Am I doing something wrong?

[u/Friendship_Little]

I’ve been writing fanfics for as long as I can remember. I remember falling in love with my first story I’ve ever read on fan-fiction.net, reading people’s comments who give their thoughts and love for the story just as much as I have, and It inspired me to write my own stories too. I’ll admit, my first fanfic story I’ve ever written was down right terrible. Evident by the fact that even people in the comments pointed that out to me in, well, not a nice way. But those rude comments fueled my fire into bettering my writing style and over the years I darn well did. I’m happy at how far I’ve come.

However, in spite of my progress and betterment of my writing, I can’t help but notice something that has been bugging me for a while now. You ever had that moment where you put so much time, commitment, and effort into a project you’re passionate about? You spend night after night staying up to writing that one specific chapter. You write the words, you edited them, proofread it to ensure there aren’t any errors/mistakes that’ll raise a reader’s brow, and poof—you post it. Only then do you go to bed and check on it the next morning.

When morning comes so do the notifications regarding your story. The likes are there; the saves/kudos are there; and the comments. But the post comments is not what makes me angry. It’s the everyday soulless bots that post a comment to my story repeating the same song over, and over, and over again. And if it isn’t a bot, the comment section remains mostly empty. Yet, when I look at other people’s work (especially ones who I love reading from) whether they’re short chapters from 1 to 3, or long chapters from 20 to 40, I see whenever they post a new chapter that they get new comments every 2 to 5 seconds.

Seeing that everyday has left me with an uncomfortable question: am I doing something wrong? What am I doing wrong but they’re doing right? I followed the rules, I followed every steps like every other author in terms of writing, and I even improved my writing. Yet, why do I feel like all my hard work and efforts were moot? I’ve remind myself everyday that like me, people have lives outside of the internet. People who have jobs, school, and maybe even doing their time in college.

But I just can’t help but think this way.

[u/ciderandcake]

I see whenever they post a new chapter that they get new comments every 2 to 5 seconds.

No they don't.

[u/Raiven_Raine → u/ciderandcake]

some people can if they're extremely popular and write for huge fandoms.

i used to, actually. not the 'huge' fandom, but when i posted a new chapter or new story then announced it on Tumblr right away i would get the majority of my comments IMMEDIATELY. i even made jokes about it to people that they pounced on the new chapter like SO FAST! like predators on a lame calf, they were!

[u/Friendship_Little → u/ciderandcake]

Oh yes, they do. At least from where I’m seeing it.

[u/KamchatkaWing → u/Friendship_Little]

Absolutely not like that in my fandom, but then it's older and not huge.

[u/Friendship_Little → u/KamchatkaWing]

Maybe not in some fandoms. That I won’t deny. But I still see it in others

[u/Demonika_86]

First, and I'm just going to point out the obvious. Everyone starts as a bad writer. That's a common point for literally everyone. The stuff I wrote in the first 5 years of my "career" as a fanfic writer, I wouldn't show that stuff to anyone now. Not for a million bucks! (Well, okay... maybe for a million bucks... but who'd part with that? Really?)

Now that that's out of the way... engagement figures have been down across the board for everyone. Real people have stopped commenting, for whatever reason. Some of said reasons are outright silly.

Hang out on this subreddit long enough and you'll see those silly reasons...

• I've seen more than one person ask if their long comments are annoying.
• More than one person ask if writers genuinely liked comments.
• I've seen some other variations on a similar theme. I shan't list every permutation.

Those sorts of questions always get me staring at those threads, wondering to myself... ugh, which a-hole got these people thinking that we, authors, wouldn't like comments of whatever length? What is this BS anxiety? ... and how prevalent is it? Because if that's going around like the flu goes around, no wonder comments are scarce.

Unfortunately I've also seen a few people saying "keep anything that might constitute as criticism to yourself". Some people take it to mean "don't discuss what you read"... which also buzzkills comments and promotes another trigger for "comment anxiety". That's my take on THAT.

Edit: One... ugly typo.

[u/Raiven_Raine]

i would get these comments you speak of because i promoted myself and worked pretty hard for the popularity. whenever i post a new chapter, which the exception of the last couple, i would make a post on Tumblr announcing "hey everyone who follows me! new chapter!" then i'd add a fun teaser excerpt and a link to the story and the new chapter. these are even more popular if you add art or a picture, because a lot of people will share stuff if there's a cool picture, not even caring about what the link is for. lol

announcing new chapters to your carefully cultivated reader base on other platforms like Tumblr and, from what i understand, TikTok or whatever (idk how the other ones work), often remind people who scroll that you have a new thing up to go check out. helps a lot if your chapters aren't insanely long. catching people who love to scroll is different than catching people who are looking to spend chunks of their lives reading.

and, i know what you're saying.... "but, Raiven, there's a 'follow' feature where you get emails and/or notifications for new WIP chapters and stories!" yes.... that does exist. and sometimes it even works as intended. and sometimes people even look at the notification and are able to check out the chapter at that moment without getting a notification while they're busy then forgetting to go read it.

catching people scrolling is, IMO, the best way to go about notifying readers. they're already bored and scrolling and/or not busy and they're on a device where they probably read things anyway. they're already right there doing nothing but scrolling.

IMO, push notifications suck. emails suck. i never check my email unless i'm expecting a one-time activation/verification code for something. lol

i do notice tho that if i don't post new chapter announcements on Tumblr i will get less or no comments until i do. so... there must be something to that.

but i also get bots on every new chapter i post nowadays. usually one, sometimes two. i expect it. the last time i posted they were 2 days late and i almost worried for the health of the poor bots... and also wondered if they'd finally been defeated. but, no. i got one 2 days later, then another 3 days later. odd, really.

[u/YakFruit]

There is such a thing as investing too much of yourself into a story. I know what it is to be hopeful for the connection, the knowledge that someone enjoyed the effort, the validation- all the positives of the kudos and the comments and the hits. One always wants more. Its an addiction.

Its presumptuous, but perhaps we both look at fanfic as a sort of... amateur performative effort- more so than a hobby. We want to entertain and we want to do it as best we can. And we crave the confirmation that we succeeded in entertaining someone.

If my story gets crickets, I regard it as something of a failure- but not a waste of time. Maybe the idea wasn't sharp enough, or it was out of alignment with the fandom, or it just didn't involve a ship or situation people were eager for at the time. Who knows? People don't seem that into it.

Just more practice. Something for the next idea. The writing wasn't wasted, it was just more sharpening of the tool.

So, my advice would be: whatever story you got going. Take a break from it. Seize up one of your more cookey ideas you probably have in the back of your head, and write that for a bit.

I too feel a need for reader response, so finding the right idea, the right angle, the right ship and the right time. That makes all the difference. And you might not really know how people will receive it until you get a few chapters out there.

[u/serralinda73]

If you are going into someone else's fic and refreshing the page every two seconds to count the comments...you have a problem (and this is the only way you could guess at how fast their comments are coming in), and it has nothing to do with your writing. If your sole intention when it comes to writing/uploading fanfiction is to earn attention and find people to chat with, you should probably rethink your choices. Either choose different topics/themes/tropes/characters to write about, adapt your writing style to something more...conducive to conversation, or find some of that connection elsewhere and try to draw it toward your writing (AO3 is not social media).

Some people have a writing style that encourages people to talk to/at/about them. Some people choose a plot/theme/characters that the fandom is eager to talk about. Some people have separate social media lives where they have built a community of fans that feel comfortable commenting. And some people just...hit a nerve by pure luck.

You can't "earn" more attention or engagement, no matter how much hard work and effort you put in - especially not if you haven't targeted all that hard work correctly. Almost no one who might read your fics understands the work that goes into making them. They take that for granted, have no idea, or don't give a shit. They don't know if what they like about a story came from hard work or being drunk and bored, if it took a couple of hours or three weeks, if you agonized over word choices or merely used a thesaurus, or if any of it comes from personal issues or pure imagination.

You need a new strategy or a new mindset. What you are doing now isn't working for you, so make some realistic adjustments in what you write, how you write it, or what you expect in return. You can find something that does work for you. It might require some compromises, some trial and error, some frustrations, but you can find it if you try. What I know is, complaining about how things are currently won't fix them, and merely sympathizing with you won't change anything either.

"I can't help but..." is a cop out - seriously. You CAN help yourself...if you really want to.

[u/Saletales → u/serralinda73]

I don't agree with: "You have a problem." I mean, you may never look at others, but come on, people want to know what's going on. Refreshing like a madman a few times while waiting for your own hits to update isn't 'omg so mentally troubled'. It's just curiosity. Which is pretty normal.

Now, needing a new strategy or mindset, I totally agree with. Sympathizing in this thread with the OP will do nothing out in the real world. I'm happy with the reception of about half of mine. So I look at the lower-performing ones and see what I can learn from them. If I were really into it, I'd look at other people's fics and see what they may have done to get a good reception. That's not really something people in a Reddit thread can help with. But look at everything from fandom to pairing to kinks to stellar writing to marketing to good starting ideas to how they play with emotions, etc...

I will say, OP, that if you're in a big fandom, you may need to up your game. They're spoiled for choice. Take it as a challenge! Or find a more relaxing hobby. Or simply retool your expectations, which is the simplest. But don't beat yourself up. That's no fun.