Exlor

  • Aug 19, 2023
  • Joined Nov 22, 2017
  • The Mech Touch is still ongoing. The Webnovel app posted the false notification because of a mistake I made in the author interface. I have already published some authors notes in the current chapters to explain that it is a mistake.

    THE MECH TOUCH STILL HAS YEARS TO GO BEFORE REACHING ITS END!

    • Writing is a craft. Writing is art. Though it seems simple to sit down behind a computer screen and press the buttons on a keyboard, it takes true skill and dedication to become proficient in entertaining readers with your writing.

      The art and craft of writing cannot be picked up by anyone who has never seriously attempted to do storytelling before.

      That said, like any art or craft, writing is a skill that can largely be trained and practiced to a proficient level.

      I like to compare writing to other expressions of art such as painting or playing the piano. It takes years for painters and pianists to become skilled enough to reach the level of a professional, or at least someone who can earn the audience's appreciation.

      Therefore, don't think that the low entry barrier of writing means that writing a good or entertaining story is also easy. It takes effort, creativity and skill to write a story that can do well on Webnovel or as a published book.

      Just like any other form of art or craft, you can train your creative writing skill in a focused way.

      You can read lots of good novels to train your story awareness.

      You can start writing fanfiction, which is not only easier than writing an original story, but also allows you to shape your writing style in a more tolerant setting. It is easier to attract readers if they are already fans of the characters you include in your story.

      You can also buy books or watch online videos that teach you how to write a story. I believe Brandon Sanderson has a good lecture about this on YouTube.

      Whatever method you choose, if you are truly serious about creative writing, then you need to realize that you have to put some serious effort into becoming good at it. After all, you can't expect a random stranger to become a good pianist in just a few weeks of practice, right?

      While it doesn't take a decade or so for someone to become good enough to do well on Webnovel, in my opinion it does take at least a few months to a year to reach a point where earning money on this platform become viable. From the other original authors I've interacted with, I believe this is very much possible for anyone who is truly willing to commit to this craft.

      Therefore, if you reach a point where you are seriously questioning whether its worthwhile to continue writing, you just need to consider whether you are motivated enough to work hard in raising your writing ability to an acceptable level. Anything possible as long as you have the passion in creative writing.

    • Tomoyuki

      At the moment I do it full time and so of course I have the time to dedicate that much time each day on writing. If you are already studying or working, then of course you should rightfully treat it as a hobby, side job, extra activity or whatever put firm limits on how much time you spend on writing. Spending six hours a day on writing when you already have an existing full-time job or study is insane.

      The only other thing that I can say is that readers aren't interested in your own circumstances. Like audiences of a theater, they only see a carefully crafted show. They don't see what happens outside the performance date and off the stage and how much effort the actors put into practicing and mastering their performances.

      This is the nature of art and the entertainment business. Readers are only presented with a finished product that is the culmination of our hard work. It is unfair to make a comparison between a novel written by someone who writes fulltime to a novel written by someone who is writing part-time. Yet readers don't know any better or don't care and make those comparisons anyway. This is the reality all authors have to live with and it is best not to listen to these kinds of voices at all.

      All I can say is that passion and enjoyment are vital to sustain writing in the long term. Write as much as you enjoy and your free time allows and no more if you want to keep it up for years. Writing is not a race nor a competition to be the fastest writer or the best earner, though all the comparisons and jostling for power stones something make it seem like it sometimes.

      • When it comes to writing, the author should stick to what they are comfortable with and only push themselves to write more if they are prepared to stretch their limits.

        I'm one of those authors who write 6,000 words a day, 3 chapters a day, for several months now. This isn't the most as I know there are a couple of people who pump out even more words a day.

        I can speak from experience that it is extremely difficult to maintain quality standards. I have trained myself to write 1,000 words per hour so I spend 6 hours to write every day. I don't do any proofreading or editing though my English writing skills are good enough that there aren't any grammar or spelling errors. Nonetheless, if you write so much all the time, you definitely won't be able to plan out things as much.

        I didn't get to this point immediately, of course. Over the course of 1,5 years since I started writing, I started with an update rate of 2,000 words a day. Then 4,000 words a day. Then 6,000 words a day. Increasing your daily writing volume is a skill that can be trained, but it requires dedication, time and a willingness to work hard to increase it. The novel also has to be able to accommodate it and the author's imagination also has to keep up with the pace.

        Not every author has the time to dedicate this much effort into doing such. If they don't have the time or don't feel motivated, it's better to stick to what is sustainable to them. I have seen too many authors break because they tried and failed to push their limits when they weren't ready for it. Listening to reader feedback and responding to their demands is only useful if it benefits the authors.

        Is it exhausting? Yes. But no more so than a full-time job. The earnings I've received for writing my novel this way has made it worth it for me to write in this style and at this pace. The novels that Webnovel offers are different from published books. They don't have the best quality, but they leave you coming back for more every day.

        Many authors are amateurs and don't have a lot of writing experience and that reflects in their quality of their work and their update rate. If they were pros, they would have probably brought their novels to a publishing house or Amazon instead. Webnovel offers a lower barrier to entry for authors and while there are many works that are disappointing, the charm of this platform is that there is always a gem in the rough or a particular flavor that you like from the mass of novels on offer.

        Ultimately, writing is a passion and the best stories are written if the author is on fire. I write a lot of words a day, but I enjoy it and that keeps me going day after day without any depression or mood swings. Authors should pay more attention to their mental and physical well being and their financial situation to decide how much they want to write. Just responding to pure user feedback is not always healthy because usually the loudest and most extreme voices are amplified in the comments and reviews.

        • Webnovel is undergoing through some controversial changes that aren't being rolled out at the same time. As mentioned, fanfiction will receive their own separate category. That is what I heard of. There have been other changes that have pissed off original authors.

          No matter what everyone thinks of fanfiction, from what I think they are mainly being used to attract new readers to Webnovel. Popular fanfics can draw new readers that aren't normally exposed to Eastern-style translated novels and original novels. The hope is that these readers might branch out from the fanfics and read the other novels from the site.

          However, fanfics are different from the translated and original novels in that they aren't bound to any single publishing platform. No contract restricts them from only publishing their work on Webnovel. There is always fanfiction.net, RoyalRoad, Archive of our Own, Wattpad, Scribblehub, and etc for fanfic authors to publish their work instead. If Webnovel becomes unattractive to fanfic authors, they can always move elsewhere.

        • I've seen a lot of authors jump up in popularity but diminish rapidly after the novelty has worn off. I've also seen authors push themselves beyond their limit to deliver bonus chapters and partake in mass releases and such.

          While these methods work, I think the most sustainable long-term method of gaining a following is to simply output according to a regular schedule. This is what I've concluded after being an avid reader of novels on WN for more than a year before I started writing my own story. WN has adopted a culture that encourages steady updates without interruption, preferably daily at the very least. As long as your story isn't too bad and you can commit to a regular update schedule, then you will find a lot of people will come back time and time again.

          • You have to acquire the discipline to continue writing even at your most awful days. Once you master that skill, you are capable of writing in any situation. This is a skill any author has to master if you have ambitions to earn money from your writing.

            I have my good days and bad days, but even at my most awful state, I force myself to finish my daily chapters. Their quality might not be up to snuff, but at least I got something to show for it. The more you do this, the better you are able to cope with this situation, and the more your quality will stabilize.

          • The income from gifts in dollars isn't very great at the moment for contracted authors, and it will be even less for non-contracted authors. International money transfers are very expensive, so you won't be earning anything but money for a single coffee at Starbucks.

            • View count is one of the least useful metrics on this site. If you write short chapters, you can get more views than if you write longer chapters.

              In my opinion, the best metrics are comments and power stones, because they require active input from your readers. You can measure the level of engagement of your story from them, though I don't recommend you obsess over them every single day.

              • Webnovel is actively translating a number of Chinese and English-language webnovels into other languages, and I think they will expand their catalog in the future.

                • Awesome event! Those are great looking photos and the venue looks classy.

                • The more mech stories on this site, the better. This one looks solid.

                • You can usually rely on contracted novels and those that are supported by Patreon subscriptions to be updated regularly. Money is the best motivator for authors to commit to their work.

                  • Amazon's self-publishing market is large, but it's hard to stand out. You have to do everything yourself, particularly marketing your novel. Publishing on Webnovel can be attractive to those who can't build a reading audience from scratch. The readership here is great while the amount of competition you have is not that overwhelming (yet).

                    • Editing is a different beast than writing and takes up valuable time you could be pumping out your next chapter. It's not that we authors recognize the value of editing and going over our chapters multiple times, but it is an exhausting process that not everyone enjoys. We already have our hands full trying to keep up a regular updating schedule. I do think that running a free spell checker like Microsoft Word or Grammarly should be a given, but you can't expect authors to spend too much time doing something that sometimes feel like you're sucking out your soul. The process of writing and editing are two connected but ultimately distinct areas of expertise. It's possible to be good at both of them, but in my opinion it's as rare as those dual cultivators that are seldom seen in cultivation novels.

                      • ano81 You can also change your image size in Paint or Paint 3D with the crop tool and some fiddling around. It's completely free as well, unlike Photoshop.

                        • I think one of the great things I picked up when reading all of those eastern fantasy novels is that power is everything. As they like to say, absolute power trumps all tricks. In the civilized world such a saying is not really obvious, but it actually underlines how important the countries we live in should pay more attention to national defense. I'm kind of sad at Europe's state of affairs where I live in because we are pathetically relying on the United States to keep us safe. The NATO is a nice thing and all, but I'd rather my country reinvests in tanks at the very least.

                          • This is an old problem that I've experienced with the translated novels that updated their covers. I'm experiencing it myself for my own original novel when I updated its cover. It's good to hear this will get fixed soon :)

                            • I read the chapter as soon as it published but it contained nothing but a single page with just a few sentences of nonsense that I've forgotten. Presumably what the translator published wasn't a finished chapter.

                              • A good synopsis should contain a 'hook' to 'reel' readers in. By hook I mean the cool thing that makes your story worth reading, for example a system or reincarnation. They should be as short as possible so potential readers can judge at a glance if the story fits their interests or not. I think a lot of readers get confused because some synopses don't incorporate a hook in their description, or do so too vaguely in order to avoid spoiling their carefully constructed plot. It's a difficult challenge to balance between informing your readers and avoid spoiling too much.

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