How can this section be revitalized?

[Dr. Cakey]

I don't think it needs to be said that the Creative Writing forum isn't very active. Now, as a person who likes reading fictional words, and who likes YGO, this saddens me. YCM is a shrinking community, but this place is kind of astonishingly barren.
 
What can be done about this? How do we trick people into coming here?
 
Well, for starters there's the boring, knee-jerk solution: Comment more!!! And, yes, that is needed. If you're putting your work up for people to see, you probably want a response. Receiving feedback is encouraging, and not receiving it can be incredibly discouraging. I'm honestly not sure if, given the choice, I would prefer no feedback or an avalanche of negative feedback. Granted, I've never gotten the latter (because I've only gotten the former, not because I'm a creative genius - though I might be), but still. More comments means those who start stories are more likely to continue them, and may also encourage more people to start in the first place.
 
But, that's only a start, and a very rough one. I'll be the first to admit, I am awful at commenting on stories, and I'm awful at it because I hate doing it. Well, I have no problem writing "its s***", and I'm almost never wrong, but people don't feel good about reading that, and I'm no longer a cool edgy teen so I no longer feel good about writing it. I'm not bold enough to tell someone their work is good when it isn't, and not clever enough to accentuate the positive. Even when I read something I like, even something I really like, it's often tricky for me to come up with something to say about it. So I imagine the same is true, to a greater or lesser degree, of many other people.
 
And comments are really just a means to an end, or maybe even a means to a means to an end. For the section to genuinely be "alive", what we need is the obvious, very obvious solution: More stories!!!! This is, of course, much harder than more comments. A comment is a handful of sentences, whereas a story is...more than that. My story-writing discipline has always been calamitous, and has only gotten worse since my days as a smol child, so I understand the difficulty quite well. I seem to have a particular subconscious hangup about the number 5 - I can almost never cross either the fifth page or the fifth chapter. It's so pathological that I recently got desperate enough to look up the meaning of the fifth Arcana, The Hierophant. The results were disturbingly relevant...

 

I'm not sure how to facilitate getting more stories out there. I think people collaborating on projects might be one, way but that requires a) people who want to collaborate, and b) people who want to collaborate with each other. (That is, two people who have an idea they both like. I'm not worried about people refusing to work together because they despise one another. Unless I should be...) It's not a simple task.

 

Personally, I've been wondering recently if working with another person would help sustain and support my creative drive in various ways. I've avoided it because doing so doubles the number of people I fail when if I abandon it. (hmu tho)
 
With those covered, there's also solution #3: I don't know!!!!! Ultimately, reviving the section requires that more people visit. This can be at least partially accomplished with #2, and even a little with #1, but are there other ways to do it? Making the name flash neon green? Offering free cookies? Chloroform?

 

Discuss.

[Flash Flyer - Sakura]

(Hey Zai, you got plans for this section too?)

 

But yeah, members need to actually add more stories (doesn't have to be Yugioh themed) and people should hopefully be interested enough to read/comment. At the same time, the writer should also be willing to take critique on their works. Obviously, it is impossible to cater to everyone's taste and the writer does have free reign in the style of writing.

 

I mean, I technically have a flash fic that I wrote in 2015 for a 270-level English class for college (it does have some Naruto undertones in there because of its nature; not much I can do about that). If you guys want me to post it, I can. Another thing I've been considering is a (Ultra) Sun/Moon-esque fanfic with more local influence in there, but not writing it yet due to time as a college student / other reasons.

 

Collab fics would be cool, but it does require all parties to actually add stuff on time and have a general interest on how to write it.

 

(Or just open this section to non-fanfic type works like poetry or something. Not too sure if this section already does that, or it did in the past but Aix/Nai scrapped the idea.)

 

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Suggestion-wise, I suppose we find a way to incentivize making fanfics or reviewing. I know I have a review redemption thread for people to cash in CC reviews; not sure how that'd work out here.

 

Ultimately, any changes are up to Zai since he technically leads this place, but just throw your suggestions out there and hopefully he reads / implements them.

[Catterjune]

I wrote 2 stories (and completed them) within the past year and am currently writing an omake (final chapter this Monday! ;D).

I feel weird about advertising my stories sometimes because when I do (on status updates, in my sig, and in this very post too) no one ever comments so like... do people not care? I dunno. Feel like someone's about to yell out "Stop trying to make Fetch happen!"

As for reviewing, I don't do it for two main reasons.

I feel uncomfortable being super critical of other people's works because I myself have a story out there and would kinda feel like people would see maliciousness in my posts and be malicious right back. I know my stories' shortcoming. I know things I could have done better and I cringe when I re-read them and see glaring typos or think I could have phrased better. I wouldn't rewrite my stories though, unless there was something major I was offering in the rewrite.

The second reason I don't review is because stories die pretty quickly on YCM. I hate putting more effort and more thought into a story than the person who wrote it. I hate it when I come up with a funking term paper and all I get back is a "Word of God" response and no continuation.

Regarding collaborative work... it would depend on the person. they'd have to have a proven track record of consistency, good ideas, and story telling capabilities. To be frank, most of the people on YCM are rather lacking in this, in my opinion at least. Either stories are too short or they take ages to produce anything of note.


Other unorganized thoughts:
- I funking hate duels in YuGiOh fics. Do you read a Star Wars fanfic and 90% of the action is a light saber battle? It's like that. I feel duels should be the sprinkles on top of a story, not the main course.

- I hate short chapters, frequent cliff hangers, and weeks and weeks between chapters. Nothing kills my interest in a story more than these, and they usually always happen.


As for my own suggestions:

... Maybe like a subsection for authors to sorta foster a community? I dunno...

But I guess, sorta like how RP has an OOC-section? Something like that but for authors where they can answer questions or get ideas or have more direct contact with the community or fans of their work? Sounds like it would be too much of a circlejerk, and it'd be kinda sad to see someone who got zero fans, and I assume the threads themselves server this purpose anyway but... I dunno... =\

[Fukato]

I mean, I don't mind constructive criticism at all. I have one story in here "Yu-Gi-Oh! Union" and only one person has criticized it to an extent. Of course, there is a fine line between flaming and criticism, but I would take both into consideration and better myself as a writer. I know what direction I want to take my story towards (in which the age rating tag may have to change) but I am not sure about any readers or if any of them are actually thoroughly reading it and enjoying it. But in the end, I am posting it slowly and to the best of my abilities, albeit I feel some of my chapters may be short. I do need to solidify the plot a bit more instead of giving random duels between characters, even though the interactions may or may not be interesting.

 

So who knows how to better it.

[Dova]

I don't review because I'm lazy. Stories get big, and I'm not as much as a reader as I used to be.

And besides, apart from that fiction I wrote a chapter of a year or so ago, I haven't written much either. I have MANY works planned, most of them fanfictions, but reviewing the structure of my work made me realize just how much effort I need to put into it to make it good, and quite a few of those ideas...I couldn't see where to go with most of them. And, predictably, my interest faded.

I have plenty of free time for the moment. I think I should start poking my head into this section and perhaps posting my thoughts, even if I don't have much to say, as you have said, it's something we should do. Even if the story is bad, and they don't intend to continue it, you should be willing to provide some help. If they have rejected your offers, and/or others, it's fine to not post there; they want good reviews, and perhaps when people don't have anything good to say, they might end up being a little more open. But again, I do hate posting when I am just bashing the fic.

I don't really get collaboration stories. I have never considered the idea, and am unsure as to its execution, so I can't provide much input there.

Rewards for reviewing...I see no reason not to include it. Sections like RP don't use it, because people aren't incentivized in that way to post there, but any means to get people to say anything would be welcomed.

As for advertising your fics: No-ones saying anything at the moment. I feel that no one saying anything is a perfectly valid reason for you to try and get people to, well, say something.

Time for some of my thoughts:

• I prefer reading fanfictions to actual stories, particularly online. I massively enjoy worldbuilding, but find it difficult to immerse myself in an entirely new world of a fiction, particularly if it ends up being disappointing or rather constricted. Tying onto that, I really hate fics that don't expand said world.
• I prefer short segments to a story; it sections it into bite-size chunks, and I find it easier to convince myself to read them.
• Perhaps some sort of writing tips post or something, in which the active people here could all contribute to. Maybe even a focus on fanfiction, idk. We have an implementation thread pinned, but perhaps an ideas thread would be nice to combine with it as well.

[Dr. Cakey]

Revving up reviews isn't a bad idea, but it's got limited utility. As Catterjune pointed out, they're a big time-sink to write and often feel useless, not-fun to write, or both. They're also often not as helpful to the author as they ought to be (Neil Gaiman says, "When someone says your story is bad, they are almost always right. When they say what is bad about it, they are almost always wrong."). And, at the risk of sounding and/or being extremely...'utilitarian' is not the word I am looking for, but it sounds like it is...the aim here is to increase quantity, not quality.

 

I never got the idea/point of collaborating on a story. Twice as many bad ideas, twice as many people to lose motivation and quit half a tenth of the way through, etc. But like I said, I've started to the concept. I suspect (one of) the obstacles to my writing is that my ideas are unfinished and incomplete, even though they don't feel like they are. And when I try to fill in the holes, it ends up feeling forced. So having somebody to bounce ideas off of might be helpful. And feeling beholden to someone else might buoy motivation to continue. Or not.

 

A dedicated thread to come together as a writing community isn't bad, either. I know there's been one at various points in YCM's history. A thread like that is fun, and can be useful, but I'm not sure how beneficial it actually ends up being. Writers love to talk about writing, because it means they don't have to do the not-fun part and actually write. =P

 

Maybe we should have a big banner that says, "We want your story, even if it's sheet".

[Dova]

Revving up reviews isn't a bad idea, but it's got limited utility. As Catterjune pointed out, they're a big time-sink to write and often feel useless, not-fun to write, or both. They're also often not as helpful to the author as they ought to be (Neil Gaiman says, "When someone says your story is bad, they are almost always right. When they say what is bad about it, they are almost always wrong."). And, at the risk of sounding and/or being extremely...'utilitarian' is not the word I am looking for, but it sounds like it is...the aim here is to increase quantity, not quality.

If you are saying that you do want to increase quantity, not quality, then great. I think that's idea behind increasing activity, after all. And a more active place seems more friendly...even if they may be other factors in that aspect of it.

 

Maybe we should have a big banner that says, "We want your story, even if it's sheet".

Where's YCMaker when you need him?

[MewMew3]

The writing section here is way more active than Yugioh ETC before it shut down. When ETC died only me and Spectre2300 ever posted anything. Other great authors like Palaos and Lightning Swords stopped posting a while before, which made me sad.