Hi!
I'm a relatively new writer. The rating for one of my stories is going down. I know that this is part of writing and I'm not complaining that this is happening. Just wondering how you all cope with disappointment? Any rituals?
Thanks! :)

I simply chat with that particular super low rater. 
There's a time I offended a reader in one of my short story JUNO for depicting political ultra right wing kind of character.
But I believe every reader interpret stories differently.
Like some might call Teleios I wrote to be toxic feminist and anti-trans. 
But a story can have multi-dimensional understanding from each readers.
No matter how great a story is, there's always people who read it differently.
And author's goal should be presenting the story to as much readers to have the story interpretation as close to author's intension as possible.
 

Oh, and you can always report the low raters if they meant to harm you

Faytales Wrote: Hi!
I'm a relatively new writer. The rating for one of my stories is going down. I know that this is part of writing and I'm not complaining that this is happening. Just wondering how you all cope with disappointment? Any rituals?
Thanks! :)

Usually criticism is a good place to start when editing. A random drive by .5 rating doesn't help. But you can't let it define you or your writing. 

I agree with talking to the low rater, he can't make it any worse than it already is. No need to push him to rate it higher, you could just ask what was wrong with it to begin with.
All and all there would always be criticism, whether its bad or good criticism. All we can do is to keep writing and try our best to make our writing better.
You could also advertise your the story on your other stories and suggest to read it and rate it, if they would be nice enough, which could also help.
You could always come to the community here and ask for help, I bet that there are always people willing to do review swaps to help and give good criticism (don't look at me, I'm not doing that ヽ(*。>Д<)o゜)
Nonetheless good luck m8

Is there a way to talk to the low rater if they left a rating, not a review? Or is that anonymous? Sorry, I'm also new to RR, and I'm a little bit confused with the interface

BananaDragon Wrote: Is there a way to talk to the low rater if they left a rating, not a review? Or is that anonymous? Sorry, I'm also new to RR, and I'm a little bit confused with the interface

if they only left a rating, you couldn't see who left it.
So for as far as I know, no, you can't talk with them. Only with people who give reviews.

However maybe premium has some sort of a option to converse with people who only give rating, (though I doubt it)

Dante Wrote:

BananaDragon Wrote: Is there a way to talk to the low rater if they left a rating, not a review? Or is that anonymous? Sorry, I'm also new to RR, and I'm a little bit confused with the interface

if they only left a rating, you couldn't see who left it.
So for as far as I know, no, you can't talk with them. Only with people who give reviews.

However maybe premium has some sort of a option to converse with people who only give rating, (though I doubt it)

That makes sense, thank you!

I would just keep writing, and do a few review swaps. You gotta know that most reviews usually come from a subjective place, so you need to be the objective one looking at your work to see whether it's good or not. 

Thanks all. I would talk to them but they only left ratings, not a review. So I can't see what chapter they rated from or anything so it's left me in an odd spot of wanting to improve, but uncertain as to what people aren't liking. Hmm. Thanks though, all of this has been helpful!

Just keep writing. 

Rating is something we see, but it doesn't have a lot of effect on your readership unless you can get under 100 and be in the first few pages.

When you only have a few ratings, a bad one hurts worse now than later when you have more.

Ratings are for readers. You can't please everyone and it's not worth stressing over it. No book is 100% universally liked and the more niche the subject, the more polarized the opinions will be. That's fine. Just keep writing.

Write more.

I don't think there's a single book in the entire world where you can please everyone.

Everybody grew up differently and have different opinions.

If anything, write out of spite to beat the low ratings. Also, spam review swaps.

Faytales Wrote: Hi!
I'm a relatively new writer. The rating for one of my stories is going down. I know that this is part of writing and I'm not complaining that this is happening. Just wondering how you all cope with disappointment? Any rituals?
Thanks! :)

When you get to a certain point on RR you will start getting more and more negative reviews. Just remember the more popular you get the more visibility you have so there will be more people who can and will find problems with your work regardless if there are any. The best thing you can do is just hide those reviews that are outright hate and not objective so you don't have to see them every time you open your author dashboard, moderate your comments so that the same thing isnt visible. Lock comments that are obviously emotionally charged and placed there for no reason other than to put down the story or characters with no objective basis.

One thing I tend to do when i get ratings that are bad with no review, or reviews that are low just because they don't like a particular part of the story, or a review that is outright lying for whatever reason is just weight them against your positives. these 1 offs are just that, one offs. it is a single loud person against the hundreds and possibly thousands of people that enjoy your work enough to keep reading, but just dont express it.

I think most readers that enjoy our work are just that, people who are content with reading your work. They will most likely never express it as they don't feel they need to. That's why i think it's a good practice to look at your overall stats because they will paint a much brighter picture for you. if you have 30 5 star reviews but only 2 0.5 is it really that your story is bad, or was a vocal minority really just louder than your supporters for a short time.

Also I believe if a review is left you can message the person because their name is placed with the review, but i would highly advise against that as talking to someone who has enough time to leave a in-depth negative review in my experience is just someone who is outright mad, has hate in their hearts and you were just a convenient excuse to release it, or they may possibly even be projecting on your story as it has struck a cord. I'm sure there are even more reasons if you go into it, but my point is, leave a negative review as that and move on with your fiction. Take them as a nudge that you still have room to grow as a writer, and not that you are bad one. Just that you have room to improve, which in my opinion is a great thing because if you have no room to improve what do you have to strive for.