#and rediscovered that ppl can genuinely love your writing but also respect you | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

elytrafemme · 1 year

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Hey. Ive been following you for a while and yk just friendly neighborhood kid trying to get a following

I try and write, but i was wondering how to start bringing up my account as to how to get my writing up and about, as well as like what formatting i should try out first in the begining (like blurbs, 1 para descriptives, one shots) (i dont do x yn it unnerves me)

... Honestly im a bit confused and lost and ur a huge deal to me so some advice to the fan if you will :>

hey hey! keep in mind that i'm just one person out there who writes, so take everything i say with a grain of salt, but i will do my best to give advice :]

i think the absolute main thing when it comes to writing is that you HAVE to write things that you yourself enjoy writing. a while ago, there was a fic i started for a fandom, and it got the attention of a pretty popular person in the fandom space, who was super super excited for me to continue it. it ended up never getting a second chapter, because while that external support was nice, i was never truly in love with the concept of the fic and honestly found myself more and more stressed at the prospect of working on something i didn't care about.

getting support for the things you create is amazing-- everyone loves validation and getting to have a community of readers is so so nice-- but you have to love what you're creating, not just go after what you think people might want. and it took me personally a while to learn that but once i did, i started enjoying the things i wrote way way more, and i think people who read the works i made could tell that.

in terms of the /kind/ of writing you put out there, i haven't noticed one type of piece getting more attention than another. i recommend that if you post a piece, you give some kind of header with the title of it, if it involves characters list the main characters involved (if it involves OCs you could describe them briefly but i am not experienced in posting original works on tumblr so i can't really speak to that), list off any major content warnings (i.e. death, core, etc.), and give an approximate word count. that way, especially with one shots, people know the length of what they're about to read and can set aside time accordingly for it.

when you do that, also, you can then tag for those things! I'm not the best at tagging my writing in all honesty, so I'm not sure of all the tips and tricks there, but I think you can get a lot out of tagging the main characters involved (if a character only shows up as a brief reference in 1 line, i don't recommend tagging them). past that, you can always look in the tumblr writing tag and see how other people tag their things; that might give you a better idea than i can.

also, if you do start to get people reading and enjoying your writing, you can make a tag list! i'm ... also notoriously bad at using mine, but basically if you get a few works up you can ask if people want to be tagged any time you post a new piece of writing. that's a good way to have people consistently look at things!

last tip i'll give is that you should absolutely reblog the FUCK out of your own writing, because that seriously does help. a lot of people also tag on "reblogs are appreciated" or "reblogs > likes" to encourage other people to share their writing. don't go up to someone directly and ask them to reblog something/why they haven't, since that is a pretty uncomfortable experience, but on the actual post itself i think it's fine to say that you would appreciate people who like the post to also reblog it! just a gentle nudge y'know.

also this is super minor but one of the good things about reblogging your own writing is that you can queue things (albeit i have never used tumblr's queue system so again, grain of salt), and hit different timezones! 4-6 PM EST is the time range i usually shot for with posting anything i wanted people to see, but i have no idea if that's actually the best time, so you can use self reblogs to experiment

i don't know if this is what you wanted me to answer for you; truth be told i was a little confused at your intiial question haha, but i hope that this is somewhat helpful! best of luck with writing :]

#nightmare.ask #again i have not posted my writing in forever and i never really went after maximizing notes so i can't rly speak #the biggest thing i'll advocate for is to WRITE WHAT YOU ENJOY #because Jesus Christ i lost a lot of time trying to appeal to people with my writing #that it almost ruined the craft for me before i started CS #and rediscovered that ppl can genuinely love your writing but also respect you #and that you need to love your writing and respect yourself

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