Tyranomaster's Guide to Getting Readers

Tyranomaster

Tyranomaster

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So, you’re looking to get readers/views/comments on your story. This thread is intended to help you evaluate your story to achieve that goal. This thread isn’t about selecting a story to write, and assumes you already have one in mind or are already writing one. Getting viewers and readers is a numbers and evaluations process mostly unrelated to the meat of the story itself.

This thread is designed to help you take your first steps and get a few eyes on your story, not show you some grand secret of success to hitting trending and being popular. An amazing story presented as trash will get no readers, but a terrible story dressed in a suit will at least get people to read it for a while.

I’ll be splitting the thread into three broad categories, “The Bait”, “The Snag”, and “The Catch”. Fishing is a pretty good analogy for what you’re doing, after all, as you’re looking to bring in readers in a vast sea of stories. These categories are separated by the general timeframe that they are seen by readers. If you fail in a preceding category, the reader will never reach the next stage. If a potential reader skips out due to a bad description, it won’t matter how good the story is.

This thread is intended to tell you things you should be doing. People have succeeded while missing some of these points, but if you’re missing any points on here, fix them. Otherwise, you’re purposefully neglecting steps to success, and shouldn’t ask the forum for other ways to get readers. Remember, no reader cares about your excuses! If you’re just doing this for fun, you’ll be graded just as harshly by readers as people who are doing this for a living. Readers don’t care if you’re just learning English, or you’ve been speaking it for years, they only care if it’s readable.

Ultimately, getting readers and views is a numbers game, as I stated before. Once you’ve dressed your story up for success, then it’s just a matter of luck and time until you get views.

As always, I’m open to adding things into this guide if people have additions!

Last Update: 4/18/2024​

The Bait
The Bait is all about the very first things a reader will see. These have very little to do with the content of your story, and more to do with how you present the story. You are the salesperson for your novel, so act like it!

  1. Cover Art - This is the very first thing anyone will see on Scribble Hub for your story due to how the eyes work. As much as people may not like it, an attractive (or frequently, seductive) cover is the first impression people will get of your story. That said, if your first impression is a lie, it won’t do you any good. So don’t put non-existent characters on the cover as clickbait, it won’t help you.
  2. Title - After someone’s eyes are drawn to your cover art, the next thing they’ll read is the title. The webnovel meta has sort of morphed what a title has become. Historically, a title would be short and snappy, so that the spine of a book could use bold lettering to attract your view in a bookstore. Online, titles function as a super-condensed description of your story. There should be enough of a basic premise to encourage a click to read further. Too long and people skip it, too generic or vague and people skip it. Try to keep your title to between one and eight words and keep it relevant to the story.
  3. The Synopsis (or description) - After someone actually clicks on your title, the very next thing they’ll look at is the synopsis. A synopsis should be short, sweet, and get to the point. Good synopsis are between a sentence and a paragraph long, and don’t spoil anything. If you, like me, have multiple volumes of a story under the same title, you can write a synopsis for each volume. People also include disclaimers and warnings in their synopsis for webnovels. If your story contains content that might bother some people, then throw in a warning (This can range from Gore to ‘Opinions about current political events’). Warnings might drive potential viewers away, but it’s better than getting a low rating, which might severely limit future viewership.
  4. Tags - Tag it up! Every relevant tag should be applied to your story. After you get a dozen chapters up, re-evaluate and add new tags. You should keep these up to date, as tags are how your story gets searched! A good mix of high popularity and low popularity tags is key. High popularity tags are generally large story elements (like level systems), while low popularity tags are generally more specific (like teamwork). Low popularity tags tend to have much less competition for individual readers, so your story is more likely to get picked up. High popularity tags have high competition, but a significantly larger number of readers. Having too many of one tag type vs another can harm your reach. Nothing is worse than being undertagged though!
  5. Initial Push - The initial push is something that, sadly, most people reading this have likely missed out on. The initial push for a story consists of daily publishing (either one or two, but NEVER more than two chapters a day) at a regular time for two to four weeks. Communicate this schedule in your synopsis, and let readers know when the burst will end. This burst gets your potential audience’s eyes on your work in the latest updates section. If you’ve missed out on this, do not unpublish and republish your work. The admins have generally accounted for that potentiality, and your work will likely not appear in latest updates. You can always do a burst in the middle of your story, and it will have approximately the same effect. The reason you do it at the start is that, as an author, you have the most energy to write your story, and you don’t have as much sunk cost if it fails. Plus, you want to have a decently large body of work for readers to read from the start.
  6. Regularity - Regularity means setting a publishing schedule and keeping to it. Far too often people say, “I really don’t know if I can actually keep to a schedule like that,” only to publish six chapters a week for four weeks, then publish one chapter a week for two. Set a conservative publishing schedule, and schedule the chapters regularly. Let readers know in your synopsis when to expect chapters. Keep a backlog, so you don’t get caught off-guard by life events. Readers can see when your chapters were published, and will note large irregularities. Remember, no reader will complain about extra chapters in a week, but every reader will feel slighted if you miss an expected chapter.
  7. Self Promotion - Go out there and promote yourself! On the forums, you can set your signature to host links to your story! There are threads where people offer to read and give feedback. There are other places, like reddit, where you can promote your own work. Utilize all of them!

The Snag
After you’ve attracted a potential reader, the next step is The Snag. These are things that the reader notices in the first one to five chapters. If they stop before that, they are unlikely to comment, review, or continue reading.

  1. Grammar and Spelling - I’m grouping these together because they have the same standard. Your spelling and grammar shouldn’t detract from the story. An occasional error won’t be an issue, but the reader shouldn’t ever struggle to understand what you mean to convey. This means you should check your spelling and grammar if you aren’t confident in them. Frequent spelling errors will distract readers, and the same goes for frequent grammar errors.
  2. Chapter Length - For webnovels, a chapter length between 1k and 3k words is generally considered the optimal length range. Less than 1k and the chapter isn’t quite long enough for any real story “meat” to be present. Above 3k and readers begin to experience “fatigue” while reading. If they’re reading a particularly long chapter, and want to stop, they can’t just leave a bookmark on the line they left off on, and are very likely to stop reading altogether as a result. This is another statistic that readers appreciate having stated in the synopsis. (i.e. Chapters approx 2k words in length.)
  3. Jargon - This isn’t applicable to every story, but it’s a killer for some, and it also depends on your target audience. Cultivation stories use a lot of terms that are generally unfamiliar for a naive, english speaking, western audience. If you introduce many of those terms all at once in the first few chapters, that potential audience gets lost, and stops reading. When using tropes, it’s good to evaluate what jargon you’re using from said trope, and evaluate if you’re laying it on too fast. To this day, I still only have a vague idea that a sect is something akin to an organized clan focused on a particular way of life. Yet, sect is used in a lot of stories, and it’s just assumed that the reader understands it. Similar things can be said about the word mana, class, and levels. Authors should be cautious about using these words without showing or telling the reader what they mean.
  4. The Hook - This is a fairly well understood storytelling idea, but “The Hook” generally describes an inciting event at the beginning of the story, something that gets the reader interested and invested or “Hooked” on the story. It doesn’t matter what kind of story you’re trying to tell, if the reader hasn’t become invested in it they’ll find everything boring. People frequently blame certain genres for being boring, when the real issue was that there wasn’t a good hook to get you invested, and those genres are more prone to bad hooks. Spice and Wolf is basically a medieval trade simulator, but it keeps people interested because they’re invested. Spice and Wolf at its base is a pair of people doing taxes and going shopping for multiple novels, but you’re interested in what they’ll do next so you keep reading.
  5. K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple, Stupid. A design principle that is far too often overlooked in writing. Being a good writer is arguably negatively correlated with the complexity of your vocabulary. Using difficult words makes it harder for readers to enjoy your writing. One of the previous two sentences is easier to understand, but states the same general idea. Unless you’re writing a technical document, you should strive to write in layman’s terms. This is a similar idea to avoiding jargon. If you find yourself using flowery, verbose, and complicated language to describe everything, be aware that many readers will simply stop reading. Some will enjoy it, but more won’t. If a complex word must be used, make sure it has plenty of context that lets the reader understand it. “This surface is very differentiable.” is a really bad way of saying, “This surface is smooth.” One of those sentences is easy to understand on its own, the other isn’t. If you can’t write the sentence in layman’s terms, then you yourself don’t understand what you’re saying.
The Catch
The Catch is the final stage of getting readers. You’ve managed to get them to read a few chapters and not drop the story. Now, you have to get them to come back as new chapters come out. If they read until they’ve caught up, and then drop your story never to return, that’s not a good sign.

  1. Cliffhangers - The dreaded cliffhanger, the bane of readers, and the boon of writers. While it is possible to overdo the usage of cliffhangers, you shouldn’t neglect the underlying principle. Readers should be engaged enough at the end of each chapter that they want to find out what happens next. Cliffhangers are the easiest way to do this. There are many other ways to keep readers engaged. Overarching plotlines or intrigue, or some continual goal are ways that readers stay engaged. Think about episodic shows, like pokemon. Hardly ever is Pokemon left on a cliffhanger, but people stay engaged because they are watching something engaging in the moment that has an overarching goal.
  2. ‘Arcs’ or Volumes - Either one is fine, but you should strive to set a certain cadence with achieved goals of your story. Some people are “pantsers”, which means you write by the seat of your pants, or rather, you make it up as you go. Even if you’re a “pantser” you should evaluate the rate that your plot is developing, and try to keep the story moving forward at a reasonable pace. If you aren’t a “pantser” then setting a reasonable word count for progressing your stories to the next arc or volume is a good idea. An average Light Novel is about 50k words. Harry Potter books were between 70k and 200k words. So, consider 50k to 200k words the general length sizes for entire plots to traverse.
  3. Editing - There are two ways to take someone’s feedback about errors in grammar and spelling. You can get angry, or you can be glad that someone was paying close enough attention that they’ve given you free editing. Never shy away from doing editing and review of old chapters. DO NOT do an entire rewrite unless you feel the plot got completely away from you, and you need to make major revisions. Finish the story, and decide if you’re attached enough that you want to do a total or partial rewrite at that point.
  4. Engagement - There are many ways to engage with your community. Some are positive, and some are negative, and many cases are obvious but hard to break the habit of. If someone negatively reviews your story or leaves a negative comment, the first response your body has is an angry response. However, engaging in ANY way other than to thank the individual honestly for their negative feedback is going to hurt your success. If you can’t thank them honestly, then ignore the comment or review. It may not be “fair” but it’s the way things work. There are other ways that you might be negatively engaging with your audience though. Writing long author’s notes at the start of each chapter that aren’t relevant directly to your story is one such way. Starting author’s comments should be reserved for story relevant information (Patreon, publishing, scheduling, story recommendations, or self advertising), and should be kept brief. Ending comments can get longer, and be less relevant. If you want to share something interesting or exciting that happened to you, put it at the bottom, not the top, of a chapter. Don’t confuse your story’s popularity with your own, this is a story website, not facebook.
 
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CSDestroyer

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Nice guide. These same principles can also be applied to things like Business Resumes, Cover Letters, and marketing in general.

In regard to the synopsis, I've also been trying to create incredibly short one-to-two sentence snippet that somewhat describes my stories, and also baits the reader into reading it too. It's basically an elevator pitch. Hence, my current one:
The Hero thinks the Demon Lord's sister is a threat. He is wrong.

I actually custom-made this for a different website, literally counting characters to get it to fit within a certain length. And it seems to work consistently across several platforms. Short, concise, targets the audience that is already aware of the tropes, slight subversion. Meant to immediately grab the reader's attention, and also works to fuel their curiosity.

I've also got a few other elevator pitches, too, and they seem promising, based on how people react when I pitch it to them. But I won't get to those stories for... ages.
 
Corty

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Tyranomaster said:
I don't want to be rude, but for many of the people who ask for advice on how to get readers, I felt like their attention spans required an embedded cliffs notes.
Click to expand...
 
Tyranomaster

Tyranomaster

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Joking aside, it does help a wall of text appear much less daunting when it looks like there is a single highlighted sentence that you can latch on to for skimming purposes.
 
Corty

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Tyranomaster said:
Joking aside, it does help a wall of text appear much less daunting when it looks like there is a single highlighted sentence that you can latch on to for skimming purposes.
Click to expand...
No, no. You are right. People always want the tl;dr. So, there are more than you think who will only read the highlighted text.
 
WinterTimeCrime

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Woow, props to anyone who reads all of this - You truly have the determination and perseverance to become a well-known author.
 
SailusGebel

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Solid guide. The only thing I want to comment on is this part.

You can always do a burst in the middle of your story, and it will have approximately the same effect.

If we are talking SH, it won't have the same effect, not the small burst. If you miss the opportunity while your novel is still in the latest series, you will have to update daily for a long time. It depends on the tags and genres, but if you write something not necessarily popular, you will have to do the "burst" for a very long time if you miss the initial one.
 
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