I still write in this book? Well, apparently, when I think of something worth saying! As some of you know, my web novels have been doing decent lately, and I've also been helping a lot of upstart authors get a footing in their writing. That said, a question popped into my head that I found particularly interesting, so I starting dwelling on it. Eventually, I realized it'd make a great topic to discuss in Wattpad 101, and so here we are.
That question is, "What Skills Do You Need to Work On To Be A Web Novel Author?" No, I'm not talking about "writing well" or "having good grammar". Those are the expected easy answers. Fundamentally, if you want to write web novels, you need to be able to write them in a readable and interesting way. So, I wanted to branch out from that norm and think more about the fundamental NONE writing skills that I needed and still need to work on to produce web novels.
There is a distinct difference between what it takes to write a good story, and what it takes to be a successful writer of web novels. It was perhaps a distinction I didn't make before, but as I focus more on web novel writing and less on novel publication, it's a distinction that I realize more people on Wattpad ought to make. These skill sets may not have any use to the standard writer making a manuscript and sending it to a publisher, but for those of us out on the line earning fans with our weekly releases, there are just some skills that are really useful.
Fives the charm, so here is my list of five skills you should master to be a successful web novel author!
1) Fight Writer's Block / Learn to Write When You Don't Want to.
This is a no brainer, but many people probably don't think of it as something that needs to be learned and practiced. Yet, being able to force yourself to write is a bit of a skill itself. Freezing and struggling to come up with something to write is a problem all writers have, but if you want to get good at writing in the long-term and on a schedule, you're going to need to develop a good system for circumventing writer's block.
Some people will let themselves get bogged down for days, weeks, months, or even permanently if their writer's block is bad enough. If you want to release reliably, you have to make yourself write, even if you aren't in the mood. Some might say that forcing yourself to write will decrease the quality and creativity of your writing. That might be true to a certain extent, but it doesn't negate the fact that if you want to be a producer of writing content, you need to be able to produce reliably.
Thus, this skill requires you to not just write when you don't feel like it, but be able to produce with the same quality as you can when you do feel like it. That isn't to say you can't ever get writer's block, but a two hour walk should be enough to shake you out of it. If you can't get over your writer's block to the point where you're writing again within a day or two, and on a reliable basis, you're going to quickly have pipeline difficulties.
I'd say a reliable release schedule is more important than anything else when it comes to growing a fanbase. People depend on knowing the next chapter is going to be there, so you can't just quit for three weeks because you weren't "feeling it" and still expect to grow in popularity as an author.
If this is a skill you can't wrap your head around, then there is a way around it. The best counter for a person in writer's block is to not start publishing a book until you've got a sufficient build up of chapters written. If you have the next ten chapter finished, that means on that day you just can't get yourself to write chapter eleven, it won't stop your release schedule. The trick with this is you got to make sure that you have enough chapters ahead that you don't run out before you complete the book. It also means you you need to produce extra chapters on days where your words are flowing freely to make up for days when they aren't. If that's the route you go, however, you need to learn another important skill.
2) Master Delay Gratification / Learn to Resist Fan Pressure
For much the same reason as the previous point, you're going to need to develop a tough skin when it comes to your fanbase. The more they like your work, the more they'll likely grow demanding and indignant about it. Many fans will constantly demand "moar!" and once you provide more, they just demand even "moar!" They'll keep demanding moar until it is done... and then they'll leave... likely without even a parting comment or thank you.
The demand for mass releases is constant on some platforms, and just as much as your fans want you to unreasonably constantly produce more content, at the same time, they seem to want all of that content now. This is a bit of a catch-22 because if you give them all the content they want now, you won't have any content to give them later. Thus, there is little winning when interacting with your fans this way.
So, if you're sitting on a large batch of chapters, don't let your audience trick you into releasing them all in a mass release. If you have a schedule, stick to the schedule. That is the best option you can choose. Being five chapters ahead can mean you have five releases worth of time before you got to push out that next chapter, which is perfect for when you're dealing with #1.
However, resisting fan pressure also has a second outlet. That's giving the readers exactly what they want. A small minority of very vocal readers will jump into your writing and tell you exactly what they wanted instead of what you wrote. Resisting Fan Pressure also means knowing when it's okay to fix some things, and when you need to not radically change your story in the middle to placate a group of random people on the internet.
This is your work, and you rarely want to change the plan in the middle because a handful of people really liked that character who you just killed off. Bringing them back suddenly will likely only succeed in pissing off another group of people... and lets just say if you get into the game of giving your readers exactly what they want, no one leaves happy.
Of course, part of being able to do this is by teaching yourself how to...
3) Accept criticism / Don't let the bad overshadow the good
I have chapters on accepting criticism and fighting writer's block, so it's clear that I thought these abilities were always important. Now, I'm just explaining how they fit into the larger picture of being a successful webnovel author.
Learning to accept criticism is one of the toughest and perhaps most important things to becoming a good writer. A few people might luck out and just have that magic to write something beloved by so many it drowns out the haters, but for most of us, we might end up receiving several haters for every dozen positive comments, or perhaps even more detractors than promoters. This is when things get the toughest.
Thus, this is a skill you need to learn. Not being crushed whenever you get some criticism saying your work sucks. Only you can continue to build your drive to keep going on. When you accept criticism for your writing, you accept your writing, and only by accepting your writing can you embrace being a writer. Once you embrace the idea that you are a genuine writer, rather than a "writer" or someone who just writes for fun, you need to own up to it. This becomes important and ties into the next skill.
4) Demand Your Due / Don't Let Passiveness Rule You
Another one that was written into a chapter, it's always good to remind yourself that you are worth it. If you write content, and that content had a lot of energy put into it, and better yet, it's good, you deserve to receive compensation for it. It's one of the hardest skills for some people to reach. In society, we're often taught that modesty and discretion are ideal and advertisement and panhandling is shameless.
Please note once again that when I speak of compensation, I don't always mean money. Wattpad compensates readers with stars, follows, and comments. Most people put out their work just to hear responses from fans. We enjoy that validation just as much as someone at twitter wants to see their tweets retweeted, or a facebook person wants to see their post go viral. Except, where that tweet and post took you five minutes or less to conceive, most chapters take hours to write. We could all use a star and a comment.
Yet, for many people, even on Wattpad, we look down in scorn at those beginning writers who post on the Wattpad forums begging for reads "illegally". We resent those who do star trading or write long essays begging or holding chapters ransom for stars. I'm not saying that any of these actions are good. I think this is a complex topic with many different levels to it that I'm not going to go over here. I've written several chapters on it before if you want more of my thoughts.
However, what I am saying is that the need to be properly compensated is important to writing, which is why it's so important to perfect this skill. You need to understand the value of your work and develop a skill to demand what you're due without coming off as needy or shallow. You have to respect your fans feelings on the matter while creating a solution that leaves both parties satisfied.
The worst thing, however, is to be passive and to not reach out to your audience. Most of the time, if your fans are truly your fans, as long as you're up front and honest about what you expect and want, you shouldn't experience too much of a problem here. Most fans are happy to star... if you remind them and they think about it. Most fans wouldn't mind commenting... as long as it's not too inconvenient.
5) Diversify / Learn To Branch Out and Try New Things
Once you find something that works, you might be inclined to stick to that thing religiously. If you have one story blowing up, you're going to want to milk that cow. If you have one thing making all the money, why bother with other things? I've experienced this a lot with my fans. I keep getting people saying:
"{One of my books} is popular and what most people read. Why are you writing this other stuff. Just write that and that only."
I think that's a bit of a fallacy there, and it will eventually lead to my success shriveling up.In the short term, the best way to blow up a story is to release it rapidly. By focusing on one story undivided, you could release chapters as quickly as once a day! Then, you gain a bunch of readers, and because you're releasing so fast, you finish the story! So, you have a popular story that is finished. All your readers want MOAR! Notice the similar themes playing out here?
So, you wrote your fantasy story, "Badboys With Icepicks", and you grew a fanbase of 500 and every chapter gets 15+ stars. Maybe you've even tried another story, "Badboys with Rockpicks" and that shit just didn't go anywhere. Icepicks or bust! So, now you're releasing "Badboys With Icepicks 2: Glacial Retreat!" It gets... less fanfare... but it's still more popular. You concentrate all effort on this, then on to book three a few months later. Your return is even less. By the time you finish the IcePick Trilogy, your story and account have fizzled out.
There is no saying this will happen, and if your first book was exciting enough, you still will probably gain momentum with each subsequent story. However, I think if you wanted continued, sustainable growth, you need to diversify. Let me explain.
This is a concept well established in the stock trade, diversifying your portfolio. You put all your money is risky ventures... and you're either going to explode with wealth or lose it all in a bad gamble. Thus, by keeping your money spread out into various stocks, even if a risky venture dips, the more stable ventures keep that dip from being all encompassing. Likewise, this also means that your successes don't lead to instant wealth, but if you do see a risky stock rising quickly, you can always choose to invest a little more into it in the hopes of seeing a better return.
Now, let's look at your career as a webnovel writer. You don't have what you don't write, so if you put all your eggs in one basket, you're swimming or sinking based entirely on one concept. Man... how many metaphors did I just mix there? Anyway, who knows what story will be the story that took off for you. It could be Badboys with toothpicks, Badboys with axepicks, or even Badboys with no nose to pick. Every story you write has a chance to hit a market, and if you want to continue to build a sustainable population of fans, you're going to need to diversify your portfolio... perhaps by even writing something that isn't even about badboys at all!
Diversifying, and more importantly, knowing where and how to divide your attention to maximize your fanbase satisfaction is incredibly important. Spread yourself across too many works, and your release schedule will be too slow or high energy to maintain. Focus too much on one or two works, and you could be missing out on the next megahit because you were busy working on something mildly liked. You could finish a story in a month that might have kept your fanbase interested if released more slowly over the course of six months.
I'd also like to note diversification doesn't just mean new novels, new stories, or new genres. Diversification can also mean spreading to other websites. Who says you only want to release your story on Wattpad. For all you know... the story would do way better on Royal Road Legends. Or Scribophile. Or Booksie. By trying your story out with different websites (and by extension, differing audiences), you might find different responses. It'd be a real shame if your book never got the attention it deserved simply because it wasn't marketed on the right site. So always make sure to branch out and try new things. Not only will they increase your success, but new things may also create fan satisfaction.
So, these are just five none-writing related skills you'll need to become a better web novel writer. As everything I write, take the ideas that fit for you, see how you might apply them to your future writing, and then move forward with a few more ideas in your head. There is no single thing that will distinguish between being a good or bad writer, let alone being a successful author. It's up to every one of us to hone our skillsets and do what we love to do best, write.
Good Luck, and Happy Writing!