Writers Central

[missp]

I JUST CAN'T FIND THE MOOD TO WRITE!!! I sit down at the computer and pull the story up and... NOTHING!!

[StellaBlueBella]

Hi again everyone! So, I am officially a "writer" now. Voting in the contest I entered is now closed and I have my little fic, A Tornado Meets a Volcano, posted on my own ff.net profile. It's inspired by Love the Way You Lie by Eminem, hence the name. I don't mean to brag - at all - but I am really proud of myself. ATMaV is short but I worked so so so hard on it. And believe me, it needed it! I was lucky enough to get the help of a fabulous beta, I think of few of you may know her. I can't say enough how much I loved having her involved.

I am trying not to be too sad that my fic probably won't do well in the popular vote. It's only had two reviews, both of which are from judges. I kinda knew going in that it wouldn't receive lots of attention since it wasn't ExB or even JxA (I wrote an alternate POV for EC chapter 24 "Snap Decision") but honestly it still hurt at first even though I knew what would happen. I just couldn't do that to ExB... If you've heard the song Love the Way You Lie, you know what I mean... I worked so hard on it and for it to be ignored felt unfair. But I decided instead of getting frustrated and I would review some of the other fics that didn't seem to be getting a lot of attention. It was totally not competitive of me but, I felt better afterwards. I guess it was the whole Golden Rule thing...

So, my fic has been posted on my profile for under 24 hours and I've noticed I can check the traffic stats and where in the world the traffic is coming from. When I looked at it a few hours ago, there were 16 hits but only 4 from the US. Is this normal? Are there really people all over the world reading my fic or are there a lot of spammers on ff.net? I shouldn't be suspicious of hits from other countries, that is prejudice right?? It's just hard to imagine someone in Singapore reading what I wrote.

I also had a PM from someone asking if I wanted to join a role play community. Is this just a coincidence? I mean I've been on ff.net for months and no one has ever PM'd me before... It's not something I am really interested in but, I don't want to be rude. If I reply to say no thanks am I setting myself up to get a bunch of spam or something? Honestly, I had a bad experience once on ebay when my account got hacked after I replied to a message. I am not sure but, I think what happened there was I accidentally replied to it from my email instead of a ebay message. Still that experience has made me a lot more cautious.

I would love to know what ya'lls experiences with ff.net have been like from a security standpoint. Any probs with hackers/spammers?

And if you'd like to take a look at my writing efforts, ATMaV can be found here (doesn't appear to coming up the site's search yet, hmm): ATMaV

Post edited for typo. Found in the sentence regarding much needed beta, of all places, lol!

[Amanda Beth]

In the future a post like this MAY belong in the fanfic thread since this thread is reserved for the act of writing -- you'll also get a better response because there are people who read there who don't come on here. Your post kind of walks the line between the two threads

Writing a story about anyone but Bella and Edward definitely lowers read count. I knew before I wrote TPC that I'd be losing readers--people even commented in LAF and TOLD me they won't read it bc it's a Renesmee story. And really, don't let your number of reviews bother you. Neither of my Twilight fics ever even hit 300 but then there are a lot of AH stories hitting thousands upon thousands of reviews. It doesn't mean anything if the reviews are "omg update soon!!!!!!!1!1!!!!11"

As for country? I've never actually paid attention so I just checked one random month of LAF's stats and they were mainly USA, though Canada, Germany, UK and Australia had a couple hundred readers. But then there were visitors from everywhere from France to Romania to Chile...so TBH, I dunno lol. No one has ever spammed me and I've never heard of anyone else having that problem.

[VirginiaMay]

Hey StellaBella!! Welcome aboard, sweetie!

I think you're fine asking your questions here. Most of us have used FF.net quite a lot, whether as a reader or a writer. Technical sorts of questions are definitely a part of being new to writing. As a FFn reader there are a lot of things you never look at or really use on the site, and when you start using them questions are bound to pop up.

The only issues i've had with FFn are spyware & viruses. I think some of that stuff is imbedded in the ads though, b/c these problems popped up long before I started writing & posting. Yes, it's fairly common to get PMs about games, forums, and role playing. I've also had people want me to write a story idea that they have but can't or won't write themselves. I usually ignore & delete. It isn't a coinicedence that you got one afte posting. I think they just go down the "just posted" list and PM all the writers. You can report these people as spammers, especially if you get more than one of the identical message or if they ask you to go to a third-party site. Again, I usually ignore them though. If in doubt about anything you get in a PM, just ignore it. You don't have to respond and the messages themselves can't hurt your PC.
.
Now... as for the writing, I haven't read your entry just yet as I'm on my phone right now, but don't get discouraged too soon. There could be lots of explanations for why you didn't get as much attention as other entries. Like Amanda Beth said, the pairing has a lot to do with it. It could also be the rating, a lackluster summary, or that you're simply unheard of for the most part.

So... my advice would be to give it some time. Keep asking questions. Keep reading. And keep writing. Even if it's not anything you think you'll use in the future, write something every day. I'd be happy to take alook at your one-shot when I get home though.

Does that help??

Big Hugs & Congrats Again on taking the plunge!

~Ginnie

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[Amanda Beth]

Thought of another thing... it took a couple of chapters of LAF before I got any decent number readers. The hard thing with starting your ff writing with a one shot is that it's harder to draw people in. The one shots you often seen w/ a lot of comments are already established on the site so people have them on author alert etc etc

[missp]

StellaBella~~ I've never had problems with spamming on ffic.net. My advice to you on the review/traffic issue would be to write for you first. The reviews are icing on the cake... however few you will probably receive. The majority of us do not receive a lot of reviews. In my own story, I looked more at the traffic and the number of hits I received and how many people added me to their favorites list than anything else. For some reason, most readers just don't take the time to review. Congrats on your success!!

[VirginiaMay]

StellaBella~~ My advice to you on the review/traffic issue would be to write for you first. The reviews are icing on the cake...

This is soooo true and very good advice, MissP! ( I can't believe I forgot to mention that myself. )

And on reviews... it's hit or miss. Some stories/writers grab a lot of reviews. Some don't. I don't know how accurate FFn always is with their stats, but when I completed "Timing Is Everything" there were supposedly 3000 hits that first day. I got less than 10 reviews for all those "views" of the story. To this day there are still very few reviews for that story. Even less for my one-shot, "I Don't Believe You". And that was an E/B story. Of course, as much as I love getting the reviews, the real reason I do this is because it makes me happy. Maybe that's easy for me to say because "What Drives Her" is such an anomaly. But it's also been in progress for over a year now and I've done a lot of shameless self-promotion along the way.

Stella- If you like writing one-shots and writing for contests, keep doing that. Don't let this first experience discourage you. Because every opportunity you can get to put your name out there will not only help gain you readers, but every story you write will teach you knew things. (Especially with a special lady helping you along the way. *waves and winks at the beta in question* ) I, for one, am glad to have you join us here on the Writer's Thread. Even though it tends to be a very small group of people who post regularly, (or at all) this thread was meant to be a place for all writers to talk about their writing and seek out others who enjoy the same.

[blasphemous_contessa]

Do you guys have trouble writing characters you don't like/agree with?

I'm doing a story that involves an arranged marriage and a jealous ex but I just can't get the ex-girlfriend right. (she's supposed to go into a jealous rage and attempt to murder the arranged wife thus awakening the couple to the fact that they don't hate each other quite so much and have in fact come to care for each other). It might be because my nature is SO contrary to hers (I'm not the jealous type....or the affectionate type...or actually any other strong emotion really) but the story will not work if she gets over it, finds a new man, or has an affair with the guy (it goes against his nature he takes promises very seriously which is why he tried so hard to get out of the marriage) everything in her character says that if they were real people in this situation she would not be content to watch or even hire a hit-man she would do the deed herslef. But everything I write her saying or doing just comes out so overdramatic, exaggerated, or like a preachy cautionary tale. I even added three chapters of back story just to show where she's coming from and why she reacts so strongly but that just makes it sound like a "women are evil, petty jealous creatures" story which it isn't.

[missp]

^^^YES! I have an extremely hard time writing characters I don't particularly care for very much. Recently, in my new fic, I was writing a scene where one of the human characters died. I had the hardest time getting past it because I didn't want it to come off insensitive. For the most part, if I don't like one of the "cannon" characters, I find some way of NOT writing for them. I either send them away temporarily... or permanently. Hmmm... Now, that sounded insensitive, huh?

[Amanda Beth]

I try and find a trait in them that I can relate to...I'm pretty sarcastic and can come off a bit mean sometimes ( ) so if a character is mean then I just use that part of me. It's something I picked up when I did theatre growing up.