well as some good writing prompts, but Vocal provides lots of these in their Resource Section is you are ever stuck for things.
The thing is. just do your best, and make friends with others in the various Vocal Groups that I list in the poem that close this piece, and there are a lot more out there than those groups.
If you have never had a Top Story or a Challenge Placement , keep writing, keep trying, do your best and it will come for you.
Now that poem.
About the Creator
Mike Singleton π Mikeydred
A Weaver of Tales and Poetry
Join & Share In VSS
Creationati
Call Me Les β₯ Gina β₯ Heather β₯ Caroline β₯
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Comments (8)
It all depends how much transparency you want in the selection process. I suspect most of us have read top stories and wondered what made them special, and I'm sure we've seen work that resonated with us but didn't seem to excite anyone else. On balance, I'm with you - too much detail about the "formula" will encourage formulaic writing, and that can't be a good thing.
Great topic choice! There is sooooo much more that can be said on this subject--not gonna say it right now-- but oodles that can be said...just sayin' π
You called it! My similar sentiment, penned humorously (allegedly) in verse went NOWHERE. I may have offended the people that be. https://shopping-feedback.today/poets/top-story-november-2023%3C/span%3E%3C/span%3E%3C/span%3E%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E%3C/div%3E%3C/div%3E%3C/div%3E%3Cdiv class="css-w4qknv-Replies">
Very informative as usual. I don't try to understand Vocal's choices. I had top story once but I didn't see it until it was the last one. π I am trying to get into a writing routine and I am hoping that Vocal will help with that. This is a great read.
It doesn't bother me to see just published stories chosen as Top Stories. But I guess that's just me. I mean, I can be unbothered by a lot of things π π
What makes a Top Story? Vocal makes a Top Story, often in ways that seem arbitrary & capricious.
That's right, consistency is key! Btw I also saw a Top Story that was published only hours ago while others have to work hard for these achievements...
I will type that I was expecting this to be a bit more in-depth.