Back up again! This is a guide on how to make your writing as 'user friendly' as possible for the reader.
Hit read more if you have not already, else wise you're missing out.
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Writing for others should not be taken in the literal sense. Writing for your reader does not necessarily mean that you have to give you your ideas or make any drastic changes to a story. The phrase, as I will be using it, means that you make a story as 'reader-friendly' as possible. You are meeting your reader half-way to ensure they have a pleasant experience and understand everything you were attempting to communicate with the piece.


Your reader is anyone who might happen to join the community and find the writing. They can be a seasoned veteran or a fresh faced fawn. This poses more of a challenge because you cannot assume that your reader knows things you might consider 'common knowledge'.

Your reader's only bridge to understanding the story is the information that YOU as the writer provide. For this reason you must keep things in mind:

The reason you posted the piece is to be read by someone else. Otherwise you would not have posted it to a public place.

Your reader only knows as much information as you provide.

Your reader may not be familiar with your deer, or common landmarks of the forest.

Your reader may have very little patience. If the piece is especially long you may wish to break it up into two separate pieces.

Your audience encompasses ALL age groups. For this reason you should ALWAYS put a warning in the title if there will be strong language, violence, sexual content, or death. It gives a clear warning for people to know what they are getting into when they click the link.



Your reader is a stranger.
They do not know your deer.
They do not know your deer's past.
They do not know who your deer hangs out with, who their mate is, where they sit in the forest nor what they do for fun.
They do not even know your deer's name for the Twin God's sake.

Assume that your reader is a new player to the site and knows 100% absolutely nothing about the forest, your deer, or any character in the story for that matter.

For this reason you must always fill in the blanks for your reader. For example:

"Foolish doe. Do you think for a second you could cross me again? I remember what you did last summer and I am getting my revenge for the sake of all water fowl!"

"Doe? ha ha you think little antlers makes me one of the lesser fowl?! I'll show you whose plucky!"

Now what do you know about the above deer?

Can you name which deer they are based on the way they 'talk'?
Do you know what deer 2 did last summer?
Do you know why both seem to have an obsession with water fowl?
No.
Because you just clicked a link and were blind sided with a conversation you know nothing about.

For this reason, you must always assume that your reader does not know a thing before you start throwing out dialog and plot. Under the assumption that your reader is completely ignorant, you must then fill in all the potential missing information for their sake.



Your deer has a name. Chances are you call it something other than 'random assortment of shapes in a gold halo'. So why, might I ask, aren't you using your deer's name in the story?!

As you have seen above, you cannot assume that your reader will know what deer is the narrator or even a character in the story if you do not thoroughly introduce them.

No, putting "btw here are the deer featured" at the bottom does not count. It is VERY helpful as an afterthought, but you should be using names all the way through.

Did you introduce a new character? Name them.
Is one character narrating? Name them.

Now comes the second part:
Who is this character?

First of all everyone knows that it's a deer.
If it is NOT a deer, you better make a mention.
That would be under 'vital information'.

The rest of the 'vital information' will be covered as followed:

What do they look like?
How are they related to the other characters?
What are they thinking/feeling during all of it? (not necessary, but interesting)
Are they female or male?
How old are they?
How long have they been in the forest?

If any of that is key to the story, it better be explained.


Clearly you have some sort of plot line in mind.

If your plot line concerns the above two deer having a showdown over the 'massacre of the ducklings' you must be sure you communicate this to your reader.

Make sure they are aware of the past, present, and possibly at the very end 'future' of this story line. It should have a clear succession of events with a definite end or a clear indication that the work was intentionally left on a cliffhanger or will be finished at another tome.

For example, If I were writing about deer 1 and 2's duckling massacre I might have deer 1 flashback to the day that it happened before going into a rage and screaming at deer 2. Then there would be a fight sequence concluded with deer 2 running off vowing revenge on deer 1.
This gives a good indication that there may be a sequel while ALSO wrapping up that encounter in a tidy manner with very few left over questions.


What information do you believe is 100% necessary to understand your vision? More importantly, are you communicating this to your reader?

If deer 1 is trying to kill deer 2, wouldn't it be a good idea to let your reader know instead of forcing them to go to another bio page/status/entry to find out that information?

In all honesty, it won't happen. All the basic information someone needs to understand a story should be within the story. Your reader will not hunt down some obscure piece of writing or tucked away biography page to find out that deer 1 and deer 2 are estranged lovers who now find themselves at war because deer 2 accidentally trod on a nest of ducklings.

A simple flashback, aside comment, soliloquy, stream of consciousness, or even simple dialog can fill in enough information to get reader and writer on the same page about what is happening to cause the conflict of the story.

If the story directly relates to another piece of writing there should be a notice at the top of a page with a link to that writing and a small message that they should read the other entry first. Do not tell your reader this after the fact. You could easily lose the reader somewhere in the middle if they jump right in with no knowledge about whatever story or chapter predated the current one.

Another easy way to show this is to have "chapter n" or "part n of n" in the title. Where as n stands for whatever number it happens to be.


Descriptions are wonderful to give your reader the imagery of characters, scenery, events etc. The problem is when the writer gets out of control with descriptions.
Let's have an example shall we?

He came upon a large leafy tree. It appeared to be an oak of some sort and the storm from the previous night had not been calm to the aging giant. It's branches were completely bare and the ground was scattered with the stripped leaves. The trunk was so ravaged by debris that it splintered and wavered with the slightest gentle breeze. He looked upon it in great pity and collected the discarded seeds that littered the ground. There was no saving his mother's tree, but it's demise would give birth to the future forest dedicated to her memory.

Now let us examine when good descriptions go bad...

The tall swathing gentlemen with long blond hair, strapping frame, and golden oculars that resembled the most gorgeous summer sunrise on the 5th of may in the fifthteen year of our lord cast his magnificently ruggedly handsome piercing gaze upon the untamed piece of wilderness before him. It was at one time a great Oak planted by his mother. His mother was a kind beautiful woman whose hair could be compared to the feathers of a raven in flight on a moonless night with a slight breeze. Her gray hair mottled the dark beautiful cascades like mercury penetrates the depths of your soul. The oak stood about ten feet tall with a thin frame and twenty branches. The first branch was strongly built with a few small branches forking away from the trunk. The second branch was thinner and at once time held many leaves. The third branch had been savaged by the winds of the previous storm and splintered in exactly five places. The first crack left the branch at-

Alright I assume you’ve stopped reading about now. I have not even communicated why he is at the tree, why the tree is overly significant, or what happened to it because I’ve been too busy describing the topography of the vegetation and how amazing beautiful both the mysterious protagonist and his mother are. If you notice, some of the descriptions I give are just confusing, nonsensical, or unnecessarily detailed.
Descriptions are wonderful, but do not get out of control. The reader is not willing to sit down and try to decipher what exactly an ‘ocular’ (who would know I'm trying to refer to an eye, really?) is or what the feathers of a raven in flight on a moonless night with a slight breeze have anything to do with hair.

No need to pull out the thesaurus to make yourself sound posh or cultured. We’re here to read the story, not to see how many different words you can use to describe a leaf. Try not to overwhelm your reader with the minutia and look at the big picture.



S'mae! Croeso cynnes iawn! Mae'n dda gen i gwrdd â chi. Nadolig llawen a blwyddyn newydd dda
Let us now examin together the sentence that i am in the process of righting, as you can see it is both not grammatically correct and frankly just one big run on that is very streining for you to attempt to reed; this can't be helped,however, as i am writing for myself and decided to directly copy and paste this from my little note pad prorgam not runnning spell cveck, not checking switches words around for, and above all not putting any spaces between my thoughts leaving you to only stare at one big giant glaring paragraph'; you have no reference point, no way to tell where you've stopped or started, nor any time to digest the information, by the way did you notice how this is all in disgusting eye blinding colours that make you not want to bother reading it further? I can't help it, my favorite colours are neon pink and cyan so i'm running them together cause i think its pretty. She smiled and turned towards the small group of writers furiously taking notes. Now, class, do you understand why this could be annoying? Alecsander would like you all to know that this paragraph was purposefully written in a very annoying fashion that makes you not want to read it as it is a combination of all of the problem areas that can distract and turn away your audience....it may seem hard to digest....and i applaud you for actually reading it (if you did elsewiseshameonyou). by the way we now decided we like hot pink and black.

Just a wee bit annoying is it not?

So here is how you fix it:

-Use paragraphs.
Got that?
Space your thoughts using their logical breaking points. If deer 1 and deer 2 just got finished fighting and now you're switching to dialog, you can logically put in a paragraph.
It's okay.
It's good for you.
Just hit the return key.

And now, a reiteration:

Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs. Please use paragraphs.

It makes it easier for us to read. It makes it easier for us to read. It makes it easier for us to read. It makes it easier for us to read. It makes it easier for us to read. It makes it easier for us to read. It makes it easier for us to read. It makes it easier for us to read. It makes it easier for us to read. It makes it easier for us to read.

Thank you very much, sincerely, your audience's eyes. Thank you very much, sincerely, your audience's eyes. Thank you very much, sincerely, your audience's eyes. Thank you very much, sincerely, your audience's eyes. Thank you very much, sincerely, your audience's eyes. Thank you very much, sincerely, your audience's eyes. Thank you very much, sincerely, your audience's eyes.

Now let's not make me repeat myself yet again.

-Provide a translator/guide to slang
Some characters don't speak English. The community, however, as a whole seems to use this as our common dialect. As such, be kind to your reader and provide translations within the text. Use parenthesis or greater than/less than signs or some sort of way to let the reader know what they're saying. It could be as simple as having another character 'echo' what they say back.

For example:
Deer 1 approached his escape vehicle and flared his nostrils. Something was wrong here. He did not recall it ever being quite this..slimy. It hit him like a ton of bricks and he raced from the space shuttle screaming at the top of his lungs for all of the forest to hear. "Mae fy hofrenfad yn llawn llyswenno!"

Deer 2 looked up in alarm and cocked his head to the side."Your hovercraft is full of WHAT?! eels? that is digusting my good chap."

This also holds true for use of slang. Not everyone lives in the same region, city, state, providence, or even country. As such, if you use any exclusively native slang or words you should provide some sort of 'dictionary' at the bottom where the meanings of the words are listed.

-Run spell check AND have someone proof read it.

Self-explanatory. There should be no reason why you do not do both of these things. Even the best writers switch up a word, typo, or accidentally leave out an important word.

-it is not very good to be vague because it causes bad stuff.
Honestly, what good is the above sentence? What did you get out of it? Absolutely nothing. It's just vague filler words. Make sure you make it clear what characters are speaking, what is going on, what they're feeling etc. Don't get lost in a sea of 'he, she, it, they, we etc."

-Pick a point of view/tense and stick with it!
If it's a first person narration, it better stay in first person!
If it is third person, there should be no I's. No I think, I feel, I wonder etc. unless it is dialog. Even then He, or she, or it, or -insert character name- said it.

-Unnecessary colouring can easily become an eyesore.
Yes, colours can bring a piece to life. The problem is when the writer gets out of control. Every paragraph does not need to be a different colour nor does every third word or line.
I, personally, believe colouring should be limited to the number of characters in the story+2. That way every deer can have a colour they speak in, you can have the body text a different colour and one for emphasis.
Example: A one deer one narration piece can have 3 colour changes. A Two deer piece has 4, a ten deer piece has 12 changes etc.

Uses of colouring
So you want to add colour but you’re not sure where to put it. The most common places you’ll see colour are as followed:
The whole piece can be in a different colour to make it ‘prettier’.
You can also use colours to emphasize certain words.
Dialog in particular is a favourite to emphasize as most users make certain deer talk in certain font changes/colours.
Flashbacks are always good to emphasize with a colour/typeface change.
Warning about colour choice
In the above example paragraph I used black. You can BARELY read black on when you are quoting or specifically replying to a post where a character is using black. You end up having to strain your vision or high-light to see.

You also see me using bright clashing yellow/cyan for the whole body text which strains your retinas.
It doesn't look good and people usually will not sit down and read something unpleasant to look at.

Try to pick subdued neutral colours unless you’re doing a deer’s dialog.

Some deer are very energetic/hyper and may bust out a bright cyan. Feel free to use it, just be mindful that you’re using a colour that might give someone a headache. You may want to limit their dialog or choose a slightly darker shade if they have a long speech.
In short, have to make sure the colour choice is both easy on the eyes and does not clash with the ‘chocolate’ background or the ‘dark brown’ reply background.

-Typface Taboos
Fonts are wonderful are they not? They can easily bring a bit of class to a piece and give more of a personality to a deer or a piece.

You’ve met those deer, the aristocrats. The fobs. The poets or artists who just scream ‘swirly cursive’. You sit down and start to search Microsoft word for the perfect swirly curly cursive font that encapsulates their renaissance soul.

Found it? Good.
Now close the program and forget it or get ready to provide translations.

Let’s be frank here, most of the artistic curly fonts are near impossible to read.
They look pretty, but chances are unless you pump up the font size to 16+ no one will have a clue what you’re on about.

For this reason you must make the hard decision:
Don’t use the font or Provide a plain text translation.

There are many ‘artistic’ cursive fonts that are not necessarily as hard on the eyes. Take for example the following fonts:

Bradly hand ITC is not too bad.

castellar is very legible

How about that lucida calligraphy? Nice eh?

monotype corsiva is quite dainty and very pretty.

Have one to add? Leave it in the comments. Am I incorrect and one of these is hell on wheels to read? Tell me for the twin god’s sake. I’d hate to be advocating a font that hurts your brain.


First of all, you did read this guide yes?
Did you see something you are doing wrong?
Yes?
Correct it, re-update, and bump yourself back up.

Wait, you mean you do all of this and still are not getting comments?

Add 'looking for critique/feedback' to the title and bump it back up.

What do you mean you don't want to sound 'desperate?'
Hey man, I'm not the one whose obsessive over who is reading/commenting. :x

Though in all honesty here is the main culprit:
The activeness of the community.
People miss things.
Artists start flooding the 'recent posts' and then your nice poem/story/what have you is back on page 10 when it was posted less than a day ago.

It happens.
You can rage against the machine all you want about how it's 'not fair' and you're 'not getting the attention you deserve' and 'artists always get comments' blah blah blah but it will not change a thing.

You must proactively be the change you want to see.
Did you read a writing you liked?
Comment telling that writer.
Not only do they get positive feedback, but their piece also gets bumped BACK UP for more community members to see. I often find my 'old' writing back on page one because someone new saw it and commented.

You know what I do?
I go find one of their writings that I enjoy and bump it up for more people to enjoy.

You can also get views/comments by making a page where all of your writings are cataloged together for easy browsing. If the writings are the diary entries of a deer , then they can be linked right on that character's biography page. If it is a miscellaneous collection of poems than make a blog called "____'s poetry" and have all of them linked there. If one person enjoys ONE story of yours, chances are they will want to find more of your writing. Making it available in one spot is another easy way to meet your audience half-way.


The main way to get views/comments is to keep yourself active, engaging, and available.

But remember...
Comments/views are nice, but they're not the end all be all of writing. You shouldn't post something and EXPECT people to fawn over it and shower it with praise. Pay more attention to the number of 'views' versus than the number of comments.

A poem that has 100 views but no comments is most certainly not being 'ignored'. It is just not being given feedback. You might have to ask if you want that extra bonus to the view.

Not everyone will enjoy your writing .
Even the most brilliantly hailed authors of the human race can have works that are detested by his peers.
Shakespeare's writing, for example, is notoriously hated by school age children who are forced to read and examine his plays for English class.
No amount of plot, story, character development, detail, action, adventure, romance etc. will make a person who does not like the character or genre of the story sit down and read it.
You have to accept this fact and move on.
There is no fairy tale world where everyone in the community is going to adore your latest writing and hail you as the next Twain.
Accept your praise and criticisms with equal dignity.
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Now that this is all said and done:
What did I miss?

Is there anything in particular that you, as a reader, know turns you off from a piece of writing?
Note: not *content wise* but layout, word choice, style of writing, etc.