Is my story okay?

[Sylver]

First time poster and Scribblehub writer here! Just wanted to say thank you to the people who made this site possible for new writers like myself and many others to dip their toe into story writing!

So the synopsis of my story is a fantasy setting where the MC discovers a cat girl with memory loss, he decides to take her in under secrecy while taking care of her and teaching her how to survive. It's a romance/smut story where we see the two learn more from each other and develop feelings, but then secrets and dangers from her past begin to resurface.

I think one of my weaknesses is that I'm slow at building up the story. It's over 200 pages and I'm not done with the first arc just yet, about 60% more or less. My first chapter has less than 500 views and my recent chapters are struggling to reach 100. Not to mention the lack of comments and low number of likes, any chapter that reaches 3 likes is a feat for me. I see other stories with way more views per chapter then my chapter views and it makes me wonder what I am doing wrong. I know publishing more frequently helps and I try my best, it just takes a few hours with each chapter and it's all my free time before. After I finish with my college finals next week, I'll have more free time until school starts in the last week of January, so I can maybe push myself to write more when I'm not working.

But I wanted to know if it's not quantity but rather quality here. Is my story just not a good or interesting story? Is it my writing, my pacing, or even the synopsis maybe? Is the word count intimidating for new viewers? I'm not sure about that one, more popular stories have a higher average word count than mine does.

Is it as simple as publishing more chapters more frequently, or is there another reason why my story isn't doing well in views?

 

[Kalliel]

It's not about pacing.
My first arc completed only after more than 120.000 words, which is about 400 pages.
It's about the genres.
GL, GB, harem, smut. Those are popular here, so see if you have any of those.

 

[Syringe]

One of the biggest draws to any story will be chapter number. Your page views are actually pretty good imo so people are checking out your story whenever you upload. Frequency will definitely help since your views are solid. Pair that with more chaps and it's only up from there.

It takes time for views to build up. It doesn't happen instantly. For instance, it took 2 years for my old story to reach double of what you have reached in only 2 months.

 

[Sylver]

It's not about pacing.
My first arc completed only after more than 120.000 words, which is about 400 pages.
It's about the genres.
GL, GB, harem, smut. Those are popular here, so see if you have any of those.

It doesn't include Gender Bending and there's some similarities to a harem but it's not quite the MC getting multiple women to fall in love with him, just two. I don't know the GL genre, is that about romance between women?

 

[Kalliel]

It doesn't include Gender Bending and there's some similarities to a harem but it's not quite the MC getting multiple women to fall in love with him, just two. I don't know the GL genre, is that about romance between women?

Girl's Love, yes. It is very popular here.

 

[SailusGebel]

Link?

 

[HungrySheep]

200 pages for the first arc isn't bad.

 

[Corty]

Not to mention the lack of comments and low number of likes, any chapter that reaches 3 likes is a feat for me.

Don't worry about it. Got my first comments after publishing 60+ chapters. As @Syringe said, chapter numbers are important. Many people only start binging when there are a handful of chappies to read. So don't give up, push on.

Likes are even more rarer than comments. Here is a recent stat from my freshest story:

3702 views and 102 likes. That is 2.7%. Very few people click on the hearts.

I checked your story, and it looks nice. (I will read it when I have time.) The synopsis could use a redo, and a better cover could draw in more eyes, so I would change those if anything if you are looking to expand and try to get more readers. Otherwise, just be consistent, and it will work out.

 

[prognastat]

It doesn't include Gender Bending and there's some similarities to a harem but it's not quite the MC getting multiple women to fall in love with him, just two. I don't know the GL genre, is that about romance between women?

GL = Girls Love so yeah either sex or romance or both between women.

As for those tags they're effectively a bit of a shortcut, but not necessarily a must. It's just that they receive an outsized amount of attention compared to novels of the same quality without them.

Since I haven't read it I can't really give the content/writing feedback so I'll stick to just the presentation for getting new readers:
- You only have 14 tags.You don't have to use all 25 tags, but I generally would recommend it. It means appearing in more of the tag rankings that people use to find novels that contain the elements they like. You can go to the tags section and open the link to the list of all tags and sort it by how much they are used. I would start at most used and add those that are applicable until you reach your limit of 25.

- I would probably go for a simpler and catchier title such as "Monster Girls: KuliKuli the Nekomata" the rest feels superfluous(even if it may not be that's how it comes across to me if I were to come across it on the front page or rankings)

- To draw more people it would probably be better to have the cover be at least the entire bust of a cute cat girl than just the face. Also adding the title to the cover would make it look like the book is the result of a more serious author(the shorter title would help here too).

- The synopsis could be improved. The last paragraph detailing your larger plans honestly could be removed as beyond what you will be doing in this book people aren't going to care until after they read your book and become invested. Instead spend a bit more on the MC and what the general concept of this particular story is.

Between the tags and synopsis I wouldn't even know whether the book was from the peasant boy's perspective or the cat girl's perspective, that's how little the title, synopsis and tags tell me of what to expect.

Also yes generally posting more frequently is going to help since it will grow your views faster which will lead to your story showing up higher in various rankings which will draw in more people to take a look. Only things to really avoid is don't go under 1k words per chapter and it is generally not helpful to post more than 1 chapter per day.

Regarding hearts/likes they just don't happen a lot. I literally have a call to action at the end of my chapters for it and it still only reaches 5% of the amount of people that viewed the chapter.

 

[Sylver]

GL = Girls Love so yeah either sex or romance or both between women.

As for those tags they're effectively a bit of a shortcut, but not necessarily a must. It's just that they receive an outsized amount of attention compared to novels of the same quality without them.

Since I haven't read it I can't really give the content/writing feedback so I'll stick to just the presentation for getting new readers:
- You only have 14 tags.You don't have to use all 25 tags, but I generally would recommend it. It means appearing in more of the tag rankings that people use to find novels that contain the elements they like. You can go to the tags section and open the link to the list of all tags and sort it by how much they are used. I would start at most used and add those that are applicable until you reach your limit of 25.

- I would probably go for a simpler and catchier title such as "Monster Girls: KuliKuli the Nekomata" the rest feels superfluous(even if it may not be that's how it comes across to me if I were to come across it on the front page or rankings)

- To draw more people it would probably be better to have the cover be at least the entire bust of a cute cat girl than just the face. Also adding the title to the cover would make it look like the book is the result of a more serious author(the shorter title would help here too).

- The synopsis could be improved. The last paragraph detailing your larger plans honestly could be removed as beyond what you will be doing in this book people aren't going to care until after they read your book and become invested. Instead spend a bit more on the MC and what the general concept of this particular story is.

Between the tags and synopsis I wouldn't even know whether the book was from the peasant boy's perspective or the cat girl's perspective, that's how little the title, synopsis and tags tell me of what to expect.

Also yes generally posting more frequently is going to help since it will grow your views faster which will lead to your story showing up higher in various rankings which will draw in more people to take a look. Only things to really avoid is don't go under 1k words per chapter and it is generally not helpful to post more than 1 chapter per day.

Regarding hearts/likes they just don't happen a lot. I literally have a call to action at the end of my chapters for it and it still only reaches 5% of the amount of people that viewed the chapter.

The cover was from an artist I commissioned, I can add the rest of the image showing the two main characters. Not sure what else to add to the synopsis without spoilers, and the story is told from both perspectives of the cat girl and peasant boy.

I'll add more tags to the story if it helps. What would you say makes for a good synopsis? It's hard for me to make a pitch for my story, do I mention that it's a romance that turns into a narrative drama when dangerous situations start to happen?

Don't worry about it. Got my first comments after publishing 60+ chapters. As @Syringe said, chapter numbers are important. Many people only start binging when there are a handful of chappies to read. So don't give up, push on.

Likes are even more rarer than comments. Here is a recent stat from my freshest story:

3702 views and 102 likes. That is 2.7%. Very few people click on the hearts.

I checked your story, and it looks nice. (I will read it when I have time.) The synopsis could use a redo, and a better cover could draw in more eyes, so I would change those if anything if you are looking to expand and try to get more readers. Otherwise, just be consistent, and it will work out.

Could you help me with the synopsis? It's surprisingly difficult for me to write a pitch for my story. As for the cover art, I could change it so we see both main characters instead of just KuliKuli, but it's the only image I have for the story. I don't know how other writers get such amazing art work for their covers, I was satisfied with mine but it's put to shame compared to other covers!

Link?

Monster Girl Chronicles Book 1: KuliKuli the Nekomata

In this Medieval World of Fantasy, full of smut, romance, and mystery, welcome to a tale of Magic and Monsters! When a lonely farmer takes in an unconscious stray cat he discovered in the aftermath of a storm, he gets more than he bargained for when his new feline friend...

www.scribblehub.com

 

[TheEldritchGod]

I think one of my weaknesses is that I'm slow at building up the story. It's over 200 pages and I'm not done with the first arc just yet, about 60% more or less. My first chapter has less than 500 views and my recent chapters are struggling to reach 100. Not to mention the lack of comments and low number of likes, any chapter that reaches 3 likes is a feat for me. I see other stories with way more views per chapter then my chapter views and it makes me wonder what I am doing wrong. I know publishing more frequently helps and I try my best, it just takes a few hours with each chapter and it's all my free time before. After I finish with my college finals next week, I'll have more free time until school starts in the last week of January, so I can maybe push myself to write more when I'm not working.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!

Wait wait wait... your latest chapters are struggling to reach 100?
Chapter 125 of my story, I'm at... 293k words. I have 18 views. 4 of those views are mine... and you think that you are doing poorly? Dude, I WISH I had 100 views a chapter.

Could you help me with the synopsis? It's surprisingly difficult for me to write a pitch for my story. As for the cover art, I could change it so we see both main characters instead of just KuliKuli, but it's the only image I have for the story. I don't know how other writers get such amazing art work for their covers, I was satisfied with mine but it's put to shame compared to other covers!

Yeah. Easy. Take your story, put it all in one file. Break it up into 50k word chunks. Feed it into Claude.AI and ask it to create a synopsis for you. Also ask it to list all the characters while you are at it, summarize them, then put that in your glossary section.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!

Wait wait wait... your latest chapters are struggling to reach 100?
Chapter 125 of my story, I'm at... 293k words. I have 18 views. 4 of those views are mine... and you think that you are doing poorly? Dude, I WISH I had 100 views a chapter.


Yeah. Easy. Take your story, put it all in one file. Break it up into 50k word chunks. Feed it into Claude.AI and ask it to create a synopsis for you. Also ask it to list all the characters while you are at it, summarize them, then put that in your glossary section.

I want to laugh with you, because beneath all of the wondrous stars above, that is some infectious maniacal laughter.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Sounds like you are going through a rough patch, my "normal" man.
And this advice comment section is, I think, why @doravg started their thread about the recommenders of GL, Harem, and such for popularity's sake.
You are doing pretty great! You got this! Just a matter of perspective.

 

[Deleted member 133647]

Just write GL, I have like 2 chapters with nearly 2,000 views.