Scribble Hub Forum

That's the way. At least it's better than having 1k readers but only 10 views on your latest chapter.

Try shorter chapters, man. Your story is hard to digest.

I've switched to a biweekly release schedule to help quell it but believe me, I've tried making shorter chapters. I'm stretched to my limit The story I want to tell simply can't be accommodated by a daily 2k chapter and I'm not saying this as a good thing.

The plot I opted for is a slow burn and requires patient building for the themes to even work. Cutting it in pieces just makes it worse, and I'll just end up losing both old readers and new ones. I've tried it myself; even I, as the author, can't stand it. It just comes off as careless and cheap.

Between quality and popularity, I'd rather choose artistic death as a compromise. I'll probably start another series on the side to deal with the view drought and funnel the readers into my main story but as of now, I'm holding out. Regret and tears are inevitable but it's better than selling out to myself.

Also yes, I'm shilling my story here.

FUCKEN READ IT REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

You don't need to tell me about your plot being slow burn. I read the original after all, and I still remember the carbonara with creme, but that is besides the point.

Originally, my chapters were 4k and now after the rewrite they went down to 1k. I split them and reduced the bloated word count.

Even the top novelists here are prone to inflating their count by resorting to a multitude of text fillers and rambling, which only proves that word count and content don't mean the same. You can do a lot even with a limited amount of words. No need to write 20k chapters for a single scene.

Here's the thing; the original is FAR from what I'm currently doing. As in, wildly different tone and plot. It's not even a rewrite anymore. The only thing similar between the two is the character name. I can do the usual 2k - 3k back then but that was all pointless fluff with no plot, as you've stated before. This isn't pointless fluff anymore; I have a message and point to make in this story.

And yes, I do agree with that content and word count are mutually exclusive, but both also contribute to atmosphere building and setting up a tone. Believe me: at any given time I CAN pump my story's word count beyond 10k, even 15k at any moment (currently sitting at a comfortable 7-8k word per chapter), but I don't, because I understand the verbosity:reader ratio just as well as you do.

What I'm saying is that I'm doing the BARE MINIMUM for everything at this point. Everything you can read in my story right now is the absolute barest essentials cut down, compromising with chapter length and my personal desire for how I want my story to be. Like I've said, I'd rather have my artistry die out than to intentionally fuck up whatever I want to write just for the numbers.

Is it redundant to make this post? Yes. Call it self-pity, I guess. I needed a place to vent out a little and there you go. I've even stated I'm going back to writing after this. Least I'm not making a giant post stating how life is unfair against me and I'm the victim of my own stupidity on a new thread.

But back on track, my current word count on Caninstinct is far from padding; I'm already leaving as much as I could on the cutting room floor, so much so that I'm nearly kneecapping important plot points, story flow and key character interactions that serve the bigger picture of the story.