[Vent] For Authors who just need a moment to let it all out

[LillyWhite]

My MC is the perfect reader 'can't complain' type. Military training, knowledge sponge (not a natural genius, artificially inserted with all the knowledge of humanity).

But they still have something to complain about after all: Why is a genius behaving like a dumbass?

It makes me so angry!!!! Geniuses aren't good at everything!!!! Especially savants!!!!

How can you complain after the MC makes 9 backup plans to a fucking battle scene and still complain that she did something dumb?!?! CAN YOU MAKE 9 BACKUP PLANS?

 

[Corty]

My MC is the perfect reader 'can't complain' type. Military training, knowledge sponge (not a natural genius, artificially inserted with all the knowledge of humanity).

But they still have something to complain about after all: Why is a genius behaving like a dumbass?

It makes me so angry!!!! Geniuses aren't good at everything!!!! Especially savants!!!!

How can you complain after the MC makes 9 backup plans to a fucking battle scene and still complain that she did something dumb?!?! CAN YOU MAKE 9 BACKUP PLANS?

They complain for the sake to look smart. I have began adressing them through my MC. He began saying things like “look, I don't know, I’m just going with the flow. If it works, it works.”

 

[J_Chemist]

Me when a reader expects a constant power trip without proper scaling and an arc or two of the MC getting his shit together after almost getting obliterated in a literal dumpster fire of calamitous events that stacked up right in front of his face:

 

[prognastat]

Not an issue here so much as WN. Although I I get a lot more reader interaction there which is good it also comes with a massive helping of dumbasses.

I thought I was edgy. Then I came across some of the readers there and apparantly an antihero should be a 100% selfish murderous psychopath who would step on puppies and drinks the blood of the innocent. Like no… an anti-hero is still a hero… not just another word for villain.

 

[TwistedRomcom]

Since I only receive positive feedback, I never know what areas I should focus towards improving. Also I'm worried that if I continue to be so excellent all the time, people might start to see me as unrelatable. Luckily, I've managed to remain humble so far and haven't let it get to my head.

 

[Deleted member 84247]

I'm not sure someone vented about this already. I know there are plenty of entitled authors, but readers can be super entitled.

For the most part, stories on here are free entertainment. Authors here aren't professionals, and they usually have lives outside of this space. Don't spam an author for updates, especially if you yourself have never written a story.

 

[LesserCodex]

I have come to vent *jumps in a vent*

Alright with that out the way I don't have a lot of peeves but one I do is when a reader comments on someone else enjoying the story and telling them this is stupid or that they shouldn't read this. Like what's the point? He didn't ask for your opinion? And for those who are so ehow dumb enough to follow like sheep turn on the author and just make things hard all because of this one asshole. Like seriously ? be better.

 

[Superboii]

Welcome to Corty's Office of Mental Health!​

View attachment 29536

Did someone stupid barge in, comment something on your hard work, slapping your mojo around and back before dropping a fat dump and leaving? Come here and vent! I'm here to listen.

We all have THAT guy once in a while who knows it better, knows more about YOUR story, and can predict the future that you haven't even written yet. They are just too busy to start writing it for you.

Sometimes, we need a moment just to vent, complain, and let the stress flow out and feel better. In my office, you are free to do so IF you follow these simple rules:

• No literal name-calling.
  • You can't drop the names of others, the commenters, reviewers, users, followers, voices in your head, or anybody you are here to vent about. This is meant to let you cry into the ether and have a place to air out your frustrations about things that happened to you and your story. If @NotCorty commented that "ur stori iz stoopid, poopiehead" this is not the place to drum up a crusade to take back the holy land of weebs. I'll report you and ask for the thread to be locked and deleted. (It is against the forum rules, dummy, I will 1v1 your ass)
• No hating on others.
  • This is a continuation of the above-mentioned rule. I made this thread because I know how it feels when someone misunderstands your work and you can't even explain it for a multitude of reasons. It is bad to keep it in, so I'm here to listen to your woes. Hey, if you want, we can discuss the issue and see what's what. I'm game if you are.
• Don't be THAT guy.
  • Please refrain from excessive cursing. Once again, the forum rules forbid it. You are an author; be creative. Think about it.

Besides these three, there should be no issues. You can also take it as a thread where, if you want, you can advertise yourself. Why not? Maybe you will get proper feedback on whether the criticism you received was valid and not a rouge basement dweller on a keyboard rampage.

PLEASE NOTE:

This doesn't mean this is a feedback threat. Even if you leave your stuff here, there are no guarantees that anyone else or I would take a look at it.

I think that is it.

Oh, and this is for authors. Readers, you have your spaces, you are constantly venting anyway, calling stories and authors stoopid all the time. Now the turntables are scratched, and I'm DJing, waka-waka-waka!

Let me start:

My biggest woe is the type of readers who come in and start commenting on what the MC should do. Constantly. Telling that this is STOOPID, that he should have done this, or this, and kill that and that because he is STOOPID. Like... man, he is not you, it's not your self-insert, it's mine! In my eyes, your ideas are STOOPID, and I think that your thought process is equivalent to a primary school bully who got told his mom is the best pole dancer in Moe's XXX Bar at the exit of I-95.

Have respect for you elders.

 

[Thraben]

Why did I use all my good names on stories I've since abandoned. There are no good names left.

I'm trying write a new thing for me, branch out and test myself, but the unironic best name I have left to give my protagonist is gonna be some lame ahh stuff like 'David' 'Darryl' or 'Joe'.

Fxck me I wish I hadn't wasted my good names early on in my writing endeavors.

Gonna be out here slinging some declaration of independence signing ahh names in a few fics.

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

Why did I use all my good names on stories I've since abandoned. There are no good names left.

I'm trying write a new thing for me, branch out and test myself, but the unironic best name I have left to give my protagonist is gonna be some lame ahh stuff like 'David' 'Darryl' or 'Joe'.

Fxck me I wish I hadn't wasted my good names early on in my writing endeavors.

Gonna be out here slinging some declaration of independence signing ahh names in a few fics.

Bartholomew

 

[Deleted member 68927]

I do my best, but get no hearts on SH. The AO3 crowd gives me hearts, but they only comment when the story is completed.

I know I can't change anything, but it makes me sad. It just makes me feel so, as if it does not matter how much effort I put in a story. People will still look upon it as a way to kill a couple of hours.

Amusing, but not worth remembering.

 

[Corty]

I do my best, but get no hearts on SH. The AO3 crowd gives me hearts, but they only comment when the story is completed.

I know I can't change anything, but it makes me sad. It just makes me feel so, as if it does not matter how much effort I put in a story. People will still look upon it as a way to kill a couple of hours.

Amusing, but not worth remembering.

Hearting stories are the work of 5-10% of your reader base. At least, that is my personal experience; it is what it is. Sadly.

 

[prognastat]

Hearting stories are the work of 5-10% of your reader base. At least, that is my personal experience; it is what it is. Sadly.

That matches mine too. Less than 10% of your audience will interact in any way whether that is commenting, leaving hearts or reviews. You’re really only going to see any of those with any frequency if your story becomes at least somewhat popular.

 

[Deleted member 166076]

God, it feels like I'm always running into annoying people.

Last week I had someone complain that 150-meters by 150-meters per floor with 25 floors is too small for a dungeon. That's like stacking 25 Walmart supercenters on top of each other and then some. It's hundreds of football fields worth of space for goodness sakes! In the same week I had a separate person tell me I should go outside and draw an 8-meter by 16-meter rectangle so I can realize how small it is. My apartment is only half that size. I'm not drawing a 1,500+ square foot rectangle outside! Also, the dungeon room in question was only supposed to contain a single tree and a couple slimes. That isn't even to mention their complaints about the space being too small for it to have a wildflower meadow theme. If Minecraft can have microbiomes, then a dungeon room can be themed after a wildflower meadow. These incidents happened here and on Wattpad.

Then last night I had someone comment that I should run my story through a spelling and grammar checker and overall make my writing out to be trash. They didn't specify what they thought the error was. However, this is writing I've repeatedly used Google Docs spelling and grammar checker on as well as Grammarly. I had also had literally thousands of others read the story before on other sites I cross-post to before they ever got the chapters. I always try to fix anything I have pointed out to me in the word document copy, even if it takes a while to rollout the changes, but they had the edited version and were still making these comments. Funnily enough, the same story has repeatedly gotten compliments for having few grammar issues even when I typed everything out on a phone when I started it and long before I made any edits to it.

Sorry, but I'm going to rant about editing now. Did you know professional editors consider it necessary to spend 1 hour / 1,000 words and charge roughly $2,000 / 100,000 words? I don't have $10,000 to spend to get a 5 volume series edited, nor do I have 500 hours to spend editing a single series. I don't plan to publish my work via Amazon or any official channels. I have a Patreon, but it makes so little money that it's almost too expensive to bother with because of the way taxes work in the US. Just to use the right software to file H&R block charges you $350 and then you have to deal with paying taxes on the money and the PayPal fees. So, yeah, I may as well be a hobbyist writer, yet I'm having demands thrown my way to edit a work I plan to have available 100% for free in 2 years time when I finish posting the chapters. What little money I make off of Patreon is for early access chapters and I post 1 free chapter / week. I spent 50 hours / week the last 2 weeks as it was on just writing 10 new chapters for my current work, story planning some chapters that required a ton of research and were a real time sinks, and cross-posting to some new sites. I don't know where they expect me to get the time to edit more than a million words across all of my work. Also, again, they weren't even a Patreon supporter, but someone who was reading for free making these demands??? I just, it's frustrating and exhausting because I already put so much work into writing and editing and then have to deal with this nonsense. This happened on Inkitt.

Yesterday morning I also had another annoying person DM me on RoyalRoad. They started out reasonable telling me I had somehow been using 2 different names for my MC in one of my novels. That was a quick enough fix, I actually spent more time posting the revised version of chapters than fixing the names in the document copy. However, they decided to complain about me locking the chapters older than 2 weeks old while accusing me of doing so for a stupid reason. I only locked the chapters because I have a history of people demanding I change something to what they want, me blocking them, and them making 2nd+ accounts to continue to verbally harass me, following me to other sites I cross-post to, and even making death threats. It's really annoying to have me trying to protect my mental health to then be made out to be ridiculous and me just being unable to take criticism. I would have been enthusiastically thanking them had they just given me a heads up about the names.

For the record, I've been dealing with toxic readers for more than a year and a half now, ever since one of my stories saw moderate success on Wattpad. My second series was even more popular and things only got worse from there. I know everyone likes to say how they wish they could get comments on their story, even if it was someone who literally hates them, but they clearly don't know what they're talking about. I regularly feel like I'm on the verge of a mental breakdown and second guess my decision to continue writing and posting chapters every day.

 

[Corty]

God, it feels like I'm always running into annoying people.

Last week I had someone complain that 150-meters by 150-meters per floor with 25 floors is too small for a dungeon. That's like stacking 25 Walmart supercenters on top of each other and then some. It's hundreds of football fields worth of space for goodness sakes! In the same week I had a separate person tell me I should go outside and draw an 8-meter by 16-meter rectangle so I can realize how small it is. My apartment is only half that size. I'm not drawing a 1,500+ square foot rectangle outside! Also, the dungeon room in question was only supposed to contain a single tree and a couple slimes. That isn't even to mention their complaints about the space being too small for it to have a wildflower meadow theme. If Minecraft can have microbiomes, then a dungeon room can be themed after a wildflower meadow. These incidents happened here and on Wattpad.

Then last night I had someone comment that I should run my story through a spelling and grammar checker and overall make my writing out to be trash. They didn't specify what they thought the error was. However, this is writing I've repeatedly used Google Docs spelling and grammar checker on as well as Grammarly. I had also had literally thousands of others read the story before on other sites I cross-post to before they ever got the chapters. I always try to fix anything I have pointed out to me in the word document copy, even if it takes a while to rollout the changes, but they had the edited version and were still making these comments. Funnily enough, the same story has repeatedly gotten compliments for having few grammar issues even when I typed everything out on a phone when I started it and long before I made any edits to it.

Sorry, but I'm going to rant about editing now. Did you know professional editors consider it necessary to spend 1 hour / 1,000 words and charge roughly $2,000 / 100,000 words? I don't have $10,000 to spend to get a 5 volume series edited, nor do I have 500 hours to spend editing a single series. I don't plan to publish my work via Amazon or any official channels. I have a Patreon, but it makes so little money that it's almost too expensive to bother with because of the way taxes work in the US. Just to use the right software to file H&R block charges you $350 and then you have to deal with paying taxes on the money and the PayPal fees. So, yeah, I may as well be a hobbyist writer, yet I'm having demands thrown my way to edit a work I plan to have available 100% for free in 2 years time when I finish posting the chapters. What little money I make off of Patreon is for early access chapters and I post 1 free chapter / week. I spent 50 hours / week the last 2 weeks as it was on just writing 10 new chapters for my current work, story planning some chapters that required a ton of research and were a real time sinks, and cross-posting to some new sites. I don't know where they expect me to get the time to edit more than a million words across all of my work. Also, again, they weren't even a Patreon supporter, but someone who was reading for free making these demands??? I just, it's frustrating and exhausting because I already put so much work into writing and editing and then have to deal with this nonsense. This happened on Inkitt.

Yesterday morning I also had another annoying person DM me on RoyalRoad. They started out reasonable telling me I had somehow been using 2 different names for my MC in one of my novels. That was a quick enough fix, I actually spent more time posting the revised version of chapters than fixing the names in the document copy. However, they decided to complain about me locking the chapters older than 2 weeks old while accusing me of doing so for a stupid reason. I only locked the chapters because I have a history of people demanding I change something to what they want, me blocking them, and them making 2nd+ accounts to continue to verbally harass me, following me to other sites I cross-post to, and even making death threats. It's really annoying to have me trying to protect my mental health to then be made out to be ridiculous and me just being unable to take criticism. I would have been enthusiastically thanking them had they just given me a heads up about the names.

For the record, I've been dealing with toxic readers for more than a year and a half now, ever since one of my stories saw moderate success on Wattpad. My second series was even more popular and things only got worse from there. I know everyone likes to say how they wish they could get comments on their story, even if it was someone who literally hates them, but they clearly don't know what they're talking about. I regularly feel like I'm on the verge of a mental breakdown and second guess my decision to continue writing and posting chapters every day.

I don't know how other sites work (Wattpad was disappointing, and I deleted myself from RoyalRoad after finishing a story there), but here, I usually pin the argumentative comments and farm their engagement for better activity ranking the following day.

 

[melchi]

I'm not sure someone vented about this already. I know there are plenty of entitled authors, but readers can be super entitled.

For the most part, stories on here are free entertainment. Authors here aren't professionals, and they usually have lives outside of this space. Don't spam an author for updates, especially if you yourself have never written a story.

>_> but.... we want to know what happens next

 

[Snake99]

Corty is like Moses bringing the table of the 10 commandments, but in scribblehud

 

[Deleted member 84247]

Corty is like Moses bringing the table of the 10 commandments, but in scribblehud

He parted the Scribble Sea.

 

[beast_regards]

I hate the Royal Road, even after I am no longer posting there.

 

[Corty]

Corty is like Moses bringing the table of the 10 commandments, but in scribblehud

And I am ready to beat people up with them.

He parted the Scribble Sea.

I ain't walking 10,000 li to the Heaven Crossing Wide Birth Earth Bridge of the Critics’ Sect.