Posted By Scath on December 4, 2009

I’ve spent the morning attempting to puzzle out the dos and don’ts of writing a web fic. The Night Has Fallen trilogy is my chosen victim to this effort, although its fate is uncertain at this time.

There are a few good reasons to consider writing a web fic, and they’re centered around giving a good, solid example of your writing in order to draw readers and build a readership.

While some people write web fic just for the love of it, there are several authors who do so in hopes that it’ll draw interest to their titles available for purchase, or earn them a bit of sideline cash via donations to fund extras they can’t afford on their monthly budgets.

Ideally, you write a web fic, draw readers in to build a solid readership for your work, and those readers spread word of mouth, resulting in more readers and sales of your other works. Bonus: feedback and interaction from those readers!

My problem? Being a rather disorganzed ADD sort of person, things that make sense to others from the get go don’t always occur to me up front.

One of the things I took great notice of was a remark by someone ‘that if it’s not easy to navigate, I move on’ in regards to web fic. You wouldn’t think that would be a stumper, but it is.

Currently, I’ve set up pages for Night Has Fallen here on my blog. A main page, with three categories to list subpages under. That’s looking to be too complicated for anyone to want to navigate, even though it would all be listed on the sidebar in order per novella and immediately viewable upon clicking on its navigational link.

Setting up a subdomain with a WordPress installation would only take a few minutes’ time and I can use categories instead. It would also let me have a dedicated links list for others’ web fics, so that’s a big draw to doing it.

I do know I need to have ‘Previous’ & ‘Next’ navigation on each post (I can do no brainers!).

But which is better: a static page or the latests posts? I’ve seen web fics set up both ways.

I’m leaning towards a static page, because I know there’ll be violence, adult language and situations, so I should have a warning up front for new arrivals.

All of this is really just me talking myself into it, although advice from veteran web fic authors is certainly welcome!

My real stumper is frequency of updates to it. Several web fics I’ve looked at update twice weekly. There is no way in hell I can commit to doing that, with my other projects and real life/business responsibilities.

And interest is a stumper. I know myself. I’m trying to concentrate on the series/stories people have shown interest in and not just plow through whatever catches my attention at any given moment.

But I know it takes time to build a readership. I also know that I write well and at a fantastic clip when I’m receiving feedback on a regular basis. Look at my 2007-2008 list of completed works! All those finished were finished because I was getting that feedback encouragement on a regular basis.

Well, okay, there were several started and not finished too; where do you think all those WIPs came from?

Committing to a web fic is a sticky proposition because I know it’ll take time to draw an audience, and no feedback=my losing interest in continuing.

My blog has been seeing around 8k visits each of the past two months. Of all those visits, less than a dozen visitors leave comments any given month. The poll deciding Night Has Fallen’s fate has gotten four whole votes in almost three days’ time. Four votes with over 1,000 visits already this month.

They’ve all been ‘Yes’ to continuing it, which is encouraging, but I’ve obviously not figured out the magic formula to engage people’s interest enough to encourage interaction.

Realizing that, it seems like a really stupid idea to embark on a web fic.

I mean, does that mean the other 900+ visitors think the first bit’s so horrible they can’t even be bothered to vote on its fate?

Welcome to the world of an independent author trying to figure out…well, everything! LOL

So here’s what I’ve decided to do: Night Has Fallen will sit in limbo until the poll has collected 100 votes. Depending on the results, it’ll either live or die.

If it lives, I’ll set it up and move forward with it as a web fic. If it dies, I’ll move it to the ‘Off the Burner’ list and maybe write it later, but not as a web fic.

Its fate is in your hands, people. Let me know what you think by voting!

(Note: I have already planned out the site for it, so I’m prepared if it lives.)

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Categories: Bloggings
Tags: Babble, Challenges, Goals, Installment Series, paranormal, readers, WIP, writers, writing