commenting dilemmas

[ratcreature]

Okay, so this probably has happened to many of us, that you read a story, that intersects with your life or experiences in some way. When that happens to me and I start writing a comment, my own experience is then what's in my head as reaction, and basically I recount whatever episode or life experience resonated with that story. Only then at the end of this, I come to the realization that my comment on the story doesn't actually talk about the story as such at all, but just about me. Then I feel really awkward, and more often than not I don't post that comment, and just click the kudo button instead.

However, most authors seem to like comments better than kudos. Does this still hold true for comments that don't actually talk about your story as such but are more or less (over)sharing of personal experiences a story resonated with?

Like okay, say you wrote a roadtrip fic where your characters look at a giant ball of rubber bands or whatever, and then you get a comment that is along the line of "here's my roadtrip experience of looking at a giant rubber band ball". It's not totally unrelated to your story, but not about praising your great characterization, awesome writerly skill or perfect timing either. And of course often it's not about a rubber band ball but some more personal resonance.

What do you think about such comments? Awkward? Still better than kudos? Better not posted because you don't really want to hear random strangers' anecdotes?

Comments

[sholio]

I like getting comments like that, although like others have said, the comment should include something about the story. I don't think there's anything at all wrong with a comment like, "I really enjoyed this, and the part with [thing] reminded me of [personal anecdote]." Actually I think it's a pretty awesome compliment to get comments like that, because it lets me know that I happened to nail the experience I was trying to write about, or at least came close.

[ratcreature]

Good to know that authors don't necessarily feel weird about getting these kinds of comments.

I can have a tendency to share stuff about me in comments I write to authors to mixed results. Like, the very first fanfic comment I mailed an author was on the very first fanfic story I read, and besides saying that I enjoyed the story, I was also just gushing at them how their story made me aware of fanfic, and more or less sharing the first joy of finding fandom with them even though my English was still much worse then (I'm not a shy person), and they never reacted. And I had kind of expected to hear something back, like just a "glad you found fandom through my site" or something.

[roga]

That might explain why you feel awkward leaving those kinds of comments these days - just having your first experience with leaving that kind of comment be an author ignoring you can have a really formative impact, and shape how you feel about it going forward. Like, maybe if your first 1-2 comments like this would have been gratitude and the continuation of the conversation you wouldn't have thought twice about doing it in the future!

I'm with sholio and musesfool - as long as you preface your comment with something (hopefully positive!) relating to the fic, ramble away. "A thing happened to me once" is an abrupt comment to get, but "I enjoyed this fic a lot! This moment stuck with me - it reminded me of when..." is a pretty cool comment to get.

(Probably would have flowed more naturally in LJ/DW comments, but AO3 is close enough!)

[ratcreature]

Yeah, that first (non-)exchange did leave an impression. It didn't put me off emailing feedback to authors, I'm too much of an intrinsic non-lurker for that, but made me a bit more cautious.