Readers
•What do you like in an mc?
A character I can relate to. I don’t mean they have to be like me, I don’t even mean they have to be good, I just mean a true and honest real person. Someone with flaws, someone who makes mistakes, someone who has interests and layers. I’m so sick and tired of reading the same 1 dimensional character, give me someone to root for. Make me care about this character, make me connect to them. Without a care for the MC why should I care about the story at all? If I don’t care about the character, it doesn’t matter how good the plot is or how bad the stuff is you throw at them, I’m not going to care what happens. Whether the MC dies or not, I don’t care! Cause there’s no reason for me to. Make. Me. Care.
•What plots do u like?
Anything original. I love dystopian, post-apocalyptic, comedy, fantasy, mythology/religious fiction (angels n stuff), etc. Those are my preferred types of stories but that will not stop me from reading from a variety of genres. If you have a strong, unique plot, well thought out characters, and carefully planned arcs/plot twists/sub plots then I don’t care what genre your story is, I’ll read it.
•Happy endings or sad endings?
I don’t necessarily think it’s a matter of a happy or sad ending because I can be happy with both, emphasis on can. I think the best endings are endings with consequence. Endings that make sense considering what has happened in the story. Stories aren’t without sacrifice! For an example, if you write a story with a major battle in the end of it, not every single one of the main characters are going to come out unscathed. It’s a battle, people die! I think many authors forget this and want to show their incredible heroic characters come out strong, but when an ending such as a battle happens and no one dies, the ending is cheapened for me. I don’t mean kill off a character no one cares about, don’t kill off a side character designed to be killed off. Kill your darlings! Kill off the LI! Kill off the best friend! If not kill, seriously injure! Show the repercussions on their mental health! Show how relationships change! Show me why I should have cared about this whole story up until now, show me why I should care about this ending, show me what this means and why it matters! Don’t just make everyone come out all happy “woo! We won the war!” with no issues at all, then what was the point??
I’m not expecting every story to kill someone off but all endings should have consequence, for an example if it’s a drama story, show how the relationship in characters change (make it make sense), show where they ended up, show how people have changed because of the story. Show. Me. Consequence.
•Do u prefer it when choices matter?
Of course! What’s the point of choosing if it makes no difference? If you wanted to just tell a story, then just do that! Don’t waste our time with choosing pointless choices. Just say in your description or in the beginning of your episode that this story doesn’t have choices, and move on, just write the story.
•When reading what’s the first thing you notice/think about the first chapter?
Does it grab my attention? Does it make me want to care? If I click into a story and the opening scene is the MC brushing their teeth, I’m already disengaged. I don’t care about this story. But if I click on and immediately see the MC partying in a club, running for her life, interacting with her outside world (world building), I all of a sudden care and want to keep reading.
•Do u like advanced directing even if it’s a shorter chapter?
Yeah. Honestly I’d prefer a shorter chapter with really good directing than a longer chapter with average directing.
Writers
•Any directing/coding tips?
Damn, remember to reread your script before updating. When I first started I always got too excited and would publish before I was ready. Now I’ve got a hell of a lot to clean up in my previous chapters while trying to write new ones. Not fun.
•When writing do you like to focus on the dialogue or the coding?
Depends on the story and chapter. It’s a visual platform so you get just as much information out of what you see as what you hear/read. Dialogue creates relationships between characters, coding creates a relationship between the story and the reader.
•Do you plan or make it up as you go?
I have got a good plan of what I want to do. I know my subplots, my ending, and how I want to plan my plot twists. Of course I don’t know every single thing I want to do and end up improvising but I have a general idea of what direction I’m heading in.
•How long does it take to write one chapter?
Couple of weeks, depends what I have on. Recently I haven’t updated for months because I went over seas for 2 months last year, then I came back and was swarmed with school work and I ended up losing someone who I cared for a lot so I was grieving, my mental health was plummeting and I wasn’t in the right head space to write. It’s always more important to take care of yourself than to make your readers happy with a new chapter. So I’ve just started writing again maybe a week and a half ago, I’ve finished my next chapter and I’m just waiting for overlays to be approved. It can generally take anywhere between 1 - 3 weeks depending how much work/homework I have, what after school activities I have, mental health status, etc.
•If you do plan, what do u focus the most on?
Everything is equally as important. I think I tend to favor character building and plot development over world building, but everything is decently planned.
•Do you like criticism?
Constructive criticism yes. If you tell me “Hey, I think this character acted strangely here and I don’t think this makes sense and I feel like this plot line was a bit week and I don’t like how you portrayed this here, here’s what an idea of what you could do to improve” then absolutely! Thank you! This is really good cause now I can learn how to make my story better in the future. If you come to me and say “Your story is awful, I can’t believe you put this in and this character sucks cause I don’t like them!” Shut up and get out.
•How do u respond to negative/mean fan mail?
I once had someone attack me and call my story racist (I’ve talked to others and they agree it’s not, there’s a war and one country has supposedly started it, it’s for the plot, there’s going to be a big twist), I tried to explain to them what I was doing with the story and explain why it wasn’t. They wouldn’t have a bar of it so I just ended up ignoring them. But other than that I haven’t really received negative fan mail.
It’s also really important to me that they respect the concept of a relationship. When the MC either goes for someone who’s in a relationship or doesn’t stay loyal in their own relationship, I really struggle to like them.
But I also love a good murder mystery or even a good romantic plot.
