Welcome to Gaia! ::

We all write fan fictions because we love to write, we love the worlds and the characters of the canon. Sometimes, that's enough for us. But other times, we would like to hear from our readers, to know what they like and what they didn't. What we're doing right and what we're doing wrong. But most of all, we want to know how we can improve!

So, how do we get reviews? The first and most important thing is to make sure your stories get seen. If people see your stories, they'll be more likely to read them. A person cannot read what they cannot find. So, the first thing is to make yourself visible. This does NOT mean going on the ff.n Forums or even other websites and begging for readers. No! Doing that tends to irritate people and will, instead, bring nothing but negativity to your story and your inbox.

So then, how do you make yourself and your stories visible? Here are some simple suggestions...

Get Yourself Seen:

* Post in the Forums: I know in the above paragraph I JUST said to not go posting begging for reviews. But this suggestion is not contradicting that. DO NOT go to the Forums and beg for reviews. Instead, go to the Forums and TALK to other fans and authors. Find a discussion Forum for your fandom and chat with the other posters. Swap ideas, makes jokes, debate, share memes, etc. Just generally make friends. If people like you, they'll visit your profile and give the stories you've written a try. Or, if discussion isn't your thing, there are always dozens of RP Forums on ff.n. Same theory applies. If you're a fun player and people like you, they'll visit your profile and read your stories.

* Submit to C2 Communities: If you write for a specific pairing, a particular genre, use a unique gimmick, etc. find a Community devoted to it and PM the founder or a staff member. Don't beg to have your story added to their archive. That will earn you an instant rejection. Simply say that you have a story that you think fits their requirements and politely ask them to look it over. If your story is relevant to the C2, then it will be added to the archive and seen by all the Community's subscribers.

* Update Regularly: This does not mean "update a lot and spam the ff.n archives". No. Updating regularly is when you keep to a consistent schedule, such as updating every Thursday, or every two weeks, or on the first of every month, etc. Something that your readers can count on and know that the next update is coming and when. This builds a certain relationship between reader and author. Readers will notice and comment on it.

* Cross-polinating: This means posting your stories on multiple sites. FanFiciton.Net isn't the only fan fiction sit out there. There's also Archive of Our Own, NovelJoy, LiveJournal, Tumblr, even deviantART has a fan fiction feature. Posting your stories in other places raises your chances of them being see, and posting links in the descriptions or on your profiles to your other fan fiction pages will give readers the choice of reading your work on whatever site they prefer.



Those will all help you be seen. But just having people look at your work isn't enough. They have to actually read it and have something to say about it. Otherwise, what's the point of posting a review for a story if you have nothing to say? This is why the CONTENT of your chapters is important. Not just the actual story itself, but also authors' notes, chapter titles, footnotes, and anything else you might add to your documents and updates.

Content, More than the Story:

* Chapter Titles: Try not to give away spoilers, climaxes, or other important information in your chapter titles. If your readers already know what's gonna happen, it will have less of an impact when they read it. If the main event in the chapter is the hero showing up late but just in the nick of time to save the rest of the cast, don't title it something like "[CHARACTER] Save the Day!". Instead go with something more ambiguous and open to interpretation like "The Cavalry". Give your readers teasers that wet their apatite but don't tell them what's going to happen before it does. Make sure they have a reason to keep reading.

* Authors' Notes: This is something I have seen people complain about the most in the Forums and on other fan fiction message boards. Authors that leave bad author's notes. Honestly, this one just might merit a thread all to its own. But for this thread, I will be brief. Author's notes are not the place to respond to reviews. They are not a place to ask or beg for reviews. Do not hold conversations with yourself, or other characters within your author's notes. Do not post rude remarks or insult your readers like this author. Doing that is a sure fire way to lose your reader base. So, now that we know what author's notes are NOT, lets talk about what they ARE. The purpose of an author's note is to convey information to your reader that is pertinent to your story, inform them of any absence you might take from the online world, or delays in updates. That's why they're called "author's notes" not "author's chat space". For example, if you a writing for a fandom that has multiple canons (such a book canon, movie canon, game canon) and your story takes place in one specific canon, but you are mixing in elements from the other canons, that is something that you can explain in your author's note. Or if you know you'll be moving and won't have internet for a time and won't be able to keep to your update schedule, that's something you can warn your readers of in your author's note.

* Footnotes: Some of you might like to use foreign languages in your fics. Japanese is the most common that I've seen, but I've also read French, Romanni and Klingon, then of course, there're the authors that like to invent their own languages. If that is the case, do not interrupt the flow of your story by putting translations right there in the narration. It takes the reader out of your world. Put them as footnotes at the end of your chapters.

* Cliff-Hangers: The BEST way to get reviews is to end your story on a cliff-hanger. This does not mean you should write atrocities just to get a rise out of readers. Just leave chapters a bit open. After all, even if the story's not finished, if you leave your chapter with things for that moment feeling concluded and satisfying, the reader might lose interest. Try to end your chapters on strong notes that get your readers rev'd-up and asking "What happens next!?"

Thank u! I'm gonna try it out! biggrin

This. ^

So much of this. ^

I cannot tell you the number of times have have completely abandoned a fic, even going so far as to remove it from my alerts because the author posted an incredibly cunty author's note. Nothing will get me to forget a story quicker than treating the reader (me) like s**t. Its one thing to beg for reviews. Its annoying, but I understand it. I'm more bothered by authors who hold stories for random for reviews. That annoys me and prompts me to NOT review. But I will still follow and read those stories.

But an author that has not respect for readers. Insults them in author's notes, calls them rude names for adding a story to their Alerts... THAT is what really grinds my gears. We do not HAVE to read the story. We are CHOOSING to read the story. If an author wants to continue to have their stories be read and reviewed, then they need to have AT LEAST a basic respect for their audience. If they have no respect for their audience, then I see no reason why the audience should respect them.

Something else I'd add to this is to have a GOOD SUMMARY. My decision to read or not to read a story is most heavily reliant on the summary for it (although, there are certain genres or characters I avoid like the plague, but beyond that...).

If the summary has spelling or grammatical errors in it, then it makes me think that's the level of quality awaiting me for the story itself. And no offense to anyone, but I'm just not interested in wading my way through bad grammar, bad punctuation, misappropriation of words, bad spelling, lack of capital letters, run-on paragraphs, etc, just to try to understand the point of the story. I glance at summaries like this and think, "Skip it! Next!"

If the author says in the summary, "Sorry, I suck at writing summaries," then, forgive me, but I have to wonder what else they suck at writing. The first unit in my first year university English writing class was a focus on writing summaries. Writing summaries is a much more difficult task than it may seem on the surface; it's a test of your writing abilities, really. Can you convey your idea in a short amount of space? In any case, writers who just give up on this task and say "I suck at writing summaries" just get this kind of reaction out of me, "Skip it! Next!"

If the author sums up the whole story in the summary (and it's really obvious that they do), then why should I bother reading it? They just told me what their story is about and exactly how their story ends. "Skip it! Next!"

Similar to the "I suck at writing summaries" point, if the author spends most of the summary discussing how they came about writing the story, or other "author's notes" type discussion, and very little description of what the story is about, then it's really not captivating my interest. As far as I can tell, their story is about them writing the story. Or there's no real story there. Or well, whatever, I don't know what the story is really about, so "Skip it! Next!"

A good summary will let people know at least one or two of the characters involved, what the conflict is (or at least something mysterious going on), and leave the reader with an open-end, something unresolved that will get them to be curious to read further.

Personally, I've started to read a heck of a lot more fanfictions in the last year than I ever have before (I used to read a lot of them, but not to this extent, back in 2002-2006 or thereabouts). And so, I rely heavily on the summary to help me decide whether I'm even interested in spending my time reading a story or not. Yeah, I have certain types, I'm going to avoid certain pairings and whatnot, (you can't please everyone), but sometimes I might just read a story that falls slightly outside of my preferences if it has a good summary. And by that same token, if it's totally the type of story that I love to read (like, it involves certain characters in a certain situation that is one of those big fandom faves to write/read about that I'm also a fan of), but the summary is very poorly written, I'm not going to bend over backwards to read it anyways - I'm going to turn it down and move on to the next story on the list.

This is very good and helpful advice. May I have your permission to add it to the guild official thread on summaries?

Yes. I... didn't notice that thread till after I posted here! sweatdrop So yeah, adding it over there is great and it makes a lot of sense!

These are very valid points and I think people could learn a lot from them.

Another good way (I've found) to boost readers and reviews is to do something unexpected. Maybe not 'having a giant robot appear in feudal Japan' unexpected, but something that works with the subject matter as well as the direction you're taking the story. There are thousands of stories out there, and many of them undoubtedly cover similar subjects, so giving yourself an edge and taking your story in a somewhat different direction can work in your favor.

And, if you want reads/comments, don't beg/bully other people into reading your stories in the comments of someone else's. This has happened to me once, and it's super annoying. The review section of someone's story is not a billboard for hire, so please don't treat it as such.