[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 1.21 MB, 498x351, tenor.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19794010 No.19794010 [Reply] [Original]

The most success I've ever had getting any of my writing read was when I was a fanfic writer back in the day. My original fiction and my poetry have had tepid reader bases at best. This is driving me insane. I think I've vastly improved as a writer since my days of writing fanfiction, and I didn't know anything about poetry back then so I've improved as a poet as well. Yet, to this day, the things I've written that have the biggest reader bases are my fanfics. They STILL get attention, to this day.

It's kind of depressing for me as a writer.

>> No.19794791

>>19794010
Post some of your work

>> No.19794868

>>19794010
Could be worse. The most success I ever got as a writer was with tg captions

>> No.19795376

>>19794010
Loads of authors have made this complaint. A potboiler they dashed off gets endless adulation, and their magnum opus barely a mention. C'est la vie. e.g. Arthur Conan Doyle got really fed-up at how everyone just wanted more Holmes stories. (He killed him off because he was bored with him, but then had to bring him back because of public pressure, hahahaha). I think he thought his historical novels, like The White Company, were better.

>> No.19795395

>>19794010
just replace the cast with a fandom cast, call it an AU and post it on ao3

>> No.19795482

>>19794010
Write porn, then. Sell out.

>> No.19795532

It's because the former is done in service of your audience whereas the latter is done in service of yourself. Guess which one your audience prefers to read??

>> No.19795644

>>19795532
Good point. That Montessori quotation ("it's the process that matters, not the product") is responsible for a lot of navel-gazing crap, I think.

This might be one reason why it can be useful to imagine an "ideal reader" or "ideal listener" and then write your book to him. (Some people even say, write it in the form of a letter to him.)

The point is, once you're writing to someone else, you're conscious of not boring him and not being too self-indulgent (just as if you were telling a joke to a bunch of friends, or something). But because it's your ideal reader, you can still write sort of the story you want. It's a good compromise.

>> No.19795695

>>19794010
This is also the premise of Misery isn't it.

I wonder if anyone has done something similar:

* Writers churns out some crap to pay bills

* Crap sells

* Now he wants to write good stuff

* But the public demands crap (12-volume fantasy epic, say)

* So he writes the crap but deliberately writes it in such a way that the ending shafts all the fans and EMOTIONALLY DESTROYS them

* He does clandistine research on popular internet forums to find which characters are most loved, and then KILLS THEM OFF BRUTALLY or makes them turn evil

Hmm, this sounds like GoT haha