My dragged-out Western-focused Anime-like writing style for my W.I.P RomCom

[matalayudasleazy]

I'll be honest, for starters, English is not my native language BUT it is the main language I use to communicate with people from abroad Indonesia.

Despite having the luxury of being able to browse through the internet, English practitioners are basically nonexistent around here, so I can't help myself but feel restless about my works that has both Anime and Western influencing my workflow and writing style.

For instance, my writing style will go like this :

[A hooded stranger takes a seat besides her, and he gives off a terrifying stare to anyone who looks at him for even a bit. “Hey, pretty girl, waiting for-?”

“HA?!“. She responded to him with a scornful expression, which might have set him off emotionally.

A retractable blade is taken from his right pocket, at which he holds the girl by the neck and the blade on the other hand. “I don't like the face you're giving, missy”. He stares at her coldly while making the people around panicked.

“E-eek!“. In an instant, her face turns pale blue from the fear of being mugged by the hooded man.]


But a 'judge', a reader criticised me with the pointers that :

[In here, after
"HA?!"

A simple, Responding to him with a scornful expression.

What you need is for the readers to get invested in your character speech, not character thoughts too much
More of how you incorporate it.

In my case, it could be like:

A hooded stranger took a seat besides her, giving a terrifying stare to anyone who would look at his way.

“Hey, pretty girl, waiting for-?”

“HA?!“. But what greeted him was a response that looked enough to emotionally stir anyone off.

Pissed off, he took out a retractable blade out his right pocket........

Another point is, there not a certain understanding of the narrator. Make the narrator with a specific tone of voice looking and saying the story, not just a 3rd person.]


Context is that I'm trying to submit my work to make myself able to be recognised as an 'Author' and make it so I can post there, but thing is that they have 0% Western works, nor ones with Western-focused stories.

To be fair, I suppose the only one I can blame on is my own self, asking criticism at a Anime-like site for my Western-focused story.

So should I adhere to the 'set of rules' of either side, or take my shot and just post it here?

 

[Deleted member 54065]

So should I adhere to the 'set of rules' of either side, or take my shot and just post it here?
I provided the 6 preview chapters in case you want to take a look at it.

One of the best results of the internet, and online publishing as well, is that we can write whatever and however we want. My suggestion is, just adhere to the basic rules of English, like proper grammar, punctuation, and capitalization, then wing it.

See, whatever we write in our early days as an author would be bad. But that doesn't mean we should throw the pen and give up. Development takes time and effort, and your willingness to risk it and see if your writing worked for your intended audience.

So with that point, I'd advise you to take your shot. If it ends up in the negative, pick comments that will help you develop, and ignore the trash ones.

 

[matalayudasleazy]

One of the best results of the internet, and online publishing as well, is that we can write whatever and however we want. My suggestion is, just adhere to the basic rules of English, like proper grammar, punctuation, and capitalization, then wing it.

See, whatever we write in our early days as an author would be bad. But that doesn't mean we should throw the pen and give up. Development takes time and effort, and your willingness to risk it and see if your writing worked for your intended audience.

So with that point, I'd advise you to take your shot. If it ends up in the negative, pick comments that will help you develop, and ignore the trash ones.

Thought someone will say that, but I'm discouraged from writing at times with the lack of feedback because no comments are present in any of my works I already posted here, one of them is this specific one that just happened to be a revised and rewritten version of it because I deem it too depressing at the start.

Despite the many word counts exceding 600+ in each chapter, it's a bummer that I don't feel being appreciated nor scorned for any of them.

The worst kind of feeling I have when posting these chapters is not the trolling, nor the low-review bombs, and neither was it hateful comments.

What I fear the most for these, is the lack of response at all...

 

[Deleted member 54065]

Thought someone will say that, but I'm discouraged from writing at times with the lack of feedback because no comments are present in any of my works I already posted here, one of them is this specific one that just happened to be a revised and rewritten version of it because I deem it too depressing at the start.

Despite the many word counts exceding 600+ in each chapter, it's a bummer that I don't feel being appreciated nor scorned for any of them.

The worst kind of feeling I have when posting these chapters is not the trolling, nor the low-review bombs, and neither was it hateful comments.

What I fear the most for these, is the lack of response at all...

Look, I went to your work to have some context, and I realized your story has updates released in a short amount of time...which is some days in January.

Another thing you should consider is how and when your potential readers might see your work, and give it try. This is why, when I was starting to get serious in publishing stories, I finished an entire manuscript first, before posting. Reason is, I can control when I would update, so readers would always see my story at times when I think the online traffic is heavy.

That's for trying to get views, which can lead to feedbacks.

Now then, let's focus on feedbacks. One thing that I also learned in my writing is that, when readers love your work, they would rarely say anything. This is true for me, since a lot of my feedbacks are just my readers trying to call my attention to errors I did in my chapters. Well, I do get positive comments, and encouragements, but that is after I finished five volumes of 60k words each.

Long story short, focus on your writing. Try to be consistent. Your hard work would not go unnoticed.

@matalayu This is the feedback I received after the reader is four-five volumes in.

And this here, is when another reader is twelve volumes in.

See the length of time before I received meaningful feedbacks?

@matalayu But not everything is criticism. The author of the second feedback sent me this when he reached my 13th volume.

 

[Tyranomaster]

I think the style might be fine, I speak English as my primary language, and although it may not be perfect, hungry readers like myself will devour even the most horrendously machine translated novels.

What does cause readers pause before picking up a new story are two questions.

1. Will this entertain me for however long I intend to entertain myself for?
This could be anywhere from 1 hour, to multiple days.
If your story isn't long enough, then most people won't even pick it up.

2. If I get invested, is it either regularly publishing, or finished?

If yes to either, then they'll read. They'll expect the schedule to be kept, as an agreement between author and reader, that they read regularly, and you provide regularly. If you break your half, they'll stop theirs. No excuse works either. If you break that agreement, you'll lose a lot of readers who may take months to come back, if they do at all.

If the story is already done, then they expect it to full and complete, not "dropped".

If both questions are answered in the right way, some people will regularly read. How many depends on the genre, but there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of readers here, and at least 0.01% will read your story and enjoy it. Which means between 10 and 100 people. If you keep writing, that number just goes up.

 

[Deleted member 54065]

My point is, it took me a long while to receive meaningful feedback. Yes, my chapter numbers are pretty low, but with an average of 4k per chapter, a reader has too many information to give a legit review once he/she is done with one book of my work.

So, yeah, just be consistent, like @Tyranomaster pointed out, and continue on.

 

[matalayudasleazy]

Thanks for both of you @Tyranomaster and @Hans.Trondheim, I appreciate the response.

Maybe I should include that a word of 'Thanks' somewhere in-between chapters would be appreciated, nay, very helpful to keep me going and see this through to the end.

With that said, I guess the best course of action for me right now (being a new writer that has quite the negative outlook on both himself and his works) is to have a clear outline of the story and set a goap for myself, like finish an arc or at least ⅓ the story?

I'd also like to share the file to the thread, but somehow it's not sent as I'm typing this on my phone, even on other browsers.
Suppose if it's still not here, any of you can ask me for the file on Discord as matalayu#2304 or matalayudasleazy .

 

[Deleted member 54065]

Thanks for both of you @Tyranomaster and @Hans.Trondheim, I appreciate the response.

Maybe I should include that a word of 'Thanks' somewhere in-between chapters would be appreciated, nay, very helpful to keep me going and see this through to the end.

With that said, I guess the best course of action for me right now (being a new writer that has quite the negative outlook on both himself and his works) is to have a clear outline of the story and set a goap for myself, like finish an arc or at least ⅓ the story?

I'd also like to share the file to the thread, but somehow it's not sent as I'm typing this on my phone, even on other browsers.
Suppose if it's still not here, any of you can ask me for the file on Discord as matalayu#2304 or matalayudasleazy .

Well if you're really in-doubt of what you've written, having a beta-reader can help you a lot. A beta reader is someone you trust, like friends or family members, that you can show your works to.

And you're welcome! Always glad to help.

 

[Tyranomaster]

Ditto what @Hans.Trondheim said!

Don't be discouraged by lack of readers. The readers will eventually come if you keep writing. Which is hard without feedback... The internet is so impossibly large that our brains can't fathom how many people our audience potentially is.

If a lot of people read, and then actively tell you they hate your work, that's when you actually should evaluate stopping or rewriting your work. Otherwise, just keep chugging along.

 

[matalayudasleazy]

Another thing I had in mind is regarding AI generated illustration, it goes more along the line of Anime-like instead of Western ones.

I generally included them on my writing app Novelist at my phone to have a concise roadmap of how the scene will go from start to end, but NOT when they're released at my files and posts.

Now, it's clear from the internet that people are not very fond of AI Art in general, but I also want to include them to help with the imagery of the scenes I'm describing at times, important or mundane ones.

Should I include them for the readers' convenience, or keep on going with descriptive text, or even both with a less descriptive text on the image that is toggle-able?

 

[Succubiome]

Should I include them for the readers' convenience, or keep on going with descriptive text, or even both with a less descriptive text on the image that is toggle-able?

If you believe the AI art is an important part of your work, I'd include it?

 

[miyoga]

If you believe the AI art is an important part of your work, I'd include it?

Slightly off here, but I had a beta reader suggest adding art to my short story a couple times. I simply asked him about different rocks. If the average reader doesn't know schist from shale, it wasn't going to do anything for my story.

 

[Theirl]

Get yourself an editor. My sujestion write in your native languagr use gpt yo translate after that u edit over it to give your own color to.the story

 

[matalayudasleazy]

Tomboyish Crush on Rehab
7 Chapters Preview.
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Sorry for not being able to post the file, Scribblehub seems to be broken on any browser and devices I used, so here's an earlier look at what I had been making.

I'll post this regularly after 10+ chapters are done, to better maintain a schedule and keep myself up on writing.

Again, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for the response and opinions, I'll try and make sure to not drag myself down again.