Advice - In The Form Of Rants

Author's Notes...

Okay, in case you haven't guessed, this chapter relates to the oh so beautiful author's notes.

Yeah, those.

Don't you just love when you're in the middle of reading a book, then you find 'a/n' underlined, bolded, put into italics and capitals? Half of the time, they're explaining possibly the most redundant, mundane and stupid things: the other they're making excuses for not updating or telling everyone their life story.

This is just... no. I always say this to people when it comes to author's notes:

'Don't have more than 3 author's notes in a book with 15 chapters (not including dedications). It's excessive an annoying. You can only break this rule if it's a somewhat important announcement (having an operation, a child, moving and so). But, you should delete or unpublish them (unless they're on your message board) after.'

I say this to stop people from cluttering up their work all the time. It's even worse when I'm telling this to people who are closer to double my age, than my age. Not only because it looks like I'm looking down on them, but it sounds a little rude.

But, those are just how many. What about the length?

Well, I'm not a huge fan of reading 2000 word essays from random 11 year old kids on here talking about how their crush didn't notice them, so I'd say that author's notes in a book chapter should be no longer than a tenth of the written work before.

To put it in short, if you have a 1500 word chapter, when you add your author's note, it should be no longer than 150 words. In the end, you should have 1650 words max. Anything longer than a tenth is swallowing the story. But, if your chapters are very long, an added author's note on top of that would put off more potential readers, so watch out for that.

What about people who post author's notes (like myself) in seperate chapters?

Well, for us lot, I have a rule regarding placement. There are only 2 places to put an author's note (includes disclaimers, trigger warnings and copyright notices); you either put them at the start, or the very end. Never ever, on any grounds apart from the aforementioned, place author's notes in the middle- anywhere but the beginning or end. It looks idiotic, random and confusing.

Seriously though, would you read a published paper/hard back book with random author's notes scattered throughout? Where the author talks about their own life more than the story? I wouldn't: it's unprofessional, embarrassing and amateurish.

To sum it up, try to keep author's notes to a minimal. I want to read your story, not find out about your weekend.