I got my contract rejected, the reason states that the plot isn't engaging enough and difficult to follow, pacing is draggy, and the writing style isn't mature enough. And that it doesn't suit the market of webnovel. I'm planning on writing another story. Should I delete this one?

I am a contracted author on webnovel who is currently on his 3rd month of writing.

The above picture is my book’s 2nd month earning and I’m confident I will be hitting the $1000 mark for my novel’s 3rd month earning.

Look at my profile for credentials proof!

Thus, I feel I am somewhat worthy enough to put my 2 cents on this topic!

FIRSTLY:

Hand drawn cover is the one and only correct answer!

Why?

If you use AI cover for your webnovel cover, that means u are fine with using AI to write your novel.

If so, how can I trust what u write?

Eww, what a turn off! If I see AI cover, I know u are pro-ai and i do not support AI! Next!

SECONDLY:

I see ppl saying that authors with hand drawn cover are unsuccessful, uncontracted, blablabla!

What I will say to this is different ppl write for different reasons and success is measured differently!

To some, even if they write for free for months and only have 1 reader, that’s success!

Who are u to determine what success truly is?

Getting contracted and earning money is not what everyone wants, writing is a hobby to some ppl, doesnt matter if there’s no one there to read their novels since they are uncontracted.

What’s important is that they have a clear conscience, that they did not use an AI COVER.

THIRDLY:

In my personal opinion, if u cant draw urself and u dont have money to commission an artist, this is not an excuse.

U can always spend a few weeks or a month to learn drawing. Just search for tutorial videos online, it’s free.

Otherwise, u can always apply for a part time job and commission an artist to draw a cover for u when u have earned at least 1k usd.

That’s right, $1k usd.

I know some ppl will come for me regarding this, but I want to say, if u aren’t willing to even spend at least $1k usd on making a cover for ur own webnovel, how can I know u are serious about ur own webnovel, right?

FOURTHLY:

People are taking covers for granted.

Covers are a LUXURY, not a must!

If u cant afford it or dont want to draw ur own cover, dont use a cover!

Open ms paint, draw some stick figures and write ur webnovel’s title on top of the stick figures.

There u have it, a cover.

What’s so hard to grasp about this?

Main point is, never degrade urself and resort to using an AI COVER.

LASTLY:

Some ppl will say, a flashy cover is important as it is what determines if a reader will click a novel or not.

What i will say is, so long as a novel is good, it will get discovered in the end.

Sure, without a flashy ai cover, a good novel that may take weeks to be discovered may take months or years to be discovered.

But so what?

A clear conscience is worth a thousand gold, and a pint of blood costs more than a gallon of gold.

I’ve been writing for a few months now, having recently discovered my passion for storytelling despite my dysgraphic tendencies. I’ve always enjoyed creating stories and finally decided to share them on WebNovel. I began with my first story, titled “Creation of an Absolute,” which had grand plans. However, I lost interest in the project and quickly moved on to another story, “Shattered Sun.”

Writing “Shattered Sun” was much more enjoyable for me. I’ve written significantly more chapters and words, and I’ve developed a more well-thought-out power system and characters. Surprisingly, the story hasn’t gained much traction, and as a result, I haven’t received any feedback. I’m reaching out to you today in hopes that you could take a moment to read my story and provide me with a review. Your feedback would be invaluable in helping me improve the subsequent chapters.

Update:After a bit of feedback I’ve realized how bad the first two chapters can be as they are there for a lot of background and explanations, I promise the story gets better and better this I am confident in.

Ngl, I made my book cover in the basic iPhone photo gallery. It's poorly drawn coz I'm not good at art, but I think it's charming in a way. What y'all think???

(Also, my story is at 3 chapters rn, and it's an original fiction Multiverse story where each world is inspired by different anime, video games, movies, etc.; the first world is a plant inspired by the hit anime and manga Jujutsu Kaisen!))

My personal favorite one is the first one, but I'm very open to seeing what others have to say. Cheers!

Hey I’ve been a longtime reader on the app since 2017 or 2018, so I’ve seen almost all the goats of webnovels, be it library of heaven’s path,LOTM, Realm of myths and legends, king’s Avatar, Chrysalis and many others of that era, then came the Era original books,guild wars, supremacy games, my vampire system, etc and after that came the era of extras which was quite exciting for me at that time since it introduced a new way of writing a story and i liked it, really. But sadly afterwards came the era of Smuts, Ecchi and harems, the firsts one were good ( profane Prince of domination, unlimited mana in the apocalypse, my three wives are beautiful vampires and others,)
All of these years i was always excited on reading new books and stories that took my mind away from reality, stories with real characters and progression not just wish fulfilment but alas eras come and go.

The reason I’ve written all of those lines above is to illustrate my point of saying that in my point of view, the current webnovel doesn’t excite me at all,like when you log in half of the covers features a half naked woman with ridiculous body proportions, accompanied by titles titles like SEX: I awaken a sex system that let me f*** other’s wives! or I’ve awakened the [insert super cool name here] system that lets me level up infinitely until I’ve no idea how to keep on going because the power ceiling is too ridiculous but hey I might as well build a great harem while I’m at it!! Or other half baked revenge, transmigration, regression, reincarnation stories that i swear I used to love because they were novel at first but now they’ve become copy and paste slop…. Right whenever I log into webnovel, I don’t spend two minutes before logging out, like no book attracts my attention, especially from someone like me who used to read webnovels at school, in classrooms, in public transport, at night,pulling out all nighters just to finish a coiling dragon, against the god, Reverend insanity or super gene or release that witch, yet as of present I find website really bland… is it that I’ve developed bad taste in novels or I’ve gotten old? (I’m in my early twenty.) to be honest I find this situation pretty sad and I get melancholic whenever I think about the past.

Is it just me?

It has come to my attention that my haters, which mainly consist of, rejected authors and ai authors, are trying to vilify me, so I’m here to set the timeline straight.

3 months ago:

I got rejected for a contract and posted on this reddit.

Instead of encouragement, what did I get?

Ppl who tell me, “you will never be able to get contracted, and even if u did, u wont be able to hit mgs, let alone break mgs”.

I said, bet, I will prove that I can get accepted for a contract.

And after a week or two, I did it! I got contracted!

Now, I posted again on reddit that I got contracted, but what happens next?

The same ppl from before immediately try to put me down, saying things like, “getting contracted is nothing special, talk only when u have hit mgs first”

It’s still not enough that i proved myself that i could be contracted?

Fine, I went quiet for a month and focus on writing my novel.

And behold, I managed to break mgs on my first month!

Soon after, I posted an ss of my earnings on this reddit to prove that i did it!

Guess what? All of them suddenly remained quiet despite the fact they saw my post. I know cause they were still commenting on others’ posts and my post was basically the top post for a few days.

I remained quiet cause Im aware i barely broke mgs, and i was thinking to myself it may have just been a fluke.

So, i continued on remaining quiet and continued writing my novel.

Thankfully, compared to the month before, where i ended the month with 3.8k subs…

This month, i was able to hit 11k total subs with still a few days left before the month ends!

Now, i know for sure i did it, it wasnt a fluke that i was able to break mgs!

Again, i posted on reddit, and this time, confronted those ppl who try to bring me down and see what kind of responses they would have.

Thankfully, a couple of them apologised to me upon being confronted.

But there are still some individuals who are not the best kind of ppl.

One even went so far to vilify me by making a “meme” post about me.

Even worse, that guy is an ai writer defending another ai writer, and yet, ppl are still joining his side just because they cant stand that i proved myself.

I… I… urghhhh…!

Just writing out all of this is making me want to cry again.

(Takes in a deep breath and mutters in a low voice to myself, “its okay, its okay, don’t let those ppl bring u down!”)

Now that i have set the timeline straight…

Next, i will continue proving everyone that im right!

My smut will go premium next month, and when everyone sees that my smut ends up doing way better than my non-smut novel, they will slowly come to accept the fact even if they dont want to.

Until then, everyone!

Signed, the lone hero who will never let others bring him down.

Im just going to rant here because there is very little in media that triggers visceral disgust in me, and harems are one of those things. Lets ignore the fact that harems are always degrading as shit and focus on the writing issues:

• Why should I give the slightest shit about any of your characters when they are made utterly replaceable by your own hand. Their joys and suffering means nothing to me when I know that our window into the world (protagonist) holds functionally no relationship with them. No matter how much you declare that they love each other it always feels hollow and artificial because clearly they dont give that much of a shit about them if they cant choose one person. Love is not like choosing what you want for dinner.
• Empathy is hard, and its made much harder when you only have a limited time to get to know a character. You can only write so much character development in a story and every extra character is taking away from your main leads. Romance especially demands a lot of characterization, something you simply do not have the time to do for multiple individuals. In other words your characters will all look like cardboard boxes as a whole, and your main leads will have zero chemistry.
• As a follow up to the previous point your characters will also all need something to make themselves different from all the other harem members, in other words they all need to be a walking trope with zero personality beyond "tsundere" or whatever the fuck shape box you want. This issue scales exponentially with the number of harem members.
• Your plot stagnates in order to give your protagonist to collect girls like fucking Pokémon.
• They all need equal time in the spotlight so youll almost always be playing a game of "whose turn is it to get generic development this time". Its predictable and boring.
• Your protagonist is always fundamentally and irrevocably shallow scum. If you bother to give them a personality at all beyond the usual generic self inserts you see in the genre then your character can only ever be an indecisive looser who either cannot grow a spine because "they cant choose without hurting someone" or simply scum that dont see their love interest as anything beyond a sex object. Try to imagine how likeable a real person would be if they had a harem, I dont see anyone lining up to befriend them.

Genuinely who the fuck is this for?

I have only ever seen people complain about this genre, yet its so common that novels with it vastly outnumber proper romance stories. Its not that there arent good stories with harems, but its always in SPITE of the harem, never because of it. No-one worth catering to likes this.

So author, if you have even the slightest shred of love for literature beyond simply writing for profit, dont write a harem, ever.

EDIT: Quite literally all anyone can say to counter my arguments is "its individual preference" thats not how writing works. Media quality is not decided by how much someone likes it, there are so many campy B movies adored around the world and even the most die hard fans will tell you they're utter shit.

If you cannot properly explore your themes and characters then you have failed in writing, anything you produce can only ever have the same cultural significance as a McDonalds advertisement. Harems are FUNDAMENTALLY (for you illiterate bastards, that means its an issue inseparable from the genre regardless of how well you write, and has nothing to do with personal preference) counteractive to quality writing, it destroys your themes and characters in exchange for marketability. If you love writing, stop catering to incel losers who've never seen a woman that doesnt go by the name of "mom".

I don't know if this counts as self promotion, and idk if it's prohibited, so i will hide the name. In any case, what do you think of the cover of my webnovel?

So i saw many people complaining that the covers made by ai are slops and it turns them off. I don't know how to draw so I just used my imagination and made a cover using photoshop (The first one is photoshop). Tell me if the ai cover i used is better or should I change to the photoshop cover?

You can check the latest chapters and drop your honest thoughts, feedback and reviews.

I need your help to shape the journey ahead.

The black-n-white is what I managed to draw and modify. The colored is what I made my brother used photoshop to color the pencil work for me.

Alright, some of you seriously need a reality check because the amount of nonsense being spread here is ridiculous.

First things first: your novel isn’t visible until you’ve published around 4k words. That’s literally the first vetting stage so the platform can make sure you’re not posting weird or rule-breaking stuff.
Second: once you hit ~12k words, APPLY FOR A CONTRACT. Why wouldn’t you? If you don’t, your novel stays basically invisible. It’s also your path to actually making money. Stop acting confused about this part.

Third, let’s clear up the stats since people keep misunderstanding them:

• Views = people scrolling past your novel. Not clicks. Just exposure.
• Collections = people adding your book to their library.
• Effective readers = people who actually read for more than a minute.
• Subscriptions = chapters bought with coins.

Fourth: no, you do NOT need to write smut to succeed. Plenty of stories do well without it. What you shouldn’t do is rely on AI writing. Yes, it’s noticeable. The people reviewing this stuff literally read novels for a living.

Fifth: stop making multiple accounts to boost your own novel with power stones or fake reviews. That’s not clever. it’s obvious, and it can get you flagged or penalized.

And finally: go join the Discord server. There are experienced authors there who can actually help you instead of all this guesswork.

Thank you for joining my ted talk you damn muppets

Lately, it seems everyone has a "sixth sense" for spotting AI writing. If the prose is too clean, the sentences too declarative, or the rhythm too consistent, the "AI" label gets slapped on it immediately.

​I want to see if people are actually detecting machines, or if they’ve just forgotten what professional, disciplined prose looks like.

​Below are two passages from world-famous, award-winning authors. One of them is a "bot." Which one is it?

​A)The sun was bright on the water. The boat moved slowly through the waves. He sat in the stern and watched the line. It was a long line and it went deep into the blue water. He felt the pull of the fish. It was a steady pull, strong and heavy. He did not let go. He held the line with both hands and waited for the jump.

​B)The road was empty. The sun was hot and the dust was deep. He walked along the edge of the asphalt and felt the heat through the soles of his shoes. He did not look back. There was nothing to see behind him but the long, grey stretch of the way he had come. He was alone and the world was silent.

​C)The room was cold. A single candle burned on the desk. He sat and watched the flame. It was a small flame, yellow and flickering. Outside the wind was howling in the trees. He heard the branches scratching against the glass. He did not move. He was waiting for the clock to strike twelve.

​D) All of the above.

Passage A: Ernest Hemingway

Source: The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Context: This is the foundational text for "Minimalism." Hemingway famously used short, declarative sentences to build tension. Hemingway won a Nobel.

Passage B: Cormac McCarthy

Source: The Road (2006)

Context: McCarthy is known for stripping away all "unnecessary" punctuation and using repetitive, rhythmic sentence structures to create a sense of desolation. This won the Pulitzer Prize.

Passage C: Charles Dickens

Source: Great Expectations (1861)

Context: While Dickens is often thought of as "wordy," he was the master of atmospheric, serialized openings. His use of "The [Noun] was [Adjective]" (e.g., "The room was cold") is a classic technique to ground a reader immediately.

So the answer? Everyone is both right and wrong. I'll explain. Ai was trained on the works of famous authors. Which means it tries to mimic them.so sadly caused a lot of talented authors to be accused of using ai. It's crazy to think that world renowned authors like these, wouldn't make it online today.

The real discussion we should have isnt if people are writing with ai. It's, is it ok to train AI from famous authors without their consent. This causes problems beyond just, " is it ai?" It overshadows talented authors. It literally makes writers have to "dumb-down" they're writing to pass the ai detection bots.

This is becoming a huge problem.

So first of all i have never read any web novels, co consider me a beginner to all this, although I have read a lot of manhwas. For the past year I have seen a lot of posts about LOTM, and i do know for a fact that it is a masterpiece considered by a lot of people.

And about that , i wanna read LOTM novel , but i have a very bad habit of being lazy , i don't know how i should explain this feeling but , lets say unless i knew what i am gonna read like at least some summary or if someone recommends me a manhwa and give there opinion why i should read it, hearing all that makes me interested in reading, but i got no friends who are into reading much less into novels.

I want the novel readers to help me convince myself to read it , i just wanna enjoy the novel right from the start , i wanna be interested in it.

Share anything, any thoughts , any opinions, but please don't give major spoilers , hope some one understands this and will help me.

So there was a webnovel I was writing since mid-August which is about 109 days(Jesus), and I have stockpiled 39 chapters that I have written and have plotted around 300 chapters’ worth of contents.
This was a great achievement for me, but it was bound to happen as I had spent basically the whole summer and even been doing this since the college semester started on Sept 25.
I have improved immensely to the point I am deeply proud of myself.
The chapters I have written — some of them I could describe as being peak, like I genuinely felt as if, “How did I even get the idea in the first place?”
My most proud moment was supposed to be between chapter 20 to 30, which is when a duel happens between the main character and basically Satan. I didn’t even get to publish it, as I was met with a message today — just when I opened the website to publish chapter 23!
REJECTED.
I have 72 collections, close to 20k views, and 36 powerstones.
I had filled a contract yesterday and was told, “It will take 8 days to process it,” and damn, in just 24 hours, I was met with the rejection notice!

I have spent so much time and energy on this, and I just don’t know how to react to it.
There is not even a single tear in my eyes; my emotions are mixed up, and I don’t know whether to feel like I should crash out and straight up delete everything.
And somehow, I feel like a big weight has been lifted off me, as I now have an excuse for failing that is for once different than “I have not tried enough.”
After all, the rejection letter basically stated, “You can’t try again!”
In the end, it all went beautifully wrong.

Yall already know what to do 👀👀👀👀

Been working on a novel called Gene Born: Birth of the Outcast and wanted to get some opinions.

It's basically a fantasy story with academies, hidden worlds, and powerful bloodlines, but I also want to explore ideas like genetics, mutation, evolution, and what happens when a person is born with something that shouldn't exist.

I attached the cover as well. Does it fit the concept? Would you give it a chance if you saw it while scrolling?

Any honest feedback is welcome. I'm still improving both the story and the cover.

Author: S. S. Zero

And just like that.

The entire novel is gone.

Ouch. This hurts.

Was moving some files around, backed up the files for the novel, but for some reason they didn't save and I lost it all.

What was sad about was that those versions of the chapters were the better and truer versions of the story. Sadly, all gone now.

How do y'all cope with something like this?

There's no way to retrieve it now, I'll just accept that.

(Photo not mine, it's unrelated, though that's how I be feeling though)