Clowniac You’re absolutely right, authors don’t owe readers anything regardless of whether they’re reading for free or not. Likewise, readers don’t owe authors anything: they don’t have to like your books, they don’t have to vote for them, they don’t have to review or comment on them, they don’t have to save them in their libraries or even freaking read them.

Honestly, if basic, and I mean basic, standards of writing were to be adhered to; most novels on WN would fail the test and that’s being modest. In fact, when it comes to grammatical accuracy, the translations fare better than the originals (feel free to disagree). Most readers shut down their brains and read with their hearts in order to appreciate the efforts of the authors. Like someone rightly said, readers choose the plot over grammatical accuracy. That said, even the plot is so messed up sometimes that readers have to, mentally, edit it as well as the grammatical errors ( which is freaking frustrating) for the order of events to make sense.

Tip to readers:
When choosing a book to read, 1) check how far gone it is - if it’s less than a hundred chapters, then it may take a while for the story to pick up (especially so with translations which are usually a 1000+ chapters) in which case you may want to hold on; 2) check the frequency of updates by checking the last date it was updated and the intervals between each update; 3) check the creator’s comments to see if the author is one who communicates breaks in updating regularly then you may choose to read at your own risk; 4) NEVER fall the ‘comments and suggestions are welcome’ ploy cause most authors say that but end up whining and ranting when you actually comment and suggest honestly (except, of course, if you’re painting black white).

Tips for authors (if I may, o magnificent ones):
1) don’t be in a hurry to publish your book if you’ve not completed up to 75% of the raw/draft/first edited text, cause once you publish, readers will keep demanding for updates to feed their suspense (I dare say that it’s only on WN that this is considered a bad thing).

2) Don’t open the floodgate of suggestions if you can’t handle honest views and opinions.

3) Minimise subplots involving supporting characters as these leave too many loose ends to resolve, especially when there’s no clear connection to the main plot. (I suspect this to the main cause of ‘writer’s block’ here).

4) Be sincere in your communications on updates; prepare the readers’ minds (whether to expect daily, weekly or monthly updates) so they know what they’re getting themselves into.

5) Now this is the most important one - STOP whining! Its unnecessary and annoying. Frankly, I’d rather be ghosted than to read an author’s lamentations about how difficult it is to do what he/she claims to love doing.

That’s all folks!

PS:

If you think I was rude, read your post again.

    Clowniac Rapeculture is sure is real, like blaming female worker when mass exfect had a bug, or saying that females achieve everything by sleeping around. And it’s always rape threat. Webnovel should report those to the police quite frankly.

        Reinesse

        For what it's worth, I've had it happen for long spans of time like this as well, but it's been a long time since the last one. Once I genuinely stopped caring if anyone was going to like what I am writing, I stopped hitting those kinds of snags. I really do think a lot of it is performance anxiety, and not an absence of ideas or creativity.

            Clowniac I feel like only a child would complain about writing speed. In higher education you get 6 month to research and write 100 pages long thesis and 3 months for 50 page short version. I personally clocked up to 200 including images and transcriots etc. but I had to work at it 10+ hours a day. If you wanna meaningfull text produced faster than a page a day then you get a textbot or a chatbot that generates rubbish.

              Bloody hell, 2 hours to write a 2,500 word chapter? Who said so? I spend 3-4 hours a day writing 2,000 words!

              It's kind of funny because I usually receive several types of responses. I do have one or two readers asking for mass releases, but when you spend 3-4 hours a day writing just one chapter, that's not realistic. Really. Even so, I do my best to the point I overworked and fell sick a couple of weeks ago, complete with a fever, just so I can stockpile enough chapters.

              And what did I get in return? After falling sick from overworking myself (I don't just write, I actually have a real job and I have to study for graduate school in real life, and I essentially sacrificed sleep and lots of stuff just to write), one reader came in and told me in a one-star review that my story is garbage. Now, I understand that my story is trash and I'm probably the most awful writer on the site, but do you not find it frustrating that when you've overworked yourself to the point of falling ill, some guy (or girl) comes in and calls your story garbage? After all the time and effort you put into it? I'm not asking for praise, and I guess readers should be encouraged to be brutally honest and call people's stories trash if they think it's terrible, but it's no less depressing. I feel like I should have spent the time better and taken care of my health if I knew everything would go to waste.

              The other type of response, which I receive more often, is rather than asking me for mass release or chapters, these readers actually demand that I stop releasing any chapters whatsoever. They want me to delete my story and leave the site because my writing is so poor that it apparently lowers the quality of the website. Yeah, that is how bad I am, and sometimes I think I should just take their advice and quit writing because I clearly don't have the talent for it. I don't know why I bother...

              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 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.

                                  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.

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