What's So Great About Writing Webfiction? :-)

[aldersprig.livejournal.com]

Hi! My name is Lyn, and I’m creator and co-writer of the webserial Addergoole. I've been posting it two or three times weekly since January of 2009, so I'm still a junior member compared to many around here.

Credit where credit is due: I started Addergoole. because a friend pointed me at Alexandra Erin's (ae_stories) Tales of Mu back in 2007. I went from that to meilin_miranda's Intimate History, and thought, hey, I can do this.

I was already a rather prolific writer, so the process for me involved picking a story I thought I could stick with - it ended up being a combination-adaptation of two different settings of mine - and writing what I thought was enough backlog.

Lesson one. There's never enough backlog.

The friend who pointed me to Mu is an avid webcomic reader, and had one piece of advice: pick a posting schedule you can stick to, and stick to it. It's a good place to start with any sort of serial - if people can stop by your page once a week or once a month and get an update, it can be routine for them.

Expanding out from there, I found Twitter, and from twitter, found at least a segment of the giant web-fiction community. The community out there is big enough that you can spend all your time talking to other writers and readers and forget to write anything - that's happened to me before. There's crowdfunding, here and on Dreamwidth,
Web Fiction Guide, Epiguide, Muse's Success, and weblit.us, to name a few - and then there's the forums on other author's sites. We've had a lot of fun on mine, and on AM Harte's, and I know MeiLin Miranda has a large community on hers a well.

So what’s so great about writing webfiction?

I was lucky enough to catch haikujaguar on twitter Sunday afternoon. She's just recently wrapped up Spots the Space Marine, and even more recently begun A Rosary of Stones and Thorns and Black Blossom as ongoing series. She started in 2003 with Flight of the Godkin Griffin and publishes on Livejournal, as well as on stardancer.org.

Asked what the best part of writing webfiction was, she answered "Best part is making money, consistently for something I get to do regularly. Plus, it's fun to watch people's reactions. :)" I have to agree, the reactions are one of the best parts for me as well. Immediate, visceral feedback.

Deirdre Murphy, wyld_dandelyon had a similar comment: "My favorite part is hearing from people so soon after I write something! So much better than waiting weeks 4 rejection slip!" Her writing can be found here.

Becka Sutton, of Firebird Fiction, says she most likes: "comments, of course, and that fact I can't give in to writer's block because I have readers waiting for the next installment and I can't let them down." It seems to be a common theme; Irkdesu of The Peacock King said "...Simple things like 'I can tell whether the readers like my story as I am writing it, and not long after I want to be done with it' are what make me post online. So, the fact that I can get comments and emails from readers, and interact with them as I write, keep me excited enough to keep writing my story, and give me motivation to stick it out when I hit a slump. It's that simple for me."

I've found that the crowd-sourcing is as much a reward as the crowd-funding, if not more: Addergoole. changes, for me, with the audience's desires, and I try to make sure there's lots of opportunities for that - bonus stories, questions, feedback on the forums and on Twitter. It’s a constantly interactive experience.

I close with another quote from Irkdesu: "I think people should know that there are some gems out there. They may never 'make it big' but they are worth reading."

Comments

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>>pick a posting schedule you can stick to, and stick to it.<<

This is great advice for any kind of serial project. My Poetry Fishbowl runs once a month, then sometimes there are extras. People know to watch for the main event.

>>I've found that the crowd-sourcing is as much a reward as the crowd-funding, if not more: Addergoole. changes, for me, with the audience's desires, and I try to make sure there's lots of opportunities for that<<

Agreed. I value this with my projects too. I post recipes because people love them, though I haven't monetized that yet. I write poetry based on audience suggestions. One interesting thing happened this month -- people picked a brand-new series as the recipient of a bonus poem. So the donors got a huge amount of influence over that whole storyline by sending prompts for something that wasn't very developed yet.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

This truly is the post of links! *laugh* Very nice!

I should add a little embroidery on my comment to you on Twitter, which is that after years of losing money to postage and printing costs attempting to get published traditionally (because back when I was trying there was no such thing as electronic submission, or even much internet), being paid for my writing regularly is one of the most novel and pleasing parts of writing a web serial for me. It's a relief not to be wasting time and money, and instead to be making it.

The reader interaction parts are also delightful, but they were an unexpected delight. The whole "not having to pay other people, even incidentally by having to ship them a bloody 1200-page manuscript in a giant box" was a delight I was altogether anticipating. -_-

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

This. I used to send out several manuscripts a week -- short stories and batches of poetry, mostly. I don't do that anymore; it's just an occasional thing. Most of my submissions are now electronic because they're free. I recently realized that I no longer need to buy big envelopes in bulk, because I don't go through them that fast.

But there's another factor: my audience buys up a lot of stuff that I would once have needed to peddle through the mail. I sell a LOT of poetry. These days, 90% of those sales go straight to my readers. Magazine editors are only accounting for about 10% of my poetry sales. My top market of all is nonfiction with Llewellyn, a major Pagan publisher; my second is the Poetry Fishbowl at large; my third is one individual fan. Single magazines are waaayyy down the list.

Guess who gets more influence over what I write and how I manage my business. That's a big change.

[meeksp.livejournal.com]

I've found that the crowd-sourcing is as much a reward as the crowd-funding, if not more

That's been my experience too. I haven't been doing this long enough to be making a living at it, but the ideas, the feedback, and the opportunity to interact with so many creative people has made it a lot more fulfilling than any job.