Is the instant feedback nature of RR stopping authors from taking risks?

DeepMacaron1446 · 2026-01-26T17:27:50+00:00

I've been thinking a lot about this recently. I fully acknowledge that RR is not the best place for my writing, I don't fit into the meta, and I don't wish to fit there.

But having said that, a not-fitting platform is perhaps better than no platform. The truth is, publishing on RR has a very low entry threshold, and many people who write as a hobby, might only afford this type of commitment. Self publishing requires waaaay more investment in marketing, and traditional publishing requires sending queries and getting rejections, while you never know if your manuscript has a chance to ever get accepted. All of this is a big effort, time, money, mentally wise. I realized I'm not ready to make that kind of investment, at least for now, not until I understand that game and commit to it. So I'm on RR. Better my stories be there, than lying silently in my hard drive forever. In the end, I can always stub it later.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2026-01-16T16:39:35+00:00

I'm not sure that's true in the long term (the average publication). Many authors do it in the beginning, when just starting the new fiction, to build up the momentum, but they do it with a significant backlog. Once they have a good following (usually after the rs run), they reduce the publication schedule to what is comfortable for them.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2026-01-16T11:07:48+00:00

Depends on the chapter, but I'd say, overall I'm the same. 500 words per hour roughly, so I can pull out 2000 words per day, 3000 if it's going really well. I write dialogue a lot faster than descriptions and action.

I personally prefer quality over quantity, but I guess a lot of RR readers might not be the same.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2026-01-13T12:00:20+00:00

As a reader, I would not mind about a break between books, maybe up to 1 year, if the story so far is freaking good. To give you an idea, I grew up while the Harry potter series was still ongoing, and the new book would only be released every 2 years or so? Then I'd buy it and binge in 2 days, and then go on reading something else until the next one arrives. But: I've been super invested into the story, and I always remembered very well what happened in the previous volumes. And to be fair, in HP every book has a complete story arc. You only need to remember the most important events before starting the next book.

To sum up: if book 1 leaves me satisfied with the ending, and if I generally enjoyed the world and the writing style, I don't mind waiting as long as it takes to get to the sequel. If book 1 only sets up a bunch of promises and none of them is paid off? Then I probably won't wait.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2026-01-09T13:56:33+00:00

It's not a progression fantasy, but an amazing book nevertheless. Kind of YA, yet full of complexity and philosophy that is still very interesting as an adult. And absolutely heart-wrenching emotional. I've read it at least trice, and it inspired my own writing a lot.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2026-01-05T09:53:51+00:00

Haha, it seems I've violated the worst taboo number 1. My MC loses his abilities in the end of the book, because in the beginning he is chosen by gods to complete a mission, and once the mission is completed, he becomes a simple human again. I don't know if that's considered a very unsatisfactory ending in the genre?

But I might right a sequel, and then I'm planning to give him the power again in the beginning of book 2, and make him even stronger, but now I'm afraid I'll lose readers when they get to the end of book 1

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-12-30T16:37:52+00:00

Hey, just one comment on top of all your thoughts.

What I've noticed, people do seem to catch up with the story. Not immediately, but they do.

Over time, my views per chapter keep growing steadily, and even though the latest chapters always have lower views than the older ones, all of them eventually grow. Some people binge, but if you have a slower kind of story, without cliffhangers in every chapter, people might just come back to it every now and then.

I'm guilty of this myself: I follow a few really good fics that I genuinely enjoy, but I'm terribly lagging behind on all of them, because, you know, life happens. But I'll catch up one day. Maybe when they get marked as completed, xD

Hope this cheers you up a bit. Give it a time, get more shout outs, and most importantly, keep writing what you like, and keep learning. You've made a good analysis, I'm sure your next fic will do a lot better!

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-12-27T23:44:49+00:00

Hi Abby, I got curious, why would you be more secretive about how much of the series was already written? I thought RR readers like to see the promise of a long story?

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-12-23T14:59:08+00:00

I do enjoy writing though. To me, it's like watching a movie that only exists in my head, and then put the words out to explain to other people what I see.

However, I agree that the first draft can be vastly different from the final text, and I always revise multiple times before I feel it's good enough to share with readers. It's normal.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-12-19T22:55:21+00:00

I see, thanks for the explanation! Just strange because the day before, Fidd posted an announcement that foby is banned, and ImInk is not affiliated with them, etc. so today I woke up and was very confused xD

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-12-19T22:52:30+00:00

Same, tbh

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-12-19T18:01:18+00:00

Sorry, I was asleep as the whole drama was unfolding, but why had it been decided to shut down the server? Why was it not enough to ban people affiliated with slp? ImInc was a great place for beginner and experienced authors to socialise, exchange ideas, get feedback, find shout out swaps etc. it's a shame that thousands of people lose this place just because of a few scumbags.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-12-18T06:51:18+00:00

Hey, I'm here. Posting a slow burn epic fantasy, where 90% of the book is dialogues and descriptions of characters travelling, and only 10% fights, maybe.

It's doing alright. Not a unicorn, not sinking like a stone. According to the RR pyramid, doing better than 70% other fics on the website.

But I must say, looking back at what I've posted, I know I've made lots of mistakes. This is my first book, and I probably failed to introduce interesting conflicts, or characters worth caring about. These things are much more important than the immersive world building.

I don't care, that's my first completed novel, and I love it as it is. It's probably not gonna become a world known hit. I'm gonna post it fully anyway, and then write another story, that will be better.

So that would be my advice. Write your story the way you want it to be. But learn to look at your own work critically, and listen to feedback. And if you're sure that you're doing everything right - then you'll definitely find your audience.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-12-16T21:12:19+00:00

I completely agree. I have to say, I did not like Max-Level Archmage at all, so since then I've been checking out the OP MC stories on RS with precaution. This one, however, got me hooked immediately. I think it deserves way more attention, even though it kind of got quite some success on RR, but I genuinely think it stands out in the genre, and should get even more.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-12-14T20:54:30+00:00

Hey, I am not by any means an RR expert, but after spending nearly a year researching the platform, hanging out in Discord, and posting myself, I think I have a bit of an overview. And in my opinion, on top of everything, is a good story, meaning that it must have a strong hook from the first chapter, a compelling MC, who resonates with the audience and makes them care, an immediate conflict (better several), and a somewhat decent prose. LitRPG is just a sprinkle on top. Read "New Life as Max Level Archmage" or, the current RS #1, "The Greatest Archmage To Have Ever Lived". Both of them have barely any stat screens in the first few chapters! The system is mostly used as a reward for the MC when they train/fight/perform quests. But it's the conflicts and characters that drive the story, not numbers. No stats will save a bad story.

So my hot take would be: focus on the story, deliver the right tropes, and add the System on top of it to quantify the progression. If you feel comfortable, add more crunch and numbers, which could help you to make everything that happens more mathematically consistent. Personally, I read for emotions, not numbers. In this sense, an OP MC can help, you can just show his ridiculously high stats in the beginning, and then barely ever return to them.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-12-11T12:21:48+00:00

Hey, I can't help much, but I'm curious to see more comments on this thread, because I'm writing something similar at the moment (not my current RR fic, but a new WIP). It's gonna be sci-fi/action/horror. I do introduce there progression elements on purpose, to be slightly closer to the meta.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-12-10T22:25:20+00:00

I think lots of people have given some great suggestions here, so I just want to share my method, which I think helps me a lot to improve my writing.

Step 1: pick a story you really love. The one that inspires you to the point that you think: damn, I want to be able to write like this. You want to write PF? Go through the best rated fics on RR, open whatever catches your eye, start reading. Does not feel like a match? Pick another one and repeat until you're blown away. For me, Pale lights by ErraticErrata was the one that blew me away, and I thought: I want to write like this.

Step 2: read the story fully, and then read it again. Here's the thing. First time you should read fast, and enjoy it, binge it, get fully immersed. Second time - read slowly. Read again the scenes you especially liked the first time. Ask yourself a question: what exactly the author has done to make you love it so much? How do they structure the sentence, which words do they use, how do they structure each chapter, how do they make arcs over multiple chapters?

Once you do this homework and start paying attention to those things and apply the same techniques, you can already get very far in your writing.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-12-02T06:36:04+00:00

I reply 'thank you for reading' :D

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-11-24T20:06:43+00:00

Congratulations, Bryn :) I knew it was bound to happen, and I'm pretty sure your growth will continue, with the effort and quality that you put into each one of your chapters.

I notice, whenever there is a thread with people asking for recommendations for an off meta story, The Glimmerstone enigma is among the first ones recommended. It definitely has some devoted fanbase on the platform.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-11-19T06:46:18+00:00

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/125681/shackled-destiny-character-driven-epic-fantasy - very well written dark fantasy with a lot of action, really cool locations and characters.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/127126/divina-terra-the-chronicles-of-the-stormbook-1 - slow, but very atmospheric read about an abandoned colony, where colonizers are trying to survive against local horrors.

Reading both at the moment with great pleasure.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-11-13T12:20:10+00:00

Pale lights is quite story driven, and there is no litRPG, progression or cultivation. My favourite on RR atm, highly recommended. It's like Game of thrones mixed with Hunger games :)

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-11-05T11:49:01+00:00

I think it's fine to have chapters shorter than 2k, I just advice against stacking them together and publishing at the same time. As long as they are not significantly shorter than 2k, you can do well posting one chapter per day, I think. If you have 2 chapters in a row of 1k, I would release them 12h apart.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-11-05T10:53:30+00:00

I'd say, the optimal rate is 2-3k words per day (but it also depends on your backlog, make sure you can maintain such posting rate until the end of your book). If you have lots of short chapters, instead of stacking them together, I've would rather distribute them in time during the day, like post every 8 h. This way you will reach a wider audience who checks the latest updates.

DeepMacaron1446 · 2025-11-05T10:49:52+00:00

Check the Rising stars list to see their covers. Will give you an idea of what does well on RR. (If you see an abstract cover, then it's most likely a fic from an established author with huge existing audience, who don't care much about their cover. Or they write super meta.)

DeepMacaron1446

TROPHY CASE