All the things you hate about writing Web Novels

[QueenofBabyLoon]

We all need to accept that garbage gets published because garbage is easy. We have dumbed down society. Here where I live, in Canada, about 40% of the population can't read a simple newspaper article. Take that in. That is half of the population. And then we expect them to read English literature?! That is asking too much. You will see that all books that are published are written in simple English and present tense. We are at a point where our college graduates cannot project themselves in time, for Pete's sake! And so we publish books that can be read by the masses. Perpetrating this intellectual numbness that has taken society over.

The whole point of education is to take the lowest common denominator and pull him up as close as possible to a standard of excellence. Not to use literature, the main vehicle of knowledge ever since Gutenberg invented the printing machine, to drag down society to the lowest common denominator.

Urgh. I just can't take this anymore.

And of course you are not a fame-whore. You write to bring joy. If there is no echo to your message of affection and joy, you feel like you are stuck in a dark box. I've realized that readers who truly wish to reach a level of excellence in their writing need to learn that it isn't as dark as it seems, that utter silence, and that you just need to get your eyes accustomed to it. Then you will see much more than meets the eye.

[RiidDisBuk]

Ahaha, true. It's not something I'm mad about, though.

Expecting popularity quickly is a bad idea. Everyone knows this.

[WaterRaven]

Nowadays, you gotta have an Instagram account, or a Twitter, or even better, a 24/7 camera where future readers can look at you writing, crying, getting diabetes and pimples and never seeing the light of the day again while you prepare their next commercial, consumerist novel.

Omg, I laughed so hard and then cried from the truth of it.

What kills me is how much time and energy you have to put into something, only to offer it for free, and you have to keep doing that -until- it gets enough attention that someone deems it worthy of being paid for. On some platforms it's some mystery algorithm mixed with a youtube following and a blood sacrifice before you get subscribers or sales. One minute I've got sales on Amazon and I'm like "Yay, look, money for the five years of work I've poured into my writing, editing, cover art, social media, and promoting..." and then suddenly there's a dive and I'm staring at this empty sales board and need to take another online course or bribe more people with free stuff in the hopes that they'll buy the next book in the series. All the while, I am throwing out books for free on multiple platforms, running ads, and on social media when all I really want to do is write the next book.

That's the other thing--feeling stretched across so many platforms. I was solely with KDP select for a while and now I'm branching out again and I definitely think web novel apps are the next phase in publishing, but I still need to promote on FB, Kobo, Draft2Digital, and somehow share all of that on Twitter, my newsletter, and FB starts to vibrate with the sheer amount of coffee she has to drink to keep up with all of it O.o

I was this artistic type that couldn't show up to something on time to save my life and now I have to schedule my whole week to make sure I cover everything. :') Yay self-employment.

[QueenofBabyLoon]

I forgot the blood sacrifice!!! Or you can summon Rumpeltiltskin (because ever since Harry Potter started making an obscene amount of money for publishers like no book before it - since the Bible, that little guy has never gone out of business) and offer him your next ten children in exchange of maybe some consideration from any normal publishing house. JUST SOME CONSIDERATION!!!

And then you realize you've spent more time on social media promoting the thing than actually writing its sequel. And the stress hits in, 'cause now you've gotta think about the sequel but you've lost all the ideas, because the last time you thought about it was 5 years ago. Actually, you don't even remember what the first book was about?! A love story between a seal and an alien, or shit?! Oh, no, wait, it was this very sensitive, beautiful tale about a young man who was blind but who fought against the odds to become a great pianist and his love story with a young Kazakhstani ballerina! You don't even remember where Kazakhstan is on the map at that point.

Come here so I can give you a big hug. You've worked hard. You've worked well. But people are garbage.

[nostalgicroxas]

Hoo man. I gave up a lot of those "complaints" over a decade ago when the internet was still young. It was depressing me too hard and I just flipped a switch : If they like it, they'll read it. If they like it, they'll share it. If they like it, they'll comment.
And instead I've been on the hunt for "not dead" websites for traffic. Another post of mine somewhere on these forums I went into stats and details for these sites. Fanfic vs Original fic side by side stats, vs is the site itself dead. And generally, a lot of the sites Google recommends are dead as a door nail.

It's actually super disheartening. And is another reason why I'm trying hard to resist stat studying this site aswell. Stats are important, yes, but not when you're going crazy from it. I end up just finding sites that have UI's that I enjoy. dA for a long time was a site I loathed it's novel submission process, Ao3 is the second favorite site I enjoy it's UI for, if not a bit above dA's. Both sites have huge issues for me: algorithms, FF.net refugees who A/N in tags, and readers don't cross pollinate from fanfic to original fics.

Honestly, I've had very little luck for natural readers or promotionally dragging readers to my stuff. Does that make me think my stuff is bad? No. It makes me think I ***king hate PR / marketing and the internet algorithms. First and foremost, I write for myself. If I don't like what I'm writing, I will not write it.

Yeah the multiple outlets for artists and writers is honestly stupid. I miss when we just all posted on dA and that was the go-to to look at people's art. I hate following and browsing art portfolio's on tumblr (I just go to username . tumblr . com / archive for the lazy way, screw your custom layout). Twitter and facebook and instagram and all are TERRIBLE at navigation for anything. I follow a cosplayer on FB that does really neat stuff like dying silk and painting on it, and it's a 10-20min process to find the one picture I'm looking for to tell a friend about how cool this artist is. On dA you'd just hit "view all" and bypass their folders to find it in 2 minutes.

[AllynCrowe]

The only thing I dislike about writing web novels, is that people somehow think it's fast and quick? Maybe it is if you rush and speedwrite, but for me personally it's a very slow process, and I really get annoyed when people tell me writing is easy and simple, since it goes so fast.
If I want to write something of actual quality, I am not going to write more than 300-500 words an hour. Which means that for a decently sized chapter of around 2000 words, I spend 4-6,5 hours. That's still nearly a full work day!

[WaterRaven]

I guess I better get on the baby-making so I can sell them off

That's absolutely true, you spend way more time on social media and on ads than actually writing, and I CANNOT tell you how many times I've forgotten where Kazakhstan is. It's brutal.

And thanks for the hug, right back at you

[WaterRaven]

I loved tumblr but left it when everything went down. I just don't have time to spend on a platform everyone is abandoning when I'm already on instagram, FB, and Twitter etc. I miss it though, it always recommended great stuff for my feed and I followed lovely blogs. I really appreciated too how the community would get after people who didn't credit an artist or photographer. On FB, instagram, and Twitter, people just post photos and art like it's their own and it's not right. For me, I thought Tumblr had a great set up. Sometimes I think about setting up a new blog on Tumblr again but the idea of being on yet another platform, especially one that people are leaving, is exhausting.

You're totally right about navigating Twitter, FB, and instagram. I can never find anything I want. I am constantly looking for art accounts to follow and just end up with written tweets instead. I'm still on DA but I'm not as active. It's great for following beautiful art but I never sold anything through DA. If I had time, I'd be more active on it just to enjoy the art, but that's what authors and creators don't have these days: Time.

[WaterRaven]

Make sure that you are selective about the advice you take You can get too many opinions and get discouraged. You can't please everyone. At the end of the day, it's your work and what you want to write and make is up to you.

[ratscout]

Honestly, I think the most difficult thing is pouring all your heart and love into a story, and having it get like, no love in return. And then you look at some popular novels and they're cliché, have spelling and grammar errors everywhere, the characters are one dimensional, but it somehow it has like, 2 million followers.

As a runner up, I would say that subs who don't comment or even like are pretty frustrating
1. Because if they don't, you really don't know who's reading the story or not
and 2. it's the only way to interact with your readers which I love doing.

Another little thing: Why are so many sites, including Tapas, allergic to keeping my italics in tact when I copy and paste my story from a word document? Holy smokes is that annoying.

[AllynCrowe]

Each second you spend having to redo the italics and fix the quotes, Tapas takes as power for summoning a dark cosmic horror that will consume us all with his third lower mouth while watching Dr Who.

[vothnthorvaldson]

I am constantly looking for art accounts to follow and just end up with written tweets instead.

I have so many issues with that.. Actually I can't see myself keeping any time for twitter because of that. And that include caring for my own account, that stays unused.

If I follow a personal account it is (sort of) fine to get many random written tweets, but if I follow a specifically art account, I don't really want all the random thoughts. Plus, I'm often very disappointed by the artists I like, not necessarily because they actually are bad persons, but because this mode of communication is so shallow people post without thinking at all and a lot of posts are inconsiderate and irking. Sometimes when I know the person outside of social media I wonder if it is actually the same person. Maybe there are also a lot of tweets that are written when people are drunk? I don't now, but twitter or anything permitting/promoting thoughtless posts is not for me.
And it is handicapping when it comes to promoting my work.

[MariMontoya]

When I copy and paste....and I just don't indent anymore on tapas...I'm a monster...plus italics are a pain.
And there are some days when I copy my chapter on Tapas but I still have to edit it some more and just so it doesn't publish the same day I just set a random date and I kinda forget about it, so when that day comes Penni has to remind me that I published a chapter with two words on it...fun...
Burn outs are just awful. As much as I love my babies there are some days that I just don't want to write or know what to write.
Having a social media presence. I think of something and I'm like this sounds like a good tweet let me post it. I get on Twitter start to type and then I forget what I was supposed to say or I get cold feet.

[WaterRaven]

I am 100% with you on that. At this point, I'm only on Twitter because I've been on it so long and I have a large (enough) following from the very supportive writer community. That community is generally positive, I find.

What isn't there though, is definitely the art. I don't mind seeing some personal tweets mixed in, especially if they're looking for a nod that someone's there and cares, but I don't care for the petty and toxic stuff. I actually had to step away from Facebook as a personal social media (I only update my author profile) because I got that--social media anxiety/depression? I think there's a name for it now. It took me a little while, but I realized it was having a big impact on my mental health.

Twitter really isn't a visual platform and even if an artist posts artwork or photography, it's usually lost in a host of written tweets and cropped anyway. I might go back to tumblr. I signed a couple petitions to try and change their minds on the ban but we'll see I guess.

Thanks for the reply

[WaterRaven]

I see that a lot on Twitter and Instagram. On Twitter writers use anything from movie and T.V. gifs to copy written images and photography as a visual for a quote or description from their book and it makes me so upset when they don't credit the creator. I won't RT anything that's not credited to the artist or photographer. Wattpad has a lot of people making book covers from images that don't belong to them too, but I mean, apparently you can write fanfic about a real person on Wattpad, make them an abusive alcoholic and not get sued for it--even after it gets a publishing deal and becomes a movie O.o --now that definitely seems nuts to me

[Lady_DarkStar]

I hate PR. I hate that getting views is a popularity contest. I hate that I feel pressured to put out a product I'm not satisfied with because people just don't care about grammar, or if the work is polished. I hate that because I come from a traditional publishing background, what is popular on the web makes me cringe because It's symptomatic of the deterioration of the public education system. I hate that I'm having to waste more time promoting my stuff on social media than I get to write. I hate that I feel like I'm wasting my time writing a book that is going to take at least 3 more drafts before I'm happy enough with it to publish it because I'm the only one who will appreciate the extra work i put into it to bring it to the level it could be sent to a traditional publisher. I hate that I'm starting every sentence with "I Hate".

[Maps]

I’m currently in this boat (inbetween point A and C). I’m having some type of writer’s block (like I have ideas but I’m not feeling motivated enough by them to sit down and whip em out). I’m more excited for what I know is to come. It’s been difficult trying to space out this part of my story and sort of fill in some blanks. I’ll honestly begin trying to type and just feel exhausted/overwhelmed. I’m also doing a comic which I’ve been working on more this week, but I desperately want to remain consistent with my novel chapters. I just can’t find it in me to start the next chapter yet

[Maps]

OMG you guys I did it. I wrote my chapter. I feel like a god.
But I also think I made the mistake of also adding in bits that will spin off into more unwritten parts

truestruggles

[nostalgicroxas]

I honestly feel like tumblr started to get abandoned when pixiv moved in, and moreso after the advent of Instagram. I dislike how any and all platforms basically allow you to steal art. In this day and age of reverse google search images, we should have a site set up that in the process of uploading the image gets flagged and you have to appeal it. That could be messy yes, but I'm sick of seeing a lot of the same artist's stuff stolen - either from their dA to a different social media, or from their Patreon exclusive to something free/open.
Tumblr was good as a "blog" and even then, it honestly failed to like... actual blog sites hahaha Especially for navigation. The only thing it has/d going for it is the seamless scrolling it has and the ability that text = images = gifs. The UI and layout is 10x better than anything instagram which just handles pictures.

[OrangeHanada]

On the mystery side of things, posting web novels serially really messes up what kind of clues I can use and how I can hide them, etc, because posting serially means that there's a good chance that your audience is going to forget minor details that are going to be of crucial importance later. Or, even, that they might forget conversations that end up being vitally important.

Gah!