Are you considering writing a story, either an original work or fanfiction? If so, you’ve come to the right place! Whether you are looking for critical or positive feedback on your writing, plan to write 2,000 words or 200,000 words, want to publish your writing after college or are just looking for a creative outlet, posting your story online can be a helpful way to gain experience in marketing your projects. I will be focusing on not-for-profit, more casual methods of posting, but there are plenty of guides online for publishing your story via outlets such as Amazon or in print.
Choosing a Site
There are a plethora of platforms to post your work, depending on what you want to write. While ultimately posting on multiple sites will give you the most readership, I recommend first choosing a site that fits with what your story is about and your intended audience. If you don’t know what you want to write yet, not to worry! Browsing these sites may give you some ideas.
Choose Wattpad if… you want to post your fanfiction or original work. Original romance fiction and One Direction fanfiction are staples of the site. The advantage of posting on Wattpad if you are college-age is that you are older than the majority of users and the higher quality of writing would be appreciated. With the Wattpad app, readers can comment on specific words, lines, and paragraphs which make the site more interactive and user-friendly.
Choose Movellas if… you want to post your fanfiction or original work. Overall, it is a more niche and less populated version of Wattpad. However, this can work to your advantage, as that generally means there are fewer stories to compete with. Like Wattpad, writing contests are a regular aspect of the site.
Choose Fanfiction.net if… you want to post your fanfiction. The site is much more diverse in its audience between age and nationality, and unlike the other sites, you can easily track traffic to your story. Study popular stories’ descriptions for ideas of how to catch the attention of readers, as the description is the focal point of stories when scrolling through.
Choose Archive of Our Own if… you want to post your fanfiction. The site stands out for its liberal content moderation (meaning explicit works are allowed) and its elaborate tagging system. AO3 is not as visually appealing as Wattpad, but has the best organizational system of the four sites I recommend. The top fandoms on the site are Marvel, Harry Potter, and Sherlock.
Creating a Cover
To create a cover, I suggest using, Photoshop, Pixlr.com, or GIMP (see my article on the free program for more information here). On Fanfiction.net and AO3, covers are insignificant. On Wattpad and Movellas, a cover can launch your story into popularity or keep it underground. Wattpad and Movellas have forums for users to request other users to edit covers for their stories, or you can also ask your followers to make you a cover.
For people new to photo editing, the easiest method to creating a cover is finding a photo — whether it be of a character, actor, scenery, etc — cropping that photo to the specific cover dimensions the site specifies, and adding a title. For those at the intermediate or advanced level of photo editing, you may combine several photos and manipulate pictures of models you find online to look like your characters, adding props and a background to your cover. If you are a better illustrator than editor, you may also wish to use GIMP or Photoshop to draw a cover, or combine photo editing and illustration.
Posting Your Story
Each author has a different amount of time they can dedicate to writing and a different point of view on updating. Some feel more inclined to post as soon as they finish a chapter, others wish to be more strategic. After going through an irregular update schedule, I learned how to be the most effective to gain the most readers. The summer is the best time to dive into your story so you can write and plan as much as possible before school begins. You should delay publication until you are around halfway done with your story so you have a cushion for maintaining an update schedule when you are busier.
The vast majority of story sites organize works primarily by update time or popularity. The more you can have your story on the top of the “Recently Updated” list, the better, which means posting short chapters (around 2,000 for shorter stories, 3,000-6,000 words for long stories) across an extended period of time (several months for shorter stories, 1-3 years for longer stories) is the most effective method.
General tips before and after posting your story
1. To build your reader base, encourage more comments, and gain insight into the online story posting world, it is beneficial to comment, review, and favorite the stories of other writers on the sites you are on. There is often a feeling of reciprocation within the community which can be very useful.
2. If you’re posting a one-shot (as in a single piece, usually considered under 5,000 words), then it is best to post several on your account so readers have an incentive to favorite/follow you and can go from one of your stories to the next. You can also post your collection of related one-shots in a single work.
3. Some authors also post links to their fanfiction on Tumblr or, in the case of short stories, post the entire work and tag it with the character pairing and fandom. Though this method isn’t suited for feedback and the bookish formatting of story sites, it is a good way to build confidence and (for fanfic writers) participate in a fandom more directly.
4. Go through your story every month or two and do a thorough edit of the entire work to keep your style and quality consistent. You can also ask friends to edit or find a beta reader (the easiest system for this is on Fanfiction.net).
5. If you are considering writing an original story that you eventually want to have published, you may want to hold off on posting it online, particularly if you have a really good concept; it may be better to try to publish or submit to writing contests. On the other hand, sites such as Wattpad provide chances to have your work noticed by publishers.
6. Similar to the print world, your first chapter — page, even — is what will encourage or discourage visitors to continuing reading or click away. For original stories, having a unique and attention-grabbing introduction is key. For fanfiction, it is important to make sure characters are not initially OOC (out of character) and that you establish a plausible, well-paced beginning. In both cases, ask yourself: “Who is my intended audience?” and “Why should they want to keep reading?”
If you’re nervous to take that first step and post your story, that’s okay! Most people begin with low esteem about their work, but know that the process itself builds confidence. I posted my first (embarrassingly terrible) story online in middle school and over time my experiences have motivated me to write more and involve myself in the multiple aspects of posting online. It is a way to open yourself to another mode of storytelling and is an incredibly rewarding hobby.
If you would like to write for Her Campus Mount Holyoke, please email mt-holyoke@hercampus.com.