AnneOminous
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2023
- Messages
- 80
- Points
- 48
Getting decent on AO3 - Wattpad and FFN are ghost towns. So are Royal Road, WebNovel, Inkitt, Neobook, QuoteV...Scribblehub shadow bans mass uploads to prevent bots. If you post more than 3 a day then the site flags you as spam. You can appeal it but that won't change the upload rulings. Most of the people here aren't telling you to change your story but rather that 350 is pretty good for SH and that may be your market cap for this site. Fanfics in general do better on Ao3, fanfic.net, and wattpad. There is a market here and other sites but they are significantly smaller.
If 350 is good for SH, why the hell is anybody here? That's nobody.
I have a personal connection to the character. Ranma saved my life when I was a kid.I understand frustration. I've been there myself. In a former life, I wrote clean, LotR-style fantasy (no smut, not romance, just adventure and action and a splash of comedy) and got MAYBE 2-3 views. 1-2 reads. 0 comments. I spent 5 years working on that daily. That is to say, 5 whole years dedicted every available moment to working on it. you have any idea how frustrating it is to spend literally every waking moment working on a single project and have nothing to show for it? And I do mean every waking moment. at work, I'd think and plan. on break, write down notes, at lunch, eat and type, go home and type some more.
So yeah, I get your frustration. but as has been said, you need to consider how many people like ranma 1/2, how many people like fanfics, and how many people like your writing style. make a venn diagram and that little section in the middle? That's your audience. and I'm not saying your writing style is bad. I don't know. I haven't read it. but each author has a style, just like each painter does. not everyone likes van gogh or da vinci, or rembrandt.
I know it sucks. I know it's frustrating. and I know it hurts. But the reality is that you limit yourself by calling it a ranma 1/2 fanfic. I LOVE ranma but i'm not a fan of fanfics. that said, if your story were original, I'd likely be more willing to read it, if it were "inspired by" ranma rather than a straight up fanfic.
You say you left canon behind in chapter 2. so why keep the fanfic tag? Why suffer under that banner? do you not have faith that your story could succeed without riding on the coattails of an existing title?
Finally, your uploading. Take advantage of the scheduled uploads SH offers. schedule maybe 2-3 a week, rather than a large dump that people have to slog through. My main stories aren't the most popular, but they are getting noticed. my key is that I planthe uploads carefully (if maybe a little playing dirty). My main uploads are AWLAYS on the same days at the same times. if I have an important announcement, I post it at any other time (helps increase exposure to a crowd that isn't on at my usual times). but most importantly, I plan each chapter to "take as long as a standard poop". the idea is that they can sit down and do their business while they read, then be done when they're ready to leave the toilet.
but in the end, you just sound bitter. you come here asking for advice then effectively shoot down and mock anyone that gives advice because it's not what you wanted to hear. so my advice? Take a step back. step back and consider if it's really worth it. consider what you want specifically. do you want to be noticed by more people? Then drop the fanfic tag and instead make it "inspired by" ranma 1/2. if you want a ranma fanfic, then give up your notion of being famed for your fanfic, because fanfic authors rarely if ever get major audiences.
I know I can file the serial numbers off and do better, but in my opinion I would be flushing the *soul* of why the story matters to me down the toilet. I bring little bits of canon in where it makes sense - usually no more than 1 canon character every 25-30 chapters, and when I do, they are given the background treatment as if they were a new character.
I wanted to tell a story. I've done that. And now I see that the story has *profound impacts* on people who read it - and their comments have in turn had a *profound impact* on ***me.*** And it has made me crave more. It has made me want to reach more people. It has made me think there are more people out there who *need* the impact my readers tell me it has had.
Nobody cares about the fandom on this platform. I'm hoping the new anime helps there. The three stories in my series are #1, #2, and #3 in the Ranma tag on SH, and their readership all sucks.
I don't need them to care about Ranma. I need them to care about the person I allowed her to be. The growth her creator refused to give her.I see, so your entitled and also vain. 350 readers for volume 1 puts you in the top percent of authors. People have written more than you for less. Even a packed bus in a third world country can't get 350 people on it. Take a moment to actually appreciate what you have.
Your audience is exactly the audience you signed up for when writing a fanfic of a semi-fringe show. Again, maybe the reboot will change that, but I don't know.
I also didn't say you needed to change the story and make it more sexual. The twilight fanfic was already sexual. Just rename characters from Ranma, and give them different descriptives, like change hair color, eye color etc. If you story already diverges heavily, then it doesn't change much.
Or you know, bang your head against the wall that people don't actually care that much about Ranma, but you desperately wish they did.
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