Avoid Launching Into a Void
Six ways to grow an audience before you’ve got anything to sell
Many creators make the same mistake. They finish the thing first, and then go hunting for an audience to see it.
Screen scribblers do it. So do indie game designers, self-published fiction scribblers, musicians, visual artists, and TTRPG designers. By the time the finished thing shows up, building anything real with an audience is off the table. A social following isn’t an audience. An announcement post isn’t a relationship. Showing up after years of silence with “hey, I made this thing” is a cold pitch to people who don’t know you exist.
I called this the WAG Pipeline: World, then Audience, then Game, whatever form the game finally takes. I’m living that pipeline right now with Terra Conflictus, my tabletop game. Lore documents, faction fiction, audio scripts, and a found-footage meta-narrative have all been out in the world for months.
It’s the same instinct I had helping build Heroes for NBC. I used to describe running that show like running a D&D campaign. We’d build the world, the rules, the factions. The scribblers and our partners in publishing and online were the players.
My job was shaping a space where everyone could be creative and the fans felt like citizens of the mythology. Same deal here. Build your world loud enough and long enough, and the audience shows up before you’re trying to sell them anything.
Here’s six ways to actually do it.
Pick One Platform and Use It
Match the platform to how you naturally talk. If you scribble, start a newsletter or a Substack. If you’re verbally gifted, do short video or a podcast. If you draw, live on Instagram or ArtStation. If you forge communities, Discord’s your home.
The right platform changes by craft. Screen scribblers do best on Substack, short video, and Twitter/X for the industry conversation.
Indie game folks live on YouTube devlogs, Discord, and an itch.io page, with Twitter/X still the best spot for cross-community discovery.
TTRPG designers cluster on Substack, Discord, and itch.io, a small enough community that you can actually find people.
Fiction scribes work Substack, BookFunnel, and serialization sites like Royal Road. Musicians do best on Bandcamp for the direct fan relationship and YouTube for process.
TikTok’s organic reach has been sliding for years, and getting seen there increasingly means paying to play.
Visual artists anchor on ArtStation or Behance, then use Instagram for reach and TikTok or YouTube for process video.
Ask yourself which platform doesn’t feel like a job. Posting three times a week on one platform for a year beats a scribbler juggling five profiles badly. Consistency’s your whole strategy.
Show the Work in Progress
Most creators only show up when they have something to sell, a finished game, a book, a new album, and the audience hears the subtext loud and clear: I need something from you.
The creators who build something that lasts do the opposite. They show the work while it’s still a mess.
Game devs post devlogs, the main way players discover and stick with an indie game before it even exists.
TTRPG folks post playtest reports and half-finished faction documents, letting the system develop out loud.
Fiction scribblers drop first chapters, world building notes, character sketches.
Musicians post studio session clips and demo fragments.
Visual artists post work-in-progress shots and timelapses, which almost always beat a finished-piece post for engagement.
Process content does two jobs. It proves you’re actually working. And teaches your audience what you make, how, and what you believe, all as they watch you make it. Invite people in before stuff exists, and by the time it does, they’re already invested.
Give Something Away First
If every post you make is a pitch, you’re running a billboard. Most people drive right on past billboards without reading them. So, give audiences something useful before you ever ask for anything.
Scribblers can put out a craft essay, a scene breakdown, a structural framework.
Game devs can drop a free playable demo or a devlog that actually teaches something.
TTRPG creators can hand out a free one-page scenario or a mechanics breakdown.
Fiction scribblers can give away a short story set in their world or a first chapter.
Musicians can release an isolated stem or a production breakdown.
Visual artists can put out a technique tutorial or a full breakdown of a finished piece.
The test is simple. Would somebody share it with a friend whether or not they ever buy anything from you?
If you do that consistently, the ask, when it finally comes, will land on people who already know you’re worth their time.
Own One Direct Channel
Own at least one channel that’s actually yours. Social platforms change their algorithm, choke your reach, or vanish outright. A direct channel can’t disappear based on a corp’s product decision.
Email’s the foundation, full stop. Start your list early, make it really easy to join, even easier to leave, and give people a reason to stick around that they can’t get from the public feed.
Two more worth naming. For game devs, the Steam wishlist works like a direct channel with real teeth. Every wishlister gets pinged the moment you launch, and that first wave of sales helps you climb the charts and rack up reviews fast. Build the list from people who actually play your genre, because a bloated wishlist full of the wrong people tanks your algorithmic performance later.
For musicians, Bandcamp subscriptions work the same way email does, landing directly with subscribers with no algorithm in between, and artists keep an average of 82% of the revenue. A subscriber list built during the process phase converts to launch sales in a way streaming followers never do.
Every creator who waited three years to start their direct channel probably wishes they’d started on day one.
Let People Put Their Hands on It
The strongest communities don’t just watch. They participate.
Playtesting is the sharpest version of this for game devs and TTRPG designers. A player who’s tested your game before launch is worth ten players who found you through an ad, because they’ve already put their hands on the work. TTRPG crowdfunding campaigns live or die almost entirely on how big and engaged that pre-launch audience is. The room needs to be full before the campaign opens.
People support what they helped build. Give them a way to contribute, whether that’s a feedback thread, a vote on a creative choice, or a straight-up playtest, and they’ll stick around a lot longer than those folks who just showed up to watch.
Let Your Personality Run the Whole Thing
There’s no universal playbook here. Some scribblers are funny. Some are obsessive about one narrow thing, one broken convention they can’t stop picking apart. Some build community instinctively, others do better on the page than on camera.
All of that is information you should actually use.
Your audience connects with you before they connect with your project. The work lands harder when the person behind it is already known and trusted. Figure out what’s actually true about how you communicate, then build the platform around that truth.
People can feel the difference between someone playing a character and someone just being themselves.
The Order Matters
Pick one platform and actually use it, own a direct channel from day one, and give before you ask.
Then share the process to keep the thing alive. Invite people to put their hands on it so the community builds itself on top. Let your personality run point so the whole structure lasts for years.
We built Heroes’ whole online mythology on this instinct before anybody had a word for it. I’m building Terra Conflictus on it right now. The world is there for exploration, experimentation, and iteration.
ABS. Always. Be. Scribbling.