Writing How to: Survive awful readers

LostLibrarian

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Okay, right from the start: the title is a lie, clickbait, and awful in itself. Because I won't talk about awful readers. But it also targets towards newer or less confident authors, who often struggle to deal with negative reactions. And after reading a lot of threads about "the first bad rating", "Trolls", etc I thought I will just share four of my cents and how I handle self-doubt and motivate myself by minimizing the negative response.

  1. Know your target audience

    As I said above, I won't talk about awful readers (e.g. Trolls) a lot, because they shouldn't have an impact on your writing anyway. It's easy to label the first negative reaction as "Troll" or "Toxic Community" and go on with your life, but here is a problem. Those first negative reactions won't be the last. And you'll get people, who write low-rated reviews, who point out all of your mistakes and typos in the comments, or get angry if your story takes a different turn. And I saw multiple writers who gave up at that point because "just a Troll" wouldn't hold up anymore. Especially if it's maybe a "3/5, could have been so much better" which often stings a lot more.

    So here's the point: Your story isn't for everyone. And it'll never be. Some of the most successful authors are equally hated for their writing. I could point towards Dan Brown who writes extraordinary stupid science into his novels, half of which are the same story retold with a different plot device. You have Ken Follet, a guy with his own statue, and people still throw one stars and hateful reviews at him. You won't do any better while publishing your first or second draft on the internet...

    And the reason is simple: you have your target audience. And depending on your genre and story itself, it might be a really small subset of the readers. Sports-novels or BL-novels have rather small audiences on many sites, Japanese-esque isekai-stories drown on a lot of western-oriented websites, and the simple notion of rape or trauma can turn off the majority of your potential readership.

    So should you avoid these themes? No. But you should think about your target audience. You publish a "Japanese Beta-MC Isekai Story with Harem Waifu-CutOuts"? You'll get negative reception from some readers. And that's okay. But don't throw them into the "Troll category". Your readership shouldn't be "People who like your story" and "Trolls". It is divided into "Your target audience" and "other readers". And yeah, trolls are a part of the latter, but not everyone in the latter is a troll. And that is important when you have to deal with justified qualms or negativity.

    Because with this, you can accept those types of negativity a lot easier. Your story isn't for everyone. In fact, your story isn't meant to be read by the majority of people. So don't bother about them. If you get negative feedback, don't despair about it, but remember your target audience. You write a story aimed at people who like your generic harem story? If so, you can ignore the reader who wants that "Alpha MC who kills everyone". Instead, you should focus more on negative feedback of people, who fall into your target audience and point things out.

    Like this, you can easier dismiss "useless" feedback and concentrate on the things that matter.

  2. You aren't perfect and your writing isn't either

    It sounds a bit harsh but I wanted to add this for a simple reason I threw out in another post. In its core, writing is another form of communication. And there are four points to your story. "What you think you wrote", "What you actually wrote", "What the reader read", "What the reader thinks he read". The problem is, that the two ends of the communication can be vastly different.

    Each reader brings his own world to your story. His life experiences, his vocabulary, other stories he read before yours, and a lot more. You don't know these things, so you have to make sure that the reader still understands your story. And to me, there are two really important steps for that. The first one is really simple: Make sure that you actually wrote what you think you wrote.

    Writers think a lot about their stories, go through their characters and ideas, rewrite stuff in their head, change small and big ideas, etc, etc. In short, you probably told that chapter ten times to yourself in some form. So it often happens, that "Information X" is really clear to us, because we created this character. But that might be completely different to the reader.

    One short example from my story: I had a side-character with certain traits in my story and some readers understood her actions and reasoning. But a lot of readers didn't really get it but welcomed her as a different character with different traits. So what was the problem? Were those readers too stupid to understand my writing? No. The problem was, that I only had hinted at it throughout my chapters. I already knew all the information so in my writing, short hints where enough because "you'll get it". But sometimes those hints aren't enough and so the character on paper is different from the character in your head.

    Which also brings me to the second point. Be specific. Give details, make extremely clear what you mean, and don't assume that the reader will understand. "An ugly man" isn't a good description. Ugly is different for each person and can also vary greatly between cultures. Also not all of your readership has the same mother tongue. So "vague word X" might mean something different to a reader with a different background.

    So make sure, that you get all the information needed on the paper and make that information as clear as possible.

  3. Know the atmosphere of your story

    This one is a bit more technical but builds upon the last two points. When you write for a target audience, people will bring in their experiences and expect certain things. One easy example: LitRPG-readers are used to a heavy focus on stats ("those blue tables"). A lot of readers will expect to see those stats and your story will feel "unfinished" without those. Which will often lead to a worse reception if those "conventions" aren't used. An even easier example: If you write a detective story about a murder, people expect a dead body, a "who's done it?", and a clear and logical answer. If those aren't in there, people will dislike your story.

    So the important thing is: You as a writer can influence these expectations. It's in your hand to influence what the reader expects, which also changes what the reader thinks he read. And in turn will also change how the reader will look back at your story when he gives you a rating or leaves a comment. So use this to your advantage and create less negative and more positive reactions.

    Setting your atmosphere is a massive field, so nothing I could ever cover in a forum post, but here are a few short few things: the name, your cover art, your genre tags, your blurb, your first chapter, your choice of words. If your cover looks like a "generic waifu cover for generic isekai", has the same "generic tags with isekai and harem", has a "generic blurb about reincarnation without any information", and starts with a goddess talking to your dead main character... people will expect that the rest of the story will be the same. They will - for better or worse - expect one-dimensional girls who drool over a Beta MC who will never touch the girls. Which is alright if you want to write that kind of story, but bad if it's different.

    So if you want to write a "dark isekai where the MC suffers" make sure to reflect that in your cover and pick a less flashy cover or a less generic motive. Don't use "I was reincarnated as a death knight" as title because those words scream "generic happy go lucky". Don't just say "He was reincarnated" in your blurb, but say that "he'll suffer against X". Use tags for the central themes and only for those. If you only have two out of a hundred chapters with female side-characters kissing each other, don't use the "girls love"-tag. Use the right descriptions because "I walked through a forest" and "My feet sank into the ground as I stumbled through the moldy thicket" are two different things. They describe the same action but the reader's mindset (and his expectations) will be different.

    Lastly, pick the content of your first chapter with care. If it's an action story, start inside or directly before the action. If it's a crime story, start with the crime or the discovery of the dead body, if you write a more mature story about the inner changes after reincarnation, start with a chapter that introduces these themes. Because here is the thing: most readers won't give you a bad rating after one chapter. A lot of readers will give you bad ratings when they had expectations and you didn't deliver on it. Because that made reading it "a waste of time". So be clear up front and set the atmosphere in your first chapter. And people who dislike your overall idea for the atmosphere might just leave your story without anything negative to say.

    And after you've set your atmosphere: stick with it. Don't change it every three chapters. You can change it up at turning points of the story or between arcs. But don't change it from chapter to chapter because you feel like it. A volatile atmosphere feels like you never had a central theme. Especially for new writers, this can be a challenge (it's still for me now), because your own mindset while writing the chapter can change your writing. Or you just didn't write for a week or two and can't find the same ideas again.

    A simple trick for that can be to just "imagine a trailer for your story". Whether it's a movie or an anime, think about the music of the trailer. Something epic? A metal song? Or some sad violins with a voice over? Click through the thousands of "best XYZ music of all time" on youtube and find a few songs that could fit. Look for artwork on deviantart (or pixiv, ...) that catches the style and feeling you want to go for. Think about that one epic scene at the climax and how that would feel like. And just save your ideas in a folder. Nail that atmosphere in an earlier chapter you can reread.

    And next time you can't get in the mood, you can go and discover your atmosphere again...

  4. "Your story" and "Your writing" are something different

    The last one but for me also the important one. A lot of new writers fear that "their story" is bad because "their writing" isn't great. And yeah, there are readers who'll drop stories in no time if the grammar isn't up to par. But there are even more readers who'll read through badly written chapters if they like the story and its ideas. Just look at all the badly written translations out there, who still get tons of views because people like the stories. So the most important thing is to get your story right.

    I personally dislike my writing style. There are days where I want to delete everything after re-reading my earlier chapters. I lightly edited my first volume to fix the biggest problems and I still want to go back and rewrite everything because I think a lot of my writing is subpar. In fact, the "keep your atmosphere the same" and "use the right descriptions" are things I struggle with myself. Same for the whole "What I think I wrote" and "What I really wrote" discrepancy. There are days I hate myself for it. But I'll still publish my second volume and (if any reader survives that) my third volume because I personally have confidence into "my story".

    Stories are about change. You have a Status Quo, something happens, the main character has to change to solve it (good ending) or the main character doesn't change and the changing world destroys him (bad ending). You can go a lot deeper in story theory but that is really the simplest thing. A story without change gets boring because "it's the same". Even if you look at your Slice of Life anime and novels, you'll find, that the overwhelming majority of the favorably received ones are about change.

    Change doesn't mean "To leave your home and go save the world". Change can be about four girls who become friends while they sit around and eat cake instead of playing music. Change can be how those girls have to confront that they won't be together forever when they grow older. Change can be a man who has to confront his work ethic to rekindle his marriage. Change can be about someone changing his way because he realizes what he has done. Try to name the change in your story (idea). If there is none, chances are high that people will dislike it because it's boring.

    Besides change, one could also talk about a central theme and story structure ([beginning, middle, end], [incident, complications, choice, decision, result]). Those things should exist for both your overall story and each of your smaller arcs. On some level the same is true for each single scene of your story. Normal scene should have a beginning incident, some complications, a choice that leads to some change in the Status Quo, a decision by the characters, and a result that leads to the next scene.

    There is a lot more stuff to story theory like conventions for different genres, the need for an antagonist and complications, etc, etc. But the important thing here is: those things are objective measurements. Those aren't about your choice of words, about your writing style, about the length of your chapter, etc. If you have a story idea which leads to some sorts of change and follows the standard story structure, your story will work. It might not be a great story, it might not be a successful story, but the story itself will work. And a working story is less likely to disappoint your readers and lead to bad feedback. Instead, working stories often intrigue enough so that readers will overlook other mistakes you make.

    So if you want to write a love story, take your time to research what love stories are about, what conventions and standard scenes are in most stories and why they are there. Why a "lover's break-up" is important for a lot of stories. Why there should be an antagonistic force, no matter whether it's a love triangle, society, or a character's flaws. And that doesn't mean you should write "a standard story like all others". But "to break the rules" you should know "why the rules exist in the first place".

    And if you have done that, you can check your story idea with those questions in mind. Develop it so that your story (or the current arc) has a beginning, middle, and end, has a theme, and leads to change. And if you've done that, you have a working story.

Which brings me to the end of this... and so how does one survive awful readers? With self-confidence. With the knowledge that your story works. Because afterwards it isn't about "Am I a shitty writer?" anymore, but it is about "how do I deliver my working story to the audience who'll like it?" In short:
  • Develop your story/arc idea into a working story
  • Find the atmosphere that fits your story
  • Use things like your cover, blurb, and title to set the atmosphere of your story
  • Use the explicit descriptions to deliver your story to your readers
  • Differentiate between your "target audience" and "the other readers" and concentrate on the former group
Following this, you'll still receive one stars, nasty comments, and bad reviews. This is the internet, and most of everything on here is shitty in some form. But you still decided to publish your story anyway, so embrace it. Make sure that you know what you want to deliver. Make sure that you deliver it. And afterwards, pick the right feedback (whether it's good or bad) and use it to grow.

Because the most important thing is to finish your arc/story and grow with that experience. Yeah, it might not be as good as you want it to be. It might even be shit. But it still works as a story. And you can use your experience to make the next one better. And the one after that even better. And someday you might go back to the old story you loved and rewrite it into a great story.

But for that to happen, you need to keep writing and grow as a writer.
And I hope that these points will help you to minimize your "useless negative feedback" and help you motivate yourself to slowly better yourself.
A lot of baby steps still make a marathon...
 
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K5Rakitan

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Great tips <3

Personally, when I get trolls, I like to troll them back. When telescammers call me, I start singing camp songs. It makes life much more pleasant.

"Each reader brings his own world to your story." - or her own world. I've found that many women have had issues with controlling male partners. I've been there myself, but I also appreciate a partner who takes the lead in a supportive way. It's a fine line, and it's especially easy to get confused when the protagonist is interested in things that most people are not interested in. When I first released my story, a lot of women told me that Marc came off as controlling, so I added a few sentences to show Joan's appreciation of his behavior, and people stopped saying that Marc was controlling.
 

LostLibrarian

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I hope people keep posting things like this for when I actually have enough chapters to think about when I read these kinds of things.
I would argue that thinking about such things is already useful before you wrote the first word. It should lead to a more uniform start of your novel...


or her own world.
Of course. Funny thing, in my mother tongue it's normal to just use the "male form" and imply the female form for a lot of things, so it often shows in my casual writing. Another example for how different backgrounds make for different understanding...

But your example is also great. Just adding a few lines of thoughts or some detailed information can totally change the reader's perspective =)
 

LostLibrarian

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Wow. I wished I've read this before I begin writing my story. You point many things that I've encountered throughout my writing journey.
Was the same for me... hence I wrote this thread :D
 

Eleven_M.A.

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This is a mixture of everything I always try to say to new writers, and everything I wish I heard when I was starting out. Thank you so much for posting it ❤️

One thing I never figured out is, what to do when your story is so niche you have no established target audience to reach? What if it doesn't fit the established genres - and, hence, the readers' expectations?

and the simple notion of rape or trauma can turn off the majority of your potential readership.
In an ideal world, it can :blob_teary:
 

Temple

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One thing I never figured out is, what to do when your story is so niche you have no established target audience to reach? What if it doesn't fit the established genres - and, hence, the readers' expectations?
The story is going to be carried then by a very strong MC (strong in the sense of presence). Basically the main character will carry the story if you're not in an established genre. The readers will continue reading because they want to see what happens to the MC and not because it's lets say a litrpg. The problem though is going to be the synopsis. It's hard to write a "marketable" synopsis if you're not in a well defined genre.
 

LostLibrarian

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One thing I never figured out is, what to do when your story is so niche you have no established target audience to reach? What if it doesn't fit the established genres - and, hence, the readers' expectations?
Depends a bit whether it is a new genre in terms of story movement or just a setting that is a bit different. Space Opera, Hard SciFi, Militaristic, and all that are sub-genres of Science Fiction. So if you go for such a new setting, you target audience will most likely be a subset of the "original" genre. So try to still add those elements to your setting.

For the story itself, you would have to rely more on entertaining characters and perfected pacing to make readers want to read another page until they "understand" what the ideas and movements of your story are.


But honestly, I would say that coming up with something "completely original" is pretty much impossible. So you'll have always at least some audiences you can target to slowly build up your audience. At this point it's more about executing the same ideas in an interesting way and less about revolutionizing the writing world...
 

Eleven_M.A.

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Depends a bit whether it is a new genre in terms of story movement or just a setting that is a bit different.
Neither. It's a story that mixes several genres, but stays true to none of them. It borrows some devices from all of its 'mother genres', but they're just vehicles to drive the story - the 'core' lies elsewhere. Which is why I always had a hard time marketing it. Whichever target audience I reach out to, they're going to be dissatisfied - the story just doesn't unfold the way they want. On the other hand, trying to describe it for what it is is tough... And the description is not very compelling, to be frank.

For the story itself, you would have to rely more on entertaining characters and perfected pacing to make readers want to read another page until they "understand" what the ideas and movements of your story are.
This requires the audience to sample the story first, though. I was always struggling to get to that point. Once my readers gave it a shot, some of them stayed to the end. The problem is, how do I get them to try?

But honestly, I would say that coming up with something "completely original" is pretty much impossible. So you'll have always at least some audiences you can target to slowly build up your audience. At this point it's more about executing the same ideas in an interesting way and less about revolutionizing the writing world...
Note that I never used the word 'original', thank you.
 

LostLibrarian

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Note that I never used the word 'original', thank you.
It wasn't just purely about your, but about stories archetypes and genres overall. Can't think of a lot of subgenres or themes that aren't based on a parent....

The problem is, how do I get them to try?
That's only my opinion, but I would pick one main genre on which I build the story. Not only because it is easier to market to other people, but also because it is a lot easier to write if you have some restraints. Otherwise I would fear that it would become just a mess without clear core message...

That said, it clearly depends on the story itself. So it's hard to go in great detail like this...
 
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