The Internet has democratized fiction publishing, allowed teenage writers to set new standards, and delivered a bunch of cool new failure modes. Here's a list of them!
What is going on in these comments?? Acknowledging that the royalroad userbase is baseline homophobic (and mod team too, lmao, look at the endless stink whenever anyone asks them to add an LGBT tag to the site) and majority straight guys is kinda a statement of fact that has nothing to do with Makin or the story mentioned. If you are writing on that website, that is the audience you've got. (Because you can't even add an LGBT tag to turn homophobes away at the door, because the mod team on RR sucks lmfao.)
I have reread the section of this post in question and do not understand what people are mad about here.
See Enneagram #6, but to summarize some people are scared of the world, so they need to know where they stand in relation to the world around them as that’s the only way they can alleviate their fear.
They do this by latching onto a group/idea. This gives them a lot of blind loyalty to said idea and can’t stand anything that’s against said idea.
So in this case the group is LGBTQ+, and the “against” idea is this post.
If you thought about it for more than thirty seconds or are a royal road user you wouldn’t find a problem, however they see something that’s slightly tangent to there idea. Therefore this post is a threat to them and must be destroyed.
If you want to read more I have an entire document about this. It was originally a writing tool but I found it useful for classifying people & social interactions
A tendency towards excessive length seems to have formed even before sites like Royal Road added financial incentives for it. Yudkowsky's HPMOR, Scott Alexander's Unsong, and the other stuff that came out of the rationalist community was all skewed towards being very lengthy. When this sort of writing was primarily skewed towards women it seemed to have a much more variable word count.
I thought you had to be joking with that 70k/mo on patreon. And then i checked and you were actually lowballing it by almost 7k 💀 Literally how does someone do that?
"Story suddenly develops long unrelated subplots" is a problem not unique to web-fiction, and *probably* (but I Can't be sure) not always/usually caused by wanting to pad things out because of money or popularity. A lot of people just keep getting carried away.
I haven't read a fanfic in about five years. And I haven't read the 2024 post about Celestial Forge. Which means, when I read this post, I felt like Makin was just... charting a personal fictional taxonomy. And you know what, for the sake of comedy, Makin is. But at the same time, in the back of my head, I know this is all based on reality. I'm peeking through the looking glass and I'm liking what I see
I would say that a Potemkin Story is not a failure mode for the author of the story. Either they don't want it, and it's a failure of the mod team, or they do, and they are getting the discussion they want. It's also not necessarily a failure mode for the readers either, I like both examples and have not engaged with the discussion thread at all, and didn't realize these two qualified. It's also worth noting that authors often have discord communities with more focused discussion, so even if the forum thread is heavily diluted with off topic discussions, that doesn't mean usable amounts of feedback is impossible.
All that said, this article was a fun glimpse at the current fiction writing environment, so thanks for posting it.
Hi yes, I have read the daily grind and I fail to see how readers being homophobic should be framed as the writer's problem, and in fact I am certain you're only going to make yourself miserable trying to follow that kind of advice
I think I might have been a bit too ambiguous in that section, but the only thing I'm claiming is that revealing the main viewpoint as gay without proper warning *on RoyalRoad* and a few other places will get you review bombed. It's only a "problem" if you care about reviews or making money from that specific audience.
If your objective is "not being miserable" that's going to be an uphill battle no matter what though. I don't know a lot of happy webfic writers.
"If you’re a funny asshole, your flaws can make the story better. But certain ones—like depression or social anxiety—are nigh universally inimical to good storytelling, especially if it’s your first novel."
No points for guessing how Makin self-identifies! Lmao. Add an 'unintentionally,' maybe.
It's also really funny that you think a main characters having flaws like depression or social anxiety is 'nigh universally' an impediment to storytelling - it says a lot more about you and where and what you read ('forums like SB/QQ/SV' and 'the worst fucking ratfic power fantasy slop anyone's ever heard of'). Yeah, I bet the other forumite fans of your genre are usually terrible at writing it, but this is called 'Man vs Self' and it is not a product of the internet age.
But the dumbest part by far is your insistence that anything not by and for straight cis men is a foolish author Not Knowing Their Audience. Absolutely hilarious in light of your target - the author of TDG has a fucking *huge* audience and knows exactly who he's writing for. You're just so fucking mad it isn't you. The furious entitlement of the man-child who's too precious to see a nasty gay knows no bounds, lmao. Defending review-bombers who scream and cry and shit the bed the instant they see a trans character is very on-brand, you don't seem to realize how much you're showing your ass.
Enjoy some extra engagement in thanks for the laughs! Watch out though, you might not realize how much of your 'audience' is pointing at you in the 'get a load of this guy' cam.
While depression and social anxiety as concepts are neat, I think they generally suck as features in a protagonist? You can have a cool character-focused narrative if you want, but just having agency-reducing flaws means you need more contrivances in action/plot-driven narratives to make this person follow the tracks and go forth. I only want to read Oblomov once in a blue moon etc etc.
Why are you assuming that a gay relationship in fiction is automatically "targeting audiences" and not ... something the author wanted to write, maybe? Because maybe the author is into that, because the *author* is a man who is into men? Is that actually so completely out of the question here?
Why is the existence of gay/bi men in fiction some kind of Bad Egregious Trope to call out? Why is this the fault of the author and not of the homophobic audience?
Do you think fiction about queer men and queer men's fiction should be sequestered away into its own part of the Internet where you never, ever have to engage with it or are you just not thinking about the implications of your words?
Where did you find this article, by the way? I'm confused by how two people with the same misunderstanding commented in the span of one hour. Did it get reposted somewhere?
also none of us are 'misunderstanding' you, you make your position incredibly clear. remember that non-rationalists have eyes and don't need biases explicitly spelled out before we'll stop assuming good faith about bigotry. especially in an article that is *checks notes* entirely mockery and derision of the 'tropes' listed? and you have that 'sausage party' gif? and portray people being review-bombed by bad-faith transphobes/homophobes as snivelling crybabies? naaaah that *totally* wasn't what you meant, wink wink! time to retreat to the motte! this is definitely a believable defense!
If you are making money off a homophobic audience and suddenly hit them with homophilia they will not like this and you will in turn make far less money. No fault, no moral judgement, I'm not making a moral claim here. Just: as a fiction publishing strategy, you may find your success (views, reviews, money, audience size, cultural reach) suddenly decreases if you do this. The mistake is* getting surprised* by this.
You can write gay fic in the same places as all the other fic, but knowing your audience and managing expectations are key to smooth author/reader-community relationships. I'm reading a lot of queer fic on RR (Are You Even Human, Sunspot, This Magical Girl Is Mine, etc), but I *am the audience for it* and *knew exactly what I was getting into*. I'm not shocked by the content and the authors won't be shocked to hear that I like it.
Why are you assuming bad implications for those words? Why so defensive? Why the all-questions style?
Okay, this stopped being funny, I've banned the troll. I think I know who this is, someone who had a freakout in a Discord I moderate. They're probably just saying what they think will make me angrier instead of anything they actually believe.
What is going on in these comments?? Acknowledging that the royalroad userbase is baseline homophobic (and mod team too, lmao, look at the endless stink whenever anyone asks them to add an LGBT tag to the site) and majority straight guys is kinda a statement of fact that has nothing to do with Makin or the story mentioned. If you are writing on that website, that is the audience you've got. (Because you can't even add an LGBT tag to turn homophobes away at the door, because the mod team on RR sucks lmfao.)
I have reread the section of this post in question and do not understand what people are mad about here.
See Enneagram #6, but to summarize some people are scared of the world, so they need to know where they stand in relation to the world around them as that’s the only way they can alleviate their fear.
They do this by latching onto a group/idea. This gives them a lot of blind loyalty to said idea and can’t stand anything that’s against said idea.
So in this case the group is LGBTQ+, and the “against” idea is this post.
If you thought about it for more than thirty seconds or are a royal road user you wouldn’t find a problem, however they see something that’s slightly tangent to there idea. Therefore this post is a threat to them and must be destroyed.
If you want to read more I have an entire document about this. It was originally a writing tool but I found it useful for classifying people & social interactions
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l_6A76uR8yP0_kJBjTEw8SlmDbgRuudFhz6NU5aDeZg/edit?usp=drivesdk
webfic really does attract some unorthodox types huh
spoken like a true enneagram #135385 (the numbers go up)
A tendency towards excessive length seems to have formed even before sites like Royal Road added financial incentives for it. Yudkowsky's HPMOR, Scott Alexander's Unsong, and the other stuff that came out of the rationalist community was all skewed towards being very lengthy. When this sort of writing was primarily skewed towards women it seemed to have a much more variable word count.
I thought you had to be joking with that 70k/mo on patreon. And then i checked and you were actually lowballing it by almost 7k 💀 Literally how does someone do that?
The hot dog gif slaughtered me lmfao
77k/month!? Wow
"Story suddenly develops long unrelated subplots" is a problem not unique to web-fiction, and *probably* (but I Can't be sure) not always/usually caused by wanting to pad things out because of money or popularity. A lot of people just keep getting carried away.
I haven't read a fanfic in about five years. And I haven't read the 2024 post about Celestial Forge. Which means, when I read this post, I felt like Makin was just... charting a personal fictional taxonomy. And you know what, for the sake of comedy, Makin is. But at the same time, in the back of my head, I know this is all based on reality. I'm peeking through the looking glass and I'm liking what I see
Pretty close to what I’ve seen, nice to see this be put into words.
Thank you for writing this!
I would say that a Potemkin Story is not a failure mode for the author of the story. Either they don't want it, and it's a failure of the mod team, or they do, and they are getting the discussion they want. It's also not necessarily a failure mode for the readers either, I like both examples and have not engaged with the discussion thread at all, and didn't realize these two qualified. It's also worth noting that authors often have discord communities with more focused discussion, so even if the forum thread is heavily diluted with off topic discussions, that doesn't mean usable amounts of feedback is impossible.
All that said, this article was a fun glimpse at the current fiction writing environment, so thanks for posting it.
I don't understand the category of Potemkin Story. I thought a Potemkin village was about recurring facades? How does that relate
The facade (the forum thread) is way more impressive than the contents of the buildings.
This was fantastic!
Hi yes, I have read the daily grind and I fail to see how readers being homophobic should be framed as the writer's problem, and in fact I am certain you're only going to make yourself miserable trying to follow that kind of advice
I think I might have been a bit too ambiguous in that section, but the only thing I'm claiming is that revealing the main viewpoint as gay without proper warning *on RoyalRoad* and a few other places will get you review bombed. It's only a "problem" if you care about reviews or making money from that specific audience.
If your objective is "not being miserable" that's going to be an uphill battle no matter what though. I don't know a lot of happy webfic writers.
"If you’re a funny asshole, your flaws can make the story better. But certain ones—like depression or social anxiety—are nigh universally inimical to good storytelling, especially if it’s your first novel."
No points for guessing how Makin self-identifies! Lmao. Add an 'unintentionally,' maybe.
It's also really funny that you think a main characters having flaws like depression or social anxiety is 'nigh universally' an impediment to storytelling - it says a lot more about you and where and what you read ('forums like SB/QQ/SV' and 'the worst fucking ratfic power fantasy slop anyone's ever heard of'). Yeah, I bet the other forumite fans of your genre are usually terrible at writing it, but this is called 'Man vs Self' and it is not a product of the internet age.
But the dumbest part by far is your insistence that anything not by and for straight cis men is a foolish author Not Knowing Their Audience. Absolutely hilarious in light of your target - the author of TDG has a fucking *huge* audience and knows exactly who he's writing for. You're just so fucking mad it isn't you. The furious entitlement of the man-child who's too precious to see a nasty gay knows no bounds, lmao. Defending review-bombers who scream and cry and shit the bed the instant they see a trans character is very on-brand, you don't seem to realize how much you're showing your ass.
Enjoy some extra engagement in thanks for the laughs! Watch out though, you might not realize how much of your 'audience' is pointing at you in the 'get a load of this guy' cam.
I have haters now. I made it.
While depression and social anxiety as concepts are neat, I think they generally suck as features in a protagonist? You can have a cool character-focused narrative if you want, but just having agency-reducing flaws means you need more contrivances in action/plot-driven narratives to make this person follow the tracks and go forth. I only want to read Oblomov once in a blue moon etc etc.
Why are you assuming that a gay relationship in fiction is automatically "targeting audiences" and not ... something the author wanted to write, maybe? Because maybe the author is into that, because the *author* is a man who is into men? Is that actually so completely out of the question here?
Why is the existence of gay/bi men in fiction some kind of Bad Egregious Trope to call out? Why is this the fault of the author and not of the homophobic audience?
Do you think fiction about queer men and queer men's fiction should be sequestered away into its own part of the Internet where you never, ever have to engage with it or are you just not thinking about the implications of your words?
Check this comment: https://recordcrash.substack.com/p/8-tropes-of-the-webfic-age/comment/124909776
Where did you find this article, by the way? I'm confused by how two people with the same misunderstanding commented in the span of one hour. Did it get reposted somewhere?
majority-gay writing Discord
also none of us are 'misunderstanding' you, you make your position incredibly clear. remember that non-rationalists have eyes and don't need biases explicitly spelled out before we'll stop assuming good faith about bigotry. especially in an article that is *checks notes* entirely mockery and derision of the 'tropes' listed? and you have that 'sausage party' gif? and portray people being review-bombed by bad-faith transphobes/homophobes as snivelling crybabies? naaaah that *totally* wasn't what you meant, wink wink! time to retreat to the motte! this is definitely a believable defense!
If you are making money off a homophobic audience and suddenly hit them with homophilia they will not like this and you will in turn make far less money. No fault, no moral judgement, I'm not making a moral claim here. Just: as a fiction publishing strategy, you may find your success (views, reviews, money, audience size, cultural reach) suddenly decreases if you do this. The mistake is* getting surprised* by this.
You can write gay fic in the same places as all the other fic, but knowing your audience and managing expectations are key to smooth author/reader-community relationships. I'm reading a lot of queer fic on RR (Are You Even Human, Sunspot, This Magical Girl Is Mine, etc), but I *am the audience for it* and *knew exactly what I was getting into*. I'm not shocked by the content and the authors won't be shocked to hear that I like it.
Why are you assuming bad implications for those words? Why so defensive? Why the all-questions style?
Okay, this stopped being funny, I've banned the troll. I think I know who this is, someone who had a freakout in a Discord I moderate. They're probably just saying what they think will make me angrier instead of anything they actually believe.