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Author's Notes (AND WHY THEY EXIST)

Rant (partially) inspired by multiple authors' struggles of people not understanding the purpose of A/Ns (and my own but but honestly who tf is even counting anymore)

Yahoo!! I'm in Canada for the summer (really long story that I do not wanna get into rn) but I'm ready to bring you guys another rant ahahahaha

IM SAYING THIS RIGHT NOW IN ORDER TO PRESERVE THE SANITY OF BOTH THE READERS AND THE AUTHOR THEMSELVES: PLEASE READ THE AUTHOR'S NOTES

I know some of you don't like them, but guess what? When used correctly, they serve as a means to inform readers of their intentions and how the story is going to move forward in the future.

The correct way to use an author's note: Do not let it disrupt the flow of your story. Seriously, don't. It kills the mood and whatever tension/suspense you were trying to build.

Now I'm not saying that you can't create a separate part in your story for that purpose and in fact, I would actually recommend that if something you need to say is longer than you expect it to be. I'm not even saying that you can't add one at the beginning or end of a chapter, and that's actually good practice if you really need to say something quick.

But you can't add a note smack dab in the middle of a serious and/or even a funny moment and expect to be taken seriously afterwards, that's just the facts. Fortunately, no one really does this anymore, but it's still something to warn new writers about.

The other rule of thumb to follow when creating an author's note: Use it to inform your readers of stuff that's RELATED TO THE STORY YOU ARE WRITING.

A one-two sentence rant about your day is fine and dandy bc a lot of writers use that to talk about the writing process of that particular chapter or something.

But a full on rant about your day is something that belongs on tumblr or Twitter, not in your story. Let's be honest, a lot of us don't really care about the nitty-gritty details and I highly doubt that a lot of people are that outspoken these days in their A/Ns bc those are nowadays reserved for rant books. This may sound a little insensitive but the readers don't want a full autobiography of your day in what is supposed to be an AUTHOR'S NOTE.

EDIT: This only applies to Wattpad tbh. If it's on AO3, you're probably better off just creating a new chapter for it. And even then, Author's notes are used to update people on the current status of the story and where it's headed and what might affect future updates. That's the only area where I would cut the authors some slack when they talk about their lives in A/Ns.

"But that's supposed to interact with the readers!!!1!!" you say

I say "you see that comment option? You see that plus sign in your drafts? It's there for a reason"

Also, the message board and inbox are also good ways to interact with your readers js, even if some people are shy. (I feel like I'm straying from my original point....)

Long story short, if its something that directly affects your writing, the future of your story, the editing process, and/or the plot of your story, use the A/N's to keep your readers updated. If it doesn't, well, what do we have rant books for then? These are like our personal internet diaries that people can avoid if they want to; that's more or less why they were created to begin with lol

And now the readers:

This kind of goes back to my half-readers rant but some of ya'll are lazy and entitled af.

You have got to get over yourself, SUSAN

Like there'll be an A/N specifically telling you that Book B is a sequel and Book A must be read in order to understand the chain of events in Book B but ya'll just ignore it, start reading the story and then later comment about something not making sense.

Guess what? A lot of authors, including myself, are getting sick and tired of people not doing the basic task of PAYING ATTENTION.

Authors are not obligated to spoon-feed readers about the details of their stories and itll be your own damn fault that you didn't understand what the fuck was even going on when you read the first damn chapter of the book.

Take the Harry Potter series and/or the Percy Jackson series. They're both book series that depends on the information from previous books. Do you see readers complaining about that? Of course not. Sure, there will be a sentence or two explaining what happened previously but you are expected to remember the remaining details behind that sentence. You don't see people reading/watching Deathly Hallows before Prisoner of Azkaban. You certainly didn't need an A/N to tell you all that, and summaries of each book should clue you in concerning the order of the books.

Edit (01-23-2022): I also want to add Arcane as an example, because its an prime example of the writers TRUSTING THEIR AUDIENCE AND NOT INSULTING THEM. Watching Arcane requires a significant amount of nuance and being able to pay fucking attention. The fact that it's an adaption of LEAUGE OF FUCKING LEGENDS (and that you don't have to know shit about it also helps) that's the example of authors not spoon-feeding you information is just fucking amazing.

On sites like wattpad, fanfiction.net, ao3, ect, an author's note is about as clear as an author is going to get without spoiling the details of their own story.

Majority of the time, A/Ns are used as a means to communicate about certain things to keep in mind about their story and as a means of further communication when the message board isn't enough and I'm pretty sure the writers don't want to clutter their message boards with various A/Ns for different stories, and further more its inefficient for the people not following the author of the book bc they won't get the same updates as the followers of the author.

The moral of this rant: PLEASE READ THE AUTHOR'S NOTES LIKE SERIOUSLY ITS NOT THAT FUCKING HARD

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk

Okay so the rant for OHSHC is gonna be delayed for a bit while I deal with real life adult shit. Yeah, I'm on my own for the time being ahahahaha. Anyway, what's your opinion and/or advice? Comment below, vote and let me know! Sayonara fuckers lmao

My conscience:

Keerthana no-

(I am so sorry ahahahaha forgive me-)

Until next time, beautiful readers: