Exactly what it says on the tin; What do you like to see in a manip? I have been looking back at some of the work I've done, and I find it difficult to find a clear route to improve my work. Should I base "how good" a manip is upon the number of favorites and/or comments it receives? If so, some of the work I am most proud of end up ranking very low and vise-versa with some of the things I am less happy with. Additionally, some of my works that got great comments have fewer favorites.
Lacking the ability to read everybodys' minds (One day...!) I decided to ask directly.

the femdom captions

nothing. NOTHING beats a good femdom caption.

Personally, I like slow inductions. Like, the subject (reader or otherwise) can tell (s)he is being hypnotised but can't help it and falls (willingly) regardless. Comments on how "drowsy you look" or stuff like that I like too. And extra, if there's a mention of a "good girl" or "good boy" in there :p

Depending on the story or picture, a short text (3-8 paragraphs) or long text (8-12 paragraphs) can both work, but I wouldn't go past half an A4 page worth of text.

I have no idea what you should base your feelings of success or failure on, but what you find hot and doing a few different things here and there (femdom, femsub, maledom, malesub, ...) regardless of rating will I hope always have the best effect. I can almost tell if the writer is smirking during certain passages, squirming in his/her chair so to speak. And if it bores you, it bores the reader.

I browsed your pictures and see more than a few of my favourites in there. I'd say you're on the right track ^^

Friye sums it up well. Make stuff that you like and you're more likely to strike a cord with readers.

The two questions you presented mean very different things to me.



I like femsub, slower inductions, not much on exhibitionism, milking(?), etc. Essentially just themes in general, and of course I'd like to see said themes in a manip as well.



I should note the following are just the criteria I made up for myself.

- Does the image go well with the text? (ie. Why use that picture specifically? If someone else slapped another image over your current one would anyone else even be able to tell? If not then your text might be too generic).

- Is the text "well-done"? (Text should be an addition to the image, not the other way around. Which means that if possible there shouldn't be a wall of text. Typos and grammar problems should also be minimal. The font, color, and placement of the text should also help the reader infer who is speaking (if any) and should compliment what you're trying to accomplish).

- And obviously, how good is the actual manip job? =P (Are the edits you made to the image glaring and out of place? Does it look like effort was put in instead of a simple erase of the eye with a spiral under it? Are there too much unused/blank space in the manip? Stuff like that).



While comments and favourites are always appreciated I personally don't give them much weight when it comes to ranking whether a manip is good. They do help slightly in that matter there are way too many variables in both for them to be a good indicator.
(Ex. Nude/more sexual images or popular themes get more favourites overall, comments are more frequent based on an artist's social network, certain themes with a more vocal userbase or are more controversial, etc).

Thanks for the feedback y'all. I think I'm going to try and follow my own preferences a bit more. I enjoy writing happier romantic/consensual stuff, but I had not been doing them as much due to the lackluster response they had been getting. I definitely enjoy hearing what you guys think, though, it's nice.

Well enjoying it yourself is the most important part. While getting likes and comments is fun if that's all you are doing it for it's going to be boring. Do this sort of stuff cause you like it.

Ahh! And if any other manippers ever refer to this thread I'd like to add spelling and font choice as important factors as well!
Make sure it's easy to read (when in doubt, use Arial) and give your text a bit of space between it and the edge of your picture.

While this may be a personal opinion, I can lose all interest and actually get annoyed at typos and grammatical errors when they happen in a story. The better the story, the more annoyed I'll be...

I look forward to any romantic stuff you may do ^^

Score is only an indicator of what's popular. While what's popular is generally high quality, it will almost always be formulaic. Sure, many great manips are formulaic, but it's hard to actually stand out amongst that type of manip. What people like is very specific and can usually be applied to any image with hypnosis implications, and will get high ratings.

What I personally think makes a great manip is how necessary the manip is. What I mean by that is basically, "could this text be copy/pasted next to nearly any other image and still work?" If the answer is yes, then the manip is kind of unnecessary, even if it's good. When I read a manip that has a totally new concept that I have never or rarely thought/read about, I get way more into it just by that fact alone. Basically what Cradily said.

Not that I consider my manips all that good, let alone great, but I guess I can at least give my two cents:

Like Stroke and Cradily mentioned, it's important to tailor the text to fit the image (and vice versa). On the other hand, there were times when I had a base idea and went hunting for the right kind of image to go with it instead, and I suspect you're guilty of that a little as well, looking at some of your manips ;).

Sometimes less is more. While I'm guilty of making walls of text, at times I either just have a few lines or forgo them altogether, and that can work if you've a strong image. It may be just a matter of preference, but I notice your manips tend to be awfully verbose, which isn't necessarily bad, but they also have a tendency to have a lot happen in them. To put it bluntly I think there's too much tell and an awful little show, something I also notice in the stuff I made early on.
We don't necessarily need to know every little detail of the setting, including what the characters had for breakfast last monday. Narrowing the story down to a more specific event and dropping hints about the broader setting through dialogue might make it a little more digestable and "in the moment" (of course this depends on how the text itself is delivered, it might make sense for a diary to have a more stream of thought structure, for instance).

On top of that, I might suggest trying to get creative with the text in ways you can't necessarily do in traditional written form. While the results weren't all that fancy, <<hypnohub.net/post/show/18...d-demon_girl-elf_ears-fem|I>> tried <<hypnohub.net/post/show/20...ir-censored-dazed-drool-e|this>> on <<hypnohub.net/post/show/39..._only-femdom-femsub-linge|occasion>>. Point is, the image with text formula has a number of unique strengths that can make a rather simple work stand out.

To me a manip has to fit the picture you chose and elaborate on the sensation transpiring from this.
I try to keep my manips as short and entertaining as possible, making the reader interact with them.
I try to relate to the viewer and place him in a position where he faces the content of the picture and then interact with it in an immersive way.
Stories related to pictures are not really my kind of work (even though I could do some) because I feel it is more important for the viewer to be actor of the manips, rather than spectating.
That being said, if the reader is involved as a witness to something erotic and arrousing related to hypnosis it can be interesting to leave the ending open for them to interpret.

Another important aspect is the aesthetics of the manip work, especially in the choice of font and background for the text, trying to reuse color palettes from the picture makes it a lot more immersive.

Other than that I try to put in as much experience I have as an hypnotist into the manips I do, my end goal being that the short induction coupled with an appealing image would feel good enough for a susceptible and willing reader to get somewhat entranced by them, even though I doubt I ever achieved the desired result ^^'

In any case if you want to ask me manip questions directly and work on manips I am totally available and you can DM me anytime.

I worked as a consultant with Frombeyond and his manips have achieved a fair bit of popularity so I know it's manageable.

I hope my input was helpful and I would be delighted to hear more from you guys!

I pretty much suck at the writing in manips so the thing I look for when making a manip is an image that with a little bit of editing can look like a convincing hypnosis image that doesn't need text to explain what is going on.

Think of it like image macros. Every picture tells a story, possibly one of a number of stories. The good manip brings out the implicit story and makes it explicit.