Recently I’ve received multiple questions from readers about financial support for my writing, in the form of a Patreon account, e-books, or similar things. And that’s kind of cool; it’s very flattering that people like my work enough to want to pay for it, especially when I’m already putting it out here for free.
The thing is, this is just something I do for fun. In real life, I’m a fairly successful computer programmer who makes enough to live comfortably already. Many years ago, Howard Tayler, one of the all-time great webcomic authors, quit his job as a programmer to devote himself fully to Schlock Mercenary and essentially live off of the generosity of his readers. By all accounts, he’s done pretty well for himself since then, and more power to him for being able to pull that off! I met him at a con once, and he’s a great guy.
Well, I’m not Howard Tayler.
I write for fun, and as Mark Twain pointed out in his famous discussion of fence painting and human psychology, if you take something someone does for fun and turn it into something they do for money, it’s likely to become a chore and suck all the fun out of it for them.
Having said that, I’m still working on Invisible–I’m currently writing the 8th chapter–and when it’s done I’m planning on publishing it as a non-free ebook, but I don’t expect it to ever bring in revenue to rival my salary from my actual job. I just want to see what it’s like to do it. 🙂 And I may or may not set up a Patreon account at some point in the future, but for the moment it’s not on the to-do list.
As I said, I just write for fun. My compensation is seeing people enjoy my work. So if anyone out there wants to help out, spread the word! Share the stories on social media. Help keep the TVTropes pages updated as new chapters come out. Post recommendations on relevant forums. (Seriously. Right now, about 60% of my incoming traffic comes from a single post on a single forum. I’ve never heard of bato.to before, but apparently it’s a really popular site, because traffic shot way up when someone called Nadassar recommended The Tales of Paul Twister there a few months ago, and it’s stayed up since then. A few more like that and I’d be very happy! And Nadassar, whoever you are, I love ya!) Even stuff like creating fan art and linking back to here would help bring in interested readers. 🙂
I write this stuff for fun, and I assume that’s why most of you are reading it. So spread the fun around the Web, bring in more people to read and leave comments on the chapters, and it just gets better and more fun for everyone. And it won’t cost you a thing. 😛
What draws me so strongly to your work, is it’s the very sort of story I’d write if I could.
I’ve been THINKING of plots, and really enjoying stuff like Magic Decompiled, as well as your work.
But I don’t quite know how to plot out a story.
Can you share how you do it?
First, before asking “how do I plot out this story?”, ask yourself “should I plot out this story?” There are two basic styles for designing a work of fiction, called Outlining (plotting it out ahead of time) and Discovery Writing (not plotting it out ahead of time, just creating a scenario, putting your characters into it, and “discovering” what they do in response.) If you find you’re not good at outlining, try discovery writing instead and see if it works better for you.
I’m more of a discovery writer, personally. I basically start with a concept and have some vague idea of an ending in mind, and then I write out the first chapter and make up the rest as I go along. (The Lay of Paul Twister, for example, was always going to end with Paul crashing his car through a magical barrier. The rest of the story consisted in getting things to a point where that could be done and make sense.)
If you want to learn more about this, and various other points of the art of writing fiction, I’d recommend Writing Excuses, a series of podcasts by four professional authors who are far more successful in the craft than I’ll ever be. Two of them are Howard Tayler and Brandon Sanderson, both of whom I have an immense degree of respect for as writers.
I’m glad that the thread was beneficial to you and brought you more fans and site views.
One of those 60% from Bato.to here. Paul Twister was a very interesting story, very similar to Mushoku Tensei. Most popular transported/reincarnated to another world novels are in another language. Nice to see a decent one in English. Can’t wait until the next chapter comes out. Only came here because I was bored waiting for volume 22 of Mushoku Tensei, wasn’t expecting such a good story. I sorta skipped over Invisible chapters since I was more physched for Paul Twister but I may check it out later. Thanks Xagnam/Nadassar for the forum post that led me here.
You still need to pay for bandwidth and pencils, presumably.
I actually found you via bato… and that very specific post that I’d make my waifu if I could having done gone almost read every work off of it. You very much do have the mentality of the mind behind task quite correct as for example volunteer efforts have proven that paying volunteers ain’t as good as letting them volunteer for free. I would also actually buy this work if I could as well and I only do that to original stuff like yours. I thank you for this hobby of yours as you call it. It has provided my entertainment the last 3 days that I have read to this point. Please by all means continue the show after the action at least… show of a bit of slice of life genre kind of thing.