How to get your writing well known in the community?

[ricinsbluebox]

I'm a writer, my friends know I'm a writer, all my past teachers knew I was a writer, but however, no one else really knows. Thus my question is this: how do writers get their writing out into the community? On Furaffinity.net I have writing listed as a commission and all, but first off I need tips on getting my writing at least partially known because I've never been able to get my writing popular enough to get lots of people following it. Outside of fimifiction.net where I had a couple of semi-popular (not enough to make the front page or anything) fan fics from the MLP:FIM fandom. But that story aside, I really would like some tips on how to become quasi-well known and at least enough to heard of.

Like Jack Sparrow heard of. ... if that makes much sense.

Please halp?

- Ricin

 

[Gnarl]

If you ever figure that out be sure to let me know! I have four books on Kindle and several short (sorta 40K words) stories on several sites and doubt if anyone would ever recognize my real name! I even tried putting out there on certain FA-DA-weasyl some art works from the illustrations that would never be found anywhere else, not even in the books! I guess if you broke down and were to pay for real advertising it might help. I have no advertising or promotions or anything like that,,,,,, yet! Can't afford it right now. I have two kids in college and there is no way in hell I will let them get the shaft like I did for student loans!

 

[Conker]

Furries like porn. Bout all I got for advice.

 

[ricinsbluebox]

Furries like porn. Bout all I got for advice.

-.-' ...

 

[Torrijos-sama]

Use a pseudonym and publish smut, and establish a community around that. Then, use that fame to bring attention to your serious writing.

That's called pulling a Stephen King or an Anne Rice... Publish nothing but smut with every cliche and trope known to man, then once it has gotten popular, release a serious work that gets the critical attention it deserves, like Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

That, or serialize stories and figure out how to manage hype over releases of new parts of your canon, and don't be afraid to permit the community to make fanfics of your own work to generate hype around the original source material.

 

[ricinsbluebox]

That sounds so incredibly awkward to do... publishing smut and getting famed for that . To me that just sounds really backwards but it kinda makes sense at the same time.

So really I have two options (this is just for clarification)

A) Publishing smut to form a community, then use the fame to draw attention to serious works

And B) Release little bits of canon at a time, start drawing in attention and allow people to make fanfics of my own work?

Any tips on where to start, maybe? Perhaps Deviantart.com and go from there?... I'm also hoping to get enough attention in the near future to start doing commissions from furaffinity.net, too.

Thanks JesusFish, though .

@Gnarl: I think JesusFish just about answered our problems xD

 

[Gnarl]

I would go with option B...I just take handle the idea of doing smutt!

 

[ricinsbluebox]

I've tried writing smut before, and in the beginning it doesn't feel too awkward until you actually have to think about what exactly you're writing... /then/ stuff gets awkward. At that point I just exit out of word cause I can't take the sheer weirdness out of it D: . But I suppose I don't really have anything much to do outside of trying to get semi-known in the two big fandoms I'm a part of! Best of luck to you too, Gnarl.

 

[RailRide]

So really I have two options (this is just for clarification)

A) Publishing smut to form a community, then use the fame to draw attention to serious works

And B) Release little bits of canon at a time, start drawing in attention and allow people to make fanfics of my own work?

Any tips on where to start, maybe? Perhaps Deviantart.com and go from there?... I'm also hoping to get enough attention in the near future to start doing commissions from furaffinity.net, too.

(emphasis mine) Not a writer here (visual artist), but an observation in general:

Image sites, even those that have evolved into social networks, are probably the worst places to gain recognition as a writer. Furry fandom as a whole, is only slightly less so being so heavily geared toward visual works, but I'll leave that aside and concentrate on art websites geared toward visual rather than written works.

Think of the amount of time it takes to read far enough into a story to know if it's any good (to you) or not. Then look at the number of people the typical FA/DA'er is watching (I looked at the OP's FA page, and note that the join date was a day ago, 4/19). You'll find a whole lot of folks are watching hundreds, if not thousands of other users. Imagine how many art submissions are appearing in their Inboxes even if only a fraction of those watched post work in any given day. Even for pictures, it takes a few seconds at most to make that determination, and lots of people here admit to discarding piles of notifications because there simply isn't time to devote a few seconds each to hundreds of pictures.

This is a nightmarish scenario for writers looking to get noticed. It makes you wish there was an alternate community where writers get the kind of recognition and followings that artists can garner here on FA and DA. Until you think about that time investment thing and multiply that by the number of potentially worthwhile writers likely to gather in such a hypothetical community. I'm no great consumer of amateur (or even professional) writing, but I've read a number of FiM fanfics linked from EqD that I found myself reading to their conclusion. But of the ones what weren't complete, I couldn't keep track of the ones that already proved promising, and didn't have the time to devote to following more than a couple at a time even if there was a +watch system to keep track of them.

Didn't mean to be a wet blanket on top of credible suggestions, it's just what I observed being on sites like this going a decade or so.

---PCJ

 

[Conker]

Use a pseudonym and publish smut, and establish a community around that. Then, use that fame to bring attention to your serious writing.

That's called pulling a Stephen King or an Anne Rice... Publish nothing but smut with every cliche and trope known to man, then once it has gotten popular, release a serious work that gets the critical attention it deserves, like Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

That, or serialize stories and figure out how to manage hype over releases of new parts of your canon, and don't be afraid to permit the community to make fanfics of your own work to generate hype around the original source material.

Never read any smut by Stephen King, though I bet he treats the genre better than the crazy person who put out Fifty Shades of Grey.

 

[Tica]

Well, you could start by actually posting writing samples to your Furaffinity account. Right now all I see is an empty gallery.

I think it's more important to practice and become *very, very good* at writing than it is to become well known. If you're very good, and you share your work with your friends, the work will start to spread. If it's mediocre or simply okay, it won't go anywhere.

 

[Wither]

start by writing.
followed by posting said writing.
engage in the community.
continue all this.
if you're writing is good enough to warrant a large amount acknowledgement, it will become well known.

It's like I solved string theory there.

 

[Auramaru]

When I got into writing community websites I would review a lot of other people's material almost excessively. Naturally when I'm posting top-notch critiques/reviews on many people's stuff, they tend to check out my page and review my stuff in return.

Doesn't always work. I can name a few websites that it definitely DOESN'T work. But once you find a nice circle-jerk of writers reviewing each other's material, you're pretty much set.

(Or like everyone else said: Smut. Loads of smut. Or a slow-burner-yiff-story)

 

[ricinsbluebox]

Just a side note to you all: I've pretty much been writing since the day I was born. I don't wanna brag too much, but I'd say I'm a pretty good writer.

From what people have said here thus far, I like some of the suggestions. I do understand that DA and sites that are like DA are devoted mostly to visual arts and writers don't get the attention they may deserve and that they go generally unnoticed. However, I /think/ I might try posting some small samples on FA and keep up with the community.

Also, whether on doing smut or not I've no idea, but I guess I'll sort out what I'll try to do and see where it goes.

Aurmaru, I like your idea! I like your idea too, Tica, I think I'll try to post some stuff up today if I can.

 

[Conker]

Just a side note to you all: I've pretty much been writing since the day I was born. I don't wanna brag too much, but I'd say I'm a pretty good writer.

Skip the community shite then and simply send your stuff to magazines and the like who will pay you to publish your works.

 

[Wither]

Sofurry is a good furfag site for writing.

Question though. These 'small samples to post on FA'. The fuck are those? Where do you post your actual works then?

 

[ACraZ]

Meh... it's not gonna be amazing famous one millions views per day for any writer and gonna be pretty, not in my life...

Posting smut, or just hammering away at fetishes (fat, feet? Diapers, ponies? Fat ponies in diapers with moist feet? Even better!) will get you views, if you want to be watched by a crowd like that.

Posting constant reviews and comments on other writing will get attention from writers who might interest you, which is cool, but this takes lots of time and effort and, although good views, the numbers probably won't be 'that' high. Still good if you have time for it.

Posting constantly will increase your chances of people seeing, viewing, and watching your stories. This idea is just patience and logic. It will work, sorta.

Get super engaged in the community with gift writing, fanfics of other people's characters (all with permission, of course), and get talking with other writers. Similar to possibility number two in that getting interested in other people will get other people interested in you! Might be fun to get a little community going.

Finally, search out and join writer's groups. They do exist and can be fun to be a part of, and you might just get a lot more recognition than you would have running solo.

Most reliable though is just porn. Honestly, just porn :I

 

[ricinsbluebox]

Sofurry is a good furfag site for writing.

Question though. These 'small samples to post on FA'. The fuck are those? Where do you post your actual works then?

"Small samples" being works of mine /other/ than my actual works, just so people can get their feet wet with my writing. But at the same time I'd go to Sofurry probably and post up more of my actual works for people to read.

 

[ricinsbluebox]

Skip the community shite then and simply send your stuff to magazines and the like who will pay you to publish your works.

Though to be honest, though I'm a good writer, my writing genre is pretty limited to fiction. I mean yeah, I can write articles about stuff or whatever, but it's far from my favorite thing to write. That most likely means if I really /do/ wanna get started by doing writing as a side-career I better get started with that.

 

[ricinsbluebox]

Meh... it's not gonna be amazing famous one millions views per day for any writer and gonna be pretty, not in my life...

Posting smut, or just hammering away at fetishes (fat, feet? Diapers, ponies? Fat ponies in diapers with moist feet? Even better!) will get you views, if you want to be watched by a crowd like that.

Posting constant reviews and comments on other writing will get attention from writers who might interest you, which is cool, but this takes lots of time and effort and, although good views, the numbers probably won't be 'that' high. Still good if you have time for it.

Posting constantly will increase your chances of people seeing, viewing, and watching your stories. This idea is just patience and logic. It will work, sorta.

Get super engaged in the community with gift writing, fanfics of other people's characters (all with permission, of course), and get talking with other writers. Similar to possibility number two in that getting interested in other people will get other people interested in you! Might be fun to get a little community going.

Finally, search out and join writer's groups. They do exist and can be fun to be a part of, and you might just get a lot more recognition than you would have running solo.

Most reliable though is just porn. Honestly, just porn :I

Yeahh... I'm not expecting to someday arrive at the red carpet famous or anything.

Honestly, if I get bored enough to write smut, I'll write smut. I'm aware people drool for stuff like that.

I've also heard that, and I'll hopefully be up to poke around the community for writers and view their stuff and get noticed back.

Gifts would be a good idea! That's something I haven't yet tried to do, so I'll maybe be up to doing that.

Then again, in a *very* strange way, some people's smut just... just isn't that great. Not that I've spared time to read a bunch, but the few I have are just not good. So if I really had to put my talents somewhere, smut would be a very dark corner of my life in the fandom.

 

[Tica]

Though to be honest, though I'm a good writer, my writing genre is pretty limited to fiction. I mean yeah, I can write articles about stuff or whatever, but it's far from my favorite thing to write. That most likely means if I really /do/ wanna get started by doing writing as a side-career I better get started with that.

There's a such thing as fiction magazines, yo.

 

[ricinsbluebox]

The thought of fiction magazines went /completely/ over my head D: ... are there a few you know of that you could name off here and stuff? If so, that would help a bunch!

 

[Tica]

The thought of fiction magazines went /completely/ over my head D: ... are there a few you know of that you could name off here and stuff? If so, that would help a bunch!

I've never had the disposable income to subscribe to magazines, but you can use the resource https://duotrope.com/ to search magazines to submit to.

 

[ricinsbluebox]

Samee. Thank you so much, though! I'll look into em!

 

[Tica]

I've never had the disposable income to subscribe to magazines, but you can use the resource https://duotrope.com/ to search magazines to submit to.

so, I posted this, but back in the day Duotrope was free: now it's a subscription service. I'm not sure about alternatves, but if you google "duotrope but free" or "duotrope alternatives" you might come up with something.