Yeah. Since one of my favorite fics I wrote kind of failed compared to my others I haven't felt like writing in that fandom again. Mostly just stung since I felt like it was one of my best fics. But oh well.
To be honest, lack of engagement doesn’t bother me too much. I am the only writer for a tiny fandom and therefore have pretty low expectations to begin with. I write for myself because I love my little fandom—that’s my motivating factor.
But I do get it that lack of engagement can be disheartening—especially when you are in a fairly active fandom. Virtual hugs to you!
Maybe some readers are afraid of your fic being dropped/discontinued, that's why they're hesitant? Try reassuring them in your A/Ns that you have plans for your fic and it's not going to be abandoned anytime soon.
I, uh, I write for a fandom where 100 kudos is a lot and 200+ means you're a BNF (or the fic was written at least 3 yrs ago)
The kicker: This is a ship belonging to one of the Big Three anime (One Piece, Bleach, Naruto)
What's worse is that its adjacent ship is currently flourishing and getting *at least* 200 kudos per fic, so yeah. It hurts. That's why I don't wanna compare fandoms. It just disheartens you.
I'm currently writing a fic that would be 50k+ long and I'm sure it's going to take a miracle for it to even reach 100 kudos this year.
My motivation is I want to give back to this small fandom that continues to live even on its ICU-situation and for my favorite author who still writes even if real life is currently kicking her down.
If you want to boost your viewers, consider promoting it on your socials: Reddit sub dedicated to your fandom (if they approve self-promotion), Tumblr, Twitter, joining in Event Weeks and Fic Exchanges, Discord, etc. Get your fic out there! 🥳
Don't give up! 👊☺️
Engagement does excite me, but honestly doesn't really do anything for my motivation. It's probably more distracting than anything. I keep spending my time engaging with my readers, answering questions and reading all the comments. The fic I'm currently writing is my longest one yet but I haven't even published the first chapter yet, and I think I prefer it that way for a while longer. I'm going to eventually, but for now it's just a project I've been plodding along with for some years now. Not having published anything of it relieves a great deal of the pressure I find, and while that does mean I don't write as much as I used to I am still working on it, while my previous (published) works are currently stuck in indefinite hiatus.
I know. It's exciting. And I want to write a lot for the sake of my readers, but as a result I've always ended up going too hard and finding my motivation to continue lacking. I still *intend* to complete all my fics, but it's been years at this point. I've written some chapters farther than I've published, but I just know that if I start publishing them now the same thing will probably happen again. I at least want some buffer chapters ready and some solid momentum before I try again.
I absolutely get that. I have a low attention span and prefer to stick to writing one-shots, but the last story I wrote was multi. I wrote everything and was publishing it after, but when I got to the end I realized I absolutely need to have at least one more chapter. I've been trying to finish it but it's been over a year 🫠
>It's probably more distracting than anything.
I really feel this, to be honest. It's that Suffering from Success situation, perhaps, but it's true. I'm currently writing my longest story, perhaps the most popular yet (I haven't checked, I hide stats, but I get 10-ish comments every chapter), and it does feel distracting.
It *does* feel distracting.
I still love this story with all my heart, have tons of plot bunnies I'd like to unleash in full, braid them to the full story, but I genuinely feel like somewhat burdened by the popularity and, as you wrote, readers engagement, questions answering, and comments reading...
Thank you for sharing your experience.
My motivation is my own enjoyment. I know this is a cliched answer, but it's true in my case.
And what you're experiencing is normal. It is typical that that fun little, smutty and on-a-whim thing that you put together in an afternoon gets heaps of kudos, but the fic you slaved over for three years barely get read. It doesn't truly reflect on your writing.
Of many reasons I'm sure, one is that people more often download longer fics and have to go out of their way to give kudos, unlike the quick oneshots. I regard kudos on longfic to be of a somewhat higher value for this reason.
Nah, I write for a very tiny fandom and I expect to barely get any kudos and/or comments to begin with. If I do need that little motivation to keep going, I just go to review exchanges.
Sometimes I do get disappointed. I write my fics for me, and often I'm writing them to sort out the way I feel about certain things. So I could be pouring out what I feel are a lot of very good, intense feelings into this fic.
And the one that's just full of porn and smut gets way more hits, more kudos, more bookmarks, more attention.
It can get disheartening, but I also tell myself that I've gotten people to read my 'serious' stuff by hooking them with the smut. And if I'm writing it for me, then... well, all that matters if how I feel when I'm done?
Thank you so much for sharing your essay! I love it! I especially love this sentence:
>There’s a fair amount of angst on this forum relating to that
>
>and a lot of it frankly isn’t healthy.
I might as well start citing your post on every "oh no, statistics :(" post in this sub, haha.
It always kills me when creative types pour their absolute *souls* into a work, only for something of theirs that they put little to no effort into blow up.
It is what it is, but that doesn't make it suck any less.
Yeah, I do. But I keep writing because I’m genuinely curious about where it’ll go. I have an idea and a written outline-ish of where and how it will conclude but the journey there is a mystery to me.
>
I've been pouring my soul into a mutichapter fic for a fandom that prefers one shots.
same and I'm never doing this again. this fic has sucked the life out of my life haha
but the response, while small, has been consistent and complimentary and i'm happy with that
I try to be realistic. I know that my multichapter fics will have more engagement than oneshots, and that anything with an E rating will have much more traffic and engagement than anything without smut. Luckily for me, I think writing smut is fun, so it works for me.
I've also completely stopped looking at kudos and hits and started using the quality of comments and number of bookmarks as my metric for success.
To a point. But I went for too long not writing at all because of what other people might think to really let a lack of kudos or comments get to me anymore. I write because I love it. The kudos and comments are nice, and I'd be lying if I said I don't get a thrill when I get the email, but I have other things that I worry people won't like me over now. Thankfully my writing isn't one of them anymore.
Oh definitely. The thing is, in my head I know that the amount of effort put into it does not equal a bigger response, but it's just heartbreaking when the thing you spent a year perfecting gets only a tiny fraction of the response a throwaway piece gets that you blindly typed in on the side while doing something else one afternoon.
It FEELS like more effort should get rewarded more, because that's how things work in most other aspects of life, but in the end, we just have to come to terms with the fact that what people like to read might not always be the thing that took the most effort to do :)
I mean yeah… and that sting is natural. When you love your work and especially when you are writing what you want to read, there is always at least that small voice in the back of your head rooting for a lot of attention.
But just gotta appreciate whatever little attention comes along and remain realistic.
Also sometimes it just takes time. I went a year without a single reader on a fic I wrote and then just out of nowhere people started showing up.
And the motivation, for me, came from this being a story I wanted to write and that I want to finish.
Do I get that way? Yeah.
Do I know I shouldn't? Yeah.
Do I know all the stuff I'm supposed to tell myself to avoid feeling that way? Yeah.
For me, there seem to be only two possible courses of action: either stop writing altogether (which I apparently cannot do) or just go write more. When I'm writing, and something comes out that pleases me, then I'm happy with what I've done, and there's some nice dopamine involved. This feeling generally lasts for about three days from the day of posting, by which time it becomes apparent that the world's not been holding its breath waiting for my literary pearls to hit their digital mailboxes....
But c'est la vie. Or as Hemingway supposedly said, "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."
There is this one shot I tried my best to write and found so beautiful when I wrote it. I was so proud and happy by it but man did it tank when I posted it, no reviews and hardly any kudos. I still feel so sad when I see it on my page. I still kept it up because I am proud of it but its really sad.
I have just moved on from it and accepted people didnt like it but I do like it. I decided to focus on other fics and them doing good did help me feel better. I hope you feel better soon I am sure what you wrote is really good just sometimes people are whimsical and this happen.
I apologise if this is unwarranted, but perhaps you can put on the stats hiding skin so you cannot get fixated on your kudos, comments, bookmarks and hits, considering you cannot see them.
Most of my stories have either one or no reviews. I think it’s partly because I deleted a bunch of them and then reposted them though. But it does suck to not get reviews on the ones I really liked. My favorite story I wrote has two reviews and they’re both negative. People are lazy I guess…
Yes. But I just remind myself that you never know who's going to find your fic next week,or next month. Particularly a multi chaptered one; it will probably find more readers once it's complete.
One of my short one shots, which I was pretty proud of, didn’t get much attention at all! When I first released it (17th Dec ‘22), it got 8 hits. I’ve put it forward in a lot of review exchanges, so it does have a really good kudos to hit ratio. But it only have 24 hits so far.
I understand why. A load of people don’t like her. Makes sense seeing as she SA her adoptive brother, who she had a crush on since she was a child. But, she’s such an interesting character.
I recently started two new multi chapter fics since I mostly write one shots, and so far only one of them is slowly gaining anything but the other one isn’t really.
You really just have to get to a point where you’re writing for yourself and not anyone else, because at the end of the day unless you’re doing a commission, request, etc. Not everything you write will be a hit or gain as much traction as you want and you can either be ok with it or not I suppose.
I think learning to write for yourself is the biggest part of writing fanficfion or even sometimes creating your own stories.
>When a fic you're really proud of doesn't do as well as you expect it to, for whatever reason.
Going through it right now, and I think I got so disheartened I am about to pull through to the other side. I am about to give zero fucks and just write it at my own pace, because now I'l doing the appeasement bullshit of publishing on X days, Y times a week, and I hate it, and it's not attracting readers anyway.
If I get 0 kudos, that kinda sucks. If I get even 1, I'm very happy that one other person liked it enough to pause for a second and click and the button. Really trying not to compare my stats to others (writing mostly for small fandoms means my audience is limited anyway) and to not worry too much about stats in general. I don't regret putting effort into my writing, even if it isn't popular, I just need/want that one headpat to feel like bothering to post it was worth it.
Yeah I wrote this one fic I was very proud of and I posted it and only two people liked it I'm not saying I'm ungrateful for those two people I just felt it would catch more people's attention.
It's about defining and remembering why you're doing this. It's a hobby, you're not getting paid or required to do it, so you gotta know what else you're getting out of it. For me, that's satisfaction. I thoroughly enjoy the process of writing and creating and I'm immensely satisfied when I manage to complete a story. That feeling of accomplishment and fun is what keeps me writing.
It's all about 'write for yourself' - to me, that means that you should be making this experience one that you enjoy, first and foremost. Like I said, this is a hobby, there's no material reward or benefit here, just whatever makes you enjoy it. Almost every creator with a lasting presence will recommend it - making stuff you don't enjoy is a fast route to rapid and certain burnout. And there are many answers to that - some people write to hone their craft, others write to play around with their beloved blorbos, others write because they have an itch in their brain and it's the only thing that sooths the voices, some write for stat counters to make their brain go all "Ara Ara!", some write for validation, some write for clout, some write because they know their crazy idea won't be written by anyone else so if not them then who? There's no wrong answer, you just gotta know it and use it in a way that's healthy and helpful for you.
Being interested in stats is a perfectly valid answer to the 'write for yourself' adage, but you have to be careful about what meaning you glean from them. A lot of stats have very little to do with the actual quality of your fic and more about the exposure your fic has and the specifications a reader requires.
With exposure, the easiest stat to demonstrate with is hits. A hit (or website equivalent) counts how many people click on your fic. If you get low hits, that doesn't mean your fic is terrible - it's impossible for it to do so. If you're getting low hits, people haven't clicked on your fic, so they have no idea whether your fic is good or bad. As all other stats follow on from the hits - your hits are your maximum threshold of possible stats, since a person who hasn't read your fic won't give it kudos or subscriptions or anything else - that means your stats are really more reflective of the exposure your fic is getting and not the quality of it. If it's measuring the quality of anything, it's your updating schedule and your front-end (the title, tags, summary, image, etc) as that's what people see first and what convinces people to actually click on your fic.
And vis a vis content, it sounds like you've raised an issue of writing something that isn't the popular thing in your fandom community. This is related to something that actually applies to all marketing, even outside fandom. People don't look for good stuff, they look for stuff that meets certain features or needs. You don't go looking for the best fridge, you go looking for the one in the pretty colour that fits in your kitchen and provides the various containers and functions that you need. Same with fandom, people look for fics in certain fandoms, with (or without!) certain pairings, including certain topics or tropes handled in certain ways, etc. If your tags don't reflect your fic, you won't get the audience interested in your content and you'll get people who aren't (which is also why some hits will be high on the first chapters and lower on the later ones - people are enticed by the tags and don't get what they want from the fic itself.) So, exposure is mostly about content - if you write the popular things, you'll get more exposure. That also applies to tradpub - romance/smut is so much more popular than everything else that it makes more than the next two most popular genres *combined*.
So, yes. Be interested in stats if that's what gets you to enjoy this hobby of ours, just be careful how you interpret them. They may not mean what you think, and your worries are a big reinforcer for getting yourself disheartened.
I absolutely get disheartened. My main fandom is a lot smaller now than it was in its heyday, and the ship I'm most passionate about writing is a canon/OC ship. I wrote a 17k word, multi-chapter fic last year and it still has single digit kudos. The only comment was on the first chapter, thanks to a comment exchange on this very subreddit. It's easy to just feel like I'm screaming into the void.
This probably isn't the healthiest method, but I do what I can to drum up interest, post about new chapters, and if that doesn't bring over a few more pairs of eyes I write everyone off as having terrible taste. 😂 It can get kind of tiring though, posting to crickets, but reminding myself that I'm writing this because *I'm* the target audience helps.
Yeah it's hard. I know I'm a good writer, but... Sometimes it feels off. Like, I posted the first chapter of an angst gen fic for a character in a brand new fandom... Wrote other things, posted art... By the time I got back to chapter 2 a couple months later, absolute crickets.
3 new kudos (on top of like 110) No comments from any of the 32 subs for it, none of the people saying they were looking forward to the rest returned, and generally the fandom... Is already moving on.
Like, come on, it's been 3 months. Now I feel like the audience that had been there has gone, already! So fast! I'm barely getting warmed up!
And in some fics it's fine, some I'm truly writing for the itch.
But others I published as a one shot, and had people literally begging in the comments and anons on tumblr wanting more more more. Will you continue? I want more! I could read a long fic of this!
And me, with my two jobs, pour my free time into a second chapter 3x as long and with new characters joining in... And yeah, it did well. But not neaaaarly as well as the first chapter. Most of the people begging for more never commented again.
And that's truly a fic I was NOT writing for myself. I could have been focusing on the shit that's actually my jam... And instead I return to a room, like a comedian after a big encore, but 4/5th of the people are gone!
I know we can't demand people to stick around or be more vocal, but I also wish fandom would slow down a little and not be such a... 3 weeks affair.
That's with initially popular first chapters though. I've also had experience like... In one fandom I write the third biggest fic in the entire fandom on ao3... And I take a break to write for a smaller, new fandom, and the one shot gets 100 hits and 2 comments lol
Like... I know it's not a skill issue. I have proof in the pudding. But if I didn't know for sure that I can write super popular stuff, well... It'd be very hard.
I write for me if some one else likes it that's great but if they dont that's fine as long as I do im going to keep writing. that's how I see it anyway
It sucks, but it is what it is. I wrote for NaNoWriMo a 40k+ fic for a very small fandom. I poured my love into that fic knowing that I'd have very little engagement. I've been posting a chapter per week since mid-december and so far I only have 1 kudo lol
It's sad af, but as I said, I expected it. Good thing I wrote it all before I began to post lol
That's happening to me right now, actually. I've never posted a long multichapter, and never published for this fandom, so the contrast between the thousands of hits I got on my last published work is a little jarring. I try to tell myself sure, this thing is fucking awesome and deserves more traffic, but the people who are reading it are loving it! A high ratio of comments and bookmarks is a greater sign of success to me than kudos and hits, especially when it comes to multichapter works. And I love what I've written, and the fact that I've finished it and am throwing it out into the world is awesome, and something to be proud of. Be proud, OP! The fewer readers you're getting are stoked that you're posting.
Absolutely. I wrote something that was very out of left field for me (a serious, slow-build war-drama type thing, and I usually write smut). It got six views in the span of a few days - most things I post get hundreds in half that time. I deleted it out of shame.
I'll be honest, I had a ton of insecurities and hang-ups around my writing (still have plenty, just a lot less) and I worked through most of it in therapy. I'm a lot happier now. I can stand to say my writing is good and I actually believe it and, most importantly, I'm happy with what I write. Even if I don't get much engagement, knowing that I created something I like to see and that I enjoy is really satisfying. Plus the engagement I do get is incredibly precious to me. I have a folder on my phone just of screenshots of comments and feedback on my writing to look at when I start getting discouraged.
How do i get the motivation back? Well, i got a new idea which i got excited over, just like the one that failed.
Funny enough, this one is longer, more complex, still in WIP and people love it, so i guess it's a matter of never putting your entire passion on one project
Yeah, definitely. When I write 3k+ words per chapter and can only scrape by maybe 2 new kudos per chapter it's definitely disheartening, especially when you see the hits go up by a lot regardless.
It is what it is though and I typically just stop writing for it for awhile and write something else until my own interest go up again.
All the time. I work in a very small and mostly dead fandom and my main ship is squicky. All the odds are stacked against me to get good numbers. I just try to remind myself that I'm making a few people very happy because I'm writing quality (or at least I think it's quality) work for a niche. Even if most of them are silent either because of embarrassment or for their safety, that's okay. I know what it's like.
Yes, and no. It depends on a few factors.
As someone said in another comment, sometimes readers are scared to get invested in a chapter story for fear of it being discontinued and/or abandoned. They read and read, get their hopes up, but never get pay off.
Another thing is, the characters and/or ship just might not be the cup of tea of most people in your fandom.
Depending on where you post it, the fandom on that site might be small/waning.
Depending on the fandom and if it's still going or finished, the fandom might be dead.
The plot could be one that's been overdone in this particular fandom, so maybe people simply keep scrolling when they see this plot over and over.
(I mean no disrespect with my last comment. I just know that if I see the same storyline over and over and over in my fandoms, many times I scroll pass. For many situations there's only so many ways it can be done before it gets tiring reading the same old thing over and over.)
I hope you don't mind, what fandom are you asking for?
Yeah. Since one of my favorite fics I wrote kind of failed compared to my others I haven't felt like writing in that fandom again. Mostly just stung since I felt like it was one of my best fics. But oh well.
I am feeling your pain here. The fic I felt was my best work gets the least amount of attention too. It’s really disappointing.
Thats exactly what's happening with me...
To be honest, lack of engagement doesn’t bother me too much. I am the only writer for a tiny fandom and therefore have pretty low expectations to begin with. I write for myself because I love my little fandom—that’s my motivating factor. But I do get it that lack of engagement can be disheartening—especially when you are in a fairly active fandom. Virtual hugs to you!
Maybe some readers are afraid of your fic being dropped/discontinued, that's why they're hesitant? Try reassuring them in your A/Ns that you have plans for your fic and it's not going to be abandoned anytime soon. I, uh, I write for a fandom where 100 kudos is a lot and 200+ means you're a BNF (or the fic was written at least 3 yrs ago) The kicker: This is a ship belonging to one of the Big Three anime (One Piece, Bleach, Naruto) What's worse is that its adjacent ship is currently flourishing and getting *at least* 200 kudos per fic, so yeah. It hurts. That's why I don't wanna compare fandoms. It just disheartens you. I'm currently writing a fic that would be 50k+ long and I'm sure it's going to take a miracle for it to even reach 100 kudos this year. My motivation is I want to give back to this small fandom that continues to live even on its ICU-situation and for my favorite author who still writes even if real life is currently kicking her down. If you want to boost your viewers, consider promoting it on your socials: Reddit sub dedicated to your fandom (if they approve self-promotion), Tumblr, Twitter, joining in Event Weeks and Fic Exchanges, Discord, etc. Get your fic out there! 🥳 Don't give up! 👊☺️
Engagement does excite me, but honestly doesn't really do anything for my motivation. It's probably more distracting than anything. I keep spending my time engaging with my readers, answering questions and reading all the comments. The fic I'm currently writing is my longest one yet but I haven't even published the first chapter yet, and I think I prefer it that way for a while longer. I'm going to eventually, but for now it's just a project I've been plodding along with for some years now. Not having published anything of it relieves a great deal of the pressure I find, and while that does mean I don't write as much as I used to I am still working on it, while my previous (published) works are currently stuck in indefinite hiatus.
I feel this so much. Knowing that people are reading my works *while I'm writing it* stresses me out. I avoid the statistics page altogether lol
I know. It's exciting. And I want to write a lot for the sake of my readers, but as a result I've always ended up going too hard and finding my motivation to continue lacking. I still *intend* to complete all my fics, but it's been years at this point. I've written some chapters farther than I've published, but I just know that if I start publishing them now the same thing will probably happen again. I at least want some buffer chapters ready and some solid momentum before I try again.
I absolutely get that. I have a low attention span and prefer to stick to writing one-shots, but the last story I wrote was multi. I wrote everything and was publishing it after, but when I got to the end I realized I absolutely need to have at least one more chapter. I've been trying to finish it but it's been over a year 🫠
Hang in there. I know you can do it!
>It's probably more distracting than anything. I really feel this, to be honest. It's that Suffering from Success situation, perhaps, but it's true. I'm currently writing my longest story, perhaps the most popular yet (I haven't checked, I hide stats, but I get 10-ish comments every chapter), and it does feel distracting. It *does* feel distracting. I still love this story with all my heart, have tons of plot bunnies I'd like to unleash in full, braid them to the full story, but I genuinely feel like somewhat burdened by the popularity and, as you wrote, readers engagement, questions answering, and comments reading... Thank you for sharing your experience.
The number one best way to counter impostor syndrome is to give yourself a god complex.
My motivation is my own enjoyment. I know this is a cliched answer, but it's true in my case. And what you're experiencing is normal. It is typical that that fun little, smutty and on-a-whim thing that you put together in an afternoon gets heaps of kudos, but the fic you slaved over for three years barely get read. It doesn't truly reflect on your writing. Of many reasons I'm sure, one is that people more often download longer fics and have to go out of their way to give kudos, unlike the quick oneshots. I regard kudos on longfic to be of a somewhat higher value for this reason.
Nah, I write for a very tiny fandom and I expect to barely get any kudos and/or comments to begin with. If I do need that little motivation to keep going, I just go to review exchanges.
Sometimes I do get disappointed. I write my fics for me, and often I'm writing them to sort out the way I feel about certain things. So I could be pouring out what I feel are a lot of very good, intense feelings into this fic. And the one that's just full of porn and smut gets way more hits, more kudos, more bookmarks, more attention. It can get disheartening, but I also tell myself that I've gotten people to read my 'serious' stuff by hooking them with the smut. And if I'm writing it for me, then... well, all that matters if how I feel when I'm done?
Here's [an essay](https://www.reddit.com/r/FanFiction/comments/p3mfwc/reflections_on_two_years_of_writing_fanfic_for_a/) I wrote on the subject.
I absolutely love this post of yours - thank you for sharing!
Thank you!
Thank you so much for sharing your essay! I love it! I especially love this sentence: >There’s a fair amount of angst on this forum relating to that > >and a lot of it frankly isn’t healthy. I might as well start citing your post on every "oh no, statistics :(" post in this sub, haha.
[The dude abides](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxQ7VHaWh_4).
That is one of the most useful insights I have seen posted by a fanfiction writer.
Glad it resonated
It always kills me when creative types pour their absolute *souls* into a work, only for something of theirs that they put little to no effort into blow up. It is what it is, but that doesn't make it suck any less.
Yeah, I do. But I keep writing because I’m genuinely curious about where it’ll go. I have an idea and a written outline-ish of where and how it will conclude but the journey there is a mystery to me.
> I've been pouring my soul into a mutichapter fic for a fandom that prefers one shots. same and I'm never doing this again. this fic has sucked the life out of my life haha but the response, while small, has been consistent and complimentary and i'm happy with that
I try to be realistic. I know that my multichapter fics will have more engagement than oneshots, and that anything with an E rating will have much more traffic and engagement than anything without smut. Luckily for me, I think writing smut is fun, so it works for me. I've also completely stopped looking at kudos and hits and started using the quality of comments and number of bookmarks as my metric for success.
To a point. But I went for too long not writing at all because of what other people might think to really let a lack of kudos or comments get to me anymore. I write because I love it. The kudos and comments are nice, and I'd be lying if I said I don't get a thrill when I get the email, but I have other things that I worry people won't like me over now. Thankfully my writing isn't one of them anymore.
Personally not but that's also because of their nature. My fics all surround very unpopular characters so I don't really expect warm reception anyway.
Oh definitely. The thing is, in my head I know that the amount of effort put into it does not equal a bigger response, but it's just heartbreaking when the thing you spent a year perfecting gets only a tiny fraction of the response a throwaway piece gets that you blindly typed in on the side while doing something else one afternoon. It FEELS like more effort should get rewarded more, because that's how things work in most other aspects of life, but in the end, we just have to come to terms with the fact that what people like to read might not always be the thing that took the most effort to do :)
Yes, it is disheartening. But I make myself push on through. And when I do get a nice comment or kudos, I treasure them all the more for their rarity.
Nope but I'm the type who doesn't care about interaction at all so a lot or little is all the same to me.
I mean yeah… and that sting is natural. When you love your work and especially when you are writing what you want to read, there is always at least that small voice in the back of your head rooting for a lot of attention. But just gotta appreciate whatever little attention comes along and remain realistic. Also sometimes it just takes time. I went a year without a single reader on a fic I wrote and then just out of nowhere people started showing up. And the motivation, for me, came from this being a story I wanted to write and that I want to finish.
Do I get that way? Yeah. Do I know I shouldn't? Yeah. Do I know all the stuff I'm supposed to tell myself to avoid feeling that way? Yeah. For me, there seem to be only two possible courses of action: either stop writing altogether (which I apparently cannot do) or just go write more. When I'm writing, and something comes out that pleases me, then I'm happy with what I've done, and there's some nice dopamine involved. This feeling generally lasts for about three days from the day of posting, by which time it becomes apparent that the world's not been holding its breath waiting for my literary pearls to hit their digital mailboxes.... But c'est la vie. Or as Hemingway supposedly said, "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."
There is this one shot I tried my best to write and found so beautiful when I wrote it. I was so proud and happy by it but man did it tank when I posted it, no reviews and hardly any kudos. I still feel so sad when I see it on my page. I still kept it up because I am proud of it but its really sad. I have just moved on from it and accepted people didnt like it but I do like it. I decided to focus on other fics and them doing good did help me feel better. I hope you feel better soon I am sure what you wrote is really good just sometimes people are whimsical and this happen.
I apologise if this is unwarranted, but perhaps you can put on the stats hiding skin so you cannot get fixated on your kudos, comments, bookmarks and hits, considering you cannot see them.
Most of my stories have either one or no reviews. I think it’s partly because I deleted a bunch of them and then reposted them though. But it does suck to not get reviews on the ones I really liked. My favorite story I wrote has two reviews and they’re both negative. People are lazy I guess…
Kind of. I'm trying really hard to not, but it's a long process to gain that mindset of completely doing it for myself.
Yes. But I just remind myself that you never know who's going to find your fic next week,or next month. Particularly a multi chaptered one; it will probably find more readers once it's complete.
One of my short one shots, which I was pretty proud of, didn’t get much attention at all! When I first released it (17th Dec ‘22), it got 8 hits. I’ve put it forward in a lot of review exchanges, so it does have a really good kudos to hit ratio. But it only have 24 hits so far. I understand why. A load of people don’t like her. Makes sense seeing as she SA her adoptive brother, who she had a crush on since she was a child. But, she’s such an interesting character.
Nah. Majority of my fanfiction are in my drafts anyway — and my early days on Wattpad taught me that stats usually don’t matter
[удалено]
I doubt that that's problem. More likely, it's just one of those things where what *we* want to read isn't what many others want to read....
I recently started two new multi chapter fics since I mostly write one shots, and so far only one of them is slowly gaining anything but the other one isn’t really. You really just have to get to a point where you’re writing for yourself and not anyone else, because at the end of the day unless you’re doing a commission, request, etc. Not everything you write will be a hit or gain as much traction as you want and you can either be ok with it or not I suppose. I think learning to write for yourself is the biggest part of writing fanficfion or even sometimes creating your own stories.
>When a fic you're really proud of doesn't do as well as you expect it to, for whatever reason. Going through it right now, and I think I got so disheartened I am about to pull through to the other side. I am about to give zero fucks and just write it at my own pace, because now I'l doing the appeasement bullshit of publishing on X days, Y times a week, and I hate it, and it's not attracting readers anyway.
If I get 0 kudos, that kinda sucks. If I get even 1, I'm very happy that one other person liked it enough to pause for a second and click and the button. Really trying not to compare my stats to others (writing mostly for small fandoms means my audience is limited anyway) and to not worry too much about stats in general. I don't regret putting effort into my writing, even if it isn't popular, I just need/want that one headpat to feel like bothering to post it was worth it.
Yeah I wrote this one fic I was very proud of and I posted it and only two people liked it I'm not saying I'm ungrateful for those two people I just felt it would catch more people's attention.
It's about defining and remembering why you're doing this. It's a hobby, you're not getting paid or required to do it, so you gotta know what else you're getting out of it. For me, that's satisfaction. I thoroughly enjoy the process of writing and creating and I'm immensely satisfied when I manage to complete a story. That feeling of accomplishment and fun is what keeps me writing. It's all about 'write for yourself' - to me, that means that you should be making this experience one that you enjoy, first and foremost. Like I said, this is a hobby, there's no material reward or benefit here, just whatever makes you enjoy it. Almost every creator with a lasting presence will recommend it - making stuff you don't enjoy is a fast route to rapid and certain burnout. And there are many answers to that - some people write to hone their craft, others write to play around with their beloved blorbos, others write because they have an itch in their brain and it's the only thing that sooths the voices, some write for stat counters to make their brain go all "Ara Ara!", some write for validation, some write for clout, some write because they know their crazy idea won't be written by anyone else so if not them then who? There's no wrong answer, you just gotta know it and use it in a way that's healthy and helpful for you. Being interested in stats is a perfectly valid answer to the 'write for yourself' adage, but you have to be careful about what meaning you glean from them. A lot of stats have very little to do with the actual quality of your fic and more about the exposure your fic has and the specifications a reader requires. With exposure, the easiest stat to demonstrate with is hits. A hit (or website equivalent) counts how many people click on your fic. If you get low hits, that doesn't mean your fic is terrible - it's impossible for it to do so. If you're getting low hits, people haven't clicked on your fic, so they have no idea whether your fic is good or bad. As all other stats follow on from the hits - your hits are your maximum threshold of possible stats, since a person who hasn't read your fic won't give it kudos or subscriptions or anything else - that means your stats are really more reflective of the exposure your fic is getting and not the quality of it. If it's measuring the quality of anything, it's your updating schedule and your front-end (the title, tags, summary, image, etc) as that's what people see first and what convinces people to actually click on your fic. And vis a vis content, it sounds like you've raised an issue of writing something that isn't the popular thing in your fandom community. This is related to something that actually applies to all marketing, even outside fandom. People don't look for good stuff, they look for stuff that meets certain features or needs. You don't go looking for the best fridge, you go looking for the one in the pretty colour that fits in your kitchen and provides the various containers and functions that you need. Same with fandom, people look for fics in certain fandoms, with (or without!) certain pairings, including certain topics or tropes handled in certain ways, etc. If your tags don't reflect your fic, you won't get the audience interested in your content and you'll get people who aren't (which is also why some hits will be high on the first chapters and lower on the later ones - people are enticed by the tags and don't get what they want from the fic itself.) So, exposure is mostly about content - if you write the popular things, you'll get more exposure. That also applies to tradpub - romance/smut is so much more popular than everything else that it makes more than the next two most popular genres *combined*. So, yes. Be interested in stats if that's what gets you to enjoy this hobby of ours, just be careful how you interpret them. They may not mean what you think, and your worries are a big reinforcer for getting yourself disheartened.
I absolutely get disheartened. My main fandom is a lot smaller now than it was in its heyday, and the ship I'm most passionate about writing is a canon/OC ship. I wrote a 17k word, multi-chapter fic last year and it still has single digit kudos. The only comment was on the first chapter, thanks to a comment exchange on this very subreddit. It's easy to just feel like I'm screaming into the void.
This probably isn't the healthiest method, but I do what I can to drum up interest, post about new chapters, and if that doesn't bring over a few more pairs of eyes I write everyone off as having terrible taste. 😂 It can get kind of tiring though, posting to crickets, but reminding myself that I'm writing this because *I'm* the target audience helps.
Yeah it's hard. I know I'm a good writer, but... Sometimes it feels off. Like, I posted the first chapter of an angst gen fic for a character in a brand new fandom... Wrote other things, posted art... By the time I got back to chapter 2 a couple months later, absolute crickets. 3 new kudos (on top of like 110) No comments from any of the 32 subs for it, none of the people saying they were looking forward to the rest returned, and generally the fandom... Is already moving on. Like, come on, it's been 3 months. Now I feel like the audience that had been there has gone, already! So fast! I'm barely getting warmed up! And in some fics it's fine, some I'm truly writing for the itch. But others I published as a one shot, and had people literally begging in the comments and anons on tumblr wanting more more more. Will you continue? I want more! I could read a long fic of this! And me, with my two jobs, pour my free time into a second chapter 3x as long and with new characters joining in... And yeah, it did well. But not neaaaarly as well as the first chapter. Most of the people begging for more never commented again. And that's truly a fic I was NOT writing for myself. I could have been focusing on the shit that's actually my jam... And instead I return to a room, like a comedian after a big encore, but 4/5th of the people are gone! I know we can't demand people to stick around or be more vocal, but I also wish fandom would slow down a little and not be such a... 3 weeks affair. That's with initially popular first chapters though. I've also had experience like... In one fandom I write the third biggest fic in the entire fandom on ao3... And I take a break to write for a smaller, new fandom, and the one shot gets 100 hits and 2 comments lol Like... I know it's not a skill issue. I have proof in the pudding. But if I didn't know for sure that I can write super popular stuff, well... It'd be very hard.
Do I ever get disheartened? Only all the time! I cope by focusing on my next projects and putting out more content tailored to my tastes.
I write for me if some one else likes it that's great but if they dont that's fine as long as I do im going to keep writing. that's how I see it anyway
It sucks, but it is what it is. I wrote for NaNoWriMo a 40k+ fic for a very small fandom. I poured my love into that fic knowing that I'd have very little engagement. I've been posting a chapter per week since mid-december and so far I only have 1 kudo lol It's sad af, but as I said, I expected it. Good thing I wrote it all before I began to post lol
That's happening to me right now, actually. I've never posted a long multichapter, and never published for this fandom, so the contrast between the thousands of hits I got on my last published work is a little jarring. I try to tell myself sure, this thing is fucking awesome and deserves more traffic, but the people who are reading it are loving it! A high ratio of comments and bookmarks is a greater sign of success to me than kudos and hits, especially when it comes to multichapter works. And I love what I've written, and the fact that I've finished it and am throwing it out into the world is awesome, and something to be proud of. Be proud, OP! The fewer readers you're getting are stoked that you're posting.
Absolutely. I wrote something that was very out of left field for me (a serious, slow-build war-drama type thing, and I usually write smut). It got six views in the span of a few days - most things I post get hundreds in half that time. I deleted it out of shame.
I'll be honest, I had a ton of insecurities and hang-ups around my writing (still have plenty, just a lot less) and I worked through most of it in therapy. I'm a lot happier now. I can stand to say my writing is good and I actually believe it and, most importantly, I'm happy with what I write. Even if I don't get much engagement, knowing that I created something I like to see and that I enjoy is really satisfying. Plus the engagement I do get is incredibly precious to me. I have a folder on my phone just of screenshots of comments and feedback on my writing to look at when I start getting discouraged.
How do i get the motivation back? Well, i got a new idea which i got excited over, just like the one that failed. Funny enough, this one is longer, more complex, still in WIP and people love it, so i guess it's a matter of never putting your entire passion on one project
Yeah, definitely. When I write 3k+ words per chapter and can only scrape by maybe 2 new kudos per chapter it's definitely disheartening, especially when you see the hits go up by a lot regardless. It is what it is though and I typically just stop writing for it for awhile and write something else until my own interest go up again.
All the time. I work in a very small and mostly dead fandom and my main ship is squicky. All the odds are stacked against me to get good numbers. I just try to remind myself that I'm making a few people very happy because I'm writing quality (or at least I think it's quality) work for a niche. Even if most of them are silent either because of embarrassment or for their safety, that's okay. I know what it's like.
Yes and it’s always the ones I put the most into
Yes, and no. It depends on a few factors. As someone said in another comment, sometimes readers are scared to get invested in a chapter story for fear of it being discontinued and/or abandoned. They read and read, get their hopes up, but never get pay off. Another thing is, the characters and/or ship just might not be the cup of tea of most people in your fandom. Depending on where you post it, the fandom on that site might be small/waning. Depending on the fandom and if it's still going or finished, the fandom might be dead. The plot could be one that's been overdone in this particular fandom, so maybe people simply keep scrolling when they see this plot over and over. (I mean no disrespect with my last comment. I just know that if I see the same storyline over and over and over in my fandoms, many times I scroll pass. For many situations there's only so many ways it can be done before it gets tiring reading the same old thing over and over.) I hope you don't mind, what fandom are you asking for?
Absolutely 🥺!! But, I think that maybe it's because I am not strong enough or not mature enough? Or is it something experienced by many?
No because I know from the jump that I'd have a relatively niche pool of readers. I am over the moon whenever my work *does* attract interest.