DISCUSSION: Do you believe we should write for ourselves or our readers?

it’s well and good to think about your readers when writing, but not so much that you lose all sense of what you wanted out of your story.

i think it’s good to have a certain type of reader in mind, the ones your story is geared to (mystery lovers if you’re writing a mystery story for instance) but ultimately you should write for you. otherwise you’ll find yourself facing a lack of inspiration or writer’s block often imo.

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Exactly. The lack of reads/feedback can be really discouraging and almost taint a story I’ve been writing and published. I don’t want it to be tainted but putting so many hours and effort in only to get nothing back is REALLY discouraging that’s why I’m learning motivation comes from within and that’s why I enjoy writing unpublished complete stories because it doesn’t get “tainted” lol. :woman_shrugging:

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Ooh… sounds scary :wink: but I’ve let people know what my plot is and they’re interested to read sooo hopefully my story won’t be “tainted” :joy:

Yourself, always. We are not making money out of this. In fact, chances are that, in this platform, you may not even get that many readers, so I recommend that you do it for passion, not for readers.

Of course, if you have readers, be grateful to them as they are valuable. But you keep the story going, you are the creator. Your readers simply tag along… until something they dislike happens, soooo… yeah, write for yourself. You will end up less disappointed.

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Came here to say just this.

If you do this for anyone else but you, you will probably feel burnt out.

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I love debating myself haha :slight_smile: I think authors should write for themselves. Me personally, as an author, doesn’t really know who I am writing for even though I’ve been an Episode author for 2 years now. Sometimes I do believe authors should write for themselves as well as for their readers in a way. Then again, authors should write for themselves because it’s their passion, it’s what they love to do.

It’s nice to have fans and readers, we all know this, but we should write for ourselves first!
It bugs me when I’m reading a new story and the story seems to be interesting and all I see at the end of episode is:

“Let me know if you like it so I can carry on with this story”
“I won’t continue if I don’t receive X amount of reads or X amount of fanmail”

:roll_eyes:

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Yes I agree, write for yourself and write what you’d like to read yourself, you won’t get bored of your story.

But, it doesn’t hurt to ask for recognition, you know? Lol. I think a combination of both.

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i never seen that, what kind of person would say i only write if i get likes and comments.

i love getting fanmail but i dont it to keep writhing

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Writing for yourself is more important, but I think it’s necessary to stay conscious of how your writing (should you make it public) doesn’t exist in a vacuum. So, in that sense, you need to write for other people. To be clear, I mean with important issues, not like “they told me my chapters aren’t long enough.”

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I rather write for myself. If I wanted to please the majority of Episode’s audience, I would probably write something different, which would turn out to be unrealistic and cringe-worthy.

Sometimes I do take into account what readers normally like, but only in little things like adding CC, trying to make my chapters longer, adding a little more choices (even though I don’t really care about them), and I always add some romance to my stories but that’s mainly because I personally like a little romance in every story regardless the genre.

I wouldn’t change however my writing style, the theme and the main aspects because of my readers, since I’m sure that would make my stories worse. I’m very certain that everyone is better in things they are interested in and/or passionate about, so should you either enjoy or hate what you are doing, both will show on your work.

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It’s a mix of both. If we were really writing only for ourselves, we wouldn’t bother publishing. Our stories wouldn’t see the light of day.

That said, it’s the way that we write for our readers that’s important.
If you’re publishing your story because you want to share your world and thoughts with readers, or share an important moral lesson or to inform and entertain, that’s wonderful.

If you let readers dictate and change the story or bully you into including CC, or make a character into a love interest when they weren’t meant to be, that’s going to get stressful really fast and writing will become exhausting and a chore.

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Why write?

Because we have a story to share. Because that story we want to share comes from our own ideas and our own inspirations. Writing for yourself means that you are writing a story that you want to read that hasn’t been written yet. You are writing a story that you want to see and hope that others will enjoy as well. But you need to keep your audience in mind. Write for yourself first, and be mindful of your readers.

All the times I wrote a story just to get readers or writing a story I knew would attract many readers, I ended up hating them. It wasn’t my best work. It felt cheap. All the times I wrote a story that I wanted to see written, I have been proud of my work. Those stories never got a lot of readers, but the ones who took the time to comment really appreciated my niche story.

Life is short, we’re all going to die, write what you love as long as you’re not poisoning the minds of others with toxic ideas.

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It also means you don’t write to please other people. So while you may not live for yourself, you are not here simply to make other people happy. And your writing isn’t meant to do that either, because there will always be someone out there who doesn’t like the story you have to tell, so don’t write it to make everyone happy because then no one will be happy including yourself. :gift_heart:

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If not for yourself then why write at all? The reason why you decided to write in the first place is because you wanted to tell a story in your own way in a way that you would enjoy it. That if you read what you wrote as a third party, you’d say “I really enjoyed this.” Then once you’re comfortable enough with it, that’s when you share your talents with others.

You wouldn’t sing a song for other people if you didnt like how you sang. Why should sharing something you wrote be any different?

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I write for myself heheeeee thats why i push my boundaries to write such a story like Tribe of Malapinchi. To test my limits and creativity and receive feedback on directing. Although little reads no matter it is still a great journey​:muscle::muscle::muscle:

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I think that when executing an idea (story) that we should keep in mind what our audience is, what they like, and when we write the story, what their concerns are.

I believe in writing for yourself, but being open minded- especially with constructive critism that you agree with. You can still listen to your reader’s concerns while writing for yourself, even when you are writing for yourself, you wouldn’t want to write a crappy story- right?

I don’t like the idea of purely writing for other people, that leads you to write the most “popular” stories, that your audience would like, but you hate the idea, but you write it anyway, to please the viewers. I believe in writing for yourself, but listening to concerns- and if you agree with them, fixing your story. That’s still writing for yourself.

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I :100:% agree! I think that we should write for ourselves, but take in the reader’s concerns as well.

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