An Open Letter To All Readers - From Your Dear Authors
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.
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.
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.
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.
yaoyueyi
So true!
Ahh, it takes me a long time to type, translate and edit. Amazingly there is editing in the chapters, unfortunately, it is not a professional edition. In my case it is faster for me to type in my language and translate, so I have "bent work". If I want to keep the publications stable.
Your outburst is exactly how I feel. I love the comments of the readers, but when they say "The story is good I just wanted the author to update more!", I am very disappointed because I am already giving the best 2 chapter a day!
Worse is when a reader comes to "negotiate" by saying something like mass launch for more power stones as rewards ... As if the work already done wasn't enough for readers to donate power stones!
This is so frustrating!
On the other hand, I have readers who always ask about my health and this encourages me more than the bulk release request or more updates.
Anyway, thanks for your words that were a big outburst for me!
Thank you very much