UNDER RECONSTRUCTION

I don't know if what I'm seeing is a Wattpad issue or a problem with my writing. I'm an amatuer. Of course, my writing is flawed. 

Throughout Sunset, readers skipped chapters as the reads yo-yoed up and down. As of early this morning, five of the 23 chapters had 15 or fewer reads. Excluding the two anomalous first and final chapters, around 40 reads, only seven have 20 or more views. I know the sample size is minuscule, but I can only work with the numbers I have, and numbers don't lie. If you look at it as a percentage, several chapters have 30% fewer views.

And why have 38 people read the final chapter when the chapters leading up to it have half as many, including the climactic Chapter 21? That shit baffles me. What's the point of reading only the final chapter? Are these people or AI bots? 

I saw this trend in Sacred Heart as well. If you go back and look at VIP and AA, it's the same. The reads are up and down, and the likes are few. I think four readers actually take the two seconds required to vote on chapters they like, and I appreciate their effort.

I've hit pause on publishing while I work on my writing problem. Since so few people vote or comment, only eyeballs can be counted. Readers are either skipping chapters or bailing out before Wattpad counts them as reads. I don't know the threshold for registering as a read. Regardless, this fact troubles me, and I'm trying to figure out why some chapters underperform.

My first theory is that my chapters are long. Chapter length is an easy fix, and I'm already on it. 

White Wedding was complete. I had 14 chapters unloaded to Wattpad, ready to publish, when I hit the pause button. On my profile, I had WW listed as coming in May. That's not happening. The next punk book is undergoing a significant reconstruction. I've gone back to chapter one, slashing scenes, rearranging, and making the chapters shorter, which will result in more chapters.

I'm also considering that maybe I have too many characters and storylines. I tend to get into the weeds and provide details that some readers may find boring. Maybe people don't want to know the ins and outs of the international diamond trade or how major record labels screw artists. So, I have deleted a new character and an entire storyline built around them. That also helps in word reduction.

This is not easy work. I must be careful of what I cut, and be sure all subsequent references are scrubbed. Reduction is by far the hardest edit for me. This will take time.

The worst part of this process is the demotivation that creeps in when going over the same chapters, work I recently considered complete, and not really knowing what the problem actually is. 

Is my problem the chapter length? I guess we'll see whether 4500-5500-word chapters do better than 6000-7000. What if the problem isn't long chapters? If it's simply structure, style, and the quality of my writing. I'm fucked. At my age, I'm not relearning how to write.

Once I figure this out, there will be two books, over 50 chapters total. I'm 12 chapters into punk book #8, the one that follows on White Wedding's heels. Now that's on hold while I reconstruct WW. I do not know how long this will take.