Thank you all for your responses!
It's been interesting to see webnovels pop off in recent years. I remember doing fanfic in the early 00s and seeing people advise others to not post their original fiction to avoid thieves, and to just focus on fanfiction works. It's so different now.
I've been out of the loop for about a decade for fanfiction, so seeing fanfics become published original works has been fascinating and bizarre.
Nothing I write fits snugly into any popular categories/genres ( as far as I know
), and that has not worked against me
. The only thing I can ask for is:
1. Write what I wanna write
2. Insert illustrations ( as long as they don't break the rules
...*cough*)
I'm looking forward to getting back into writing. Something about the idea of having occasional illustrations feels like a motivator.
Write what you love, and someone else will love it. Personally, I've gotten bored with certain tropes, so I like to break as many as possible.
Ai-chan's advise is to write following your passion. If you follow trends without passion, all you're making is a mediocre work that will probably get some notice but will be met with cynical derision because they can clearly see that you do not put your heart into it. People can tell that you don't care, you know.
I absolutely agree with you both. There is someone out there who is your audience, so go ahead and just get your writing out there.
It's a benefit. Web novel readers are extremely genre based.
Depends on how you define "benefit."
Right! I often wonder how much the benefits and drawbacks even out (being buried among similar stories vs standing out among an ocean of similar stories). Of course, it entirely depends on the individual project in the end.
I have seen way too many authors come onto this forum thinking that there is some sort of magical formula for becoming popular. I've even responded to several threads of people who followed the "formula" to success and found that nobody wanted to read their work despite the fact that they had all the popular genres of Fantasy, GL, Isekai(Hint: The writing was... forgettable.)
In truth, there are probably some genres that simply have more readers, but acting like writing quality doesn't play a factor in getting popular is bogus. Some people who write in the popular genres show a lack of understanding of the genre and it's very noticeable when you can tell they don't read jp isekai novels very often.
Personally, I read a ridiculous amount of books and I think that improves my writing to pushes me ahead of the pack. The only thing a person can do post as much as they can. For example, my new novel has 40 or so readers after it's first day, this is could be a combination of factors including Title page, synopsis, luck involving new novels, perhaps the genre is "right". But I did post 5 chapters day 1, and that made infinitely more difference.
Right! I'm not looking for a magical formula to win popularity, luckily, but I've seen so many of those kinds of posts as well. I'm looking to learn more about the community/subcommunity of webnovel fans since I'm fairly new to the scene. It's fascinating, I think I would have really loved to have this sort of community when I was younger. It's been ages since I've written regularly, so I'm mostly a lurker. I guess I'm cheering everyone on from the sidelines, haha.
In recent years I've read less and less, first because I was too busy, and later due to my poor health. When I started to recover a bit, I wanted to get back into reading. I was starting to worry that I had lost interest in it, or perhaps was too mentally dulled to read now. By chance I picked up a book that was well written and I shot through to the end quickly and really enjoyed it. I realized that part of my struggle was trying to read stories that weren't written well. Which is part of why I'm still somewhat unfamiliar with webnovels, despite lurking on the edges for a couple of years. The same thing happened with visual novels. When they are written well, it's not a slog to try to read to the end.
I think intake really helps with output, like you say. By increasing my media intake, it's helped my creativity a lot more than trying to force myself through creative blocks.
and benefit 
