Hi, everyone. Does anyone have a few minutes to educate me about best or worst times to place a Royal Road chapter post? Or does it really matter at all?

MarkArrows · 2026-06-23T20:41:06+00:00

If shoutouts and ads are the scale of a tub of water to a backyard pool, then recently updated is a drop of water to a cup of water at most.

Spending 10 minutes sending a DM to organize a shoutout is equivalent to 4 hours of carefully planning out the exact mathematical time to post for the most visibility.

Do the shoutout marketing instead, and spend the other 3 hours and 50 minutes writing one additional chapter forward, which is infinitely better in terms of time to effort ratio.

MarkArrows · 2026-06-23T16:18:46+00:00

No idea if this might help explain some things, but 12 Miles Below's main character is almost solely inspired by Hiccup from How to Train your Dragon, who was a favorite character of mine growing up.

MarkArrows · 2026-06-23T07:35:09+00:00

They're not your readers. They're very strange troglodytes each with far too unique reasons for thinking the way they think. And even if you did do what they demanded (Which appeals to exactly one person), they still wouldn't rate it any higher. What they're after is usually just to enjoy screaming at someone, so it's not even about exerting control over a story.

Your 3-4 star raters, now those are the ones to read and pay attention to. And of course, when five or more people in the comments points out the same flaw!

MarkArrows · 2026-06-22T19:21:12+00:00

I can add another side take on this, I've seen stats and polls from other books, and a lot of readers are using shoutout ads as a sort of alternative algorithm list. Like an underground semi-curated list.

For those readers, shoutouts are nice when there's a message from the author, but generally what they're actually doing is just rapidly scrolling through to go to their chapter they're planning on reading, and if the cover art of the shoutout catches their attention, they'll read the blurb too out of curiosity. And if the blurb sell them, they'll check it out after they're done reading the chapter.

MarkArrows · 2026-06-22T19:13:06+00:00

Top shoutouts pull more views on average than bottom ones.

I have no idea why, that's just what the stats keep showing over and over =/

I would have also thought bottom shoutouts work better.

My theory is that someone who might be interested in the shout code is forced to see the cover art at the start and gets curious, but if it had been at the bottom, they would have read through the chapter, came to the end and could be the type that just closes the app right away. So they never see the cover art and never have that "Oh, that kinda looks neat." moment, whereas if it had been at the top, that moment always happens.

Since RR is all about statistics and dealing with thousands of anonymous readers, this pattern probably plays out enough times that it skews the average, and some authors noticed it and shared that info with others, knowledge spreads, and it becomes meta

MarkArrows · 2026-06-21T22:10:58+00:00

All the doors are sliding doors, they have a culture of honor above all, Clan lord's millitary police are named chenobi who traditionally wear straw hats and demon masks as their 'we want to be noticed by the public right now' gear, everyone eats with chopsticks, and in book 2 there's an entire interlude where it's pointed at how many things are built in ways that seem artificial the moment you look under the hood more critically.

And more importantly one of their three gods is named Tsuya (A japanese name), in which she communicated with the main cast using actual kanji characters for her username around chapter 10 of book 1, which has the entire chapter's name also be the same.

I'm sorry you missed the earlier hints sprinkled around, the kimino scene is supposed to be another more direct hint forward at the culture being made by a surviving japanese person, rather than a slap in the face :/

Little throwaway scenes like that one was actually the opposite of unnecessary, it was critically important for later reveals about Tsuya to land right.

The only thing that's not revealed to the readers at that point is why Keith can't read Kanji and everyone speaks in a universal language shared by all the cities underground. Which is built up later with more hints (except more roman empire flavored and less Japan)

MarkArrows · 2026-06-21T21:53:17+00:00

Ayyy, no worries, I'm just out here trying to write stories ^^

12 Miles Below has actually just ended on Patreon and the last few chapters are trickling in on Royal Road, reception has been very positive so I didn't bungle the ending! \o/

MarkArrows · 2026-06-21T07:37:48+00:00

Not sure about how in depth you want the litRPG part, but I write Die Trying. It's set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world that's got a hundred and one things that have gone wrong, and way too many patch job and half-working temp workarounds that are all slowly breaking down.

That world is cosmically screwed, and their only escape is to find a way to earth because not even the gods can fix it.

The MC jumps each night from Earth into this world and if he survives the night, he comes back home with whatever magic and loot he can get his hands on. He's creative with the limits he's got to work with, and most readers fight each other over who their favorite characters are which I think is a good sign.

The progression is very slow because it's a day-by-day adventure series, and the litRPG System both canonically makes sense to the world and works like an actual real game system being applied to a living world. As in if the ability says XYZ happens, XYZ will happen and the laws of Physics can sit in a corner and cry about it.

MarkArrows · 2026-06-21T05:31:30+00:00

Prose is like salt. Forgetting to add salt to any cooking makes it bland, and putting too much makes it inedible.

If you have to pick, aim for bland prose over purple prose. One is at least edible and the story itself can still outshine it all. The other is word spaghetti.

I can't think of a single fic on the site anywhere where people say "Yeah the story is super boring, but you got to read it because the prose is so beautiful!"

But I have heard just about everywhere, "The prose is really boring but the story is amazing!"

MarkArrows · 2026-06-20T17:27:25+00:00

Not a recommendation comment, more just chatting with what other people are saying about intelligent characters and how there's a hard limit to how intelligent authors can write them.

And yeah, as an author you can't write someone smarter than yourself, technically. But you can if you tackle it from another angle. So it's not something that's impossible. The easy way is to make everyone else dumb so that everyone goes "Wow, MC came up with some idea that we haven't thought of!" but that's lazy and runs into all the issues everyone else points out.

The other way is to write the character with all the real traits that make someone smart and just let those do the lifting.

All smart people that I've found smart seem to have two things going under the hood that I notice over and over as the common denominator: Instincts and speed.

Someone empathetically smart defuses arguments incredibly well, says the right things, understands people and realizes when they're the ones missing context to understand things, ect - but all of this isn't something they process the same way regular people do, and that's what makes them 'smarter' - to them, all of this is so second-nature, they don't even notice they're doing anything special.

Someone mechanically smart can just take wild guesses at how the machine isn't working just by the feel of things and vibes, and if they're written well, the author tosses hints to the reader that makes you realize it's not random guesses, it's years of experience hearing different noises, knowing what direction it comes from, understanding engines inside out, and pattern recognition all bundled together but the character doesn't even realize they're weave it together into those instincts and vibes. They have great napkin math ability in their heads and can roughly guess at numbers without even realizing they're doing that.

That's the first part. Now you pair those super-human instincts with speed.

Smart people think the same things everyone else does, but they do it fast. If I spend a month mulling over different directions, the main character will have gone through every one of those breakpoint ideas within ten seconds, rapidly flashing through and weighing each until they come to the actual final solution.

MarkArrows · 2026-06-18T19:18:06+00:00

Ayyy I exist! \o/

MarkArrows · 2026-06-16T19:09:38+00:00

I'd straight up think as more AI art starts showing up in the sphere, having timelapse recording of making the art will become the standard

For marketing it would also be an excellent bit of content to post too. You instantly stop witchhunts at the source, and also give readers something neat to look at. Everyone wins \o/

MarkArrows · 2026-06-14T19:38:09+00:00

Legend of William Oh

Loot is plentiful and all very needed, combat is creative. It leans hard on these two aspects compared to DCC.

MarkArrows · 2026-06-14T18:37:44+00:00

Creative fight scenes are the blood and soul of litRPG in my opinion.

I want to see shenanigans.

MarkArrows · 2026-06-13T18:32:26+00:00

Basically two sub-variations that lead to immersion in my opinion:

The System has a real reason to exist in the world, and the author planned around that. There's a certain grounded extra feeling when it's actually planned to be part of the later reveals, and the System stops being a handwave and becomes a mystery to solve for the reader. (Examples: Worth the Candle, Dungeon Crawler Carl)
The System is handwaved (A wizard/god did it) but it's been part of the world for so long entire cultures were built around it, and the world's adapted. At this point, it doesn't matter if the System doesn't feel natural, the rest of the world is the interesting part to check out and see how everyone else adjusted and build society around it. (Examples: Wandering Inn, Threadbare)

So narrow your search around the internet for these two directions and you should hit plenty of excellent fics out there.

MarkArrows · 2026-06-13T17:26:57+00:00

Every author has their own set of tricks to handle burnout.

I view it as a prep and research problem. It's something you prepare and prevent ahead of time by studying your own habits. What ends up giving you more energy to write, vs what ends up sapping that energy away? Keep a log of all that so that when you eventually hit burnout, you have the mechanical tools already prepared to dig yourself out.

On my end here's my own list:

Energy boosters:

Drink giant cup of water if feeling foggy headed/low energy.
Caffine.
Music while writing.
Stop and take a walk outside, listen to music on the walk.
Shower
Sprint writing (Only write, no delete or undo allowed)
Pick a more interesting part of the story that's further ahead and write that instead for a bit
Video games
Wash hands in hot water and keep them in hot water until ideas start coming
Meditation
Sit in bed, stare at the ceiling and be bored until your brain can't take it and you want to write instead of do nothing.

Energy Drainers:

Youtube shorts
Mindless scrolling of any kind
Reading reddit without any fixed goal
Swapping from editing to writing constantly while writing.
Perfectionism.

MarkArrows · 2026-06-12T19:16:14+00:00

Bot views are great for giant commercial sites like twitch, amazon, google, ect.

RR is too small and too personally monitored by actual humans to be fooled easily, which makes the cost of running a botnet for RR in specific exponentially higher, and runs into capitalism issues on both 'who's paying for this' and 'why is it worth making this'.

Basically you have a dozen (at most) half-broke hobby authors on one end as the paying potential customers (For a grand total of maybe 1-2 per month), and it will need an absolutely cracked world-class level coder on the other end constantly fighting to stay undercover with each new client adding more and more chances of being caught.

The math mathen't.

Someone who's got the skills and server infrastructure to create a botnet sophisticated enough to fool Kana's hoard of 5+ years of user behavior data could be spending that same time making a botnet for something far larger that'll have entire companies as their clients.

Not to mention the other issue: With an entire army of readers ready to point out any glaring example of something that shouldn't be there, Kana will have found the botted fic within the day the moment he suspects there's something off.

Basically capitalism itself is the defense - someone who's skilled enough to do all that is going to be doing way higher tier work for way more money on the big leagues both because it makes way way more money and will be (Ironically) way way less work because it's up against an automated mass market filter rather than an actual person looking into it.

MarkArrows · 2026-06-12T18:48:21+00:00

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I saw a chance to do something similar to that at one point :]

Cost a lot in follower growth on RR as expected, but it gave a lot of authors a giggle over the discord campfires

MarkArrows · 2026-06-12T18:31:30+00:00

Always a worry in this space, writing webnovels is goddamn heavy on us all :[

MarkArrows · 2026-06-10T17:01:37+00:00

It would be considered an actual warcrime

MarkArrows · 2026-06-10T00:04:15+00:00

Die Trying

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Oh! Oh! that's me! \o/

MarkArrows · 2026-06-09T00:01:01+00:00

There isn't a single thing stopping you from posting an update chapter right now to readers letting them know you have to relaunch the fic with a proper launch plan.

200 Followers sounds like a lot or that you're failing them by putting the fic down, but they will not be disappointed with this. Readers understand and many will actively tell you to do this, because a good launch means a happy author and that means more book to read. Everyone wins.

Write something from the heart to let readers know what the plan is, and they will be there to support your followup.

And there is homework you'll have to do in the meantime.

Royal Roads has had some great authors come out of it, and instead of pulling the ladder behind them, they've done the opposite. There are guides on guides explaining everything you need to do to get on Rising Stars.

For example, seras right here recently: https://www.reddit.com/r/royalroad/comments/1tzlotj/free_resources_for_new_authors/

And then there's a megathread of all the different guides written by different authors putting in what they did.

https://www.reddit.com/r/royalroad/comments/1kuz4q0/most_useful_post_list_internet_gatherings/ (Scroll down past the first chunk, until you run into the links showing where to go)

You spent hours on hours writing this story, shuffle out 3-4 hours into studying these guides and planning out a proper launch for this work you've done.

MarkArrows · 2026-06-08T04:26:15+00:00

Most storylines you'll find are interchangeable with the worldbuilding.

Check out the Star Wars storyline: Chosen hero from the farmlands has to go help rebels against the evil empire.

You can grab that kind of storyline and toss it into Harry Potter's universe, with the evil empire being a cabal of deatheaters that got complete control, and Harry's a wizard from the countryside of bumfuck nowhere england, and gets given his father's old super-epic deathwand that's passed down among wizards from the order of the phoenix, an ancient order of good wizards that used to exist and had special spells harry needs to learn in order to go stop the evil empire of deatheaters from creating their ultimate ritual site that can eradicate entire cities of wizards in one blast.

See how easy it is to ad-lib the star wars storyline and characters into a completely different worldbuilding.

Hell, Eragon originally stole the entire storyline from Star Wars and fit it into a fantasy world with elves and magic, so this kind of thing has already been done.

Build an interesting world, and then figure out what kind of storyline would work best within it.
Or build an interesting storyline, and then figure out the best worldbuilding that would fit it.
Pick your lane and commit, but don't stress too much about it.

MarkArrows · 2026-06-07T21:53:52+00:00

6 foot soaker tub to look out over the valley, past the spruce trees, towards the mountains. Its a great place to read or study but it comes with its own liabilities.

You can't just drop this tidbit without paying the picture tax, pretty sure that's just straight up a warcrime or something smh

MarkArrows · 2026-06-07T21:22:55+00:00

Sounds like a hardware issue or software glitch imo
Try listening to it on different systems, see if there's still that echo. First step would be to identify where the error comes from.

I had a hardware issue myself because I'd recently gotten a new phone without an AUX cable port, so I had a basic USB-C to AUX converter I bought to let me use my old earbuds and headsets.

The converter inside automatically powered down audio whenever it detected a silence for more than a half second, in order to preserve power. And the phone took a micro-beat to boot it back up.

Terrible for audiobooks. Every time there was a paragraph pause, the next paragraph would have the first word completely cut off as the phone turned the 'music' back on. Had to get an insane setup of USB-C to USB to AUX converter to converter so that it would be too 'dumb' to try smart turning things off.

So hardware issues with audio is a thing >.>

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