When do you just accept a story is trash and give up on it?

[Jenny-Toons]

And of course, the task no one can really escape: promotion. Get on social media, use relevant tags, and promote your work!

This was actually going to be my question for this thread:

How exactly have you been promoting your work and building a reputation as a creator? You've talked about refining your craft, but what have you done to get people to look at that quality?

Have you posted WIPs for people to see? Have you helped other creators and talked outside of your own work? Have you given suggestions on what you during the creative process?

These are just some things I've seen people do, including myself, and it seems to help them build up rep and gain trust from readers.

And before anyone tells me "well, just work in a popular genre, and you'll be set" -- No. Working in an overly saturated genre isn't a golden ticket. It might help along the way, but there's always someone doing the genre better than you. In fact -- if it's saturated, there might as well be 100 more people doing it better than you. So the question is always "why should I -- the reader -- pick your work and not someone else?"

Course, I'm not saying you aren't working hard or aren't trying to get eyes to your work. But I am curious as to how you're doing that and for how long you've been doing it. Even more curious as to if you've been doing the same promotional methods for a long period of time or have been switching different methods say, every other week.

Pretty sure your work isn't trash. A lot of good work didn't get the readership it deserved right away. Hell, some never do. And that comes down to promoting and giving people reasons to invest in the storyline.

[gmaximin]

I think the original post had a legitimate question everyone seem to have avoided: “when to give up”. To me giving up is not always such a disgrace, it can be very formative to acknowledge failure.
Me, I’d say that when your objective is out of reach... it’s time to step back (at least temporarily).

I do throw away a lot of projects, ideas, episodes, because I’m not good enough, or I don’t have the resources to make it acceptable to myself. Funny thing is that after some time (decades in some cases), ideas morphed and find their way back. Or just fall into oblivion...

I’m not saying you should give up, I’m saying it’s healthy to question your objective, see resources you have, what’s missing, and decide from there your next step: keep the way it is, keep but realign your resources and your objective, or kill the beast for now.

I’m probably not a good example, but I’m doing this all the time.

[essem]

I find plenty of stories with terrible grammar. Terrible writing. Terrible characterization. Plenty of subs.

In many walks of life, not simply in the arts, arguably it's unhelpful to confuse popularity with quality

[essem]

In answer to your question - are you clear why you started writing it? And is there justification for continuing? If the answer to either question is no, then kill your darling ...

[jcmraz]

This depends on your goals. If you're trying to refine your work then try something new when you finish or when you hit a story wall. Or when decide that you dislike the basic structure and plot of the story you're writing.

If your primary goal is to get engagement and clicks then you have to watch market trends and write based on that.

Now this is very important. A story not performing well due to market trends does NOT mean that it is garbage. It may mean that its readership is more niche or less popular on the whole. If you're passionate about a story then write it. Period. It will go slower but you'll be happier writing it. If you want more to write something that more people engage with then watch those market trends and tropes and try to find your place in that. Find something that you like writing that fits within those tropes and genres. If you can't then you have to make a choice about whether you want to enjoy writing or reach people.

[KJWhitten]

Excuse me what? Your first chapter alone is well written. What do you mean your trash? You're just writing a niche story for a niche audience. That's not a bad thing in my opinion, take it from me who is writing a niche story as well.

I would say giving up on a story happens when you constantly struggle to write a story or when you lose the passion to finish writing it. If you can't figure out what happens next, how to express your ideas in a way that makes sense then maybe its time to stop. While saying that, it takes a lot of trial and error to write better and better stories. What you may consider a failure is actually the next stepping stone to another story as each one is a learning experience that you can take with you.

A friend of mine told me that there is always one person out there no matter what that will absolutely love your story no matter what it is. I think it goes with the saying: "one man's trash is another mans treasure." Sure, some people hate the anime SAO or Fairy Tail but there are plenty who like it regardless of those who label it as trash.

[darthmongoose]

I read what you have written all the way through. I wasn't expecting something so well-written to have such a low sub-count.

I don't think the lack of subscribers is due to quality in this case. I'd put it down to a mixture of the following factors:

• GL is not a hugely popular genre compared to BL or Het romance, and sadly tends to be lacking in both readership and quality titles. Even if it was the most popular GL on the site, it'd still lag in subs behind BL and Romance titles. It's best not to compare your subs to stuff outside your genre. Take it from somebody drawing an action comic about mostly queer women
• The cover isn't particularly eyecatching. It's dominated by text in an overly-elaborate font that's hard to read on the smaller writing, and doesn't clearly illustrate what the story is about. If you could commission an artist to draw a cute cover, maybe a cute illo of Faye and Monara, I think that'd be money well spent.
• "Lady in a romance with a humanoid butterfly" is... very niche. Even when it's well-written. Even as a pretty hardcore Rosemary shipper myself (Kanaya and Rose from Homestuck) who doesn't mind fics that explore the dynamic of that alien-human relationship and how they understand each other's physiology and culture, found that Monara having like... four arms and antennae and being covered in fur and stuff was a little too alien for me to not be like... "okay I can't relate to finding this physically attractive". I think if Monara was a little bit more human-like, the romance would be easier to get into.
• I'm about an hour's worth of reading into your book and nothing has really happened yet? I guess maybe this is just how slow-burn romances are, and maybe I'm not a good person to criticise a slow burn romance because I don't particularly like the genre, but I'd be more into it if I felt like there was some kind of stakes or and/or a conflict set up. The most interesting things have been the mentions of the characters former lives as Magical Girls, and Caitlyn's PTSD that causes her to be unfortunately outsider-phobic. Again, maybe it's a personal thing, but I feel like the story would be improved if there was a bit more tension and excitement.

[scribesunlimited]

When we turned the first page of "50 Shades of Grey".

No, kidding aside, If you've run out of ideas for it, or you're seeing something similar to what you've created already out there, or the characters just no longer mesh. When you don't care about the characters, the story is dead 100%.
That's why we view characters as so important. Refer to our character sheet post to help make memorable, believable, and fascinating characters people will fall in love with.

Allow us to share one of our favorite tools for writing about and describing characters. Your goal obviously is to visualize near-perfectly how your characters will look - but there's a lot more to do. So here’s a very useful character sheet that should enable you to really know your people inside and out. Name: Obvious. What's in a name? And you'd be surprised how hard it is to come up with. the name means something to you. Giving your character a name gives it life, and you can then create f…

Insignificant Otters | Tapas

Island Girls | Tapas

[HGohwell]

You've also not been posting that long and post very regularly. It can take months, even years to get up to a decent number of reads and views. Yes, you can't just use wishful thinking forever, but novels are even harder than comics and honestly, your first episode was less than a month ago. Maybe you're expecting returns too quickly. There's no overnight around here and if there is, you should buy a lottery ticket too. A month might as well be overnight around here.

But the answer to the actual question of when, is when you're ready. You can keep producing out of love and know that in time people may find your audience, but also if you feel like it's not going to get anywhere, don't keep going. Creating is a personal thing. Some people will just keep going and some people will stop quickly, some people in the middle.

And yeah, you're writing a niche story for a small audience. I think I bought this up last time you asked about why you didn't have as many views and subs as you wanted. Magical girls appeal to magical girl fans, magical girl novels are a hard sell and more mature magical girls that break a lot of magical girl conventions is an even harder sell. You can't have everything.

[dewarcomics]

Comparing yourself to others can be a double edge sword. It can motivate you but it can also demoralize you.

Creating a comic is hard work. Making sure it's good makes it even harder. You got to make sure that the story you're making is something you are truly passionate about. Something that by impulse you have to make, no matter if people read it or not. If you really think deep down you got an awesome story just continue to work on it. The reality is that readers will eventually find good stories.

You also got recognize that good ideas never truly go away. maybe you got a good concept but you still got to work on how to deliver that in a digestible way that people will find palatable.

There is a trap of having a really good concept but no story.

Bottom line my opinion is to not worry about all the numbers. It's easy to psych yourself out. because what's the alternative? Making something by the numbers of what's popular, but you yourself don't enjoy? Even then there isn't the guarantee that it will get immediate recognition. So do what YOU truly feel like creating. Stay true to yourself.

Good luck and keep creating what you enjoy~
- Yan

[Rubyleaf]

Well, as tempting as it feels sometimes, I honestly wouldn't give up on a story just because it's getting low interaction. I've been there too. But lack of interaction isn't necessarily about quality.

Honestly? My experience is that it's mostly about people who might otherwise like your story not stumbling across it at all in the first place.

It's happened to me with my most recent novel. Minimal interaction and chirping crickets for chapters and chapters, and then I got lucky enough to have it become a staff pick and basically overnight the notifications blew up. Obviously whether or not you get staff-picked is very much a matter of luck, but Tapas does have people looking out for new quality content, so if you keep at it you'll stand at least a decent chance to be found someday.

Another observation I've made is that some genres/story structures just work better as novels on a bookshelf than they do on platforms like Tapas. Especially fantasy works, and plot-heavy stuff in general. Stuff like that, I suspect, is just too complex to be read episode by episode, especially if you're still waiting for updates and have to keep track of a lot of stuff as a reader. It's something we probably have to adapt to, and I also struggle with that, I'd be the last to deny it. It's just hard.

And lastly, keep in mind that many readers on Tapas are very young and/or not native English speakers, quite possibly not fluent in English at all. They won't mind the spelling and grammar errors or weak characterization because they don't know better yet. Which is why the whole "quality losing to popular tropes" thing happens in the first place, which is super frustrating, but just remind yourself that there's also people who can tell the difference and will appreciate your work for that. They just…need to find your story first.

Basically, I don't think the problem is with you. The problem isn't with your story, either. Maybe it's not used to this particular medium or platform; maybe it'll do better once you get a foot in the door and more people can see it. At a glance, it doesn't seem like that niche a premise to me. If you want to get the story out, keep going. You never know when success may suddenly find you.

[MorganaMevil]

You have to remember you are writing on free platforms where readers can reader hundreds of thousands of free stories with varying degrees of quality. The stories that lack grammar/punctuation and are driven by very cliche, overly-dramatic plots sometimes do very well because it is a free forum where readers can read their guilty-pleasures (such as a cheap romance) without actually buying the book. If your story has more depth than that, it’s gonna take some added luck and extra exposure to gain traction. Because depth is harder to sell to readers who can get an easy escape in those quick-and-fast romances that plays to what they are already familiar with. They know what they are going to get when they read those books because those books play so straight to the expectations. With good books, the direction is less clear and the reader might not be willing to risk reading something like that if they don’t know how good the emotional payout will be.

But, remember, with a little luck and a lot of persistence, a good book can cause waves. And it is a lot more likely to make a big name for itself than a generic sensational book that’s success is rooted in its risklessness (they aren’t usually great sellers when they are actually published).

[kinleypavone]

There's a lot of other really good advice on here already but I'll add my two cents too. I know it's INCREDIBLY difficult not to think about the numbers but at the end of the day, if you love creating it, create it. If you're passionate about it and are really putting the work in, readers will come eventually and will see that. Success is often a combination of hard work and sheer luck. You just have to keep chugging along and wait for the two factors to come together at the same time. It's hard to force it. If you're worried the quality of your work isn't up to par, send it around to people for critique. An opinion is an opinion and should often be taken with a grain or salt, but if you show it to dozens of people and they tend to point out the same problems over and over, it's likely something you might want to consider adjusting.

[Wocalich]

Don't call your story trash, it's your baby. You're just writing for a niche audience so it's normal for the reads to grow slowly. Don't give up, and if you really care about the reads, you can write about a more popular topic next time.

[AnonymousHouseCat]

Personally, I think the most important thing is just if you like your story and enjoy creating it! If you like the concept, maybe you can use it as a growing experience/go back and edit/run it by a group of friends to see if anything is unclear or could be improved.That is what I'm doing for my current comic. For my last comic however (never published anywhere), I got tired of it after a few years and began seeing the plot as overly complicated and not going anywhere, so I gave up on that one, but still don't regret spending time on it because I think I learned from the experience. The stories I stick with are the ones where I feel a connection to the characters I've created and want to spend time in their world.

[joannekwan]

“when to give up”

When the thing you're working on no longer brings joy, is far from being complete, and your mental and or physical health suffers from dealing with said thing.

I mention 'is far from being complete' because even if I fall out of love with a story, but it's that close to finishing, I will finish it. It's always looks better to have finished projects than a bunch of unfinished ones.
Of course the threshold for how close something is to completion varies with each individual tho.

[Prisim]

If you're enjoying writing it then it isn't trash. Now if you actually don't like what you're writing, that's another story. But the reality of sites like Tapas is that not every good writer is going to find a fan base here. That's true on this site just as it's true on Amazon or book stores. And having a massive fan base also doesn't make something good. Sometimes it's just as much about luck as it is anything else.

Ask yourself this, will you be happy writing a story you don't like just because it happens to get popular?

You're going to have to work for your fan base. It's very rarely a case of "if you post it, they will come"

I haven't gotten a big fan base here (at least not compared to what I have on Wattpad) because I haven't worked for it. I will 100% admit I haven't worked for it because I've had personal things holding me back, but on Wattpad I worked my butt off for years. I was active on the forums, I was submitting to get on any and all reading lists possible, I was making like minded friends who may or may not read the books but they still gave me someone to talk to about my work. I was everywhere. As certain things in my life started to cause more problems, I became less active and my reads started to suffer (there were also other factors out of my control that made the reads suffer as well) and that reflects here on Tapas now too because I haven't gotten myself out of my rut. So while I've done good on Tapas compared to others, I also know I could do better if I put in the work.

So if you're enjoying the book you're writing, keep writing. Start promoting it, start making friends with no promises of them reading it but that you can idea bounce off of or just talk to when you're struggling. And above all, stop comparing yourself to others. That latter is hard to do. Lord knows I can't always stop myself from doing it. Imposter syndrome is a very real thing. The amount of times I've put down my work as being bad is so massive I can't even keep track of it. And it has stopped me in my tracks at this point in time because that's what imposter syndrome does. It makes you think because you don't have x you'll never get y. That's why it's important to enjoy what you're writing. If you don't then what even is the point of writing it?

Now I'm rambling and probably losing my point LOL

[rajillustration]

I think one of the biggest things when doing long stuff on the internet is to treat it like it's a long thing, a marathon run.

And to do that, you need to understand that it's a slow build for all creators--and several have started on different websites when they were like...children (and they might still be children, hence the bad grammar). If you're just starting out, it will be really low. Luckily, you have the talent to improve better than a child and you should have better focus and time management then a child, so you can surpass them, eventually.

Another thing to really get in your head now is that the spikes in growth that we see in other artists and writers are spikes. We see what goes viral, but we don't see how after a spike, you will have the other side of the spike--the plummet in views, the dropped subs, and the rate will go back down to where you were before, but a little bit better. Overall progression is slow and steady, so long as you stay consistent--the spikes are cool, but they aren't really permanent.

Then finally, make some concrete goals so you know when to throw in the towel, in case those goals aren't met. We can't become a servant of our works if they aren't really panning out, even if they're well written and a great time. If your goal is only improvement, then you'd only need improvement goals, which aren't dependent on subs and likes (though subs and likes help a lot!) If your goal is to profit off of your story and it isn't getting those views enough to make money in the time frame you needed...then yes, drop it and do something that will (but make sure if you do that you don't abandon your readers. Give them something to hope for--we want them to transition to your next work). Maybe this story will be better suited to a different website or a different publisher?

And like others have mentioned, having a marketing plan helps a ton--especially to think of it as a plan, so you aren't just shooting tweets out of your ass. Find out where the writers live, find out where your readers are at, find out who the influencers are that are reading web stories. It's a slow and steady climb, not a race, and what you're seeing as a failure is not. Every work we make is just a stepping stone to the next bigger thing.

[Legendofgenii]

I think it's more important how it makes you feel as you create/write these stories. If you love it, then why stop because you aren't getting views/comments/subs - I'm sure that's not why you started (it is nice to get those things though).

And I do understand completely. I spend hours drawing and painting my comic, with not much interaction in return, but I keep going because I'm having fun, learning a lot and giving up will make me have regrets/unfinished business... and I don't want to become a grumpy ghost when I die.

[ratscout]

Hey there! I took a quick look at your story and I saw that you only started writing/submitting it only recently! It is very rare that your story will gain a huge readership over night, so I think you need to just keep at it if you're truly passionate about it. Unless you use a really popular genre or you get featured on the site in some sort of way, don't expect to instantly gain subscribers/likes/comments. To give you an example, I've been working on my story for two years and I have about 270 subscribers (and this is WITH a staff-pick and extra traffic from participating in the writer's camp). Additionally, I put in a LOT of effort to get people to read my story. I have offered read-for-reads, critiques, contests, and even free art requests. You really have to work hard at this to get interaction, especially if you write stuff that is niche like I do.

I know that my story isn't perfect, and I know that it is niche, but I keep at it because I absolutely love it and I think it is a story that deserves to be read, especially with the time and effort I have put into it.

Therefore, I think that if you feel lukewarm about your story, you shouldn't pressure yourself to finish it. However, if you are in love with your story and want to keep going, you have to promote and really work hard at it.