Writers Corner is an attempt by me to create some kind of aid or assistance for people who want to write. I am by no means a great writer, I barely qualify as a good one. I am simply trying to give people the chance to not make the same mistakes that I have, and hopefully help someone at least in some small manner. While I write erotica, much of the information posted will help people who are writing non-erotic works as well. I cannot be held responsible if my advice has an adverse effect on your writing, or if it improves either.The main idea of this episode of Writer’s Corner is to talk about responses. This can come in the form of ‘Thanks’ buttons on forums, comments, replies, emails, PMs, IMs, or any other various means of communication on the internet.
Writer's Corner, Responses
No matter what form it comes in, chances are that responses won’t come as often as you want it to. I touched upon this earlier in my previous Writer’s Corner, about patience.
Now let’s be honest, we all have an ego, at least I do. You might as well. When we spend hours working on something, coming up with something, we want attention, we want to be gratified with praise. We want acknowledgement on what it is we’ve done, we want someone to just make us feel better about what we feel good about. It’s hard to step away and honestly critique our own work, just as your own child you can sometimes be blind to their imperfections. You see all the greatness and none of the faults, and believe that someone else will as well. Maybe you don’t want someone to come over and kiss your ass, maybe you do.
There isn’t much that can be done to garner more responses. I find that the best way is to form close (relatively for the internet) friendships with other people online that can come in and honestly give you positive or negative feedback. Naturally this isn’t something that can be forced to happen, this is something that has to naturally occur over the course of spending time on websites and forums. Other writers are usually a good place to try, as they have a sort of insight on writing and a desire for responses.
Another big part is to seem accessible to responses, whether it’s a simple ‘Hey thanks’ a small spelling or grammatical edit, or a more in depth critique. Thank everyone who thanks you, and try to respond to them. If they gave their time to write something to you, you should take the time to write something to them. Should it be a spelling or grammar edit, then thank them and fix your mistake. If someone comes to you and critiques your work, you should take the time to respond to it intelligently. Don’t simply accuse them of being rude or attacking your work, honestly have a discourse. Don’t ignore them. Perhaps they are putting out something that you have missed, or something your betas didn’t pick up on.
But this post isn’t designed to help garner more responses, not really. I’m not the person to talk to about that. This post is designed more to be about responses and how they work.
Sometimes you are going to write a story, or a chapter of a story, and your going to think that this is a really good job. Then the results aren’t exactly pouring in, probably more like dripping in at best. It’s discouraging. Especially if you are on a forum, or a website, and see hundreds of views and two replies(and one is your own)
Part of responses is getting your story to your target audience, if your audience likes female dominant stories, go to a femdom website. If they like futanari, go to a futanari website, and so on. If your posting stories on a website where people aren’t interested, well, you won’t get the same amount of replies.
Another part is putting it up on a larger number of places. The more places that you put your story up, the more responses that it will be likely to get, again, assuming that you’re sending it to appropriate websites.
But honestly, the most important thing to do is to not expect responses. People won’t send them really. Sure, some folks will drop lines, and it’ll be really nice, especially at first, but as the story goes on, as things fall into place, the replies will get smaller and smaller, as people get turned off for some reason or another, as people have other things begin to take up their time, and various other reasons.
That’s when the make of a real writer comes out, when you are there to do it for yourself. You’re not getting paid for it, not if you’re reading my advice, unless you find it amusing. You’re doing it for free, so why are you doing it? Because you have a story to get out, so get it out, and if people like it good, and if they don’t, or if they ignore it, or don’t post it, then just let them do whatever, and write the story because you want to finish it.
One last note, try to create a ‘dummy’ email account, because if you put your email out there, a lot of bots are going to find your email and send you spam, and in any case you might not want your ‘normal’ email to be mixed up with responses about your stories, erotic or otherwise.
So remember for replies, post your story where it belongs, and be accessible to the person replying. But most importantly, don’t worry about replies, and just get the work done, honestly, it’ll be more rewarding, and less frustrating that way.
Apologies for the lateness of the post, I hope to not miss the next week.
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