# Because us writers make stuff that requires focus



## Curtisboy (Sep 10, 2014)

This is like an extremely brief rant about how I, yes I did say IIIIIIIII, think that artists/animators tend to be a lot more likely to be successful on a site like FA

Why?

In my honest opinion I think its because of peoples attention spans. 90% of the time you're likely not going to get people that come to FA to just purely read (Now Im not saything that no one does that, I'm just saying that its like... tinier population xD) So written works don't get nearly as much attention as drawn works of art.

I don't know, this is just my snippet theory, anyone have any other thoughts on it ? :s


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## SkyeLansing (Sep 10, 2014)

This has been discussed several times in the past (you can go ahead and look through the forum history if you want). I would guess it comes up once every year or two, though not always in it's own dedicated thread.

I'm not sure a consensus was ever reached but I got the impression that a lot of people would agree with your position, however I think there are some other factors that contribute as well.

The first is that sharing works in progress is much more satisfying for all involved with visual art than stories. The progress from sketch to line art to flat colors to shading and so forth creates a satisfying sense of progress. By contrast a story in early drafts is often just miserable to read because of all the problems with it. Other authors may be interested in the progression that happens from draft to draft, but your average viewer will not care. From their perspective you've just posted the same story 6 or more times with the early ones being pretty bad to read. You can take this to it's logical extreme with art streams. Most everyone will be able to enjoy an artist streaming their work process just because it is neat to see a picture take shape before your eyes, but I very much doubt ANYONE would be interested in watching an author stream as words gradually appear across the screen. (quick aside: it is also very easy to tell an artist is getting better, but can be more difficult with an author.)

I also personally think beyond that there is another aspect: a lot of furry writing just isn't particularly good. I don't mean that as an indictment so much as an observation that most furry authors are clearly just getting started and could be considered something akin to writing fan fiction. This isn't a bad thing, everyone starts out somewhere and if you keep at it you get better, but it does raise the problem that most of the writing you're going to find in the fandom isn't particularly good. We don't have many professional authors. By contrast we are blessed with a large number of talented artists and because artists get noticed more easily it is quite possible that most new talent gets funneled in that direction. Of course most artists won't reach that level of popularity, but some will and the good artists are much more visible than the good authors in part because I believe there are so many more of them currently.


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## Curtisboy (Sep 10, 2014)

I have to agree with you one that. I mean it sucks because I've invested so many years into my writing abilities only to figure out that when it comes to a community such as this where Id like to make a decent mark, It's kind of near impossible, which absolutely sucks. Like I can't just switch over to artist work because Im such a newbie at it that it would take many more years to be able to produce art worth sharing about.

I don't know, like even I personally like to look at art over writing at times, but to me I feel like you can get more out of writing visually -in your head- even if there isn't a picture to help out -lets you do the creating in your head-


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## Nikolinni (Sep 10, 2014)

Curtisboy said:


> I have to agree with you one that. I mean it sucks because I've invested so many years into my writing abilities only to figure out that when it comes to a community such as this where Id like to make a decent mark, It's kind of near impossible, which absolutely sucks. Like I can't just switch over to artist work because Im such a newbie at it that it would take many more years to be able to produce art worth sharing about.
> 
> I don't know, like even I personally like to look at art over writing at times, but to me I feel like you can get more out of writing visually -in your head- even if there isn't a picture to help out -lets you do the creating in your head-



This might just be the cynic in me, but I also feel like people only REALLY pay attention to things that get them off. Well, the huge crowds at least. But even then, there's sexual stories that are...pretty subpar. Either in plot, character, or even not paying attention to the rules of friggin grammar. 

A friend of mine has been having trouble with getting her story more known, and she's convinced that basically, it's not "sexy" enough. But hey, that's the thoughts people get when they see the likes and favs for sexual things go through the roof, while stuff that's actually clean...not so much. 

The author in question is linked in my signature.


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## SkyeLansing (Sep 11, 2014)

Nikolinni said:


> This might just be the cynic in me, but I also feel like people only REALLY pay attention to things that get them off. Well, the huge crowds at least. But even then, there's sexual stories that are...pretty subpar. Either in plot, character, or even not paying attention to the rules of friggin grammar.



Yes and no. The reality is that for writing to be meaningful it needs to cause an emotional reaction. Lust just happens to be fairly easy to trigger. (I could also do a whole thing on how many people discover their furryness in their teen years, and consequently while the fandom isn't just about sex it is very intimately linked to many individual's sexuality.)

I'm going to use an example of Kyell Gold here. Yes a lot of his things have sexual content but realistically that isn't the actual draw of his writing. The actual core of his stories doesn't have so much to do with the sex as it does with the overreaching message he is trying to convey: That being gay is okay, that you can find acceptance, love, and happiness. If I had to guess at his market I would say gay teens that are in the closet. Any sex scenes that happen may be used to attract the audience, but the reason people stick around is because of their emotional investment in the characters and what will happen to them.

By contrast I suspect that the majority of "fap" stories probably get set aside pretty quickly after they've served their purpose.

In a sense this is partly why I say the fandom's writing scene currently looks a lot like fan fiction. If you go and browse any fan fiction database you'll find that a lot of it is sexual in nature (I'd go so far as to say probably more than half). Lust is a very easy emotional chain to pull so it is hardly surprising that people just started out writing have the most success there. You can also see authors gain confidence there, going from simple sex stories to sex stories with character development. It seems like a small step but I think it actually indicates a writer is at the point where they want to strive for something more.

The unfortunate corollary to this is many other emotional links you can give are much more difficult to attain. There are easy ones (hate, for example) but others are very difficult. For example, bringing in depression and loss is a very delicate process and extremely easy to do wrong. Stray too far in one direction and the character doesn't seem properly sad, but too far in the other and it becomes comical as they over-react. A prime example of how this can go horribly wrong is from the twilight series where Bella is upset that nobody remembers it is her birthday, and is then upset when the Collen family throws her a surprise party and gives her some thoughtful gifts. I'm not sure what the goal was (moody teen perhaps?) but it makes Bella seem to be a bitch.


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## NilFur (Sep 11, 2014)

As a writer, I know how painful the relative lack of visibility of our art compared to graphical ones can be... yet I'm not too keen on the "they don't pay attention to me, therefore they must be lazy/perverts" idea.

I have an other theory. Given that everyone has personal tastes, most of the times only a small proportion of everything that's published (no matter the art form) will be of interest to a given person.

Now consider this:

How to find 1 "good" picture in 1000 "meh" others:
1 - Open pages of thumbnails.
2 - Scan them fast with your eyes, instantly getting an idea of the themes and styles of each picture in a fraction of second. Open a few to get a better view.
3 - After about five minutes of work, enjoy your good picture.
4 - Rinse and repeat, each loop reinforcing your feeling that pictures are awesome and making you more hooked.

How to find 1 "good" story in 1000 "meh" others:
1 - Open pages of, at best, keywords.
2 - Spend a long while reading them to get a very vague idea of what you might get. Open a lot of them to read more (it's where you miss the good one that wasn't tagged in details).
3 - After about five hours reading things you don't like, begrudgingly abandon without having found the good story.
4 - Rinse and repeat, each loop reinforcing your feeling that reading stories online is a huge and tedious waste of time and making you more "lazy".

Our main issue is not that our art is too good for the brainless masses while filthy unwashed illustrators get it fast and easy, it's that we lack tools to present our work so a reader can make informed choices about which texts he'll spend his time on.

It's unfortunately hard to solve. If you happen to write on a popular topic (ex: fanfiction of a popular show), you're lucky and might find a specialized site for you: the specialization means the good to meh ratio gets excellent for the readers and the total story count decreases, making the niche lovers' experience a lot better. The physical books world gets around the issue with filtering who gets published and with a well organized mesh of critics/advisors, but online we have the chance avoid the former and the misfortune to miss the later.


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## SkyeLansing (Sep 11, 2014)

NilFur makes a good point, but also touches on one of the bigger problems modern authors are having to deal with. It isn't specific to the fandom.

If you follow any author circles these days one of the major topics touched upon is building a fan base. These days authors are increasingly holding down 2 jobs with their writing: the actual writing itself and promoting their own work. It is to the point that many major publishers want to see their authors have things like regularly updated blogs and a certain number of twitter followers before they'll release a book. Realistically building and maintaining a fan base becomes the primary focus of the author beyond their writing.

It is also quite time consuming because in order to really work this also means you need to interact with the fanbase, which means responding to some of the comments and tweets you get. This is also why the growing indy author scene often does stuff like releasing a free novella (or making their first book free). Any lost income from letting that work go out for free is generally more than made up by any new fans it generates.

That said, this is a very poor platform for an author to build a fan base. If you find people who like your writing they'll stick around... but only if you regularly release content that they decide is worth their time to watch. The added problem is that FA is very clearly built with pictures in mind. Which means the majority users visiting the site do so with the intention of looking at pictures. A user that is here to see images isn't likely to look for writing.

There are some things you can do to help boost exposure though.
-Write a story to go along with an artist's picture. Be sure to get permission first, but if you get it many artists will link to your story in the image. This is a great way to get some readers who usually only come to look at artwork.
-Update regularly, as already said. Try to keep most of it writing or writing involved. A very short 500 word story or a journal entry giving updates on your latest project or discussing some topic you think others will find interesting.
-Collaboration! Similar to my first point, but if you have other writer friends try and collaborate on a project in such a way that you can share viewers. Or maybe you know an artist who wants to do a comic but feels like they aren't good at building a story.
-General interaction. The forums are one area, but commenting on other's work also helps. In all honesty it isn't going to give you immediate exposure, but it may make you some friends which can become exposure if they get interested in what you are up to and like it.

All that said, it isn't at all easy.


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## BadRoy (Dec 7, 2014)

SkyeLansing nailed it. A lot of the writing, at least on FA, is barely read-able. Very bad. like what even is grammar.  

Also! With art if you see a bad piece you just blow by it and see a great one further down the page. But with a story you have to download the story (because most don't know how to format the text so it will show on FA), and then read it to determine if it is any good. There's more of a time investment.


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## Fallowfox (Dec 7, 2014)

Is it not 'we' writers?


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