RepresentingWrath
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This thread is not for fainthearted since it will have naked truth in it. Yeah, the real thing, not the copium others give to you in their echo chambers. Proceed carefully.
I've been thinking about making a writing guide for a long time. I am really tired of the same misconceptions parroted again and again, posioning the well. The echo chamber that SHF has long ago become got on my brain and lives rent free there. I can't stand newbies being misguided by people who have zero idea of what they are talking about. And there are a lot of people who throw advice left and right all while being unsuccessful themselves.
I decided to make this definitive writing gudie so I can just share link instead of writing the same thing again and again. The thing that stopped me was my own laziness and the lack of credibility, but I got some help from a couple of succesful authors.
With preamble out of the way, let me start the real thing.
Countrary to what vast majority parrots, writing doesn't start with paper and pen, nor does it start with MS Word, Google Docs, or any other software you use for writing. The writing starts in your head, when you get this nagging thought, "I want to create something." And this is where 99% of people make a grave mistake.
The mistake is, they don't set up a goal, or they lie to themselves. The thing with writing is that it differes tremendously based on your goal. Do you want fame? Do you want money? Do you want to get something out of your system? Majority, from my observation, thinks they simply want to write. They were very creative since childhood, they liked to read, they liked games, anime, etc; now they want to tell the story of their own.
It is a deceit. They decieve themselves first and foremost. The amount of people that actually CAN write for themselves and really enjoys typing or writing down stuff for no particular reason is miniscule, and none of you here are this perosn. All of you have a different goal deep down, but you are either ashamed or never even thought of it. Based on my observation once again, you all usually have a small adddendum, inconspicuous at first glance. I would like a reader, I would like a review, and so on. Later on you go to forums, you look for a substitute to satisfy your innder cravings, using 'feedback' threads as a replacement.
You have to be honest. Honesty will save you a hobby. If you keep reproaching your desire, if you don't set up an honest goal, you will grow bitter. There is only so much energy a person can spend scremaing into the void. You will drop writing, and countrary to what some idiots here will tell you, I hate it when people drop writing. My heart bleeds when I see newbies popping up with a story that has no more than 100 views. Lastly, I am as much of a reader as I am an author. More authors = more stories I can read.
Here are some words from the man, the myth, the legend himself, Hans! @Hans.Trondheim He is an artist, a writer, a full-time teacher! He did whopping 150+ illustration over the years, I actually believe a lot more than that. He wrote more than 2 million words, his finished Light Novel series(yep, this maniac did all the illustrations and covers for his novels) is 1.2 million words!!!
"I lost focus on my writing goal, which is to finish my story and enjoy doing it, because of my dire situation back at the end of 2023 to early 2025. From just writing casually, I shifted to wanting to monetize my work, which is--on a hindsight--is impossible, given my goals as an author in the first place.
However, my pride as a writer filled my mind, and my desire to turn that into profit took the driver's seat. It didn't help that I also lost my beta readers, so I was really 'feeling in the dark.' So, without hope for someone's help, and my perceived 'lack of talent,' I considered dropping writing and drawing altogether."
This great person almost lost it all because he got tangled up, and mixed up his goals.
So, did I make myself clear? We got this part, right? Being honest to yourself is very important, and so is setting real goals. Setting goals is important to not get lost. It is also important since you have to adjust your writing and mindset for each goal. Now, let me talk about the said goals, a couple of 'major' ones. Let's get two out of the way from the get-go. I want to write for myself and I want to get published.
I want to write for myself. This goal is self-explanatory. You don't really need any advice here, just write at your own pace. The only thing I can really add here is once again remind you that the amount of people that actually want to write for themselves is tiny, and you are probably not one of them. As soon as you get a hunch that you want to publish whatever you've written is the moment where you must have a proper honest conversation with yourself.
I want to get published. What I can say about this goal is not much. I don't have enough research or work done, but I can still say the following. SH, RR, WN, all those sites you see are not Soyetsu alternatives. You, most likely, won't get into traditional publishing through those sites. More than that, there is high probability writing on those sites won't get you anywhere. The fact of the matter is, online novels and online writing is completely different from traditional published books. So you probably won't get a lot of insights or training. There is still a small chance you might get something, but leaving this up to fate isn't wise I think.
I want fame(readers, interaction), I want money. Now these two goals are very similar. Although you can get fame without money, getting money without fame is impossible in writing. So I will talk about the two at the same time.
Let me start by discussing common mistakes people make here. First extreme mistake is, "Write for yourself" and "Write something and somebody will like it." These two phrases are absolutely not true when you are sober and look at reality objectively. Although, at its core they are both right, there are so much more nuances to them that you can ignore them altogether.
The fact of the matter is, you and your writing has to be NOTICED. You don't automatically connect with people who want to read your story. You have to find them and they have to find you. More often than not it's impossible to do. That's the sad reality of our world, no amount of copium, no amount of self-hypnosis will change the reality. If you want to write a niche genres and a niche plot, you will have to work infinitely harder than others.
So that you understand what we are talking about I will give concrete numbers. You won't even get 1k views, you will be lucky to get a SINGLE active reader that will stop reading and commenitng in 10 chapters. When you think, "I'm ok with just a little bit of readers and views," you don't understand just how little you will get in reality. I talk mostly about SH here. As for just how much more you would have to work? We talking daily uploads of chapters that are 2k words for at least three months. Yet probability is high you will have to upload daily for more than half a year.
Another common misconception here is about quality of your writing. The quality of your story here doesn't matter as much. People think if they are the next Brandon Sanderson, Richard Morgan, Pratchett or whoever else they will get a ton of views. It's not true.
This leads me to the first lesson. Once you set your goal, you are set on getting readers or money, you have to adjust, and DO MARKET RESEARCH. Stop thinking SH is Cannes Film Festival, it is YouTube or Twitch at best. You have to adapt and adjust. No one will praise your highly artistic movie and clap their hands and shove awards into your hands. This is freaking youtube full of ADHD kids, horny teenagers, and people who want to relax and be ENTERTAINED.
Are there people who will deliberetely act stupid and say "Uuuhm, well, akchchually I exist! ?" Yes, there is a 0,001% of people that all frequent this forum and act like snobs. Yes. Do you want to cater to them and write for them personally? Make your choice, do you want to potentially get 1000+ readerd, or do you want to write for that one snob who deliberately misunderstands my message and poisons the well?
Back to the topic. You have to adapt and adjust, you HAVE to do market research. You compare yourself with aforementioned Brandon Sanderson, Richard Morgan, Pratchett, you forget they have\had publishing companies behind their backs. YOU ARE ALONE. You don't have help here, and you have to do all the work yourself. Yes, to be a writer with those goals you will have to do work of a publishing company.
Many people say, "Oh, I'm so bad at advertising, I don't use this site, I don't use that site." All of it is completely worthless if you don't do the important part, if you don't adjust. Doesn't matter how many time you spam link to your novel in reddit if you spam it in the wrong subreddit. Same with SH. You can't write whatever and expect that a few posts on Insta will save your story and promote it.
Sacrifices. Writing for fame and money is a constant fight with yourself, you have to constantly make concessions. There is simply no other way around it. You want to write a short novella? Sucks to be you, only long web series get views. You want to make super long chapters? Sucks to be you, people prefer shorter chapters. And so on.
You are a writer. You have to improve your skill so that you can write something you want AND at the same time please the reader.
www.scribblehub.com
I don't like to use myself as an example, especially considering I am on indefinite hiatus, but I happen to be the perfect example of everything I've just described. Obviously you only have my word for it, as there are no proofs, but my success wasn't a fluke. Back when I was still writing actively I got 200k views and 600 readers, 5-10 were active. My average words per chapter were 2200 words, yet I didn't upload daily. In fact, I didn't even have a strict schedule.
But most importantly, my novel's quality was trash. Yes, it is abysmal, you can see it for yourself, yet how come I got so succseful? Becuase I did market research. Clickbait title, popular tags, nice cover, and an ok plot. I wanted to tell a story, but I also had to entertain and grab attention.
Some of you might whine, "Bleh, he just wrote smut now he talks shit!" My good friend, once again you only have my word for it, but I didn't write the usual smut back then. Back in 2020 authors on SH started with smut, it's only chapter 3 but there is already a sex scene. Me? I did one at chapter 20. And if I could, I would've put it off for longer, but I had to give something to readers, see? I adjusted back then.
Don't take my word for it. Here are a couple highly succesful authors on SH that did the same things I did. They did research, they adjusted their desires, they did it to achieve goals.
Let's start with @Corty . The man occupied trending for a long time and has multiple very succesful(if we look at SH only) works.
"Hey-ho, Corty here. Do you want to get popular with your original story? Choose a genre that constantly pops up in the top 10 trending spots.
When I first discovered SH and began posting, my first book popped off, and I finished it with 400k+ views. Why? The reasons are simple: Popular genre. A well-paced story that already had an ending in mind when I started, so it had a proper flow and wasn't random. Market research.
The way I did it was to check what's popular and do it but better. I checked what other reviews complained about and avoided doing it while checking what people seem to like and use it. Of course, you can't please anyone, but it is a good indicator of what things the majority dislikes reading about. But more than that... I simply avoided the tropes that I hated reading about. Still, if you want to gather readers, you must write what is popular at the moment; no escape from that. That is why there are countless isekai slop everywhere... it just works.
Most importantly, I posted daily. Every. Day. Same time, every time.
You may think it was perfect, but it wasn't. Looking back, my grammar was not as good as it is today, but it still worked because, despite the errors, the story was flowing well, the frequency of new chapters to read every day pulled in readers, and I began appearing on trending multiple times, sometimes in a row.
But not everything works out, and the next part is for those who are starting out right now. Not every genre and idea is equal. Even with my following, I have multiple stories that, simply put, are failures. I cut them short and finished ahead of my original plans, as they failed to bring views in. Note: I said finished. Not abandoned, not put on hiatus. Finished. A track record of a finished book is the foundation you must establish, or it will crumble like a house built on sand.
Failure is inevitable. Stories are not made equal, even if you have success with one story. That does not guarantee every book will be a hit. You can try, you should, but when it doesn't work out, you must realize it. Then, you either give up wholly or try again. Whatever it is, just make sure you also learn why it didn't work out. If you can't identify the issue, you will never get from A to B and just keep running in circles."
The ever-rising star of SH, @Zinless . The man reinvented himself, and achieved stunning success on SH. Almost 500k views, 2300 readers, and he won't stop with just that.
"Hello, this is Zinless, an author from Scribble Hub. I believe that my story is doing pretty well, and I would like to offer some insights. If your goal in writing is money or fame, then I have to say that market research is a must. You cannot just shove your story to as many faces as possible and hope most of them would bite. You need to adjust, adapt, and accept that some things need changes.
My current story is actually a reboot, and I had adjusted many things compared to the original so that it may become something worth putting on patreon. I learned that present tense is not a popular style, I learned that fast pacing may not always be a good thing, I learned how to keep a schedule for consistency, etc.
The main thing is to deliver not just an entertaining story, but one comforting to read for your readers. A small minor irk is enough for anyone to drop your story. By the way, the schedule I adopted isn't that crazy, it's just three chapters per week at around 1500 words each. But what's important is consistency, making sure your readers know they can expect your chapter to drop at a certain time of the day."
Here is quote from another legendary author, the local vampire, @RepresentingEnvy . I don't think I need to introduce her, as her novels speak for themselves. Constant trending, on her most popular work she 200K+ views, 2100+ readers, all of it with just 50 chapters.
"Hello, this is RepresentingEnvy or En-chan. As many of you know, I can get a bunch of readers on the site and other sites by simply adjusting to the market like Sailus said. Before you say, "I only write GL," or some other thing, I was able to get over 1k readers without any GL on OP Witch to start. I also got it with another story, and if you don't believe me, you can ask Blobby. He read OP Witch when there was no GL, and it already had a ton of readers. Also, same as Sailus, I didn't upload daily. You can check the stats of OP Witch and see there was no consistent upload schedule.
One thing I was able to master is cutting my losses. If a story is not working, I can just delete it and move past it. I see a common problem with people who are wanting fame or money. They say they want it, but they aren't willing to cut their losses. If I have a goal of getting readers, and the story is not getting it, I can delete it and move on. At first I thought this was a bad thing, but it's a skill that allows me to continue writing after I deleted a beloved story."
You might argue that we all simply write what is popular, we lucked out that our interest aligns with those of majority of readers. It's not true. Corty, me, Envy, we want to write something different as well. And we usually suffer losses when we do it. But as Corty pointed out, it doesn't mean we have to give up on those stories. Don't forget your goal here is fame, money, or both. So we should cut our losses short and find a different way to make those idea work.
So. What do we get in the end, concise TLDR. The succesfull authors disagree on certain elements, but the gist of it is the following. Quality of your work doesn't matter as much. Uploading daily doesn't matter as much. Making a backlog or long chapters doesn't matter as much. What matters is to write what readers want to read and keep them entertained.
I want to adress another misconception, a mistake certain people make here. Jeesus Christ not everyone live in America, Germany, or UK. A lot of people here are from third world countries(pinoy unite!), and to become a full time writer all we need is 750-1000$ a month. Stop trying to compare yourself to others when you can't think outside of your first world country. Yes, becoming a full time author for American sitizen is harder, but it doesn't mean it's as hard for others, god damn, man, use your brain.
Oh no, what was that!? A wild Zinless has appeared!
"Hello, this is Zinless again. I live in a third world country, and I would like to offer my insights based on my experience living here as a writer. I am still an amateur writer with much to learn, and I can't say that I'm a full-time writer yet. But I want to let you guys know that, if I was making 750 bucks a month, I can definitely turn this passion of mine into a full-time thing. For context, I am making around 200 dollars a month on patreon currently, and with it, I can:
That's about all I can say now. If I rememeber something I will edit this guide. For now I think it looks good, and you finally learned the lesson that actual writing is just the tip of the iceberg. There was never any secret on how to become succesfull. You were simply not interested in doing non-creative part of the work that will lead you to success, and you are too stubborn, as you refuse to make concession.
P.S. For all the peeps that I love; Bartun, Hans, Paul, and others. Please, don't post sad emojis saying, "I simply want someone to read my work." I love you as people, but oh my god you are stubborn as authors\writers, and refuse to face the reality. The reality that you don't adjust, and reap what you've sown. I beleive that if you put your mind into becoming succesful author you will achieve it. You all are hardworking, good people, if you ever want more fame or money from you writing, you simply have to change your attitude towards it, that's the secret.
I've been thinking about making a writing guide for a long time. I am really tired of the same misconceptions parroted again and again, posioning the well. The echo chamber that SHF has long ago become got on my brain and lives rent free there. I can't stand newbies being misguided by people who have zero idea of what they are talking about. And there are a lot of people who throw advice left and right all while being unsuccessful themselves.
I decided to make this definitive writing gudie so I can just share link instead of writing the same thing again and again. The thing that stopped me was my own laziness and the lack of credibility, but I got some help from a couple of succesful authors.
With preamble out of the way, let me start the real thing.
Countrary to what vast majority parrots, writing doesn't start with paper and pen, nor does it start with MS Word, Google Docs, or any other software you use for writing. The writing starts in your head, when you get this nagging thought, "I want to create something." And this is where 99% of people make a grave mistake.
The mistake is, they don't set up a goal, or they lie to themselves. The thing with writing is that it differes tremendously based on your goal. Do you want fame? Do you want money? Do you want to get something out of your system? Majority, from my observation, thinks they simply want to write. They were very creative since childhood, they liked to read, they liked games, anime, etc; now they want to tell the story of their own.
It is a deceit. They decieve themselves first and foremost. The amount of people that actually CAN write for themselves and really enjoys typing or writing down stuff for no particular reason is miniscule, and none of you here are this perosn. All of you have a different goal deep down, but you are either ashamed or never even thought of it. Based on my observation once again, you all usually have a small adddendum, inconspicuous at first glance. I would like a reader, I would like a review, and so on. Later on you go to forums, you look for a substitute to satisfy your innder cravings, using 'feedback' threads as a replacement.
You have to be honest. Honesty will save you a hobby. If you keep reproaching your desire, if you don't set up an honest goal, you will grow bitter. There is only so much energy a person can spend scremaing into the void. You will drop writing, and countrary to what some idiots here will tell you, I hate it when people drop writing. My heart bleeds when I see newbies popping up with a story that has no more than 100 views. Lastly, I am as much of a reader as I am an author. More authors = more stories I can read.
Here are some words from the man, the myth, the legend himself, Hans! @Hans.Trondheim He is an artist, a writer, a full-time teacher! He did whopping 150+ illustration over the years, I actually believe a lot more than that. He wrote more than 2 million words, his finished Light Novel series(yep, this maniac did all the illustrations and covers for his novels) is 1.2 million words!!!
"I lost focus on my writing goal, which is to finish my story and enjoy doing it, because of my dire situation back at the end of 2023 to early 2025. From just writing casually, I shifted to wanting to monetize my work, which is--on a hindsight--is impossible, given my goals as an author in the first place.
However, my pride as a writer filled my mind, and my desire to turn that into profit took the driver's seat. It didn't help that I also lost my beta readers, so I was really 'feeling in the dark.' So, without hope for someone's help, and my perceived 'lack of talent,' I considered dropping writing and drawing altogether."
This great person almost lost it all because he got tangled up, and mixed up his goals.
So, did I make myself clear? We got this part, right? Being honest to yourself is very important, and so is setting real goals. Setting goals is important to not get lost. It is also important since you have to adjust your writing and mindset for each goal. Now, let me talk about the said goals, a couple of 'major' ones. Let's get two out of the way from the get-go. I want to write for myself and I want to get published.
I want to write for myself. This goal is self-explanatory. You don't really need any advice here, just write at your own pace. The only thing I can really add here is once again remind you that the amount of people that actually want to write for themselves is tiny, and you are probably not one of them. As soon as you get a hunch that you want to publish whatever you've written is the moment where you must have a proper honest conversation with yourself.
I want to get published. What I can say about this goal is not much. I don't have enough research or work done, but I can still say the following. SH, RR, WN, all those sites you see are not Soyetsu alternatives. You, most likely, won't get into traditional publishing through those sites. More than that, there is high probability writing on those sites won't get you anywhere. The fact of the matter is, online novels and online writing is completely different from traditional published books. So you probably won't get a lot of insights or training. There is still a small chance you might get something, but leaving this up to fate isn't wise I think.
I want fame(readers, interaction), I want money. Now these two goals are very similar. Although you can get fame without money, getting money without fame is impossible in writing. So I will talk about the two at the same time.
Let me start by discussing common mistakes people make here. First extreme mistake is, "Write for yourself" and "Write something and somebody will like it." These two phrases are absolutely not true when you are sober and look at reality objectively. Although, at its core they are both right, there are so much more nuances to them that you can ignore them altogether.
The fact of the matter is, you and your writing has to be NOTICED. You don't automatically connect with people who want to read your story. You have to find them and they have to find you. More often than not it's impossible to do. That's the sad reality of our world, no amount of copium, no amount of self-hypnosis will change the reality. If you want to write a niche genres and a niche plot, you will have to work infinitely harder than others.
So that you understand what we are talking about I will give concrete numbers. You won't even get 1k views, you will be lucky to get a SINGLE active reader that will stop reading and commenitng in 10 chapters. When you think, "I'm ok with just a little bit of readers and views," you don't understand just how little you will get in reality. I talk mostly about SH here. As for just how much more you would have to work? We talking daily uploads of chapters that are 2k words for at least three months. Yet probability is high you will have to upload daily for more than half a year.
Another common misconception here is about quality of your writing. The quality of your story here doesn't matter as much. People think if they are the next Brandon Sanderson, Richard Morgan, Pratchett or whoever else they will get a ton of views. It's not true.
This leads me to the first lesson. Once you set your goal, you are set on getting readers or money, you have to adjust, and DO MARKET RESEARCH. Stop thinking SH is Cannes Film Festival, it is YouTube or Twitch at best. You have to adapt and adjust. No one will praise your highly artistic movie and clap their hands and shove awards into your hands. This is freaking youtube full of ADHD kids, horny teenagers, and people who want to relax and be ENTERTAINED.
Are there people who will deliberetely act stupid and say "Uuuhm, well, akchchually I exist! ?" Yes, there is a 0,001% of people that all frequent this forum and act like snobs. Yes. Do you want to cater to them and write for them personally? Make your choice, do you want to potentially get 1000+ readerd, or do you want to write for that one snob who deliberately misunderstands my message and poisons the well?
Back to the topic. You have to adapt and adjust, you HAVE to do market research. You compare yourself with aforementioned Brandon Sanderson, Richard Morgan, Pratchett, you forget they have\had publishing companies behind their backs. YOU ARE ALONE. You don't have help here, and you have to do all the work yourself. Yes, to be a writer with those goals you will have to do work of a publishing company.
Many people say, "Oh, I'm so bad at advertising, I don't use this site, I don't use that site." All of it is completely worthless if you don't do the important part, if you don't adjust. Doesn't matter how many time you spam link to your novel in reddit if you spam it in the wrong subreddit. Same with SH. You can't write whatever and expect that a few posts on Insta will save your story and promote it.
Sacrifices. Writing for fame and money is a constant fight with yourself, you have to constantly make concessions. There is simply no other way around it. You want to write a short novella? Sucks to be you, only long web series get views. You want to make super long chapters? Sucks to be you, people prefer shorter chapters. And so on.
You are a writer. You have to improve your skill so that you can write something you want AND at the same time please the reader.
Transmigrated as an NTR’ed protagonist.
WARNING!!! The mc of this novel is weak(mentally) and thus unlikable. The story also has a tag SLOW-PACE. Which means there won't be a lot of actions going on from the get-go. Erlig, a senior in a respectable college lived his whole life without knowing such a word as...
I don't like to use myself as an example, especially considering I am on indefinite hiatus, but I happen to be the perfect example of everything I've just described. Obviously you only have my word for it, as there are no proofs, but my success wasn't a fluke. Back when I was still writing actively I got 200k views and 600 readers, 5-10 were active. My average words per chapter were 2200 words, yet I didn't upload daily. In fact, I didn't even have a strict schedule.
But most importantly, my novel's quality was trash. Yes, it is abysmal, you can see it for yourself, yet how come I got so succseful? Becuase I did market research. Clickbait title, popular tags, nice cover, and an ok plot. I wanted to tell a story, but I also had to entertain and grab attention.
Some of you might whine, "Bleh, he just wrote smut now he talks shit!" My good friend, once again you only have my word for it, but I didn't write the usual smut back then. Back in 2020 authors on SH started with smut, it's only chapter 3 but there is already a sex scene. Me? I did one at chapter 20. And if I could, I would've put it off for longer, but I had to give something to readers, see? I adjusted back then.
Don't take my word for it. Here are a couple highly succesful authors on SH that did the same things I did. They did research, they adjusted their desires, they did it to achieve goals.
Let's start with @Corty . The man occupied trending for a long time and has multiple very succesful(if we look at SH only) works.
"Hey-ho, Corty here. Do you want to get popular with your original story? Choose a genre that constantly pops up in the top 10 trending spots.
When I first discovered SH and began posting, my first book popped off, and I finished it with 400k+ views. Why? The reasons are simple: Popular genre. A well-paced story that already had an ending in mind when I started, so it had a proper flow and wasn't random. Market research.
The way I did it was to check what's popular and do it but better. I checked what other reviews complained about and avoided doing it while checking what people seem to like and use it. Of course, you can't please anyone, but it is a good indicator of what things the majority dislikes reading about. But more than that... I simply avoided the tropes that I hated reading about. Still, if you want to gather readers, you must write what is popular at the moment; no escape from that. That is why there are countless isekai slop everywhere... it just works.
Most importantly, I posted daily. Every. Day. Same time, every time.
You may think it was perfect, but it wasn't. Looking back, my grammar was not as good as it is today, but it still worked because, despite the errors, the story was flowing well, the frequency of new chapters to read every day pulled in readers, and I began appearing on trending multiple times, sometimes in a row.
But not everything works out, and the next part is for those who are starting out right now. Not every genre and idea is equal. Even with my following, I have multiple stories that, simply put, are failures. I cut them short and finished ahead of my original plans, as they failed to bring views in. Note: I said finished. Not abandoned, not put on hiatus. Finished. A track record of a finished book is the foundation you must establish, or it will crumble like a house built on sand.
Failure is inevitable. Stories are not made equal, even if you have success with one story. That does not guarantee every book will be a hit. You can try, you should, but when it doesn't work out, you must realize it. Then, you either give up wholly or try again. Whatever it is, just make sure you also learn why it didn't work out. If you can't identify the issue, you will never get from A to B and just keep running in circles."
The ever-rising star of SH, @Zinless . The man reinvented himself, and achieved stunning success on SH. Almost 500k views, 2300 readers, and he won't stop with just that.
"Hello, this is Zinless, an author from Scribble Hub. I believe that my story is doing pretty well, and I would like to offer some insights. If your goal in writing is money or fame, then I have to say that market research is a must. You cannot just shove your story to as many faces as possible and hope most of them would bite. You need to adjust, adapt, and accept that some things need changes.
My current story is actually a reboot, and I had adjusted many things compared to the original so that it may become something worth putting on patreon. I learned that present tense is not a popular style, I learned that fast pacing may not always be a good thing, I learned how to keep a schedule for consistency, etc.
The main thing is to deliver not just an entertaining story, but one comforting to read for your readers. A small minor irk is enough for anyone to drop your story. By the way, the schedule I adopted isn't that crazy, it's just three chapters per week at around 1500 words each. But what's important is consistency, making sure your readers know they can expect your chapter to drop at a certain time of the day."
Here is quote from another legendary author, the local vampire, @RepresentingEnvy . I don't think I need to introduce her, as her novels speak for themselves. Constant trending, on her most popular work she 200K+ views, 2100+ readers, all of it with just 50 chapters.
"Hello, this is RepresentingEnvy or En-chan. As many of you know, I can get a bunch of readers on the site and other sites by simply adjusting to the market like Sailus said. Before you say, "I only write GL," or some other thing, I was able to get over 1k readers without any GL on OP Witch to start. I also got it with another story, and if you don't believe me, you can ask Blobby. He read OP Witch when there was no GL, and it already had a ton of readers. Also, same as Sailus, I didn't upload daily. You can check the stats of OP Witch and see there was no consistent upload schedule.
One thing I was able to master is cutting my losses. If a story is not working, I can just delete it and move past it. I see a common problem with people who are wanting fame or money. They say they want it, but they aren't willing to cut their losses. If I have a goal of getting readers, and the story is not getting it, I can delete it and move on. At first I thought this was a bad thing, but it's a skill that allows me to continue writing after I deleted a beloved story."
You might argue that we all simply write what is popular, we lucked out that our interest aligns with those of majority of readers. It's not true. Corty, me, Envy, we want to write something different as well. And we usually suffer losses when we do it. But as Corty pointed out, it doesn't mean we have to give up on those stories. Don't forget your goal here is fame, money, or both. So we should cut our losses short and find a different way to make those idea work.
So. What do we get in the end, concise TLDR. The succesfull authors disagree on certain elements, but the gist of it is the following. Quality of your work doesn't matter as much. Uploading daily doesn't matter as much. Making a backlog or long chapters doesn't matter as much. What matters is to write what readers want to read and keep them entertained.
I want to adress another misconception, a mistake certain people make here. Jeesus Christ not everyone live in America, Germany, or UK. A lot of people here are from third world countries(pinoy unite!), and to become a full time writer all we need is 750-1000$ a month. Stop trying to compare yourself to others when you can't think outside of your first world country. Yes, becoming a full time author for American sitizen is harder, but it doesn't mean it's as hard for others, god damn, man, use your brain.
Oh no, what was that!? A wild Zinless has appeared!
"Hello, this is Zinless again. I live in a third world country, and I would like to offer my insights based on my experience living here as a writer. I am still an amateur writer with much to learn, and I can't say that I'm a full-time writer yet. But I want to let you guys know that, if I was making 750 bucks a month, I can definitely turn this passion of mine into a full-time thing. For context, I am making around 200 dollars a month on patreon currently, and with it, I can:
- Cover my commuting expenses,
- Feed myself properly,
- Pay my own college tuition,
- Fund art commissions,
- Have a little extra for savings,
That's about all I can say now. If I rememeber something I will edit this guide. For now I think it looks good, and you finally learned the lesson that actual writing is just the tip of the iceberg. There was never any secret on how to become succesfull. You were simply not interested in doing non-creative part of the work that will lead you to success, and you are too stubborn, as you refuse to make concession.
P.S. For all the peeps that I love; Bartun, Hans, Paul, and others. Please, don't post sad emojis saying, "I simply want someone to read my work." I love you as people, but oh my god you are stubborn as authors\writers, and refuse to face the reality. The reality that you don't adjust, and reap what you've sown. I beleive that if you put your mind into becoming succesful author you will achieve it. You all are hardworking, good people, if you ever want more fame or money from you writing, you simply have to change your attitude towards it, that's the secret.
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So, I decided to be kind yo myself and continue with what I wrote to give consistent update. When I am re editing it however, I'll keep coming back this post ?
