Hey everyone!
I've been on Tapas as a lurker and eventually as a Creator for over a year now (I know, time flies) and thought I'd put the extensive amount of research I've done over the past few months while trying to figure out my own novel, into use. To make it really simple for everyone, I've made this little guide to new creators! If anyone else has stuff to chip in, please do so as I probably don't know everything! To make things easier for everyone, I'll do it in a list format too! Obviously, as I have only posted my Novels on Tapas, I think that's the thing I can only really go into, but hopefully someone experienced with Comics would create one too!
Actually finish the Novel!
Odd step to start with I know, but I want you guys to understand how much you need to post on this site to gain traction (still something I need to do). The average rate of posting is three times per week. Which, sounds great in practice, but the average word count you should probably put into your scenes should be around 700-1500 words. Why? Because people engage more with sequences that aren't 200-300 words long. The average reader who only reads your book 3 times per week wants to be engaged and more importantly continue the novel. In 300 words, unless you are an excellent writer, I doubt you will be able to have a start, middle and end that makes the reader want to continue your work. Brutal, I know. But I swear I'm here to help.
This is why finishing the novel is a great idea before you decide to start posting your masterpiece. With a finished novel, what you should think to do first, is re-read it and figure out where you can start breaking the chapter's up (if you have incredibly long chapters that is). For myself, as a writer who has gone through a Creative Writing degree, and mainly because assignments are 1500 words, I can tell you that the natural habit for me to write in that format -- helped. Therefore my chapters have multiple start, middles and ends, these are scenes. If your scenes are much larger, great, post them or split them up and post them on the same day. But try and post regularly, and try to post in sort of large chunks! With a full manuscript, you can seperate these, segment them and then post them with Tapas' post schedule system.
The other, and in my opinion better, benefit, is that if life gets you down, you can at the very least recover from it. When I was uploading my old novel, Birdy, I didn't follow this rule and with the amount of assignments thrown at me in addition to Covid, I broke under the pressure and essentually had to write constantly per week to keep up. This wasn't helpful to my writing process or my mental health at the time! Do the work ahead and fix it later, I promise you you will not regret it! Life is complicated and always throws curveballs, please please please plan ahead!If you plan on writing for Tapas, learn how to write in an episodic format.
This one is sort of unusual, but it is something you learn in University. Learning how to write to a good standard is useful and something I know most of you have down to a bloody fine point, (looking at you @sarahmassey998 -- sorry for the call out I just think you write very well) but a lot of you haven't actually studied how to write to a word count. You learn this pretty naturally through assignments, Freelance work and interestingly enough: writing short stories. Episodic story telling means it happens in segments. I want you guys to imagine watching, for example, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy is a great show that heralded the idea of a Big Bad (the idea that the villain at the end can be behind a curtain of other contextual episodes). Because of the nature of how Tapas works, with regular uploads being the best way to gain traction, having a weekly story can actually help boost your novel, it also means you have a lot of repetitions of whatever your story structure is. This is a good and a bad thing. Most of you who have written Fantasy will know how the Hero's Journey plot structure works. Try plotting it on a graph of reader engagement with the novel. You have the start, where the reader can be a little engaged but it's mainly learning about characters and people and setting up the premise and plot. Then you have the call to action where the plot really starts and the hero ends up in the situation. Anyway right now were plateaued, towards the end you have something called the Raising Tension moment, where the chapters get intense and the reader engagement will go up until something called the Climax, then it will go down towards the ending or sequel. Why am I saying this? Because in an episodic format you get more Climax moments and raising tensions/raising the stakes moments! This is good and unless you really want to write a standard novel and are absolutely sure you can hold the readers engagement, you should use this to your advantage. This isn't to say the standard novel format doesn't work, but try adding in episodic features to your episodes and see if you like it. If you want to practice it, write short stories following plot structures! Watch shows, explore! See what works for you.-
Don't be afraid to spend money on a cover
I know a lot of you guys aren't artists and may not have the money to do this, so potentially skip this, but with how Tapas works, you have about three things to make someone click on your book. You have
A. Your title.
B. Your Cover.
C. Your description.
The title part, god, I hate titles and am not very creative and a lot of you guys have this one down. I'm not gonna tell you how to find a good title because all of mine suck and I'm sure literally anyone else is better than me at this point. But B. the cover, is going to be your main attraction.
The cover of your book and the quality of it are going to probably be the main reason people click. But Possum, never judge a book by its cover, okay Hypothetical person, maybe don't make some covers so damn good then! Covers are there to be judged, I'm sorry, it has to be said. The quality of your cover, may not always reflect your work, but it damn will be a reason for people to never find out whether your book is good or not. My tips? If you don't have the money or are like me and don't have the art skills, use things like Canva! It's free, it has templates. I've made some okay covers on there that I'll show you (I think they're ok). I used templates and images from royalty free sites like Pexels to create them.
These might not get the most clicks, but I can look at them and think "cool, that's there". If you're lucky enough to be me whose best friend is an artist employed by a top game company and is willing to do your cover too, then you might end up with something you absolutely adore! Like this:
Sorry, I'm just so happy with it I can't help myselfe sometimes!
But the point is, work on your cover, work on your title, work on your description. Learn to sell your book. You're selling to a group of people who are scrolling so far down their app so fast, you have to slow them down to click at least once! Not many people end up recommended by Tapas, so you are in a very competetive market! Everyone's in the same, terrifying boat. Own it! -
Finally, have fun and LOVE your craft
Kinda generic, yeah. Sorry. This is probably the best rule I can think of on Tapas. People can tell when they read a piece of writing whether it has heart or not. On tapas, Creators have voices when it comes to their work. You might not ever talk to the author of your favourite published novel, but on Tapas you are the author. You can respond to comments, talk about your work, talk about other creators work. It's a pretty open platform and you should utilize that. People who enjoy your work are the most special people because they love something that you put out there and enjoy it for its merits. Be thankful. If you don't have follows/subscribers, who cares right now. I have only 8 on my new novel and every single one of them are amazing and I'm so glad that they enjoy my work (especially @joannekwan who has literally been such a fun person to talk to in the comments). Love your readers! Don't believe in Death of the Author because you're the author and in this forum and in your comments you can talk about your work however you want.
I'll probably add to this as time goes on and I learn more. I've learned so much about Tapas in the past while, there's loads of little things I absolutely forgot to put on here. If you have any additions, go ahead and post them in the responses! Sorry if this got a bit long, I hope you all enjoyed the read at least. Finally, I wouldn't be a poster on this forum unless I plugged my own work. Read my new book, Demetori10.
Hope I helped!
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Aug '20last reply
Aug '20- 10
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