Webnovel.Forum

Well I'm a reader and writer. I spend weeks if not months just figuring out what I want to write and how to write it and how to make it work. I pushed myself for the best quality I can possibly produce, but I'm shy. I read constantly and enjoy seeing new ideas and concepts come to light, and i get frustrated seeing something amazing being put down because one isn't loving some section of the story.

I write as a hobby I have a life, I have school, i have expenses, I don't have the time to sit down and write 2000-3000 ch every day for free and still maintain the quality. I have no idea if I'm good or not. Ever since the new option. To publish I became elevated with the thought of sharing some fun writing peices. But then again I'm a bit protective of my literature so I had to decide what am I willing to publish.

The aspect of constructive feedback in lines with writers. Is to help mature their style, build and improve on their craft. There will be toxic people and everything I understand. But if people are willing to say your doing a good job its because your are. If people are willing to stick to your story. This is one proof that your a good writer.

I'll be publishing here soon after I amass a good bit of content to publish through a period of time.

Guess this msg is aimed towards readers and writers. Haha. If you guys are writing and receiving toxic responses introduce me to your story I'll love to read it. But I'm only one person XD I may read a lot but I cannot be everywhere at once. And everything is subjective so being negative with no sensible clarification and reasoning. For me is meaningless. You don't like the writing, because of the mistakes ok, story is not unique ok, story has too many fillers, ok. These give an idea but lack a bit more info to how to improve. Too many fillers, can mean the development of plot. I suck at spelling and not so amazing at grammar, so I recheck myself dozens of times, that doesn't mean I will write a perfect literary composition. I'm a writer not a professionally trained editor, with a degree in lit, that can meet all the criteria of a perfect sentence.

And lastly it's not unique. Fine but what is unique. Everything has some influential aspect tied to it. If my literature if influenced by something so be it the question I want to know is did you like it. Was it interesting. Did you hate it what didn't you like about it. Help me help you. I can keep going. But I'll end it here.

Soon to be publish on webnovel.

Me uwu

Clowniac then i guess i already experienced it. no one was reading it so i dropped them.

yaoyueyi I'm not an author but I totally understand and agree with you! All the best in your writing!

yaoyueyi Let me present a Counterpoint:

Readers generally do not give a flying fck about the amount of chapters, they care about whats in them and about the authors communication.

I honestly cannot even recall the amount of comments i have read that go along the lines of:"Holy crap this is filler" or "Holy crap this chapter is short".

This leads us to another common theme: Lacking Quality. I get it. You get it. The community gets it. You are writing light novels here, not fantasy epics like Lord of the Rings or something.

But if a majority of a chapter is either reiteration of earlier chapters, reactions to these earlier chapters or stat-summaries and other word-count-padding BS people will call you out on it (rightly so) and the chapter will feel shorter, simply because you did not advance the story in any meaningful way.

This is more a problem with Translations than Originals, but still applies to some extent.

Positive Example(imho): Lord of the Mysteries. Every chapter is not too long and not too short and there is at least one thing happening relevant to the main-story-arc. Many authors could learn from that.

Negative Example(imho): Kingdoms Bloodline. Holy crap these chapters are long, but not in a good way. At some point i realised that its not even worldbuilding or character-development, just wordpadding and I dropped it after 100-200 chapters, cant even recall tbh. Sometimes 10 chapters go by with nothing relevant happening besides people talking. Some call it a slow burn, i call it long-winded.

Nobody expects you to put out perfect work like some sort of author-machine.

But to some extent, you set those expectations yourself. How many new novels have promised daily or even twice-daily updates, only to crash and burn as the weight of their own expectations caught up with them?

If you do not think you can keep that kind of schedule up communicate that to the community in a sincere way, there are authors notes and comments for a reason.
Many authors use these features to update their readers on illness/rl-stuff happening and generally its received positively and with understanding. We all know you guys are only human too.

Positive Example: Out of Space: Author just got sick, told everyone, everyone was cool about it, with no updates promised. Everyone celebrated new chapters because it meant the author was getting better.

Going silent with no warning or explanation is not well received, and with good reason. Many stories have been abandoned that way (permanent HIATUS is abandoning imo) while leaving the community built around them high and dry. Of course this has let us become scared of it happening to our favourite stories and we lash out if we feel played.

In the end i think, its a systemic issue, not a community one. Webnovel, and by extension Qidian has built this whole Powerstone-System and the little display at the top of each novel informing us of amount of chapters/day for a reason. They want you to keep writing, at all times. If you don't, your PS-Ranking suffers, you lose visibility and money from SS-Payouts. It is kind of toxic in my opinion, as it puts pressure on authors to deliver, even if its substandard.

But oh well. All of that is just kinda my opinion on the whole thing. As a reader i am biased anyway.

hi seniors , i am a restrained child in these thoughta fory novels and stories because people think i m not able to understand and manuplate. but aftrr being an author i actually gave my friend some plans and ideas for her livelife and manuplating her boyfriend . and this was actuallly huge successful .now i want your kind help as senior to read my books and share your view with mr. please help improving my thoughts........thanku

The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Nine Princes of Amber, the Wizard of the Seaside - this is a completely different type of fiction. It is fundamentally different from visual or web novels. This is a different genre.

Sometimes you read a very interesting novel, it’s cool, and then bam and from the middle there is complete shit ... and the end is generally merged into a dull shit ... you think why did I read this? Have I lost so much time? Others read and learn a lot. Chapters seem optimal in 750-1000 words if the chapter itself is interesting and goes through the action. The concert is beautiful as in Rebirth: How A Loser Became A Prince Charming. And not a clear, not really bad but not a masterpiece ending in the novels - Release That Witch, Nightfall. And the novel Epoch of Twilight began interestingly, the middle is intriguing and the ending is complete crap.

But criticizing is always easier. When you write yourself, those works that you criticized turn out to be better written. So the reader sees more, but as an author, he is not always able to better realize his criticism.

In general, as readers, be more tolerant of the authors, they may also have health problems.

Be happy, live in peace and do not worry, for nothing, and you will have peace in your soul and peace in your heart.

yaoyueyi
I feel you. It's hard to be a writer especially when you're not being paid and just using this platform to try your hand in writing. When one of your dreams is to become a writer and webnovel makes it possible, when you can't meet their expectations they just drop your novel as if you're not struggling enough with your personal life and your commitment to give them a good story.
Hope they appreciate that writing is also hard work as well.

kcorny let me present a counterargument to our counterpoint, haha.

1) I write this post in my perspective as an author. I want to make this clear before anything because the things I say in my post entirely come from my experience, perspective, and knowledge of my own work. it just so happens that what I wrote resonated with a few other authors on this site.
2) I don't write filler chapters. I believe this is a sign of poor writing, so I don't. other authors may, and your argument may apply to them, but I believe that fillers aren't really the main focus of this post, so I'm not sure why you're bringing it up? I guess you could argue that this is what readers truly care about, but I don't receive any comments/reviews complaining about fillers in my novel (b/c I don't write them), so I never made a thread about them. the thing is, complaints about fillers are fair-- it's a perfectly normal thing for readers to have problems with them. on the other hand, it's not as healthy for readers to be demanding unrealistic expectations from the author. that's why this post exists.
3) keeping up with a schedule isn't the main point of this post either. if an author doesn't keep up with their preset schedule, of course they need to tell their readers, who deserve a right to know. I don't see anything wrong with that. however, again, my post is not about authors not keeping up with their update schedule, and readers complaining about updates. it's talking about authors posting at their normal schedule, or announcing that they will take a break, and readers still continuously pressuring for chapters.
also, here's a fun fact: not all readers seem to read author notes. I've written so many times of what breaks I may be taking or "pls don't ask for mass release b/c I am physically incapable of them" or "this is the update speed, I'm not changing it", but they'll still keep asking for the same things I've explained 930819084 times to them. :cry:

overall, I think what you argue makes sense-- there are no faulty points in it-- but I don't understand how this correlates with the original post, which is simply asking readers to not keep demanding endlessly from the author? :sweat:

yaoyueyi
1) Ok, so which is it then? Your perspective as an author or "from your dear authors" as you have titled this post? This seems very weird.
2) If you title your post "from your dear authors" i assume you write for at least several of them and not only yourself? Once again, this is very weird.
3) Keeping up with a schedule is not the main point of your post, but i already laid out why it can lead to problems together with your main-problem. I am not going to repeat myself, but once again: You are arguing from your own experience, yet your post is titled "from your dear authors".

Either you are making your points from your own point of view or you do not. Which is it now? If you do not represent a bunch of authors just remove the "s" and we are in the clear.

SinB lol, me too!

Dear authors thanks anyways but please some of the authors should check their grammar before posting their novels for us to read some novels are really interesting but the grammatical errors will make u slack off and the coins in buying the locked chapters are always high.

kcorny i think yaoyueyi was just speaking based on the assumption that other authers may have experienced similar, if not the same situation. I don't think it had any other meaning.

I_Only_Sleep

Exactly

yaoyueyi that was always a question in the back of my mind do you Arthur's ever get a break period where you can rest of a while?

I_Only_Sleep Yeah ima gonna wait for a reply from the author then. For this kind of talk its kind of a big deal, if you want to vent about your own experiences or if you claim to speak for quite a group of people.

yaoyueyi writing webnovel is not easy. from perspective of author ,the real problem for is mainly editing his own novel for reader.

Editing absolutely need more than a days just for one chapter with 1000 word. That is why author can't work alone as well.

Despite author can hire editor, author has to make a high price with high spirit stone, with privilege and locked chapter as well.

kcorny I feel like the term "fillers" have been misused and thrown about too often and very unfairly. At some point, anything that the readers don't want to read or find boring gets labeled "fillers."

Take Forty Millenniums of Cultivation, for example. Li Yao boards a train to get to his university, and something happens there that has a significant impact on the way he views cultivation, as well as expresses the general world-view of cultivators. But you have a ton of readers jumping in and complaining that the entire arc was a "filler" despite the event being life-changing, important and relevant for Li Yao and the story, all because...they just want him to get to the university and start, I dunno, kicking ass.

Now, I can understand if you call the irrelevant chapters of Battle Frenzy where the author goes off to talk about the Empire and politics, which have absolutely nothing to do with Wang Zhong (and very tangential to the main plot) "fillers". Those sometimes come across as massive info dumps that deviate from the current arc. However, you have annoying readers who complain about every single slice-of-life scene, when Wang Zhong goes out with Scarlet or when he interacts with his schoolmates/society members as "fillers" just because they want to skip everything and go straight to the action. Like, seriously? Stories are not 100% action, the characters don't spend 100% of the time doing nothing but train and fight. Character developments, exploring their relationships with other characters, seeing what they normally do in school outside of training/fighting is also part of the story and the world. But no, if they aren't fighting, it's automatically classified as "filler" and readers whine about it.

I can understand complaints where the writer goes off on massive info dumps on things that have absolutely nothing to do with the story as fillers. I can understand word padding or whatever as fillers. But some of the accusations readers make of certain chapters being "fillers" are just inane. Just because you don't want to read them or you find them boring doesn't mean they are irrelevant or "fillers." It's a story, not a collection of action scenes incoherently stitched together. Protagonists have their own lives too, they don't just fight 24/7.

yaoyueyi

Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking anyone's side here nor have I read anything above the first post. I would assume that there are various discussions from the authors' or readers' side. To make it clear, i am one of the authors as well i guess? I found the first post, interesting so here i am replying to it.

Just write at your own pace and make sure that you type out what you intend. Never compromise the quality just because you are pressured to release a chapter. I've never minded the demand for more chapters from readers because, in the end, I/you as the author will be the one to decide when to publish.

You took it upon yourself to publish your work, you need to deal with the pressure that goes along with it. Though i think that the things you mentioned in your post is true, this is a subject that will incur all kinds of reasons/discussions from both sides. as this is the internetzzz.

Readers will never understand what authors go through to write their stuff unless they try and write something and publish it themselves. They would rather complain and pick off the words from your or other authors here to justify themselves. Authors will also somewhat act in the same manner and it will only be a downward spiral.

WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL
Please lock this thread. I think only the first post would have mattered as it was supposed to be a message from an author to readers, simple as that. this was not meant to be a debate or discussion.

Ruruci Uh, this is a forum. Yaoyueyi posted here because he/she was aware it would turn into debate or discussion. Webnovel just stickied it because it was an extremely good post, but that doesn't mean they never intended for it to be discussed or debated.

Tomoyuki Wait, people seriously thought that train-episode was filler? What the actual fuck. That was the most heroic shit i ever read and it was obvious it was definitely not filler.

People can be stupid that way, but the tricky thing about filler is that it is often only obvious in retrospective what is important to the story and what is not.

A good way to handle Infodumps or Statscreens is to not count them towards your total word count. Realm of Myths and Legends does this. The stats and System-Messages never factor in, but thats kind of the exception i suppose.

Fact of the matter is its contextual and the hardcore readers have enough experience to call bs out if they see it.

kcorny I didn't title my post that. originally when I wrote it, it was simply "an open letter to readers" when webnovel pinned my post, they added that part in. if you scroll, you'll see evidence of that in the top

Ethan_young depends honestly, if you break too long you lose readers, so it's a delicate balance

Ruruci I'm cool with discussion lmao. interesting to see what other people think :D

Though I've read some 'plz 10 chapters a day' comments, I always took them as joking compliments. Dunno, maybe it's just my readers, but from my experience they're rather understanding. Writing daily chapters with ~2000 words on average isn't really difficult for me as I'm usually 30ish chapters ahead of official releases so I can usually skip a day of writing if I don't feel like it and just make it up another time, but on those bad days, it really is impossible to get anything out. Usually the chapters I write on those days are just boring go-arounds that add nothing to anything and anyone and are just a chore to read. Just pace yourselves out, fellow authors. Comments can be a good way to see what's working with your readers and what's not, but stick to your own story and tell it the way you want to. That's at least a whole lot more fun for me than trying to accommodate.

Reinesse for some its month, years. It doesn't need to be a block of creativity. A block can also be the lack of motivation to write due to other things; mental health and so forth. It's also possible the block is due to development. A writer has reached a limit in skill and not sure where or how to proceed next. This is a reason why I spend time doing an end to end outline/blueprint. No matter how far apart chapters are, I can always pick up where I left off to finish.

Ethan_young contracted author, I imagine you'd have to write to a schedule since you're something of a contractor employee. As a hobby writer , you're not bound. The schedule is you're own.

I think what I'm sensing here is there a two kinds of storytellers here and story types being muddled. Authors and Writers. Stories and Books

Authors write to sell a book; a product readers commit to under whatever conditions. If they don't receive those promised conditions, tongues wag.

Writer's write stories free from commercial commitments as a hobby. They go at their own pace when their energies and whim allows it. As a reader, you pick up and put down with the same freedom.

Webnovel, being what it is, Authors and Writers get muddled together.

Readers come to expect a certain level of product commitment when money is exchanged for goods, regardless. So, when a Writer regularly unfolds a popular story then stops. Some readers might be under an impression the story was a product, so a level of commercial commitment was required. Even though the obvious markers of said Writer not being a WN Author was before their eyes.

Veronica8 nah, contracted authors get to set their own schedules, and get to take breaks whenever necessary too. they just need to put out a certain amount of words each month to get paid though.

Thats cool

I take 3-4 hours to write just 500 words. With editing, that's another hour. If the chapter calls for a higher word count or higher quality, it may take up to 10-12 hours. My readers are more understanding(bless their souls), but I hope other readers can understand! :)

SinB are you sure about that (flashbacks of whip emoji)

yaoyueyi Oh for fucks sake. Goddamn WN fuckers.

Well, whatever.

Free Hongkong, Taiwan #1, Tibet is not a part of China.

thank you T^T

Preach. If you are gonna demand so much, please write yourself.

Gourmet_DAO Since the original short story for novice authors is primarily a test - a test to see if the author will be able to develop the habit of writing at least 2500-3000 words a day or not. The goal is to write in 1 year - 1,000,000 words.

What a load of bs. There are no such goals. Not even webnovel sets such a goal. Test? What test? No there are no "tests", to see if an author will have a habit of writing 2.5k word chapters. My average is not even close to that, yet I have readers who support me. What is important to the readers ultimately, is not how many chapters you produce, but how well you produce them, and your schedule. I keep to my schedule, and that is that. If someone comes over and tells me "Dude, release more!", my answer is "Fu*k off".

I think that what yaoyueyi said is mostly true. Authors do struggle, and people simply don't appreciate our commitment. They simply crave "moaar!", yet they have no idea how hard it is to write something. Reader point of view? What bs is this? Obviously reader would love it, if Author abandoned all his/her social and private life, just to write for them. I myself already sacrifice a lot to write, and I don't intend to sacrifice even more.

What I will add to yaoyueyi argument, is that the authors need to be more firm with their audience. In other words, learn to say "fu*k off", when someone crosses the line. I have no problem telling someone "go read something else", if I see he or she doesn't enjoy my novel. There are many novels out there, not everyone will read yours. Just forget about those readers, and focus on what you have. That is my advice to the authors. As for the trolls or whatever, ignore. Believe in yourself and the people who support you, not an idiot who claims you can write 3k words a day no problem. Peace to all Authors and understanding readers :D

Gourmet_DAO It's not just my view, its basically the reality. You didn't say it was "your" goal, you generalised, and that is what I replied to. I'm not imposing my views on others, I only gave advice to authors who wish to come out of it with level head. Because ultimately? I would rather tell an author to drop something, than sacrifice his or her life or health, in order to satisfy the "readers".

You cite book of authors? Good luck with that then, hope it helps you. Great source of wisdom, let me tell you that much. You should check out the S.I.E chat group too, great source of information. I'm not trying to convince you here. I presented the reality to you guys, how you take it, it's up to you. Call it my views, opinions or whatever. You will not change the fact that authors do struggle, and readers simply demand. Now, not all readers of course, but because of the way webnovel is constructed, a lot of readers demand.

But hey, what do I know right? I'm just some dude. Either way, I'm just gonna stop here. No point arguing about something, that is not productive, right?

Gourmet_DAO Didn't see the "PS" before. So I will add this. Oh don't worry about my readers. Ask any of my regulars if I treat them well. Those I don't treat well, are idiots who think they know what they are talking about. I'm not here to satisfy readers. I'm here to publish my novel. Those that read and enjoy, I appreciate. Those that spout bs, they don't exist in my books. Whether they read or not, not my concern. And you know what? I'm a happy man. No stress, no worries. I very rarely get writer's blocks. Life is better, when you care less about such people.

yaoyueyi well if there gonna write a story it has be good not couragous either it's good or boring and bad awful horrendous storytelling

Yes, we can understand. In this case maybe an open letter from readers not to delete good reviews to boost the quality score of authors story? Author are human too and I agree with the post.