The absolute state of Scribble Hub

[Sylthix]

Now, this is a more meta post, but I wanna put forward a discussion towards the quality of the novels people post on this site nowadays. Do any of you authors see a decrease in both diversity and quality of stories? Try scrolling down towards the "Latest updated" section on the home page. 9/10 stories will be fantasy related and maybe 1/2 of the list will be stories about gender bender or girls love on a bad day. We're basically plagued with (insert noun here) systems, shallow overpowered characters, villainesses for a while and stories that are unnecessarily stretched out for no good reason. You have blurbs being a single sentence, told by an unreliable narrator and super vague leaving you with not enough about the story you've got an eye on. You could go into any story and often leave with feet-deep characterisations such as the too common trope of women whose only purpose in the story is to orbit the chad alpha cool better-than-everyone-else main character.

So after reading some of that, have any of you noticed some of these stories and issues or are you even authoring said stories now? You can agree, disagree and tell me my taste in books are bad and I'm just crazy. Let's get a talk going.

 

[Fallion]

Not exactly a new problem, also the reason I barely read anything on here.
I think it's almost 2 years ago that I started only checking in on the top 9 trending stories once every few days and doing a search every couple of months, for the exact same reasons.

 

[Ai-chan]

It's an amateur story site, not Amazon Kindle Unlimited. People write what they want to write. It just so happens that those things are what people want to write. Ai-chan thinks it's not truly a problem, as long as people keep writing. To tell people not to write more of one thing (or even worse, demonize people who write those things) is counterproductive and will harm the site in the long run. This is not a translation site where you can ask the translators to look for other stories to translate. Writing is a hard business, it isn't readily available to be released easily as easy as changing clothes.

If you do not like it, sponsor a competition to write stories you like and see the number suddenly rise.

That being said, @Alverost when is the next competition? It's been half a year since the last one.

 

[Aoi_Sora]

This is why it is fun. It's like finding a golden needle in a haystack. Finding that gem really feels good you know.

 

[FGCCheckmate]

It's what the market wants.

 

[SakeVision]

Scribblehub never had much diversity, as compared to rr, wattpad or even webnovel.
The average age here, both author and reader, is some place below 18, and the novels reflect that

 

[LostLibrarian]

Scribblehub never had much diversity, as compared to rr, wattpad or even webnovel.

I would argue that the top lists of RR or webnovel (never been on wattpad) are even worse than SH. Especially LitRPG or some meta-cultivation...

It's popcorn novels for a readerbase that wants to read popcorn novels which is why they are seen a lot in the top lists, which in turn makes many authors want to write such novel to see some success as well.

In all honesty: due to the size of the site and the trending system, I would argue that SH is rather one of the more varied sites. A quality novel that is active enough will most likely end up in trending at some point. Good luck getting to that point on webnovel or RR without a chapter a day...

 

[XKARNATION]

This site is worse than RR for quality but better than webnovel imo

 

[ModernGold7ne]

Now, this is a more meta post, but I wanna put forward a discussion towards the quality of the novels people post on this site nowadays. Do any of you authors see a decrease in both diversity and quality of stories? Try scrolling down towards the "Latest updated" section on the home page. 9/10 stories will be fantasy related and maybe 1/2 of the list will be stories about gender bender or girls love on a bad day. We're basically plagued with (insert noun here) systems, shallow overpowered characters, villainesses for a while and stories that are unnecessarily stretched out for no good reason. You have blurbs being a single sentence, told by an unreliable narrator and super vague leaving you with not enough about the story you've got an eye on. You could go into any story and often leave with feet-deep characterisations such as the too common trope of women whose only purpose in the story is to orbit the chad alpha cool better-than-everyone-else main character.

So after reading some of that, have any of you noticed some of these stories and issues or are you even authoring said stories now? You can agree, disagree and tell me my taste in books are bad and I'm just crazy. Let's get a talk going.

makes gems even more valuable, speaking seriously though, royalroad and kindle exists.
My experience is, there are good books, you just have to narrow them down, most times, its not that a story is generally bad, you just don't like it for one reason or another, the problem with this site is, almost nobody bothers to go back and edit their early chapters, inadvertedly repelling new readers, especially if the quality of the earlier chapters is drastically worse than the new ones.

I would argue that the top lists of RR or webnovel (never been on wattpad) are even worse than SH. Especially LitRPG or some meta-cultivation...

It's popcorn novels for a readerbase that wants to read popcorn novels which is why they are seen a lot in the top lists, which in turn makes many authors want to write such novel to see some success as well.

In all honesty: due to the size of the site and the trending system, I would argue that SH is rather one of the more varied sites. A quality novel that is active enough will most likely end up in trending at some point. Good luck getting to that point on webnovel or RR without a chapter a day...

Also my experience, everyone on royalroad wants to write like those at the top, that makes their story boring and repetitive.

 

[BlackKnightX]

It’s like a community with its own quirks and characteristics. Although I haven’t been here for that long, I can see that gender-bender and GL are the selling points here.

There are varieties of genres in each site, but I'll usually go for the selling points whenever I want to read something specific. If I want a LitRPG with good writing, I’ll go to Royal Road. If I want some mindless fun with bad to acceptable writing quality, I’ll go to Novel Update. If I want some wish-fulfillment gender-bending GL, I’ll go to this site.

The reason why the kind of story you’ve described is so numerous here is because it’s what people want to read—and write, if other stories can’t exactly satisfy their fantasy.

Readers can’t get enough of it. It’s the same mentality as fanfiction. You watch some movies/tv shows or read some books till the end and can’t get enough of them. You want more, so what do you do? Yep, fanfiction.

It’s the same thing. Wish-fulfillment is fun for obvious reasons, so once you read one, you’ll want another and then another. If it’s not your thing, then that’s too bad. But that’s just how it is for web novels. It’s a niche thing.

 

[Wohendum]

I would argue that the top lists of RR or webnovel (never been on wattpad) are even worse than SH. Especially LitRPG or some meta-cultivation...

Will call absolute bullshit on that, at least for RR.

A quality novel that is active enough will most likely end up in trending at some point. Good luck getting to that point on webnovel or RR without a chapter a day..

Will absolutely agree here. On RR, even really, really good stories can be buried and never heard of. Wattpad was the same, back when it actually had more than lusty teen-romance consisting of one supernatural animal-person-thing banging some teen girl in the doggy-style position, or the next bad boy to be a bad boy because fuck-all. So, 2018 and before. The moment the forums were removed in 2018 were the first , but not the last, gunshots to the face of Wattpad's overall content quality. It collapsed faster than a couch would if Rasputia from the movie Norbit swan-dove onto it.

 

[longer]

Honey wake up, there's another post generalizing the works on a writing site as poorly written power fantasies.

Right, I have to meaningfully contribute to the conversation. Most popular and trending stuff follows certain trends because that's what makes it popular. It would be like living in Republican era Rome and wondering why everyone was into femboys. If you want to read more creative stuff, there certainly are stories, of varying qualities of course. The issue is that there aren't as many on trending since not as many people gravitate towards it so you have to search a bit harder.

My basic recommendations for finding good stories would be properly discerning how exaggerated reviews are, understanding what you actually want to read, and trying out more professional sites.

 

[LostLibrarian]

Will call absolute bullshit on that, at least for RR.

I was mostly talking about diversity because the meaning of "quality" differs for readers. For quality, I would say that RR is generally a step above SH if we look at story telling because the audience is less forgiving. But for diversity?
Looking at their frontpage rising stars: all seven of them are either Isekai or LitRPG. Of their 10 frontpage "this week": 2 stories who aren't LitRPG. One is Isekai+Cultivation Meta, the other one Cultivation.

So yeah, I would argue that SH's "GB + GL + LitRPG + Isekai" is just RR's "LitRPG + Cultivation + Isekai". And for the top lists, most stories need to hit the same old notes to have any chance of being seen.
RR has probably (a lot) more "hidden gems" due to its bigger size and the also (slightly) different target audience/author pool, but - at least for the top lists - they are generally also just the same stuff with new paint.

For SH - due to the easer way to get into it - there will be that one story from time to time who is more original, but with RR I rarely see that happening because it's that much harder to get into the top lists and any "different" story that gets higher up will also gather a lot of less flattering ratings and reviews...


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That said, webnovels have a certain main audience and are catering to that.
And to me, it's weird to point at that. McDonalds wouldn't create tons of unhealthy and shitty food, it costumers wouldn't gobble it up like there's no tomorrow. We would see a drastic shift to more quality if the majority of readers actually cared about quality.

But "free" is also still a synonym for "bad" to many and so they accept that webnovels are mostly just fun little stories with a tons of flaws, written by someone as a hobby. And in that environment, "fast food" (e.g. high pace, fast release rate) is more important than quality or diversity...

 

[Horizon42]

the problem with this site is, almost nobody bothers to go back and edit their early chapters, inadvertedly repelling new readers, especially if the quality of the earlier chapters is drastically worse than the new ones.

Yeah, that's definitely me. Editing is a huge part of writing. I keep telling myself I will go back and edit chapters, but I'm not sure I will until the story is done. It's an ongoing experiment of a story and due to the scope of the project, I'm not sure how I want to edit it.

I'm not sure what the reasons are for other writers, but considering the average age of writers, I'm guessing they don't know what to edit besides grammar.

 

[Ai-chan]

makes gems even more valuable, speaking seriously though, royalroad and kindle exists.
My experience is, there are good books, you just have to narrow them down, most times, its not that a story is generally bad, you just don't like it for one reason or another, the problem with this site is, almost nobody bothers to go back and edit their early chapters, inadvertedly repelling new readers, especially if the quality of the earlier chapters is drastically worse than the new ones.

Also my experience, everyone on royalroad wants to write like those at the top, that makes their story boring and repetitive.

Yeah, that's definitely me. Editing is a huge part of writing. I keep telling myself I will go back and edit chapters, but I'm not sure I will until the story is done. It's an ongoing experiment of a story and due to the scope of the project, I'm not sure how I want to edit it.

I'm not sure what the reasons are for other writers, but considering the average age of writers, I'm guessing they don't know what to edit besides grammar.

In Ai-chan's case, it has nothing to do with procrastination. While Ai-chan would fix the more obvious errors, Ai-chan kept it as is because Ai-chan wants everyone to buy the much better edited and proofread final book.

 

[Wohendum]

Republican era Rome and wondering why everyone was into femboys

How dare you insult us, True Romans of Rome!!

How very.....Hellenistic of you...

 

[Paul_Tromba]

In Ai-chan's case, it has nothing to do with procrastination. While Ai-chan would fix the more obvious errors, Ai-chan kept it as is because Ai-chan wants everyone to buy the much better edited and proofread final book.

That's the same for me.

 

[SakeVision]

I would argue that the top lists of RR or webnovel (never been on wattpad) are even worse than SH.

I wasn't talking about top lists, I never look at them

 

[LostLibrarian]

Also my experience, everyone on royalroad wants to write like those at the top, that makes their story boring and repetitive.

Successful things will always be copied. Whether it's webnovels or published novels. Like the endless flood of Twilight/Hunger Games/etc clones in YA. Or the one millionth LOTR copy in fantasy.

People are writing towards a target audience. And a big part of that group wants to read "more of the same". It's the reason all that "copy+paste" works in the first place. People want more of the same because it reminds them of how they felt when they first discovered that thing . And now they want to forget the fact that it ended/became less exciting by re-living those same first moments.

It's the reason so many people want old school MMORPGs back. Not because those games were great, but because - to them - the world was a better place when they first started WoW. And it's the same with novels or series or anime. People want more of the same because they feel comfortable with reliving what they already know.

In traditional publishing, it's actually a competent step to go and take something already known through and through and combine that with one little thing that is different. "Twilight in Space" or whatever. Because people will be comfortable enough to read the same story again, but there is that little twist so they can market it as something new and exciting as well...

I'm not sure what the reasons are for other writers, but considering the average age of writers, I'm guessing they don't know what to edit besides grammar.

It's also just time. Successful webnovels have a high release rate. Good luck going back all the time while still pushing out all those chapters at the same time...

I wasn't talking about top lists, I never look at them

Fair enough. Due to their size, RR and webnovel probably have a lot more unique stories outside of the usual tropes, but they are also burried under even more copies of the top stories. So given my limited time, I probably never dug deep enough to find those gems.
So only top-list fodder for me...

 

[AliceShiki]

If you see a synopsis you dislike and doesn't hook you... Just skip it.

Do the same for genres you dislike and tags you dislike.

There, you found the good stories that appeal to you now. Start reading them.