Writing On Royal Road
Most people want to write a novel, and just finishing one is an achievement. So I started writing on Royal Road, even though I wasn’t writing in the LitRPG style that seems to be all the rage there, and I had no intention of writing a never-ending story. Still, I had an idea, and I kept going.
About eight months later I had a finished story with every chapter published, and a very small number of readers. Athena: Fallen Goddess was an interesting premise, but I wrote for the experience of writing, and I put it on a public forum because it would keep me writing, even with few readers, because I had to get to the end. So many stories start and flounder and die. Mine started and floundered and finished. And I learned a lot.
I did many of the things you’re meant to do on Royal Road, posting lots of chapters in the first few weeks to make sure I appeared in listings, then keeping it regular, with three chapters a week for most weeks. And I got review swaps, which feel a little odd because everyone gives each other 4 or 5 stars for every review.
Right now I have 27 followers, and my last few chapters show just over 100 views each, but I’ve no way of knowing how many of those were readers, drive-bys-or bots. I did get one or two dedicated commentors, which was nice.
More importantly, I learned a lot about writing. In particular, I learned that I had not written any characters… or not anyone with a real character. I got about two-thirds of the way through and realised what the main conflict I should have written about was.
The important thing was finishing, though. Or finishing a draft, because that’s all it was. As it stands, if I wanted to “fix” it I would just start again, with the world I built, which was good, a better version of the characters, which were okay, and much more direct conflict.
So what next? Now I’m knocking my next story into shape, and now I know that I don’t really understand what a story is about until then end. But some things I did learn was that I don’t really need to work on world building because that came more naturally, but I did work on characters. So I have. It still wasn’t enough for my first draft, but it was better, and the second draft was better.
Would I post on Royal Road again? I’m not sure. Maybe if my stories never see the light of day in any other way I’ll give it a go. I’m not doing this for the money, I’m doing it to see if people will read my stories. So maybe I should just post them up there and forget any idea of traditional, or even self-publication. We’ll see.