EliseValkyria
Competitive Professional In Being Ignored
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2020
- Messages
- 293
- Points
- 103
Hello everyone, I haven't discussed anything in the forums for a while because I've been focusing more on continuing my novel.
First of all, I want to give some context to what exactly is going on and why I want to ask whether or not it is a good idea to relaunch my novel.
First of all, there is my novel, Valkyria Squadron, the link is in the signature. I've been working on it for a long time, a project of many years, almost 7 years of planning in my head, 3 years of writing. So far there are 280 chapters, more than 750 thousand words, 354.6k views, 5782 favorites and so on.
So far so good, good numbers I think.
The problem I have is with the reviews. My novel has an average rating of 3.6 and dropping, which, based on the comments I've received, is turning off a lot of people, maybe too many. And while I wouldn't normally pay much attention to that, it's supposed to be a rating from the readers themselves.
The problem is that I've realized that my novel and its rating are currently in a weird loop that I don't think I can get out of unless I somehow reset the rating.
It all started in the first days of writing my novel, the illusion of being written, the initial adrenaline, the joy of knowing that there were people out there reading what was so personal to me. The problem is that English is not my first language, and the tools I was using were not the best, so those first chapters received very strong negative reviews, which I still agree with today, those chapters were a disaster, plus added to the already complicated plot of the novel made the first chapters look like a complete disaster.
Once again, I agreed with the criticism myself, so of course I tried to improve in that particular aspect. Time passed, I improved as a writer, I could organize my ideas and how to present each chapter better, the tools improved, I learned a lot more English and grammar. But I was always bothered by that rough start of my novel, so I worked tirelessly to improve those first chapters over time, during these three years that I have been writing the new chapters, I keep revising the first chapters to improve them a little more.
The real problem?
That the comments complaining about the grammar never stopped, and the negative reviews got even louder, indicating that the first few chapters were worthless garbage.
What happens is that the chapters they complain about no longer exist. New people are now reading what is essentially the 4.0 edition of the early chapters, and they are still complaining. They are still complaining about how horrible the first chapter of the whole story is, even though it is a completely different story now, even with different characters.
The only thing that has not changed over time has been the analysis of the novel and the comments of the chapters because I never deleted them. At the beginning they were more than deserved, but now after so much time and so many arrangements?
And I understood that new readers only saw the comments complaining about the grammar and they also started to complain about the grammar and how poorly written it is, without ever saying exactly what's wrong or how to fix it, they just "feel in the force" that something is wrong.
So I guess I'm stuck in that cycle right now. A new reader comes in, sees the novel with a low rating by Scribble Hub standards, maybe reads the synopsis and plans to read it. They see the reviews about the horrible grammar from people who never got past chapter 13 of 280. They read the revised 4.0 version of those chapters and then complain about the bad grammar too, leaving a negative rating because it's poorly written, not because of the story itself or sometehing else.
At first I was a conspiracy theorist. But recently I have received comments from new readers who have read a bit more and mentioned that they also believe that the comments and analyses they saw before reading it were much harsher than what actually happened, and that it put them off reading the novel in the first place because of the large amount of criticism it received from other people.
First of all, I want to give some context to what exactly is going on and why I want to ask whether or not it is a good idea to relaunch my novel.
First of all, there is my novel, Valkyria Squadron, the link is in the signature. I've been working on it for a long time, a project of many years, almost 7 years of planning in my head, 3 years of writing. So far there are 280 chapters, more than 750 thousand words, 354.6k views, 5782 favorites and so on.
So far so good, good numbers I think.
The problem I have is with the reviews. My novel has an average rating of 3.6 and dropping, which, based on the comments I've received, is turning off a lot of people, maybe too many. And while I wouldn't normally pay much attention to that, it's supposed to be a rating from the readers themselves.
The problem is that I've realized that my novel and its rating are currently in a weird loop that I don't think I can get out of unless I somehow reset the rating.
It all started in the first days of writing my novel, the illusion of being written, the initial adrenaline, the joy of knowing that there were people out there reading what was so personal to me. The problem is that English is not my first language, and the tools I was using were not the best, so those first chapters received very strong negative reviews, which I still agree with today, those chapters were a disaster, plus added to the already complicated plot of the novel made the first chapters look like a complete disaster.
Once again, I agreed with the criticism myself, so of course I tried to improve in that particular aspect. Time passed, I improved as a writer, I could organize my ideas and how to present each chapter better, the tools improved, I learned a lot more English and grammar. But I was always bothered by that rough start of my novel, so I worked tirelessly to improve those first chapters over time, during these three years that I have been writing the new chapters, I keep revising the first chapters to improve them a little more.
The real problem?
That the comments complaining about the grammar never stopped, and the negative reviews got even louder, indicating that the first few chapters were worthless garbage.
What happens is that the chapters they complain about no longer exist. New people are now reading what is essentially the 4.0 edition of the early chapters, and they are still complaining. They are still complaining about how horrible the first chapter of the whole story is, even though it is a completely different story now, even with different characters.
The only thing that has not changed over time has been the analysis of the novel and the comments of the chapters because I never deleted them. At the beginning they were more than deserved, but now after so much time and so many arrangements?
And I understood that new readers only saw the comments complaining about the grammar and they also started to complain about the grammar and how poorly written it is, without ever saying exactly what's wrong or how to fix it, they just "feel in the force" that something is wrong.
So I guess I'm stuck in that cycle right now. A new reader comes in, sees the novel with a low rating by Scribble Hub standards, maybe reads the synopsis and plans to read it. They see the reviews about the horrible grammar from people who never got past chapter 13 of 280. They read the revised 4.0 version of those chapters and then complain about the bad grammar too, leaving a negative rating because it's poorly written, not because of the story itself or sometehing else.
At first I was a conspiracy theorist. But recently I have received comments from new readers who have read a bit more and mentioned that they also believe that the comments and analyses they saw before reading it were much harsher than what actually happened, and that it put them off reading the novel in the first place because of the large amount of criticism it received from other people.
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