Is this Section Dead?

[† Emotional Outlet]

Well, it's a circular problem at that rate.

 

People don't pay attention because there's nothing to pay attention to, and people aren't posting because no one is paying attention. So since no one is posting, no one is paying attention. Round and round we go.

 

You have to break the cycle and I think the ideal would be to have people writing and updating with little to no regard for who is paying attention. Asking people to pay attention to stories and poems that seem abandoned isn't fair to the audience, and doesn't really make sense for the writers, especially if they feel bitter about the lack of attention in the first place.

 

People not commenting seems to be an issue common to a lot of writing communities. At AO3 you can easily end up with stories that get a lot of hits and kudos, but few to no comments (one of my fics has 1570 hits, 27 kudos, 6 bookmarks, and... zero comments). Same thing with FF.net. Same thing with Tumblr.

 

Honestly, there's a lot of stuff on the Internet. A lot. You have to start small and start in obscurity--there are few venues where you're guaranteed automatic attention and feedback (one of them is very small fandoms where people gobble up any bit of fan work because it's that obscure of a fandom). As you continue to produce and people notice, they will begin to comment. And as you continue to produce quality material, people will talk and bring in some more folks.

 

That is to say, regular updates will eventually garner an audience. If you sit around waiting for someone to notice you, you might be waiting a long time.

 

It happens for almost every webcomic. Pick a comic that has comments enabled on the pages. Look at how many comments there are in the latest pages--some of them can reach hundreds of comments for a single page. Then go back to the start and look at how many comments there are--you're lucky to see a dozen of comments.

 

One of the best pieces of advice I got was the importance of learning how to enjoy and embrace obscurity. You are given full reign to experiment, make mistakes, and do whatever you want with few repercussions. Once you're in the limelight and a lot of people are paying attention to you, the margin for error narrows. You will likely never get a chance to relive the freedom of obscurity like that again.

[Breathless]

Damn it. I had a huge philosophical post when google chrome decided to crash.

People shouldn't be afraid of what other people think. You can never know what anyone is truly thinking, save for one person. Yourself. If you like it, that's infinite times more important than an infinite amount of other people liking it. Also, "Artists don't address themselves to audiences, they create audiences". - Edmund Snow Carpenter. You're crazy. CRAZY SMART!

That being said, I'm working on a project. Read it, or not. I'LL POST IT ANYWAY AND YOU CAN'T STOP ME! (It's no where near completion.)

[† Emotional Outlet]

Haha, I don't think the problem is that people are afraid of what others think, it's that no one is saying anything at all.

 

But I think I agree with your quote, haha. I just read this article that said,

 

The bigger message here is that brands seem to live and die by the numbers and this forces them to create messages for an audience, rather than creating something of significance that will find its way to the people who matter most. It's not a slight shift in thinking, this is a true paradigm shift. How often do you find yourself asking, "what is it that my audience wants?" instead of saying "let's create this because it's who we truly are."?

[Breathless]

a-aaah. Yup, lack of content can be pretty daunting. Hrmmmm.

Then it's simple. We kill the batman. I think once people find free time, more stories will find their way here. And as you said before. Activity begets activity. All it needs is some momentum first.

There's a Kametsu skype group right? Why don't we try something like a story swap, or a collective story. Iunno. ( I find due dates and group projects can help start initiative. )

[† Emotional Outlet]

Due dates and regulation seems to result in people breaking out in hives, haha. There was talk of having, like, a monthly list of writing prompts and people didn't find themselves too enthused about the idea.

 

But we definitely should kill the Batman, he is a menace to our society.

 

Anyway, I am not averse to a group project, what kind of thing were you thinking?

 

I once wrote a story with a friend where we wrote a few pages at a time before switching, it was pretty fun because we did not inform each other of what we were attempting to do. We ended up wrestling over the plot as increasingly weird things happened in the story. Obviously this isn't a very ideal situation if you like to be in control and know exactly what's going on, haha.

[Breathless]

I guess due dates ARE pretty scary! (I've been scared by my fair share of due dates) Anywho~~.

I had no real concrete plans or ideas in my head. Just a few general outlines. 

 

I once wrote a story with a friend where we wrote a few pages at a time before switching

This was one of the ideas in my head. Ahah.

You also had a secret santa/valentines thing once. or twice. I missed out on it, but I was really interested in it. Something similar could be cool. Like, everyone writes a story, it's then anonymously given out to everyone else! :>

Which kind of brought me to another idea. Everyone writes a story, and we post it anonymously. (somehow. Maybe through one of those google quiz things.) And then we just guess who wrote what!

And reading these ideas on paper made another idea pop in my head! Person "A" writes a story. Then after that, Person "B" writes the sequel (or prequel) to the story. And this continues UNTIL WE HAVE A UNIVERSAL STORY TIMELINE OF AWESOMENESS!

AGAIN. This is just theorycraft. Because theorycraft is fun!

The end result doesn't have to include people giving advice on your story, or their thoughts. Though that would be an awesome thing. The most important thing is the incentive to write. Which can be done by simple who-wrote-what polls and what have you.

Excuse my messy post. I didn't know how to format it, so I kind of didn't. I don't even know if this made any sense! D:

[Dark_Angel13]

I guess due dates ARE pretty scary! (I've been scared by my fair share of due dates) Anywho~~.

I had no real concrete plans or ideas in my head. Just a few general outlines. 

 

I once wrote a story with a friend where we wrote a few pages at a time before switching

This was one of the ideas in my head. Ahah.

You also had a secret santa/valentines thing once. or twice. I missed out on it, but I was really interested in it. Something similar could be cool. Like, everyone writes a story, it's then anonymously given out to everyone else! :>

Which kind of brought me to another idea. Everyone writes a story, and we post it anonymously. (somehow. Maybe through one of those google quiz things.) And then we just guess who wrote what!

And reading these ideas on paper made another idea pop in my head! Person "A" writes a story. Then after that, Person "B" writes the sequel (or prequel) to the story. And this continues UNTIL WE HAVE A UNIVERSAL STORY TIMELINE OF AWESOMENESS!

AGAIN. This is just theorycraft. Because theorycraft is fun!

The end result doesn't have to include people giving advice on your story, or their thoughts. Though that would be an awesome thing. The most important thing is the incentive to write. Which can be done by simple who-wrote-what polls and what have you.

Excuse my messy post. I didn't know how to format it, so I kind of didn't. I don't even know if this made any sense! D:

 

I kind of like the ideas you put up but I think my writing could easily be picked out but that might just have to make me a bit sneaky with it haha. For the second idea you had it's pretty good and I suppose you're all right about accepting my work and just posting it and all that stuff but idk I don't post much of my writing online, barely anyone ever sees it so I guess a little validation was all I wanted ya know? But w.e, I'll just post shit from now on and roll with it.

[Kinara Uzumaki]

Looks like I'm nowhere in this world of philosophical thinkers All of you have got some very valuable opinions but what I was talking about about was the sudden drop in the posting..........there were some new and old stories and items being revived, but it seems to have fizzled out once again. Nevertheless I will try to do my share faithfully, which - these days - is getting harder and harder. 

[† Emotional Outlet]

Okay, well, I think the lack of activity feeds into the lack of activity--new people look here and see nothing has been updated in a while, so they don't feel there's an active community to post to. Established users know this place is pretty quiet and that a lot of comments aren't given, so there's little incentive there to post as well.

 

But knowing that isn't much help. We can't fix other people's lives or force them to post to an empty audience if they don't want to. If people are busy, then they are busy. If they think it isn't worth it, then the best way we can change their minds is to make it an environment that is worth posting to.

 

And we have to start with a small group. There's just no way around it. Like I said, asking an audience to pay attention to stories that are erratically updated or quickly abandoned isn't fair. The change has to start with the writers, not the audience. If Burger King sells a burger that gives people food poisoning, no one reasonable is going to say, "Well, the customers should have stronger stomachs!"

 

If people see there are active users here and not just creepy creepers stalking the subforum, then they will probably feel more inclined to post and then that will result in more people would also want to post and so on.

 

Once momentum picks up with the small group, though, we can't just sit back and stop posting, which I think is what keeps happening. We get a burst of posts and people slowly start to lay back, thinking the others will keep up the activity. But as a small group, we notice when people fall out--so at that rate, I suspect we either start nudging each other to post or take it upon ourselves to keep active despite the appearance of no one paying attention.