r/royalroad

Bored. Look for a new story on RS. Find one that looks cool. Read 5 chapters. "Well, there are some signs, but maybe it's just a coincidence. Beginner authors make mistakes." Read 10 more. It's AI.

Look for a new story. Read. It's AI.

New story. Amazing output.

A commenter asks, "Amazing, how do you write so much?" The writer replies, "Oh, I am a stay-at-home mum so 10 thousand words a day is possible for me :)."

It's not, though, because it's AI. They are just straight-up lying to your face.

Losing my fucking mind. I'd say 4/5 indie stories I check out are AI. I don't usually go for completely new stories either - mostly RS, trending, etc.

And yeah, you can recognise AI. Perhaps not with a 100% certainty - so I won't name any names - but 95%?

AI has tells - phrases, wording etc it likes to use, but it also makes specific mistakes. Once or twice you might shrug it off, but I don't think AI is at a level where its involvement is possible to hide if you read 10-20 chapters, not without practically rewriting everything it shits out. And that'll never happen as AI sloppers are allergic to work.

I think I will just stick with older webnovels and published books for a while...

I've seen a lot of discussion about AI on this site and it's got me a little worried. People talk about their ability to recognize AI and how they often drop the stories after figuring that out, based on nothing but opinion, and I completely understand that. I would probably do the same thing if I knew to recognize it, especially since it is such a big problem on RR right now.
However, what worries me is that the things they seek to figure it out. Among other things, they talk about how whenever they see any poetic descriptions of things, it must be AI.
Here is were my worry kicks in since I like to do poetic descriptions of things every now and then, especially if they are clear cut impactful moments. It's not too often, but every couple chapters I will do it, and now I worry that people will think my story AI just because of that.
I haven't been accused of anything yet, as my story is very small, but it is a worry I have.
I don't use any AI, not even for grammar checking (which tbh I find fine when others use it, I just don't like doing it myself), and that will I guess be obvious since I am not a native english speaker.
I guess my question is, should I (or anyone in a similiar situatuon) lower my descriptive prose in order to avoid AI accusations and should I be wary of not writing anything people might find AI-like?

Well, I found out how everyone’s putting out chapters so frequently. I didn’t realize the expected chapter length was 2-3k words, sometimes less. That seems low to me.

I was always under the impression that you should write chapters with a certain amount of independence. Little stories within the story, with their own beginning, middle and end. So I write my chapters around 3.5-5k, so that the story is moving forward a step with each each chapter. At 1.5-2k you’re barely lifting the foot, unless you do it in a specific way.

I’m not saying you can’t have short chapters. I have several short chapters in the novel I just published, and one of the stories I have on RR starts with two such chapters. However, theses chapters only involve 1-2 characters and maybe 1 event, and they’re written very much to the point (concentrating on the event itself, not the greater description/worldbuilding). It’s not something that can be maintained throughout the novel without it being structured to have few characters and relying on established lore.

So, my problem becomes that there’s only one chapter I have on RR that I feel I can split without a depreciation in quality. It’s about 6,600 words so I probably should have split it in the beginning, and I thinks there’s a good point to split about in the middle. The rest, like I said, are about 3.5-5k words, and they feel pretty good as is. Should I split them? Is keeping them as is, and continuing to write them at this length, going to hurt me in the long run? I’ll split them if I need to, but it seems a little ridiculous to me. Or maybe I’m being ridiculous. I guess I don’t get to judge. Price of being an author.

I'm into my third edit. Trying to get away from the prose that haunts me... If you like it but have an improvement suggestion/ deletion suggestion, let me know.

The Blurb:

Dream-jumper and falsely convicted murderer Kino von Kaelic’s sanity frays in a lonely prison cell until his conversations with an antagonizing demon start sounding more like a business arrangement.  Kino makes a deal with the demon to escape his predicament and then double-crosses his shadowed “benefactor” before his corpse has stiffened.

Finding himself leagues from home and lacking a proper body, Kino has to skirt the law, use and be used by the organized crime ring he stumbles across and above all, hide his true identity from the shadowed he double-crossed in the first place.

It would be a shame if someone(s) got hurt.

What to Expect:

Two soul-chained machines opposed to each other

Fantasy world on the cusp of gunpowder and the early days of steam

Multi-POV

Two fantasy races you’ve never encountered before

A dangerous library

Angels and demons (messengers and shadowed) actively intervening

Protagonists without plot armor

Hey all!

I’m soon to be posting my first work on RR, and it consists of a couple of different settings. More specifically, it involves two worlds.

I was thinking about getting a couple of maps commissioned for it but then I was not sure if there’s even an option to post images within the chapters.

Is this possible? And if not is there anywhere else people go to post this kind of stuff?

Many thanks!

We know authors always establish rules on their lore, worldbuilding, characters, and even to themselves.

What do you think that your MC will never commit?

Like Batman's "No-Kill" rule.

This might be an unspoken rule, something that make the MC distinguish themselves from the rest of the characters, their defining moral compass and principle, or just something that will betray their character/personality once committed.

For me, since my MC is based on a historical figure, is that he will never escalate a conflict into an open confrontation (because that would betray his inspiration), and from that I can establish what will it takes for him to work himself to stay committed to his vows, of course this sometimes takes a lot of Chekov's something so things won't be so contrive, this also might slow down the story explaining the rules, laws, and operations of how these solutions will be used when it need to.

I'm writing a new book and plans to do 4X update a week. From my current book I'm getting all kinds of weird trends as it doesn't seem to be consistent. One week I get a flux of readers on Wednesday and another week it happened on Monday.

In your experience, what are the best days in rank order to post your chapter updates to gain new followers? (Assuming the book content is the right fit of course)

Hello Royal Road readers, I wanted to ask you something. Do stories that usually have around 4,000 to 5,500 words per chapter tend to be less attractive, or do you prefer shorter chapters? I’m asking because the chapters in my story are approximately that length, and I’m considering reducing them. Also, sometimes a single chapter has at least 2 or 3 events (for example, one event with the protagonist, another involving the enemies, and another with secondary but important characters). But if it’s better to separate them, I’m considering that possibility if it could bring some advantage.

I constantly watch new authors make various mistakes when trying to market their fiction and grow their audience. I’ve been on the Royal Road platform for fifteen months, and I’m self-publishing my first book next week. I’m by no means one of the big authors but all four of my fictions have hit RS (2 were deleted later), and the latest 2 fictions made top 20 and top 10 with 1k+ followers (both now at ~1600+).

What I see is a lot of new authors seem to have no clue how to bring attention to their story (and I did the same thing at the beginning), or are using the wrong places to market. So I want to detail some things that I believe will damage your fiction/not bring you any discernible following and then I’ll detail some things you should be doing.

THE DON’Ts

1. r/royalroad is more-or-less useless for your marketing efforts. It has 18k weekly visitors, the vast majority of whom will be other RR authors and the vast majority of those will be in the same boat as you. They are not interested in reading your tiny new fiction. They might encourage you, help you, point out issues with blurbs and covers. A couple might even give you a pity follow, favourite, rating. They will not form any kind of foundation for your audience growth.

2. The “I found this story by someone and wanted to recommend it” or other such self-promo posts disguised as ‘discussion’ or ‘recommendations’. You will immediately mark your story out as something people will put into the ‘Not Interested’ bucket on RR. Please do not insult the intelligence of the audience of the subreddit/forum you are posting in.

3. Linking your fiction (with or without a blurb), but nothing else, like the audience owes it to you to go and check it out. If you can’t be bothered to sell the story, or your journey as a writer, or why the audience should read your story over the thousands of others. Guess what? The audience will care about it exactly as much as you do.

4. Displaying no confidence in your writing and almost pleading for the audience to read it. I am guilty of this one. Here’s some advice I got on my very promo post in the litrpg subreddit 15 months ago.

>Sell us on it, that post title makes you seem unsure about its quality IMO. Not to be overly harsh but it comes off like "Look I wrote things, they aren't shit, right?!"

And then I left the commenter a wall of text, like a jilted lover trying to get back with their ex and further enforcing their view. I was unconfident in my writing then. I was scared about posting. I was unsure if anyone wanted to read it. And I still suffer with imposter syndrome every day, but if you display no confidence in your writing, and provide no reason for the audience to read it other than “Please make me happy.” - guess what? They’re not going to make you happy.

THE DO’s

1. Author’s are a lonely bunch. We spend copious amounts of time in front of a screen, with little images in our heads, trying to figure out how to translate the image into words that people will not only understand, but will enjoy reading. The only people who are going to understand that peculiar motivation are other authors. Those authors will also be the ones who will encourage you, help you, motivate you and provide you with all the advice that they have learned.

Join discord servers, do due diligence on other authors, especially those who ‘could’ provide you a lot of benefit, both from the knowledge and advice they can give, and some with the bigger audiences they have to help market your story. And all this takes is to join some discord servers and not be a dick. Nobody is going to sell your fiction for you - the writing is the easy part. The time spent on the marketing, and becoming part of the community is the hard part.

Also, when on spaces like reddit and facebook, do not be a dick. Every second statement of yours does not need to be controversial, or a rant, or a moan. Nobody likes these sorts in real life. We do not like them online either. Unless you want to be known as a troll, try to keep all of that to a minimum, no matter how much the vein in your forehead wants to pop because somebody accused you of AI. (This is also advice I need to take more of!)

2. The biggest places to post to try and gain an audience for your RR fiction is r/litrpg (135k weekly visitors) and r/progressionfantasy (115k weekly visitors). Both are ten times bigger than the royal road sub and the majority of those subs are readers, not authors. But in order to promo to those places, it requires effort on your part. Be engaged with the community, including the readers. Get involved in discussions. Make interesting posts. Maybe you put something out there that makes you memorable and maybe it doesn’t translate immediately, but some of the people who saw it remember you, and will go check out your work just because of that. But if you only use those subs for promo, people will see that and ignore you.

3. SHOUT-OUTS. Shoutouts are by far going to be your biggest FREE tool, unless you hit Rising Stars, but in 98% of cases, hitting RS requires shout-outs. I guarantee 100% of getting onto RS requires ads, or some in-built large audience already. ArcaneCadence could release a story tomorrow and is guaranteed to hit RS. You are not. Engage and interact in the discord servers, and look for people to shoutswap with. Most authors display their stories in their discord bios. Do some research on them and find the ones who will give you the biggest boost.

ALSO, VERY IMPORTANT: Stop trying to only find identical/similar stories. Yes, overlap in stories leads to better referrals, but any referral is better than none. If you swap with 100, 100 follower stories that have overlap with yours and results in 20% referral (very high - doubt you’d get this kind of referral rate). Then you will get 2,000 followers check you out, and it cost you 100 chapters. You could do 10, 2,000 follower stories with little overlap, and 1% referral and it’s exactly the same amount of followers on a per chapter shout basis. Be smart. Wanting to swap only with similar stories is just some weird fetish in my opinion. Fiction is fiction. I write litrpg, I read thrillers, and I love rom-com movies. Everybody is like this.

4. Finally - BE CONFIDENT IN WHAT YOU’RE SELLING. If you’re giving the vibe that your story’s not very good, or you’re not a good writer, or you feel unworthy of other people’s time/efforts…then guess what…those people aren’t going to give you their time or effort.

I think that about covers what I wanted to say! If anyone else wants to chime in, do so in the comments!

So, there are the critiques that are frustrating. The "did you even read my book?" or the "no, I'm not going to change the whole genre for you" type. There's the 'oops' ones, like "you used wondering instead of wandering" or "in chapter 4 he has brown eyes and chapter 6 he has green." There's the ones where you can see where they're coming from, and need to think about whether to change anything as a result.

And then there's the ones that hurt.

I got told earlier today that "only your bad guys have personalities". And now it's all I can think about, while my imposter syndrome kicks into overdrive.

Any critiques that knocked you off your feet?

Hey everyone. I stumbled into this sub months ago because I got back into reading fantasy and wanted to transition my editing work to the genre as well. I ended up learning a lot and working on a few side projects for members of the sub, for which I've been grateful.

In the process, I noticed the lackadaisical attitude authors have toward the quality of their writing, in favor of the speed of output and relative fan service. I get the reasons for that, and I still think good writing is critical to giving the reader a clear image of what's actually happening.

So I want to line edit your excerpts for free. Do I have an ulterior motive? Yes. I'm wanting more experience and more notoriety, both because fantasy/fiction is where I'm aiming at as an editor and because I get that online indie authors need to know you're legit on account of scams. So here is the (literal) deal:

If you've got a single chapter or a brief excerpt, around 2,000 words, that you want calibrated for grammar, syntax, flow, clarity, conciseness, transitions, descriptiveness, spelling, tone, and structure, I'll line edit it for free. My line editing is rewriting prose to perfect the above characteristics, which means it improves your writing without dwelling on big-picture elements like plot development, character development, etc. (that would be a developmental edit, which I do, and am not focusing on here specifically).

I've been freelance copyediting and proofreading for six years, working for traditional publishing houses and doing odd jobs. Lately I've been transitioning to developmental and line editing, and I'd like to get even more experience and put myself out there. I love what I do and see this as the internet version of going in person to book fairs and writing conferences, which I can't do much of on an island in the Pacific.

Editing is my full-time gig, and I get paid for the regular, book-length manuscripts I get already. Do I want you to pay me for my work? Sure, that would be great. This offer is specifically to get me more experience line editing and to put my gifts out there, though. If you like my work, we can talk doing a larger work and payment, If you don't like it or you just want to get the free edit, happy to do it. The only "quid pro quo" request is that you tell someone about me if you hear that they need editing services, and only if you actually value my work. DMs preferred over comments.

Hi everyone,

I have a long, relaxing weekend coming up and I'd love to dive into a new fantasy book.

I am specifically looking for stories with a female protagonist that are written in the third-person perspective. I also prefer non-wizard characters (main characters who are not traditional mages or magic-wielders).

If an author is interested, I'd be happy to provide a review or share my thoughts after reading.

Please drop your recommendations below. Thank you!

https://preview.redd.it/eg4eatyroc2h1.png?width=1204&format=png&auto=webp&s=5adab9fa7f30e8fdb11e6519621bef9e73c7baf9

You would think that people would read chapters in order. It seems really odd to me that chapter 13 has more views than chapter 12, seeing as though you literally have to read chapter 12 to get to chapter 13. Very odd.

ive only just discovered spacebattles, sufficient velocity and questionable questing. these are apparently very popular sites.

ArcaneCadence posts to two of the forums. Thats a lot of work. Is it like some sort of strat? Should authors post there?

Just dont know jack shit about these sites. Whats their deal? Worth?