"Practical Guide To Webserials" edition

A general for readers and authors involved or interested in the growing phenomenon of 'web novels', serialized English fiction posted to websites such as:
>Royalroad, Webnovel, Scribblehub, Wattpad, Archive of Our Own, Spacebattles, HFY, various personal author websites, and more

>Why read web novels?
Not for prose or tight editing or deep themes, frankly. As a whole, web novels are infamous for content sprawl and pacing issues. If you enjoy having millions of words to sink your teeth into to get to know the world and characters, though, you may be interested. Keeping up with other readers on a weekly basis to discuss the story's events unfolding is another perk, in the same way discussing an ongoing TV show might be.

>Why write web novels?
Ease of access & potential for Patreon earnings. Many successful authors gain an audience on their website of choice and funnel their readers into a Patreon. See https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators/writing for an idea of what some are earning.
Also, once an author has earned a fanbase, transitioning into an Amazon self-publishing career is several orders of magnitude easier than starting 'dry'.

> Advice for Noobs!

Running your story like the business it is:
https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/116847

On writing webserials:
https://alexanderwales.com/how-to-write-a-web-serial/

Sanderson's Writing lectures 2025:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEUh_y1IFZY&list=PLSH_xM-KC3ZvzkfVo_Dls0B5GiE2oMcLY

Previous: >>24513837

Didn't want to bump the dying thread.

So, you lazy bastards are gonna make me the thread guy. I should be spamming my stuff, but fortunately I was born with moral conscience.

Jokes aside. How much have you written today, anons. I have functionally written about 1.5k words.

>>24520035
You can't bump a thread past its bump limit, newfag

>>24520043
I'm not a newfag retard, I've never intrinsically given a fuck about how threads function, I usually don't post, and only did it on /b/ for a time. Where shit dies as fast as it comes. Now, how much has your chronically online oldfag ass written.

less than a 1000 words. NGMI

>>24520058
Can't write because I'm waiting for my laptop to be fixed.
I mean I can write on paper, which is it's own form of practice, but 1500 is quite difficult to achieve in that way.
Oh well, I'll just keep on penning till my baby comes back.

I like Asian slop more then western wns, for example

lord of mysteries
reverend insanity
heavenly library path
warlock in magus world

only decent one so far - tunnel rat, and i tried

dotf
wandering inn
all skills
book of the dead
Bog Standard Isekai

My protagonist chose to stay behind in a collapsing facility to take some goons he rendered death and blind to safety, rather than let them die alone in the dark (also happened to be a hulking monster nearby that would kill all the goons too).

And later the MC is on the run and he doesn't like the idea of stealing stuff to get by, though he's very naive about it considering there's not really an alternative -- and he has to learn this the hard way.

Would've been much easier to write an anti-hero MC that never really cares about doing bad things.

The story is Archetype on RR.

>>24520195
old fashined character development in progression fantasy is tough, by the time hero decides if stealing is ok or not, he already killed couple hundred people

>>24520167
The western WNs you listed are western webnovel aping asian genres like litrpg and xianxia

>>24520212
the west just hasn't fallen, it never started
junior should just learn to revere insanity

should i write a fantasy litrpg webnovel that has an actual race war happening in the background up until the MC is forced to confront it when the place he's currently in becomes another battlefield or would that be verboten according to RR?

>>24520265
first and foremost
write what you want to write
if others like what you write it is well
if others dont like what you write it is well
what is more important is that you love yourself enough to not be weighed down by the words of others

weekendly reminder:
https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/

wishing /wng/ a productive weekend

>>24520205
My reflexive instinct is that if you're going to have a character arc where a character learns morality, the morality should be the central focus, and the plot should be trite and small. It should be in the lulls between nation-wrecking wars that the urchin has to decide between hunger today and stealing bread from the grocer barely making ends meet, and the consequences should be small as well.

If the plot is going to be big, with moral consequences on the scale of life, death, torture, etc, then the main character at least should NOT be on a moral compass development arc. They should already have one, or just go along with the flow of events acting on instinct until there's some big tragic thing that happens because of their decisions, and then they stop and realize oh shit I've been firing from the hip, and it's time to go away for a while, let the situation deteriorate even more, while I sit and meditate on morality. Then come back and kick ass and shit.

Achilles goes into the Trojan war with a VERY well-developed moral compass, and only changes his mind when his best friend gets killed. Then he goes out and kicks ass. Raskolnikov is living a relatively dull, stable life when he goes off the rails, and the general plot is very tame while the tension is entirely moral, revolving around guilt.

As an author, there's one more important consideration: how one is making readers feel about your characters. One shouldn't write one's main character doing things that will make readers hate him unless that's the intention. Even if the dude is president of the planet and taking action intentionally to prevent the planet from being wiped out, and you explain all that perfectly clearly, if that guy tears down a statue of a fallen hero and tries to get the other surviving hero executed for putting everyone at risk, people will hate him with a rabid passion that will never extinguish.

I know this is a moot question as it will be impossible to know, but what do you guys think the next big thing is going to be? Right now we're in the era of Litrpg/Isekai, and it'll go on for a good while, but what will come next? What will the fad landscape of WN's be in 3 to 5 years? Thoughts?

>>24520523
Escapism will continue to trend. More specifically fantasy escapism, and even more specifically litrpg/isekai. There's no sign on narou's top ten of anything new getting popular, and I'm not going to go scrape the bottom of the barrel looking for new growth.

it seems that making the main character female really drives away the fans. Are readers really so gay they need to mentally insert themselves into a man to enjoy a story?

>>24520523
im waiting for interactive novels

>>24520546
webnovels aren't actualy novels; they are one step removed from porn. the goal is immersion and power fantasy. so, yea.

>>24520552
my friends gary and dave think they're on to something

Never been interested in a web novel ever. Mostly think this general needs to be banned. That being said, since I was a teenager, I've had this little inkling in the back of the back of my head telling me that maybe I should read Homestuck. I've never acted on it, probably never will, but every 6 months like clockwork, a little voice starts whispering

>>24520546
good ln with female lead that I can think of is "So I'm a Spider, So What?" and it went off the rails as soon as she got out of the cave

>>24520569
>Thinks the general should be banned, starts rambling about /co/-related shit.
You can squash the little ants, anon. However, the idea is alive and well. /wng/ is here to stay. I'll tell you this, read it, and the voice simmers away. Go ahead, anon. Read Homestuck. I give permission.

>>24520546
So you'll get two types of criticism: the "very strong man makes me feel good inside" reader, and the "this is not a woman, but a man with tits, written by a coomer, male-gaze ahh" comments.

>>24520569
>Mostly
KYS REDDIT HIVEMIND

>>24520546
this is somewhat true on the bigger market of amazon, but writing a fmc is not a debuff at all on royalroad or other sites

>>24520617
The word mostly is now reddit?? I feel like there's a subset of people on 4chan who are just thinking about reddit 24/7

>>24520616
Thanks for the permission anon

>>24520546
I've heard this a lot, but is it true? Last thread we talked about a guy printing money with an overpowered character and her sidekick.

>>24520617
>>24520661
you'd need to spend an incredible amount of time on reddit to associate 'mostly' w/ it too

GUYS!!!!

I'M A RISING STAR!!!

Ugh, my characters are ignoring the outline and now I have to flesh out a side character who was only supposed to have a cameo before showing up in book 2. The bitch is making me switch to an ensemble cast, and I'm going to punish her for it later.

>>24520616
>very strong man makes me feel good inside
i bet he does

>>24520670
people in this very thread refuse to read female mc novels and 4chan posters are the most intellectual and discerning of readers

>>24520523
For some reason: Deckbuilders. They're starting to make a bunch of them on the Immersive ink cord.

>>24520696
Take that checker with a grain of salt. It checks against your story's tags, but doesn't limit to the RS pages RR actually links readers to. Still, congrats.

>>24520722
Before you go wildly off the rails sit with your outline and characters and figure out how to keep them sticking to the plot of the story you want to tell.

>>24520805
this was a mini meta like 2 or 3 years ago because All The Skills, and it never really took off beyond a mini meta. that shit is not ever hitting actual meta, it's just not good for storytelling

fuck your meta. fuck the algorithm. forget engagement. you are poisoned.

>>24520904
relax man, if you want to write without a care in the world go for it. some people want readers

>>24520696
nice, congrats bro!
now make the most of your climb, I think you get a few weeks

>>24520904
>bawwwww nobody wants to read my thinly veiled autobiography whining about authority figures and my peers and the decline of society waaahhhhhhh
Post a writing sample.

>>24520905
having an internal locus instead of deriving your values from secondary sources is not incompatible with having readers

>>24520805
That's some monkey paw shit, man. Come on... please no...

How long has the /wng/ been a thing, btw? I haven't been reading for a bit and have therefore not been using /lit/ as much but I can't remember them being a thing a year or two back. Am I correct?

>>24520920
Too late, already writing my deckbuilding, magical girl harem litRPG.
>>24520932
Since may 23.
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/24406620

Sorry, but I will be catering to the lowest common denominator on Royal Road

>>24520915
i don't disagree but you didn't make any point here

i think as a community we should all start our own deckbuilder litrpg

ok but my main character is a carpenter and he gains skilled allowing him to build wooden decks. I hate card games.

>Greetings, mortal! I can make all your web novelist dreams come true! All you need to do is shoehorn isekai and litrpg into your otherwise unchanged project and I'll grant you fame and riches beyond your wildest imagination! 5-digit Patreon earnings monthly? Manga adaptation? Anime adaptation? Live action adaption? Uniqlo merch deal? Done done done! IF you accept this infernal pact—I mean totally legitimate supernatural deal!

Would you accept?

>>24520948
I was countering the argued point which was countering the initial point thereby protecting the initial point
people who think more about how to exploit other people's joy than think about making things that they themselves find joyous are poisoned

>>24520954
I guess I'm already going to hell, but what's the catch exactly? And no, turning your work into an isekai litRPG isn't a catch.

>>24520954
can i write a nonslop project on the side or must everything I write be slopcoded

>>24520955
so is this a real conversation you wanna have or is it bait. because it reads like bait. this is the most obvious strawman you could possibly make
paying attention to the market and choosing to write something that both sells and that you also like is not the same as
>people who think more about how to exploit other people's joy than think about making things that they themselves find joyous are poisoned
having a mind for marketing may not be a literal necessity for self pub success, but in 999 out of 1000 cases it is.
/wg/ has the mindset you want, just go post there

An interesting aspect of some of the really popular fictions on Royal Road is how they are anti-characterisation.

Take Super Supportive for instance. The main character is asexual. This alone speaks volumes about how the author is simply going to negate any meaningful character relationships in the story. It's stuck in slice of life filler hell, not that it matters. Royal Road readers eat it up because it is that special brand of non-challenging form of storytelling (slop) that gives the highest amount of dopamine response.

I liked a lot of The Game at Carousel, until the non-existance of characterisation for the leads became too much to continue. The Game at Carousel has an interesting game-lit system, and plays really well on horror tropes. But it reads like a campaign manual rather than a genuine story with themes and a purpose beyond being a means through which the author can play out their autism enjoyment of horror genre tropes.

And both experiences are fine, but they're not good stories. Because good stories require characters to have layers to them. Super Supportive merely adds more characters as filler rather than develop the ones already present.

Is there a single story on Royal Road that could be clased as genuinely worthy of being published as a book?

>>24520964
Protip: if you suspect someone is trolling, they either are, or they're stupid enough that their natural behavior is identical to trolling. You shouldn't feed the trolls. Ignoring them is perfectly adequate.

>>24520970
that's a good point lol

>>24520969
>worthy of being published
Entirely meaningless in this golden age of self-publishing. Fuck the standards of the publishers. They are decaying corpses infested with decomposing bugs.

But yes come to think of it, more characters need layers. I would say Vainqueur the Dragon has layered characters.

>>24520969
>Is there a single story on Royal Road that could be clased as genuinely worthy of being published as a book?
I doubt you would classify 95% of modern popular published fiction as "worthy of being published as a book" either.

>>24520523
IMHO we'll see a major return to fedoracore Urban Fantasy since now it's far enough in the past to become interesting again.

>>24520964
are there even 999 successful stories on royal road?

>>24520969
I couldn't get very far in Super Supportive, everything was really slow and not much happened so I never got into those big dopamine moments. What sort of narrative/character "wins" did it even manage with all the slice of life sludge being the focus?

>>24520989
there are at least 999 successful self published stories

>>24520964
it's not really a conversation worth having because when anyone complains about profiteers you instantly trigger the bad faith actors who want to poison the discussion. always saying the same things
you need to surrender your creative integrity to have readers (not true, many sloppers are making a livable wage off stories that aren't completely derivative)
if you don't make your number one priority gaming the systems in place and exploiting trends then you have no place writing webnovels (obviously not. a lot of people have their stories in mind before they even learn about webnovel culture. again, successful people among them)
that there is no moderate position of making marketing a secondary priority and working at success without being a soulless hack, and that anyone who complains about annoying personalities reducing public discourse and the standard of the medium must be some pseud boogeyman (no, moderates exist and not everyone who brings it up is out to attack webnovels as a fun, non-literary space)

it's just so tiresome. the space is getting more and more saturated with indian AI gen sweatshops and wannabe wolf of wallstreet girllbosses who don't give a single fuck about creativity or storytelling but smell easy money. of course people are going to complain about it
I suspect the reason you get the same non-talking point deflections every time is that there are a couple exploitative types in thread who don't want there to be any scrutiny or standards in the community so they try to poison the well

I've yet to see a total sell-out here who only cares about writing whatever maximizes success, and if that person does show up feel free to shit talk him but until then please shut the fuck up about it, this conversational thread is just annoying and goes nowhere

>>24520954
I shall smite thee, Sloptan! No devilish Litrpg or Isekai filth will devile me. Only my own slop will, not that accursed by your hands, shall see the almightly light of God's day!

>>24520998
people also tend to neglect the simple fact that there were like a million "self-published' fanfics, ln, etc. before patreon even existed. they weren't trawling the seabed for 'micro-metas'. there were (and still are) human beings out there. the point is-- this pragmatic (marketing) reality isn't reality at all. not for many.

>>24521024
alt + 0151 — on windows at least

>>24520982
Hard facts

>>24521024
a popular fandom where successful fics are popping off literally is a micro-meta in this context
besides, talking about what's popular doesn't mean writing init, we're just talking about what's doing well on royalroad because maybe the premise/micro genre will sound fun enough to give a try. you're just taking everything in the worst faith way possible. are you that tourist from earlier who constantly baits arguments?

>>24521053
nta, so there's no pattern here. and speaking of bad faith-- you're just going to walk back your bigdick marketing larp? fuck off faggot

>>24521061
>bigdick marketing larp?
i don't even know what the fuck this means, speak human words

>>24521017
>>24520998
I think a lot also just comes down to the same old issue of people needing to feel like they're A) Smarter B) More moral than everyone else.
"My writing doesn't suck I'm just too good to be a sellout".

>>24521064
it's a mirco-trend, you wouldn't get it

>>24521066
that same argument goes both ways. especially when the paid slop writer is the extreme minority.

>>24521072
P. Much.

Maybe we should split off from /wng/ into our own thread so the same repetitive ideological arguments don't constantly derail discussions and we can talk about the business half of self published writing without autists screeching about it
wait :/

>>24521082
/WM/ writing monetanisation?

Me? I'm not selling out.


I'm buying in.

>>24521088
/wmg/ Writing Monetization General

>>24521082
I do kind of wish rather than /wng/ it was /spg/, though I suppose then there would be a disconnect between sloppa appreciators and people trying to self publish something artsy
>>24521088
I'm not interested in a thread purely about monetization and marketing, I'm just exhausted by the spergs who freak out when it's mentioned despite how crucial it is to a self publishing career

>>24521082
honestly /publishing&marketing general/ where people can just larp all day as gurus and tell each other other how to get that heckin bag gurl would be the most efficient containment thread
/wg/ hates those types, they create friction here, they tend to be sensitive and blow up into huge melties, they interrupt actual creative discussion with vapid shit like "you're not allowed to write [thing lots of people are writing]" or "your story sucks. I didn't read it but it isn't like the 3 most derivative stories making 10k on patreon right now so it must be trash."
I don't even hate all marketing and publishing discussion. getting told on /wg/ that I could probably get published and how to try for it is the only reason I've been published. it can be very useful
there seems to be a personality type (or maybe just one really active and annoying poster) who forces every topic through the framework of monetization and they suck ass

>>24521097
>exhausted
just ignore them fren
i haven't gotten into a single argument with anyone since hanging out here. I'm just here for the occasional discussion that can help me improve

the sperging officially began when one fag dropped a 'bad faith'. get real
a little pushback is healthy. you're really out here, on 4chan, yearning for the echo chamber? get a LOAD of this guy

>>24521099
>or maybe just one really active and annoying poster
the annoying person is whoever is makings posts like
>>24520904
for the completely innocuous post of
>>24520523

if people want to talk about what's trending just fucking let them talk about it and stop baiting this cancer argument over and over

I'm sitting on a batch of new chapters for my project, wondering if I should schedule them or just delete the whole shit and nuke my RR account. I could put it on amazon and be done with it, instead of sitting weeks staring at the numbers, eaten by endless doubt, waiting to see if it will grow or if I've wasted my time

one day, we will determine the trend.

>>24521088
>>24521095
/las/ -- Literary Algorithm Surfers

>>24521114
If you publish on Amazon maybe you'll get readers, maybe not. If you publish on RR, someone is bound to read it, especially if you write more.
The more you write, the more people will read, and the more people read the more you'll write because you don't want to drop it.

>>24521109
I didn't post the initial seethe. the apu post is perfectly innocuous but I can still see why someone would be primed to role their eyes at it
in vacuum there's no reason to assume that post is taking an exploitative perspective. it's just we get that kind of shit so often here you're primed for it
that post on its own is interesting. thinking about the trends of pulp is fun. we've had dungeoncore stories, been informed by hunter manhwa, system apocalypse blew up and has only been settling down recently. can you look back on the history of pulp to predict things? swashbuckling stories like the three musketeers, mysterybox slop like sherlock, horror like lovecraft, poe, or clive barker?
it's a real post that's fun to think about. but there is always some idiot waiting to pounce in like they're the hand of the market which makes it tedious to engage with any post that isn't someone dropping their story

>>24521114
>>24520696

I did it bro, you can do it too. I’ve felt the same pain, but now it’s all paid off.

>>24521134
>but there is always some idiot waiting to pounce in like they're the hand of the market
who
>> the posts from before this shit storm

let's talk more strategy again

so it turns out that archmage isekai fic we were discussing last thread first started posting on scribblehub before posting on RR as well
what are the implications of this? is it basically a soft launch? could be the new meta

>>24521114
There's three ways to be a good writer
>Live an extremely interesting life
>Read 6+ books a month
>Write constantly
Choice is yours.

>>24521147
extreme mental illness is also acceptable

>>24521152
I put that under living an interesting life.
The reason so many modern narratives are boring is because most authors are boring and consumers take what they can get.

>>24521146
>Launch on another site with less competition
>Launch on the site you want
>Rise above the deluge of literal who writing
>???
>Profit?

>>24521147
There's one way to be a good writer
>read a lot
>write a lot
No exceptions

>>24521157
I think most people who are mentally ill are living pretty uninteresting lives
it's more having a unique perspective that'd color your writing and make it stand out

>>24521146
scribblehub is really fucking hard to get traction on though, so I think this strategy has limited merit.
I suppose there's no harm in grabbing a few loyal readers over, but for a non-smut not-lgbt story Archmage did strangely well on scribblehub too. It's an aberrant story all around

>>24521160
that's along the lines of what I'm thinking/suspecting
more specifically, it seems like you can generate a tiny bit of momentum on other sites first and really hit the ground running by the time you launch on RR
none of this is substantiated of course

>>24521135
I have 200x more followers than you do but still not nearly enough to earn a penny

>>24521184
Then finish your series.
Announce that you're moving your book from Royal Road to Amazon, offering extra chapters and exclusive rewards to your loyal readers.
Your followers will ignite Amazon’s algorithm, pushing your story to the front page for new readers to discover.

>>24521171
>scribblehub is really fucking hard to get traction on
how so? more difficult than royal road, space battles, etc?

if you wanted money why didn't you just get a normal job or be born retarded enough to autismbux

>>24521207
scribblehub is like 5% the size of royalroad, and the overwhelming majority of what's popular there is smut and lgbt stories
it's actually a really good site for traction if you write in its niches though. I'm just saying if you try uploading normal stuff there it aint gonna pick up many readers

>>24521211
only suckers do that
>commits 2000 hours of effort to make $20 a month

>>24521202
why does this read like it was written by chatgpt
anyway if it failed on rr it probably won't do too hot on amazon either, right?

>>24521228
>Sentence (comma) sentence starting with ing-form verb.
>Muh AI
cope
>failed on rr.
>200 times my followers.
2000 readers * 20$ book = 40k $
UBER COPE

>>24521237
now calculate how much of the money amazon takes

>>24521237
>x followers = x sales
dumb enough it's not even even worth typing more

>>24521243
Now calculate the size of your pussy, you wet blanket of a person. Cease this doomer shit.

>>24521184
you have 2k followers and not one is willing to support you on patreon? lol

>>24521184
Skill issue. If you have 200 followers and haven't managed to convert a single one into a patreon subscription or book sale, you're doing something wrong.

>>24521247
>>24521243
More sales = more momentum on Amazon.
If just 20 of your readers leave a positive review, you’ve done it!

>>24521250
my pussy is too big for your cock, anon, I don't need to measure it to know that.

>>24521256
Try me, faggot. But really just shut the fuck up. What the hell are you even trying to accomplish with this incessant whining? Mommy algorithm doesn't like you so you're just gonna give up? Fucking everyone here has to deal with that you grandstanding wannabee. Piss off and get to writing or just give up. Don't drag us with you, you fucking crab.

>>24520033 (OP)
I want to write but I can't because my prose sucks, I can't improve because I don't write.
Vicious cycle.

>>24521362
Just fucking write, it will be shit but at least the next will be better. No one else needs to see it after all.
And if you say that it won't work, I will personally curse you with dickrot, so get to writing.

>>24521262
what?
I pointed out it is flawed to think that you get 100% of the money people pay for your stuff on amazon. That's it. I didn't say anything other than pointing out that your equation was flawed. I didn't say to stop or give up or anything.
As was pointed out in >>24521254
having a few good reviews leads to extra momentum. While amazon will take a percentage of the money earned(i don't know what that percentage is) and not all of your free readers will be willing to pay 20 dollars for your book, there is still some amount of money to be made if you want to go that route.
It just isn't 40k usd because you have 2k followers on royal road.
Don't give up on your dreams but also don't set your own expectations so high because that will only lead to a crash when you fail to meet them.
also ur penis is small lol

>>24521387
Very well, I admit that I unintentionally misinterpereted what you meant. Good luck on your writing journey.
Also my cock is fucking huge.

>>24521097
They're everywhere in all creative spaces. They all have that it's art and deep and shit and they'll never make it because they lack the fundamental parts of the brain to succeed.

my brain is capable of holding two full thoughts at once personally so I can think about both art and money

>some niggas here unironically want to start not one (1) but two (2) new generals

>>24521558
for me it's putting the two thoughts in alternating current

>>24521569
literally no one wants that pea brain

>>24521387
>While amazon will take a percentage of the money earned(i don't know what that percentage is)
Amazon recently changed their royalty rates, and the best rate is 60%. Sounds good, right? Well, no, because for print, they take printing costs out of the AUTHOR'S share. I listed my book for $14.99, and the printing cost is $5.44, so my actual earnings per paperback sold is (14.99*0.6) - 5.44 = $3.55. Obviously I could raise the price and get more money, but then people are less likely to buy it. The lowest you can price a book is $9.99, at which point I would get $0.55 per sale.

Ebooks do a little better since the "delivery fee" is much lower than the printing cost. It's 7c for my ebook, since it doesn't have a lot of images and so the filesize is small, but that 7c is still taken out of my cut. At $7.99, my cut is 4.72. Better than a paperback but not by much.

Meanwhile Patreon takes 5-12% flat on everything. So if I sell my epub there as a product, at worst I make $7.03 per sale. Oh, and the payment processing fee, but that's also fairly low.

Personally I still think it's worth it because I'm planning to do some marketing outside of RR/Patreon, and hopefully I can convert followers on RR into at least one or two ratings/reviews on Amazon. Oh, and the other good thing about Amazon is that they'll print author copies at printing cost + shipping, so I can take those IRL and sell them signed at $20 each and make actual money on each sale. Plus give them to family and friends.

Not really directly relevant to your discussion but I figured I'd summarize what I learned this last week about self-publishing on Amazon.

>>24520696
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf1DkBQRQj4&list=RDhf1DkBQRQj4&start_radio=1&pp=ygUIb21lZGV0b3WgBwE%3D

>>24520546
>it seems that making the main character female really drives away the fans.
On RoyalRoad sure.
On scribblehub less so.

>>24520696
Fucking based bruv.
Now triple your output.
Mr. Reader is a hungry hungry hippo.

>>24520546
stigma of female inserts and mary sues from the older days, and today that stigma hold true

>>24521362
Here's the thing.
All the true classic authors wrote massive amounts of slop.
Literature got worse because talented authors think they're too smart to go through a slop phase.

>>24521362
Read, read, read, and read more. Not MTL Chinese slop. Not incredbly poorly translated mishash of present tense past tense japanese light novels. read real stuff, read old man boomer tradpub novels, read homer, read nigga. read like it's literally going out of style(literally). That's how you break the cycle.

>>24521798
>>24521163
Frankly you shouldn't write until you've read one book a week for at least half a year. Your brain just doesn't contain enough reference material to churn out anything interesting.

>>24520806
The plot isn't really changing significantly. All the major beats are easily quantum ogre'd to the new direction the main pair are going. But the actions they take that are both perfectly in character and serve the story mean this other character who wasn't going to do anything of note for a long while is now up to things that are relevant. It's inserted a few dozen chapters worth of side story for which I need to create a supporting cast where before there were nameless soldiers standing silently in the background.

>>24521822
Okay, then I would recommend writing that entire arc out, and maybe some more of what you had planned already, and sit on it for a bit then go back fresh and decide if what you added was really necessary, or if it messes up the pace of the narrative. You just don't want to accidentally write yourself into a corner really well, and be unable to go back and make the painful cut needed to return to the planned story.

I had a story die to something like this, and I'm planning to dig it back out of its grave soon, but it had to lie buried for five years before I felt like I could go back and just cut out what took the story off the rails.

>>24520722
Let me phrase it this way. Imagine if you will in this instance you're director, you walk up to your character and bitch slap them, and again on the other cheeck for good measure: "Just stick to the script buddy, or I'll find someone who'll be a yes man." Stephin King did something similiar on the set of Goonies with Josh Brolin, well except without the bitch slapping or threatening to find a replacement. That's how you remain on control on set as the director(writer). In simpler words outline better nigga

>>24521845
oops not king it was spielberg but you get the idea

>>24521845
No can do, we only had enough in the budget to shoot the big set piece action scene once, and that idiot witch blew up the monster prop. Got a great shot out of it though.

i have read 100 books, may i write now?

Had two ideas since last month for a litRPG slop, but when I sat down to write, both of them seemed quite dull, what do you guys think?
This one is about a jeweller that goes against the "meta" of his class by both making and enchanting jewels for adventurers, building his own party to gather materials in the process.

>>24521903
What did those books teach you?

i read one book. it was a cook book. It was snoop dogg's cook book, to be exact. This is the only book I own.

>>24521904
The scene itself is interesting but your sentence construction is poor. Read picrel. Practice writing shorter sentences with less clauses, and think a bit more about your word choice. Also, your description of combat from the perspective of the goblin is confusing. It needs a bit more introduction and description before you jump right in medias res.

>>24521977
Funnily enough, I started reading your pic rel because it was recommended many times and it made me want to go back to work on it, hence why I posted it. Going to try to finish this weekend and learn something.
>and think a bit more about your word choice
Definitely, guess I have trouble at it for being ESL.
>Also, your description of combat from the perspective of the goblin is confusing. It needs a bit more introduction and description before you jump right in medias res.
Yeah, maybe introducing right in the middle of a fight scene wasn't the best idea, will try to situate it more when I get around and rewrite it, though, I thought I was writing more from Kate's perspective rather than the goblins.

>>24521991
And also thank for the feedback, I'm grateful for it.

>>24521994
No prob. I wish more people would post samples. Critique is fun and less of a strain than a second round of writing for the day.

>submit chapter
>gets accepted
>realize I can't add to it or change the cover
Fuuuuck.
Do I put it up or will that dumpster my metrics if I don't immediately shove a 2k update in?

>>24522010
if you're talking about RR it's just locked until you hit launch
then you can go in and change shit immediately

>>24522010
Trust me bro don't worry about your metrics. Unless you're buying an ad, they're going to be bad no matter what you do. It took me weeks of consistent posting to hit 10 followers, and it was only when I bought an ad (eventually a second as well) that I started seeing real growth.

>>24521904
"A lazy flick of the blade sent the goblin's head flying of its shoulders in a spray of foul blood. Its companions pressed the attack, undeterred by their friend's untimely demise, swinging a wide assortment of crude tools at the woman answering their brutish snarls with a howl of defiance"
You want to go HARD right out the gate.

Used to be that the new fiction page got some organic traffic but AI or maybe RR's recent popularity means there's too much trash to sift through. So if you want to hit rising stars an ad (or shout outs) is mandatory these days.

>>24522019
>>24522015
It's so over.
>>24522012
I see I see.

>>24522010
kek same happened to me, but I wasn't too worried about metrics.
>>24522018
Sounds awesome, but it isn't quite the feel that I was going to, even if it would be the sort of thing that RR audience loves.

>>24521913
everything

>>24522019
I just play on european extreme mode. I release chapters and whatever happens, happens

i’ve noticed a trend on RR where a lot of the stories seem to be wholesale Chink MTLslop with some names changed around.

i can’t believe it but people on RR are out chinking the chinks.

>>24522376
You don't need to change the names, all chinese slop uses the same ones like Tang, Mount Hua etc. If you've read one you've read them all.

I woke up at 5 today and started slopping. ;_;

>>24520033 (OP)
Is it possible to write web novel in style of pic related?

>>24522500
You can write whatever you want, you just have to adjust chapter length and the amount of cliffhangers so us sloppies can get our dopamine rush and can work for 16 hours in the factory so Israel gets its money.

>>24522500
ASOIAF is popular exactly BECAUSE it is essentially a Korean webnovel

>>24522506
anything goes if fun things are fun
if you can distract Sato Suzuki-san the black company office worker from his suicidal thoughts during his 12 hour train commute to and from the office, then it'll fit in just fine

>>24522506
>>24522514
My point was Fire and Blood is a history book, but it still tells a story but tells it in sort of weird way

>>24522538
So like legend of the galactic heroes but fantasy? Sure it's possible. Boy does it distress me stories like LOTGh are utterly, 100% nonexistant in the west on both the webnovel and trad/self pub side of things. They simply don't exist. There's like two stories max that came close to them and I was none of them, the other is on and off in hiatus hell. Sad.

So how do you come up with new fantasy races and creatures without it just being cringy pastiches of the existing ones?

I'm just so tired of elves, dwarves and orcs. But you still need interesting non humans with big boobas and enticing back ends that the reader can relate to.

>>24522543
I've thought of a couple of creatures;

Smirking Beavers, evil demonic castors that smiles creepily before they bite off your leg while laughing.

Snorting Lizard, they have a permanent cold and their snot is deadly.

Bemused Rabbit, starter town creature, very low iq, the retards of the rabbit world.

Feel free to use these in your works.

>>24522541
>So like legend of the galactic heroes but fantasy?
Love that comparison, but not.
This will sound weird, but LOGH books reads a transcription of a docudrama; it has very long infodumps, but it also has very long dialogue exchanges. And the narrator is omniscient.
Meanwhile, Fire and Blood is really reads like history but only has a few short snippets of dialogue, it it's based on multiple sources that intentionally contradict each other, nothing is conclusive, and the reader is supposed to form their own opinion on what happened, sort of like Last Duel-movie.

>>24522577
>This will sound weird, but LOGH books reads a transcription of a docudrama; it has very long infodumps, but it also has very long dialogue exchanges. And the narrator is omniscient.

You've just described my series.
Give a try: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/119783/fff-class-unlucky-antagonist-villains-origin-story

>>24522588
No, your writing is absolutely not that.

I guess you take every opportunity to plug your shit no matter how distant.

>>24522588
I want to not dislike you but you make it so hard

>>24522606
I've absolutely done that.
Read my first review.

One chapter is literally 5000 words of GoT-tier drama.
>>24522618
Hug bro.

>>24522645
Please get a trip I mean this without malice

>>24522376
They ARE chinks. I don't believe any westerner could have the same tastes for tropes and moral sensibilities (no conscience whatsoever)

>>24521202
>Announce that you're moving your book from Royal Road to Amazon, offering extra chapters and exclusive rewards to your loyal readers.
The surest way to die if you're not already massive

Someone used me as a cautionary tale in a previous thread. I want to say something about that.

TAKE THE REDPILL

Do not listen to your fucking audience. They are MORONS.

I'm a new writer, barely a year into actually writing, but I got lucky and earned some Patreon money under my pennames. What killed my momentum, what kept me from hitting Rising Stars, was this: I kept changing my story to satisfy the latest reader. And then I burned out.

Fuck that.

They don’t know what they want. THEY DO NOT.

A free reader is not a customer. Unless someone pledges on your Patreon, do not let them shape your story. Don’t listen to unconstructive feedback. Don’t chase the approval of people who can’t string a coherent comment together.

I made that mistake.

>>24522794
Press F to our bro.

>>24522794
>They don’t know what they want.
Looking at Disney's handling of its billion-dollar franchises didn't already show you that? They wouldn't be consoomers if they had any idea how to produce things.

>>24522794
The only caveat to this if multiple people are starting to complain about your story. They still don't know what the fuck they want, but if enough sources are telling you that something is off, then in all likelyhood something is off. Don't listen to what they think is wrong, listen to the fact that they think something is wrong in general.

>>24522794
>>24522922
I think the advice of Brandon Sanderson (PBUH) on this is that readers are almost certainly right when something feels off but are almost certainly wrong when they try to tell you what you should do

>>24520546
Half of the stories in best ongoing in RR are with femMC though?

>>24522376
LLMs are getting very good at producing webnovel quality content. Food for thought.

>>24522956
Which is funny because Stormlight Archives has been turned into unreadable garbage from reader feedback.

>>24522541
I actually have a story I was working on where I was trying to go for a narration style inspired by LOTGH. I shelved it because it isn't marketable enough. I do hope to get back to it some day. It's very much a story for me, with many choices that go against what people generally want from webnovels.

>>24523034
Yeah I told the slopmachine to help me with Dialogue and it spit out an entire scene of extremely cliched but perfectly readable interactions.
The standards are so damn low.

>>24523204
nta but it can do a lot better than whatever you're describing, with just slightly more direction. 'authors' are using it for (to be) published novels.

>>24523207
I can imagine.
https://rentry.org/x2ogd4pa
>The scene takes place between a young engineer and his female captain. The engineer is doubting his abilities because many on the crew of the spaceship are mentally enhanced and it's making him feel incompetent. I'm trying to craft a narrative where she gradually convinces him to stay, primarily by letting him talk and asking questions.
This is what I asked.
I ended up not using any of it but goddamn.

>>24523034
AI is so cucked. You ask it to create a royal family, and they're all wise and noble and value cooperation. Not one power-hungry asshole among them. You ask it what a culture that developed in a violent monster forest would be like and they always seek harmony and deeply respect nature, and nobody would want to simply burn down every tree and cover them in asphalt. That shit can't produce anything with personality.

>>24523215
Yes but that's a human problem. That shit can't be scaring the alliance of hand wringing Wokoids and hand wringing cuckservatives running the show so it's deliberately had a soifilter added.
If you run it locally the picture changes quite a bit.

>>24523215
have you tried... telling it to do what you want it to do?

>>24523253
No, retard, never crossed my mind

>>24522543
I base them on freaks I meet while working retail.

>>24522543
I go for spooky gothic monsters like demons, vampires, werewolves, and such.

>>24523211
Too many tense errors, maybe it's my phone or reentry doesnt have propr mobile view but the formatting could've been a lot better

>>24522541
Space Opera? There's a few. Most recently I can think of is Peter F Hamilton's Commonwealth universe book series (start with Pandora's Star). There's also his Salvation series but it's less operatic and more just a long adventure story. Way back when there was Keven Anderson's Saga of the Seven Suns, I believe it's called. Pretty decent, lots of space politics and alien fights. There's also Ben Bova's books about colonization and exploitation of space and the solar system.

>>24522560
Yes thank you very much Mr. Dinniman.

>>24522760
Moving is dumb, but selling the book everywhere you can is just smart. Only way it could be bad is if your fanbase is large enough that splitting it hurts you in algorithmic ranking. But there's a hack around that, too: a centralized youtube channel, where the algorithm is everything. By that point you're well into marketing and less into writing, though (Sanderson's podcast is an example of this).

>>24522794
F. I got some pretty harsh feedback in a review last week and they called for a re-write: instead I'm just going to be more explanatory in later arcs and resolve mysteries, turning those nagging questions they had into payoff at the end. I'm going to look like a goddamn genius in six months.

>>24523215
>the AI will not produce corrupt power hungry nobles
>>24523224
>this is because woke

you're telling the woke agenda is that oligarchs are good, actually?

>>24523335
I think it's cause of Rentry .
>Tenses
True .
It ain't perfect but by god it's sobering.

I have been reading Princess of the Void and Cultivation Nerd on RR. I have enjoyed both a lot, though Cultivation Nerd takes a bit to really hit its stride.
I like how Cultivation Nerd kind of inverts the typical isekai approach. Normally an Isekai series has the main character become a big fish who shows the backwards natives what's what and changes the world around them, Cultivation Nerd instead goes in the opposite direction and the protagonist quickly realizes "Holy shit I'm a total scrub, if I keep acting like a normie I'm going to die".

Princess of the Void is a big surprise. It's a smutty sci-fi romance with surprisingly good prose. Apparently it's been picked up by a publisher already.

A year or two ago an acquaintance mentioned that he had started writing a litrpg series to pass the time while his business was closed during the covid lockdown. It's in a genre I don't really care much for, so I didn't read it or anything. Now the other day I see it's one of the top fictions on RR and he's making $4k a month on it while still running a small business full time.
I've been trying to figure out if this makes me feel inspired or demoralized for my own failures.

>>24522645
>I've absolutely done that.
No, it is not fucking not.
Why would you even try to debate it?
I'm going to be blunt. Your shit is horrible. It's very amauterish (even by web novel tier), and you should not have published it.
The fact you keep spamming it in every /wng/ thread is annoying as fuck, especially since you ignore any feedback.
I'm not saying stop writing, but instead the same link and lying about content, maybe you should post samples as you progress the story.

Can I do sub 1k updates if I slop it every single day?

>>24523338
Looking more along the themes and setting of lotgh. No aliens or the usual adventure settings i gleam off these synopsis you posted and what i sifted through on Amazon. Closet is probably the honor verse but I dread stories that stretch on forever into double digits. I'm simply just writing my own lotgh for this reason but keeping it condensed to one book or die trying.

>>24520546
>it seems that making the main character female really drives away the fans.
What are you talking about? Royalroastie readers/redditors love female protagonist slop.

>>24523385
>I've been trying to figure out if this makes me feel inspired
You should feel inspired. The market is big and deep, there's room for more good work to get recognized and rewarded. And the bar is so low it's basically on the floor in terms of quality. All you need is the right content to capture interest and boom, you can do it.

>>24523413
You can do whatever you want. Try it and let us know if it works. For reference, I'm doing 1-2k word chapters every MWF without fail, usually scheduled to release at the exact same time every posting day (a couple days I forgot and released several hours late; nobody complained).

>>24523371
If you like PoTV you should definitely check out his other works. I read them on scribblehub for the full experience. Power Trio is all around fantastic, and Wife After Death blended cosmic horror and romance in a brilliant way

>>24522543
just stick with elves man, they get the most attention for some reason.

Because I'm slopping all day.
Slopping all night.
Oh yeah slopping.
Makes me feel alright.
I'm slopping for momma I'm slopping for pappa.
My slop goes down just like no other.
If you're slopping too I'll call you my brother.

>>24523890
This sounds lewd somehow

>>24523890
>>24523901
https://files.catbox.moe/vi372p.mp3

>>24523955
Kek well slopped

>>24523955
Ok you won, that's too good

>>24523901
Not my intention
>>24523955
Well played

>>24523413
you should write a bit more. aim for 2k-2.5k for daily updates.

>>24524131
Oof yeah I'm gonna have to rebuild all my habits.

>>24520546
>Are readers really so gay they need to mentally insert themselves into a man to enjoy a story?
Average free webserial readers are just very low iq and lack the ability to read a story without self inserting

>>24520546
Two options, want the train/furry money? FMC
Do you instead want the chud techie money? MMC
Do you want the real money? Then have a dragon as MC

>>24524387
A female dragon?

>>24524428
trans dragon, but all dragons are trans in that world

>>24520954
What about a story that has no isekai nor litrpg but hits the same slopkino progression/power fantasy plot points

>>24522956
Sandoman just copied that advice beat-for-beat from the videogame development canon. Makes sense since he's known for basically writing magic systems and fights as videogames.

>>24524387
So that's why A Practical Guide to Evil is so underrated and did a lot worse than it should hvae, it was going for the train/furry money on the surface but was chud techie coded storywise.

>>24524492
Did it? I always heard it recommended (but I still have to get around to read it). Guess publishing in Wordpress hurt it then.

>>24524387
>Do you want the real money? Then have a dragon as MC
The only dragon story I've read is Vainqueur by voidherald and even that was still from the pov of a human peon

How many actual dragon web serials (not furry human with scaley arms) are out there? Are they any good? Is an anon writing one?

>>24524512
>How many actual dragon web serials (not furry human with scaley arms) are out there? Are they any good?
Saw a bunch on Royal Road, but none quite scratches the itch, here are some that I started but dropped for a variety of reasons:
>https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/87677/a-benevolent-evil-dragon
>https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/70527/draka-volumes-1-and-2-stubbed
>https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/92766/the-dragon-heir-a-monster-evolutionprogression
>https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/121610/a-dragon-called-bob
>Is an anon writing one?
I started to write at the end of last year a daydream of mine on a whim, but stopped because I was frustrated with my prose so I dropped and wrote a bunch of half-baked ideas.
Surely I'll get around and write it someday.

>>24524512
dragon dragon or human with dragon-like features? (but still a dragon somehow).

>>24524534
Dragon dragon of course. I'm sure there are innumerable human-with-a-tail stories.

>>24524546
>Whether You Call Me a Guardian Dragon or Not, I’m Going to Sleep
I read this a while ago, and I just skimmed over the first chapter, and she's a dragon dragon but I don't remember if she turns into a human in later chapters

>>24524565
> I don't remember if she turns into a human in later chapters
Well, judging this book by the cover...

>>24524585
>Judging a book by its cover
You can't do that anon!

I've generated over 3000 fantasy names now, I wonder if that is enough.

Really good generator:

https://donjon.bin.sh/name/markov.html

My strategy:
Used namelists from different cultures found on and mixed them. I used Roman, Old Greek, Baltic, Scandinavian and Finnish. I removed all ugly names, all names that don't work in english and all that had christian/hebrew connections.

I started generating and took a cool name there and a cool name there and saved them. Did this for a couple of weeks and the result was a massivie list that I first sorted alphabetically with https://texttools.org/sort-text and now I've gone over them and removed any ugly/tragedeigh-esque names.

Going to trim it further, the goal is to have a nice list of fantastique names that aren't corny or make a reader stop and think how the hell do you pronounce that name? and be easy to remember.

And then group them so different cultures and species have slightly different sounding ones. I wonder if I should go and take that autism test the doctor said last time.

>>24524719
Know how I come up with names? From places I've been, languages I've learned, and people I've met.

>>24524738
talk about derivative
a real writer derives names from their own conlang

>>24524719
You are over complicating shit.

Just dithematic names. That is combine two elements.
You make maybe 25 prefixes and 10 suffixes and you have 250 combinations.

That's literally what GRRM, does Targs have following name elements:

Prefixes:
>Ae-
>Dae-
>Mae-
>Jaehae-
>Vise-

Suffixes
>-gon
->nys
>-gor
>-rys

Which itself gives 5×4 = 20 names

>Aegon
>Aenys
>Aegor
>Aerys
>Daegon
>Daenys
>Daegor
>Daerys
>Maegon
>Maenys
>Maegor
>Maerys
>Jaehaegon
>Jaehaenys
>Jaehaegor
>Jaehaerys
>Visegon
>Visenys
>Visegor
>Viserys

>>24524719
>>24524738
>>24524792
I've taken a liking to getting first names from here https://www.worldsys.org/europe and surnames from local areas in Puget Sound, and Scotland/Ireland. Also stealing names from Iliad.

on topic:
i use https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com since it has a bunch of stuff, but I usually edit what I take from there to sound better.

aside:
i have autism and I look at all the effort and time I've put into my story and how little response I get and every day I think I should just delete the whole thing since I feel like it is another testament to the uselessness of my own efforts, despite the individual feedback I've gotten for a small group of readers. In the end I know that I simply want to punish myself for not finding success despite playing the game wrong yet platitudes of off-meta genre and following the heart do nothing to fight the pain I feel whenever I think about how I put my everything I had into an climax chapter and got nothing more than the three chapters before it. Hearing that other people here deleted their works in fits of rage or sadness gives me a desire to not be the kind of person that does that but, I am tempted. Either delete the thing and never speak again or schedule a chapter that is a spoiler of the intended ending + summary of all the ideas going forward and I kill myself before it goes live so that the readers at least know what was supposed to happen(even though it is now dogshit to read)

>>24524951
george martin is that you?

>>24525138
Yes, I came here to ask if anyone is interested in side story of Dany's cousin Visegon Targaryen traveling to Empire of Yi Ti and becoming it's emperor.

>>24525141
only if you add a lot of girls with fat tits

>>24525149
All women in Yi Ti are futanari and MC gets pegged

>>24525152
You are going senile, old man. I will read it if the girls have fat tits. I don't care if they are futa or if they peg men. I just want to read about fat tits.

>>24525126
Your mentality is all wrong, and it has nothing to do with autism. You're identifying too much with your product, and that's the root of your problem. People finding your work boring or uninteresting does not mean that YOU are boring or uninteresting.

Though you probably are.

It just means that they didn't like the words you typed out. You can change that incredibly easily by writing better words next time, in a more pleasing and compelling way.

On top of that, there's a number of reasons people might not be giving you the feedback you think you deserve, and the biggest one is they simply never saw it in the first place. You don't get lots of views for free. You either buy them with ads or shoutouts or you painstakingly post for months and months and randos refreshing the front page just as you posted and find your title and cover intriguing then read your blurb and your first chapter and maybe stick around.

>the pain I feel whenever I think about how I put my everything I had into an climax chapter and got nothing more than the three chapters before it.
Bro it's not that deep. You can post the chapter if you want and I'll tell you what's wrong with it, and if you did anything right I'll tell you that too, but the biggest issue is probably that you're getting a dozen views a chapter and they're probably bots. You can't take it personally. You SHOULDN'T write a story so tied into your personality and emotions that you empathize with the response it gets. That's what high school poetry journals are for, and you shouldn't show those poems to anyone anyway.

>and I kill myself
Clearly you have bigger problems than your slop not getting views and ratings on whatever site you're posting on. Take your meds, go to therapy, get a job, touch grass, eat healthy, get enough sleep.

>>24525172
>Though you probably are.
I am and I know it, you do not need to tell me.

>It just means that they didn't like the words you typed out.
yes. I do not blame them for this. I only blame myself for being unable to write something good enough to inspire a response. It is simply one of many things I have failed at.

>painstakingly post for months and months
the "time and effort" mentioned is that the story has been on the site for 2 years.

>the biggest issue is probably that you're getting a dozen views a chapter and they're probably bots.
200 views a chapter and I am sure that most of them are bots.

>Clearly you have bigger problems
yeah

>get a job
has this ever made anyone happy? Everyone I know complains about their job.

>>24525186
200 views on each new chapter? That's not bad at all. That's not bots, I thought you were bitching about 15 views a chapter.
Link your work.

>>24524512
I started one but quickly realized it's actually not any fun, like Vainqueur is not fun, or any other story with an overpowered protagonist. A dragon should be an ancient monster, but humans can't relate to ancient monsters, so you either throw logic out of the window, write a dumb human with wings and make it a comedy, or give up.

>get comment
>Click on it
>already deleted
Brb KMS

does wng actually like cheatcode protagonists? maybe just indifferent? do you write one?

>>24525571
believe it or not, people don't want to think too much when reading.

they really just want to legitimately self-insert and be an all-powerful or soon to be godly being. life's tough enough as it is, most people just want to feel good bruh.

that being said, people still enjoy a well-written story no matter the genre or quirks it may have. however, it's assuming what you're writing fits that criteria for the said genre it's trying to break the mold in or fit. easier said than done.

>>24525571
my short story protag was basically a legally distinct newtype whos like an ace of aces on steroids who meets her match by the end

>>24525571
Yes as long as the story & conflicts are still interesting and not just powerlevel wank.

>>24525581
>most people just want to feel good bruh
do you cheat in videogames? not trying to psychoanalyze; but i think there's something to do with (not just expectations, but) the confidence in there being a payoff. something like that.

>>24525581
>they really just want to legitimately self-insert and be an all-powerful or soon to be godly being
For asian audiences yes, but english speaking audiences not so much. and seeing as /wng/ are writing in english despite being mostly hispanic and filipino the generic guy becomes all powerful trope isn't going to cut it for the most part

>>24525591
never really cheated to be honest. got too afraid seeing my friend's steam account get vac banned so I've been clean in that regard. though I do joke about wanting to do it just for the fun of it but I never really act on it.

knowing the outcome is a cheat in certain stuffs like things with odds. imagine knowing the outcome of a baccarat session or the next card drawn. it's literally something most gamblers have fantasized about.

for me, part of the fun isn't having the cheat from the get go, but knowing an exploit and working towards having the cheat or godlike power. the journey, the payoff and the effort to have that power and be labeled a cheater or someone considered unfair is what I at least search for in a book. the implications of having that power and how far the writer can go with that cheat is also an interesting journey yet also the problem with such stories. most authors don't want the story to end or don't know how to.

they don't want it to end because it's a loss of income and might be their only source of it or they don't know how to since they just pantsy'd their way through writing it, ala just vibe bro so it falls like a house of cards when tackled a bit too deep.

>>24525599
the vocal minority might want something deeper but from my experience in writing and with other authors, most really just want to self-insert.

pandering to the 1-5% of your readers that want a certain thing happening in your story is a recipe for being generic and boring especially in the web novel field. but as Sanderson did say, if their repeating a certain thing they don't like, you probably should take a look at it yourself.

in more traditional fields, you can probably apply the idea of being an exhibitionist to a certain degree, people watching you from your window, with you, the subject, unaware, doing your most private indulgences unaware of being a spectacle yourself. it's always fun to see what other's truly have in their mind but webnovels just don't really work that way, and if it does for a certain author, it's usually because they've built up an audience for themselves that truly like not just the story but the author's writing themselves.

the author isn't selling the story as the priority, he's selling his authenticity first and the story after.

>>24525571
I like very powerful characters but there's gotta be some kind of reason and framework.
Like even most gods have steps to go through or limits to obey.
"I can heal everything in an 90000 mile radius so hard it reverts into a single celled organism" is garbage.
>>24525584
Not cheat skill.
Just OP.

>>24525613
*they're repeating

reject focus groups!
embrace auteurship!

I just want Super Minion to leave hiatus. Why does all the best slop get shut down?

Planned to go with dual brother/sister mcs but in a moment of intense clarity I figured cousins would be a much better choice so you can lewd bait without it being too weird plus it gives you access to the important pakistani audience.

>>24525640
>Too weird

>>24525640

>>24525640
>just bait
move to scribblehub

>>24525647
Royalroad as a platform doesn't forbid incest I think, it's the desire to make big Patreon/Amazon bucks that makes people censor themselves.

question my fellow authors
where do you all get your beta readers?
can anyone spare me yours i kinda need one

>>24525866
[Online] Beta Readers are completely worthless unless they're longtime authors themselves.
Not because of some sort of idea that nonwriters can't be critics but because they're not going to be capable of coherently articulating problems.
Trust me I've been down this road dozens of times.
Unless they're a writer or trained they'll be useless subhumans.
You're unironically better off asking the slopmachine it's that bad.

>>24525742
Dude, they have a dedicated clause just for you
>3. Glorified incest (sexual relations between parent, child, sibling, or grandchild) is prohibited; the inclusion of such content is only permitted when there's a legitimate cause to include it in the story (like "House Targaryen"). You may not include it simply for the shock value or as a driving point. Necrophilia and bestiality are also prohibited.

Many silly rules there. It's like it's a site for children.

>>24525902
I don't see anything there about cousins.

>>24525920
>Like
It is.

>>24525881
I disagree completely. Writers make better editors but terrible beta readers.

>>24520546
It doesn't really. This is basically a cope invented by retards who want a reason to explain why their dogshit sloppa failed. It's maybe like a 10% debuff at most.

Now we're cooking with gas, that makes two meme edits that I can use for ads, also probably gonna get another version of this same edit from the artist of the original cover art

>>24525647
Scribblehub has a better community than RoyalRoad, especially on the readers' side, but they're too lackluster with platform promotions. I can't get ads or review swaps effectively so you have little to no means to promote your visibility

>>24526022
can you explain what you mean by better community? more talkative and more willing to give feedback/ratings/reviews etc?

We've talked about which genres do marginally better on the different sites but what about what to expect/their benefits/how best to leverage them?
>spacebattles for the more critical feedback and general willingness to discuss/give feedback because of the forum format
>scribblehub for the ________
>royalroad for the visibility and platform-building
welcoming corrections and additions

>>24526047
at least as far as commenting goes, I agree that SH is better
my stuff on SH gets far lower views than it does on RR but the comment numbers are the same

>>24526056
I think out of the 3 I never had any actual feedback or any comments on my fic on spacebattles before I deleted it there. Funny enough I had more interested readers on scribblehub for a while before i deleted it off there as well, but the forums are so huge it's almost spacebattle levels of black hole in contrast to RR where its tight knit. I only dabbled on there very briefly and wasn't as active but must've snagged a couple curious readers there now that i think about it, honestly havent gone there in maybe 3 years but from what i remember covid era SH was full of unhinged edgy posters. So far after my new story was released I never got any kind of feedback or comments on any of the platforms beside a few initial ones on RR

what is spacebattles? why does it sound so gay

>>24526176
OG forums from the very early 2000s

>>24521778
Mostly in tradpub these days

>>24526176
there's literally nothing homosexual about battles in space you fucking—

wait...

>finished writing my chapter for the day
>want to keep writing more but I can tell my quality is declining
>have to force myself to take a break
Arrrghhh I want to finish writing this climax but it's like 14k more words and I can't write more than 2k/day

Now I have nothing to do but read until wingstop opens and I can get my slop on.

>>24526275
Draft and fix it tomorrow?

>>24526278
Already got a detailed outline. It just sucks, because last week I was busy all day with self-publishing chores, and now that that's done I have free time again and I'm bored.

Hopefully I can level up to writing up to 4k/day soon, so I can get two solid chapters done per day. I managed to level up from 1k to 2k so it should be possible...

>>24526275
Writing is a muscle.
Train until your strength fails then train a little harder next session.

>>24526275
Keep slopping until you pass out.

>>24521904
Whenever I have two or three ideas that feel lacking I try smashing them together into one story.

>>24520805
>>24520812
Any recommendations for deckbuilder stories? I got mildly interested in them back when I saw All The Skills on Rising Stars, but never really delved into what was out. I usually like to wait to see what manages to make an impact, and it seems like none of them did.

>>24526352
I woke up three hours ago and I'm hyper caffeinated, passing out is not an option.

>>24526342
Yeah that's the idea. I'm a bit off today, though. My diet is getting to me.

Goddamn another 600 words to go.

>>24520033 (OP)
I hate being pantser, I keep coming up most bizarre stuff.

>>24526639
City of Lies?

>>24526639
This seems solid but my only gripe is everything after 'unlike any other' is putting the story on pause and could be shortened better to sprinkled tidbits through dialogue. I like there's consistency with your tenses or least. Good job. Now. Butcher your darlings.

>>24526725
Fair enough.
I was afraid it was seen as irrelevant. I guess I couldn't resist the urge to give a sample of what type of people live in this world, especially if the background will impact their further actions.

I think I have a new "most annoying writing habit" I've encountered. I'm honestly not sure if it's padding or dyslexia or autism.

> Several paragraphs of the MC's inner thoughts: 'Oh no Some Event happened, it made me feel A, B, & C emotions. My next actions will be X, Y, and Z'
> MC turns to some character and for the next several paragraphs says: 'Oh no Some Event happened, it made me feel A, B, & C emotions. My next actions will be X, Y, and Z'

This doesn't happen once, or only a few times, but frequently across all the author's works. Every time it makes me want to bang my head against a brick wall. At least it's a lesson in what not to do.

>>24526781
If it's in a web novel there's a good chance it's for padding, but I wouldn't discount an autist writing what should be only on his mind, as he is creating another person's mindset.
I even read it recommended on reddit as I write too little, but it sounded like too forced for padding.

>>24526339
>can't write-now-edit-later because outline exists
I don't understand

>run out of things to do with a POV character
>abandon scene and go to the next
Not my problem. :)

>>24527267
Have a scene where he ponders over the word detective and realizes it's called that because you're supposed to detect things

>>24527301
>investigator...investigates???

>>24526781
It's very common in light novels, for some reason. LN authors probably do it
>>24526804
>for padding
And then kids imitate it because it was in a book.

>>24526022
>>24526064
so how do you usually promote your shit on SH
i get no comments anywhere so i guess i am posting there now to get some

>>24526907
I find it more efficient to stop writing when quality drops off too much, rather than go back and "edit" (rewrite) the next day. I don't mind working on a rough outline when I'm in that zone, but since I already have it, there was nothing to really do.

Plus this morning I was light-headed from my diet. Now of course I've eaten and been to the gym so I'm just tired all around, mentally and physically. Gonna read some of the new licensed works on j-novel and watch some anime and call it a night.

>>24526781
It's just objectively bad writing. Less words for the same effect is generally better than more words for the same effect.

thank you for the review FFF-anon.

>>24526394
the only deck builder that did well (all the skills) wasn't remotely a deck builder to begin with. they were just slotted skills/powers with the aesthetic of a card

deck building makes no fucking sense for a story

Even the idea of reading a deck building story makes me want to puke

>>24527624
Maybe it's just that I grew up with yugioh, but I feel like there should be some potential there.

>>24527722
never watched yugioh. did he talk about making his decks, the strategy behind them, etc? or did he just play the card game and the deckbuilding was irrelevant

>>24527722
As a sky striker player this is deep

isn't a "deckbuilder" just a type of video game where your skills are accessed semi-randomly by drawing cards from a deck? "deckbuilder" litrpgs aren't about that but instead more TCG-focused right?

>>24527802
i have no clue what the real deckbuilder litrpgs are, because the only successful ones aren't actually deckbuilders. All the Skills genuinely is not a deckbuilder at all
anyone read a 'real' one?
I guess DCC's book 6 arc counts?

>>24527802
>>24527810
like I mentioned before there's at the very least a posse of peeps writing them on that immersive ink botnet but not released yet, so wait and see

>>24527788
In the Battle City arc the winner of a duel got the rarest card from their opponent's deck. Joey improved his that way, and got the card that usually ended up being his ace from it.

>>24520033 (OP)
I had this autistic obsession to have 20 POV characters.
I finally got over it by imposing a rule that every POV character needs a minimum of 5 chapters. And because I really couldn't come up with 5 chapters for most of them, I reduced the POV characters to just 5.
Another problem I had, I started fearing some of POV characters were removed from the main plot, so an additional rule I came up was that to be a POV character, the character actually had to meet another POV character like passing of a torch.

>>24528037
get your tism out of the system by writing some side stories

>>24528037
Sorry but that sounds exhausting to read

>>24528037
all the more reason to outline

>>24528052
5 POVS isn't that many...

>>24528037
pretty sure the last book of the expanse had over 10 POV characters though some only had one or two chapters.

>>24528037
>I finally got over it by imposing a rule that every POV character needs a minimum of 5 chapters.
I wonder what a story that does the opposite would be like. Where ever chapter is a different POV character. I assume its been done, but I've never seen it

>>24528107
I was thinking about doing something similar to that...

>POV characters
Since when is an omniscient narrator not enough? Just write in third person and you can easily have the story follow characters wherever you like.

>>24526394
Can a Mob Highschooler be a Normie: is a Japanese deck-building novel with a good translator.

do note it uses a lot of Shin Megami Tensei as its influence for the most part.

>>24528145
Personally I prefer limits, because it makes fun to speculate about things.

>>24528145
omniscient narrator doesn't change its voice with the character
I suppose you could but it's a bit schizophrenic

Trying to find a list over non fictional swear words that fits the typical medieval fantasy.

Insults are easily invented but made up fantasy swear words always sounds cringe and I don't want to use modern swear words since it takes you out of the fantasy.

>>24528192
pro tip: just look at the British jargon. they have a knack for insulting themselves and others.

>>24528192
What about older words that are out of fashion? Or taking foreign language expressions and translating it literally? I'm sure that german must have some fun ones.

>>24528125
Well, you should go ahead and do it anon. I have no plans to do it, I think it could be neat if done well.

>>24528152
I'll give it a shot. I haven't really done Japanese webnovels without an official release, is there a place to download it or anywhere better to read it than the translator's blogspot?

>>24528196
>>24528203
Sounds like good ideas.

>>24528223
P*lterglast translations. at least they actually write at a college level english with their translations.

>>24528192
That common ask always reminds me of the "Tiffany Problem". It's not about words that are historically accurate, it's about words or names that sound realistic / fit the setting.

>>24528272
The first chapter doesn't seem great, translation wise. Maybe standards have degraded over the years, but this is at the minimum I would tolerate back when I was in my light novel phase in college.

Is it still cheating if I just ask the slopmachine for beta reading?

>>24528420
welcome to the new age, buddy. standards will get lower every decade

>>24528430
Man, all these new things suck. Why can't they just make more old things?

>>24528192
Saw this in the new booktok hit, Sister Fister Chronicles. I think it's a acceptable example.

"Fist me arse brotha, or else the god of buggery will show us its wrath!" smirked Anaria, her bosom performing like a battlefield banner fluttering in the wind.

"Ye olde hag! It's still far from summers' first bath. Ye filthy arse shall not taste the benevolence of my fist just yet!" Durane snorted bemusingly wearing the tiny hat the merchants gave him.

"Hag-seed! Hag-seed!" Anaria smirked snortingly playfully stabbing at him with her spork.

"Ye bean eating wench!" Durane snortingly smirked, anxiously fiddling with the hat, he knew the contract wasn't a done deal until he got snipped.

Hearing the quarrel, the owner of the tavern, a large fisted man, quickly made his way to their table, looked at them both and took a deep sniff.

"Smells like arse alright, must be the famous Sister Fister duo from out of Cunnington. Heard ya fisted that ol' earth dragon harassing the nuns, imagine the smell."

>>24528474
This way anon!

>>24528442
>Ye filthy arse
that's not how "ye" fucking works. god damn, learn basic grammar before writing a book

I guess I haven't been giving RR site staff the credit they deserve
also
>Matabar
>look inside
>10k followers
>4.7* rating with 2.37k votes

>>24528859
B-based...