How do you write a web novel?

While certain webnovel sites and industry practices are definitionally exploitive, the same can be said about conventional writing and publishing. Nepotism, writers treated as market objects, exploitive magazine fees, plagiarism and other malicious behaviors are all facets of modern American publishing that I have personally witnessed and experienced; it is not at all accurate that "conventional writing" (or whatever you think it means) is better for anyone. Rather, people should evaluate their wants and needs on a case by case basis,

In fact, webnovels and self-publishing are some of the major and newly discovered avenues that writers use to own their own products, writing, and labor. It is just as important to establish these corridors as legitimate paths for burgeoning writers as opposed to writing them off.

O_T_T said:
And are you speaking from a position with credentials?

O_T_T said:
Do please tell me what you imagine I lack, I'm interested.

O_T_T said:
I won't deny any of what you list happens in conventional publishing, but I cannot corroborate it either. I have never experienced any of it or know anyone else who has. I am not American, just as the rest of the world isn't. Plagiarism I know for a fact isn't a legitimate complaint, I would be laughed out of the room if I took to whining about that.

O_T_T said:
Webnovels, however, are in their very format atrocious for the writers contributing to them. Not only is there the obvious issue of these sites accepting any work with no contract or payment and repackaging it against the creator's consent (if you look into the terms of any site, you'll find that you have next to no legal claim to your own works), but as these sites function as content farms first and foremost, writers are encouraged to pump out additional pages as often and as long as possible, purely to maintain visits to the site.

O_T_T said:
Even if you wanted to argue that it is in order to aid in one's skill as a writer, purely to practice, you are directly stopped from developing as an artist. I personally discussed this with some webnovel creators in the past; though they understood advice given to them, it was beneficial for their own local popularity to not be receptive to it, as they were not wanted for their skill. (I can even go into how Webnovels are horrific for readers - I was able to get my hands on a copy of one of Webnovel's (the company) rare work contracts, and found direct demands to put chapters of emotional climax or high tension behind paywalls. Given the average youth of these sites' users, I shouldn't need to tell you how predatory this is).

O_T_T said:
Self-publishing is already legitimate and has so been for a long time, I don't know why you'd bring that up other than for it to be your position's motte.

Webnovels, however, are not publishing at all. You are creating generating for a chinese company, not creating artistic works that can be attributed to you. To date, not a single successful writer (however you want to measure that, be it household name, movie deal, X amount of copies, whatever) has ever been scouted from a webnovel site. In fact, to my knowledge, I've never even heard a writer in real publishing say they tried webnovels for a bit before getting their break, either.

O_T_T said:
Writing is an expression of your views and ideas as an individual. Understanding this is the most important thing to get down, long before getting into the technical side of things.

I ask you, what exactly has inspired you to make a web novel, and why one of those specifically? I should warn you that that specific part of the industry - not that they really even count - is disgustingly exploitative, so trying more conventional writing would be far better for you, or anyone for that matter.

Suihou-chan said:
A webnovel is a novel you post on the web. The three step guide to writing a webnovel is:

1. Learn how to write a novel.
   
2. Write the novel.
   
3. Post it on an online platform.
   

Step 3 should be of least concern. Platform politics, specific format and formalisms, target audiences, trends, and marketability are irrelevant at the start and the process of questioning those leads to a lot of worries that often confuse without enlightening. That being said, as you reach this step, it might be worth asking yourself how you will quantify the success of your process. If you require external validation, aching for your title to be at the top of every chart, eagerly refreshing the page to see the notifications of every like, comment and share piling up in your inbox, then you probably should worry about all of the above. However, if that is the case, I'd say you're more enthralled by the idea of fame rather than writing. Which, mind you, is fair, but makes the next part of my advice rather moot.

For steps 1 and 2, it is important to understand that writing is a skill and, as with all skills, it is a long, arduous journey. Progress isn't instant, nor is it easy to achieve or assess. There is no objective measure of it either, unless you want to compound subjective opinions into one. And, lastly, there is no one-size-fits all solution. Critical thinking is tantamount to your growth.

You should, first, aim to read far more than you write. Without a proper reading pedigree, your craft will be nothing but a rote imitation of the idea of a novel and you may not want to start from there. That being said, you must also understand how to read. Words shouldn't simply pass through your head. You should be able to understand how other writers create stories and learn, through osmosis, about the techniques they use, the characters they devise, the narratives they create, then workshop all those teachings into something that is yours to use.

From then, it is simply practice. Write, look back on it, evaluate, repeat. You can ask for and use feedback to help you with that evaluation, though you should be mindful not to take anything as gospel, as the people you may receive feedback from may not be the best suited to help you. At any rate, this is the point where you mustn't give up. The most important target you should set yourself at this stage is to finish. Whether it's a short story, or a full series, do aim to finish whatever you start, no matter when. Finality ensures that what you gain from the writing is a complete experience.

There are various other platitudes I could invoke, but I don't want to ramble about what is readily available online. I felt that these two points, however, needed stressing. I hope my vagueness helps. :)

certainmiracle said:
You could post it to a blog, and then perhaps advertise it via forums focused on fiction and writing. Post chapters there and such, gather people's interest, build a fanbase. Spread your wings everywhere you can across the internet. If you eventually do get a fanbase, maybe you could make merch related to it. Fans will suck up merch if it's great. But, yeah, humble beginnings. Just start writing, post it somewhere; anywhere, and everywhere (that's reasonable, like a forum).

masterofgo said:
Yes. I have quite a few, actually.

Well, from both your original post and this one, it does not really seem like you understand what webnovels are about, nor do you really understand what happens in the conventional publishing to really be offering a lot of this advice. So, if you were to ask what I think you lack, I actually think you lack a lot of critical information. I would actually be concerned if any serious writer receives advice from you, because they would be heavily misinformed.

Right, but your original contention was that "conventional publishing" is a better avenue for writers. So, if you cannot deny that any of these problems happen, then why are you recommending this path for writers?

Even if we were to grant your point that many potential writers might not be American, these issues that I listed are cross national or at least across the pond in the UK and the rest of Europe, so hyper fixating on the fact that you are not American (I never assumed you were) seems like a weirdly tangential position to take.

Also, to say that plagiarism is not a legitimate complaint, is strange especially since you mention below that self-publishing is legitimate. If you knew anything about self-publishing, you would know that publishing plagiarism is a massive plague on the self-publishing industry, so to advocate that self-publishing is more legitimate than webnovels below while simultaneously marking plagiarism as not a legitimate complaint that you "know for a fact" illustrates your ignorance of the issues.

This does not even get into the issues with AI submissions and the potential for plagiarism and copyright infringement there. And then, even personally, I know at least one count of plagiarism in the last year where someone took work from multiple people and submitted their writings wholesale without consent.

So when you say that you will not deny or corroborate, and then say things like this, it sounds more like you simply do not know anything at all.

So this is where you have lost me. First of all, not all webnovels are listed on dedicated sites. In fact, the most famous webnovel of all time in the West might be Worm, which has been posted on its own Wordpress and the writer seems to do great with their own Patreon with their own dedicated following. Many writers in fact write on their own blogs, and those are webnovels. There are also really famous novelists who have used webnovel platforms like Wattpad.
It sounds to me that you are specifically talking about sites like Webnovel. I will admit to not knowing the legalese to every webnovel site, and as I mentioned in my original post, a lot of Webnovel sites and contracts can be scams, but the important thing to remember is that you can easily contrast that with exploitive agents, magazine editors, and so forth who engage in very similar nefarious practices. To the best of my knowledge, RoyalRoad and ScribbleHub grant legal claim over your own works, so those are two of some of the highest profile sites in the English world that directly contradicts your claim.

The important point that I stress is that people should navigate these waters and decide for themselves the best avenue for publication depending on what they want to write and how they want to write. I actually think if someone wants to eventually maybe break into Japanese anime (as far fetched of a goal that it is), traditional publishing will never actually get them there. It really is not for everyone and some people do experiment with some kind of web-based publication until they make it.

I never wanted or was interested in arguing this. However, I will note that I am of the opinion that as long as people are reading, I really have no issue with what people choose to read. In fact, conventional publishing has also become a massive grift for people who produce rote and recycled nonsense. People read airport novels, people read Ocean Vuong and even to a certain degree literary superstars like Sally Rooney can be described as hackish and just as derivative as any webnovel that you can deem unreadable. I, myself, do not like any of these authors or books, but at least they keep people reading and that is a net benefit to me. Reading opens the possibility that your tastes can improve and change. Not reading forecloses it.

I also want to point out, and I admit this is a small nitpick, but I do think that saying Webnovel's work contracts are "rare" kind of illuminates how little you might know about the space. Webnovel contracts are notoriously easy to acquire, so to describe them as rare seems a little bit strange to me, especially since by all accounts they are actually fairly easy to get.

A lot of writers are actually just performing "content generation" for American and British conglomerates when they conventionally publish, so I apologize, but I do not actually see what kind of point you are making by focusing on Chinese content generation. In fact, a lot of webnovel sites are not Chinese at all, so to be myopic in this way is kind of strange.

Furthermore, self-publishing and webnovels are both legitimate, which is why I looped them together as alternatives to conventional publishing.

In fact, whether you like it or not, millions of people read and post their webnovels online, and the presence of some of them adapted into anime (The King's Avatar being the primary example) immediately disproves your second point about there not being a single successful writer to come out of webnovel site. With King's Avatar, it was been turned into anime, they got a Netflix production, a production from Chinese studios. How much more does a webnovel need to succeed before you are satisfied that it can take a writer somewhere? It may not be the place where you want that writer to be, but I also do not like the fame certain novelists received, but that does not change the fact that they were successful.

So, in this sense, to say "to my knowledge" really only serves to elucidate how little you actually know. In fact, when you say that you have not heard of a writer in "real publishing" trying webnovels before getting their break, that also immediately tells me how little you actually know about webnovel publications.

The Martian, by Andy Weir? The science fiction novel that had a Hollywood adaptation? That was posted on his personal blog before it was picked up and traditionally published.

I do not like Brandon Sanderson, but guess what? He wrote on Wattpad. Are you telling me that "to your knowledge," you did not know the name Brandon Sanderson, perhaps the most well known living fantasy author, even obliquely?

Sometimes, people like to partake in roleplaying as authorities in order to adopt the role of a cynic under the protection of using their "critical lenses," but I actually think these people are perhaps the most dangerous kinds of people, because they spread misinformation as they do not know what they are talking about, have no credentials and will never be able to produce them, and ultimately only exist to poison waters that should be cleansed and purified to pave the way for authors to express themselves in the ways that they see fit. I highly recommend you really reflect on the fact that you might not actually possess as much knowledge about publishing as you think you do, because this conversation certainly reveals a real dearth in your knowledge that should not exist if you are truly trying to speak from some position of authority.

O_T_T said:
I don't know if you're intentionally trying to bluff past the relevant information, but I am quite obviously asking for what they are.

O_T_T said:
A lot of your response consists of these sorts of sentences, were you rudely reaffirm your assumption that I am uninformed and pretend to be aghast at everything I'm saying. They do not need to be responded to as they aren't genuine arguments. They're at best just filler space and at worst childish. I'll be referring back to this paragraph each time they occur to make clear how often you do this, before explaining in more depth what is wrong with your views at the end of this comment. 

O_T_T said:
Voltaire's La Bégueule mentions an old proverb; "the perfect is the enemy of the good." I find it has a lot of relevance here. My point was never that the conventional publishing industry is without issues, but that it is leagues better than trying Webnovels. You have intentionally misrepresented my point in order to make a fallacious retort against it.

O_T_T said:
AI is an emerging field. Neither of us can speak about it with any certainty, so I think you've just brought this up to muddy the waters. After all, AI has nothing to do with plagiarism as it is currently defined.

O_T_T said:
Now, plagiarism, as you have presented an example for, gets caught when it actually does happen. This is exactly what I was talking about, that the fear many young writers speak of, that someone might pinch their work and reap all the profits without them being able to do anything about it, isn't the case. I was never suggesting that nobody ever tries to plagiarise. 

O_T_T said:
I've kept these points together because they bring to attention that neither of us have actually defined a Webnovel until now. I am defining them as works branded as such by the brands that offer platforms for them. I took this view since this site is currently running a cross-promotion with one of them, Honeyfeed, so that is what I imagine the original poster means by a Webnovel. You, however, have elected to brand anything presented through the internet as a Webnovel, which, while not provably a false definition, does open up the door for plenty of cherry-picked examples of what you think Webnovels constitute. (This will be especially relevant later on). Now, since you yourself admit you aren't fully aware of the legal situation, I have no need to discuss that matter, I'll accept that point for my own.

O_T_T said:
It has absolutely nothing to do with the countries involved, I don't know why you're focusing on that. Perhaps some pseudo-political angle? I digress. I am talking about the nature of communicating each format of text. Webnovels are focused on being easily consumable, quick and often, whereas conventional publishing is more on the side of producing worthwhile art. See, the traditional publishing industry is that way because of hundreds of years of work by readers and authors everywhere, to create an environment where, all money aside, creators can be respected for their works and works respected for what they mean. Webnovels are just to get clicks. That is the sad reality of the situation.

O_T_T said:
Refer to the highlighted paragraph above. The specific choice of word is irrelevant, since my argument is about how damaging their contracts are, but statistics support my statement anyway.

O_T_T said:
I've mentioned this above, but again you've elected that getting an anime (in this case Donghua) is equivalent to success as a writer. I do indeed reject it, I don't think being bounced from one content mill to another constitutes success.

O_T_T said:
Now this is my favourite part of your comment, because, that's not actually true, is it? The Martian was not picked up from Weir's website. He collected the passages he'd written and self-published them, and then it was picked up.

The likely thing here is that it's yet another example of you wilfully lying about your statements to make them suit your point, but I prefer the idea that in a moment of staggering irony, this fact completely passed you by.

O_T_T said:

I didn't know that. That's a fair point, I accept it, I find Brandon too petulant and so never looked into him.

But, most well known? Sanderson? Come off it.

O_T_T said:
This is the final time you'll need to scroll up. As you can see, a lot of what you've said is just "you probably don't actually understand X and Y" over and over again. So I'll sweep it all away as Argumentum Ad Hominem, and after shaking our heads at you wasting everyone's time, we can speak with clarity about the actual matter at hand.

masterofgo said:
I am not sure what you really want to know. I answered yes because that was your question. Was there something you needed? That I volunteer, read, and edit for magazines and journals? That I submit on my own time and am working with people for publications on a handful of short stories? That I know editors, work with MFAs, am familiar and have navigated UK / American / French and academic publishing? 

I actually do not think it rude to warn people about bad faith actors. Finding good people in writer communities can often be difficult and I have found that your advice to be both misinformed and unhelpful. So maybe you think it is childish or rude, but I sincerely would advocate that people not take you too seriously based on how little you seem to know about the industry.

Per your posts above and even this one, you just seem like someone who wants to gatekeep people or suggest really generic advice that is not really helpful for anyone. Someone asks for how to begin with webnovels, of which there are legitimate pathways to get started and examples of success stories (Worm, The Martian, Brandon Sanderson, and more that I have mentioned).

I have not really done this. You are the one who have carte blanched decided that all writers should just go conventional when you said "so trying more conventional writing would be far better for you, or anyone for that matter." You did not even suggest self-publication, ignored the fact that plenty of authors publish on Wattpad, do not have signed contracts with webnovel sites like RoyalRoad, ScribbleHub, or even just build their own communities on Skype, Discord, or other social media platforms.

Maybe you cannot, but I can,

and if you were a writer or someone in the know, you would at least have an inkling that plenty of magazines and journals this year, especially science fiction ones have shut off their submissions because of a surge in AI-written pieces that have flooded their inboxes.

In fact, many magazines and journals on Submittable will now have line items where they will express hope that the author is not using AI-assisted tools. The morality of this is not something I really care to talk about, but I can speak about the impacts of AI writing as a certainty because I work and operate in the ecosystem.
Friends of mine work in AI translation, and in fact I know certain editors and translators who almost exclusively use AI translation tools for literary novels and then use their otherwise poor editing tools to finish the work and produce haphazard and poorly constructed products. I know these things because I work with editors, writers, publishers, etc. I bring up AI as a tangent to plagiarism because the way that data is mined and collected produces situations where writing adjacent to the works of others or approximate to others becomes very likely, and so I thought it was a relevant point to establish that these issues are currently out there in the traditional publishing world.

People can get caught but they do not necessarily get punished. In the particular example I cited, it was only because someone decided to take legal action, and as of this very moment, it is still unconfirmed whether the perpetrator will actually suffer any consequences.

It is not my fault for you to write off plagiarism and then suggest self-publishing as a legitimate avenue that is leagues better than webnovel publications and have to use semantic arguments when I originally cited nepotism, the commodification of the writer space, and more alongside plagiarism.

In fact your original intent of citing plagiarism was to say that it was a ridiculous claim and that you would be "laughed out" for suggesting that it was a problem, something that is patently untrue. Even if I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you only thought about plagiarism in the "conventional publishing" world, you would still be wrong. Plagiarism has happened after the publication of books recently by Simon & Schuster, plagiarism in academic texts that are published conventionally have this issue. It is just strange for you to just focus on that bit unless your only intent was to write off the entire enterprise "maybe it is bad, but come on, it is not that bad."

This is a classic example of cherry picking.

I do not know anything about Honeyfeed until you mentioned them (to be honest, that makes me think that it really is not that important). I looked into them briefly after you mentioned them and they seem like an offshoot of a failed cryptocurrency project back in 2018. But even in Honeyfeed's own terms  of service they have listed that authors retain copyright and legal rights over their own work. If you want to actually talk about Webnovel websites, you would look at RoyalRoad, ScribbleHub, Wattpad, Tapas, and more, all of which have volumes more traffic than Honeyfeed, where people have Patreons and Kofis where they collect value out of their labor and go on to self-publish the very novels that they place on their sites. If that is not the definition of an author owning the rights to their own work, then I do not know what it is.

All of these sites are Webnovel sites. People have used these Webnovel sites to derive value, build their readership, build their communities, especially with respect to things that would not get traditionally published. Anime, certain genres involving a particular kink or fetish, etc.

I state that I do not know the entire legal situation because I do not want to come off as a legal expert. Yes, I have read legal contracts for Webnovels and traditional publishing, and I know enough to navigate the waters for my own submissions, but I would never profess expertise on the entire scene. Are you an agent familiar with copyright law? If not, then you know basically about the same as any other normal person with eyes might have on the issue.

Except you were the one to mention that Webnovels are, and I quote "creating generating for a chinese company." I was even charitable with the grammatical missteps, but it was you who focused in on Chinese content generation, not me.

For traditional publishing, I think you are pretty much at the very least ten years too late on your understanding of it. Conventional publishing is not on the side of producing worthwhile art, by and large a lot of it is now in the market of simply producing mass market paperback fiction that can be sold and distributed widely. That is why self-help is a massive market. That is why a lot of covers have become streamlined and look relatively uniform. It is why 6-7 novels will likely be published this year and the next that will be rehashes of Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles, except by maybe 5 different authors who are all writing the same trope: reinterpreting Greco-Roman Mythology with a feminist perspective. It's a trope that works academically once and becomes a grift after the third time.
In fact, I would argue that most of the best art is being produced by relatively indie publishing organizations and self-publications. New Directions, Archipelago, authors who self-publish like Evan Dara and Sergio de la Pava.

It would be nice if you gave a single statistic that could back this up. The actual statistic is that there are millions of views and clicks on webnovels, that many webnovels enjoy some semblance of readership (and thus, success) and have seen their works get published in more spaces than just the original online venue that they chose.

You were the one who stated to webnovel writers had not achieved any success and listed "household name, movie deal, X amount of copies, whatever."

I have proven to you that is quantifiably false that webnovel writers do not achieve any of these successes. Multiple chinese webnovels have sold plenty of titles, received deals for movies or TV shows, have become a household name with plenty of audiences. It may not be the audience that you are a part of, but Sally Rooney not being an author I enjoy does not take away from her success. To suggest otherwise is to just gatekeep for the sake of it and not even be right about it.
If your entire contention is simply that webnovel writers are not successful unless you say they are, then that is your prerogative. But your original argument, which was that webnovel writers do not find success, is wrong. It is just wrong.

No, it actually suits my point just fine, you are the one that is just shifting goalposts.

You said that "In fact, to my knowledge, I've never even heard a writer in real publishing say they tried webnovels for a bit before getting their break, either."
The Martian was a webnovel. It does not matter if he took additional steps to get there, it was still a webnovel.

Brandon Sanderson wrote on Wattpad and look where he is now. You can play these semantic games all you like, but that does not change the fact that you are wrong. The fact that you have to grasp like straws at this just shows how limited your understanding of both conventional and webnovel publishing (and self-publishing for that matter) really is.

Most well known living author? Living? Maybe he is not as famous as George R.R. Margin, so I apologize for him being somewhere in the vicinity.
My point was if you cannot even figure out some of these basic facts about webnovels, some of their authors, and the successes that they have enjoyed, then you simply cannot be a trusted authority on it.

I mean, again, you are free to use words you learned in your college seminar and speak with your three unpublished writer friends who are receiving bad advice from you (and likely need to stop listening to you if they ever want to make it) but no, I sincerely believe you do not actually understand publishing and would vigorously warn people against ever listening to you.
You have routinely demonstrated that you are woefully behind on news in the space, project your lack of knowledge onto others, and more. Your final point concerns some grandiose notion that conventional publishing produces better art, but really all of that is at the mercy of a reader's disposition and prejudice. I read contemporary literature, both the bad and the good, from conventional publishing and it is a wide space filled with mediocrity and only a handful of novelists I can actually list are pushing the envelope and doing something cool.

But still, the fact is that many readers have shifted how they read, what they read, and more, and webnovels have provided a space for those readers to engage in something that makes sense to them. That means, there is a demand for writers to exist in this space, and your write off of them, which I can only describe as coming from an elitist perspective, is not even backed up by any real data or information. Again, I sincerely would ask that you do some research, read a book or two, and maybe do not be so quick to make vapid unsubstantiated comments about things you do not understand.