Author's Notes: Yea or Nay?

onceatiger

onceatiger

Virgin
Hi, folks,
I'm a pretty new writer here, having just posted my first story with only a few chapters as of yet a couple days back (Women Have Needs), and I'm just curious how people feel about in-story author's notes. You know the kind, usually at the end of a chapter: "Author here, just letting you know about where this thread is going and asking for feedback", etc.

I've always found them a little jarring, myself, but on the other hand, if you particularly want feedback on some decision or branch you're not sure of, or want to impart some sort of "out of character" information, I'm not sure what else you should do. So, since I'm trying to get into the swing of things regularly creating content on this site, I thought I'd see how other people felt about things like that here.
 
I can't imagine a situation in which author's notes would be overall beneficial. Chapters have comments for a reason, and by separating notes from content you're not disrupting passive readers (i.e. those that don't interact on the site). It's important to be aware that, on the Internet, most of your audience is invisible, effectively - only a small fraction will like, comment, or even make an account on CHYOA; the vast majority are just reading. You could have chapters dedicated solely to notes as suggested above, but interspersing them with story content ranges from annoying to intrusive to destructive, depending on how they're done - at least for this 'silent majority'.

Note that the type of users to be engaged with the forum and respond to this post will generally be more tolerant of author's notes than the actual average CHYOA reader, because they (we?) are on the opposite end of the activity spectrum to most of your readers.
 
I personally like to use the "what's next?" question for this. Of course thats only used for very brief communications, but I feel like it's removed enough from the actual chapter to not be too obstructive.

For anything longer, definitely stick to the comments, unless the information is absolutely vital(it most likely isn't)
 
I sometimes like to do them, to confirm for people that they're at the deepest part of the story and encourage them to suggest anything they wanna see. It can be nice to just check in and to let people know that, for now, they're up to date with the story so far, but I always delete 'em as soon as I add the next chapter on, and I think that's the way to go for sure. In that way, the note is always movin' around to wherever the most up-to-date part of the story is, and you don't have that interruption of story-note-story.
 
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