How do I get my au to become popular like yours
ALRIGHT, I’ve got a lot to say here!!
FIRST OF ALL, THE MOST IMPORTANT ADVICE I CAN GIVE: Don’t write for popularity. Seriously. I know that’s cheesy, but I’ve tried it before and it’s just draining and fruitless. If you’re writing an AU, or a fic, or anything random related, you should be writing it because it’s something you wanted to see. When starting Weapon by Name, I wrote the first five chapters with no intention to post it at all, it was purely because I wanted to read it. We have the canon writers to give us stuff that’s written for popularity; if you’re writing fanfic, you have the freedom to cater to the audience of you, so embrace that!!
That being said, I do think I have an idea of some factors that have brought Weapon by Name to the position it’s in. So, here’s what worked for me!
If you’re making a Marvel AU, something that I’ve noticed is that AUs that are more grounded in canon tend to do better. For example, I actually wrote a IronDad and SpiderSon fic at one point, which theoretically should have done well because that was a super popular dynamic. However, the fic was a Peter Pan AU, and had a ton of additional worldbuilding that I think made a lot of people skip over it. On the other hand my GotG fic where the only change to canon was that Floor lived ended up doing pretty well. I think I’ve noticed that as a trend; people seem to like AUs that are close enough to canon to be easily recognizable, probably because this makes them a bit easier to initially grasp and get invested in. Things like “Civil War BUT Hulk is there” or “Daredevil BUT if Matt lost his powers” are more likely to get hit then stories that are so heavily AU that the characters look more like OCs. This can change based on the fandom you’re in, but I think it’s relatively true for Marvel AUs!
Once you have your idea, you want to establish consistency. If you’re consistent, that means you’re reliable, and that means people will come back to your story. WbN has slowed down a lot now that I’m back in college, but during the first month or so I was putting out a new chapter every two to three days and I think that is a huge part of the reason that it started to gain a following. It gave people a reason to check back with the story, and to do so frequently. A big thing that helped me with keeping consistency was to establish an editing buffer; I’m actually writing the story about five chapters ahead of where I’m posting it! This buffer gives me time to ensure quality, cohesiveness, and also gives me an update to fall back on if I really need it!
This is where I got flat-out lucky. I had no idea that the X-Men fandom would get such a resurgence when I started posting WbN. I started posting it because X-Men ‘97 had rejuvenated my love for the characters, and I quickly found out that I wasn’t the only one feeling that way. That initial wave gave the story a bit of a boost, and then by the time Deadpool and Wolverine came out the fic had ten or fifteen chapters; the perfect amount of there being enough to read, but not too much to be overwhelming. I think that’s where a lot of the attention came from, and that was just pure luck with the timing.
Now while timing may have gotten some interest, interaction is where you go from “interest” to “community”. If you want people to interact with your work, interact with them! Reply to any comments you get! If you get fan art, link it in the story! If someone reaches out to you, respond to them and chat (I got out of my comfort zone and replied to a few direct messages that I got as the story gained interest, and holy cow I’m so glad I did because I met some of my favorite people on the internet)! The reason that Weapon by Name got to a moderate level of “popularity” is because people started talking about it, and the more that people talk about it the more people it will reach. Your audience is important and valuable, so make sure you treat them as such, no matter if you have two people reading your story or two hundred.
Speaking of, you have to keep going no matter how “popular” your AU is. That’s why it’s so important that you write something you want to read, because there is always a chance that you do everything right and then your story is still lost to the depths of the internet. I’ve had that happen more times than I can count. However, you have to keep creating; you never know when someone might find your story, and if you have a good amount of content out then they’re more likely to stick around. Most people would be more likely to click on a multichapter fic with ten chapters than one with only one. You have to love your story, and you have to keep writing; worse case scenario, finish it because you want to see the ending, even if it never gets “popular”.
There are other factors to what goes into a “popular” AU, of course. I do think that quality matters, and I do think that WbN’s quality is one of the reasons people are coming back to it. The way you present your story (through tagging, description, summary, etc) also can be a huge impact on whether or not someone will check out your work. Style matters, voice matters, character choice matters… but at the end of the day, this isn’t something you should be writing for hits and kudos. This is fandom. You should be writing a story for yourself. Don’t get discouraged by a lack of hits or attention. Just keep creating; you never know when things might work out in your favor!
