>>24725258
I am 96% through MoL and I believe now is a good time to ask for lots of recs. I read much and often so if there is some story where you can't get anyone else into, I will at least check it out if you give me a name. I've scraped and read some rr stuff before but never much bothered to gather a huge comprehensive backlog.
I plan to read Nowhere Stars next and here is what else I currently have downloaded
>Ar'Kendrithyst
>Practical Guide to Evil
>Years of Apocalypse
>Rock Falls, Everyone Dies
>Worth the Candle (read the first chapter but all the dnd shit took me out of it so will probably not bother; yeah I poked at the rentry rec list)

I'm not really looking for xianxia right now but I'll include it. Some progression/-xia stuff I've read in the past
>first book and a half of Godclads
>two books of Speedrunning the Multiverse
>BuyMort (quickly dropped)
>LotM (same ^)
>DCC and K:BS
>Infinite Realm
>100some chapters of Shadow Slave
>ISSTH/AWE/currently reading AWWP
>CD/DE/ST by IET
>Heaven's Laws (western xianxia, two books atm)
>Soulship (western prog, six books atm)

I won't be back until I finish MoL so feel free to include your overall thoughts on that one as well. I hope the ending is not a BIG STINKER.

>>24725314
Read Worm

>>24720054
>>24720201
Recommend me some good webnovels with strong, competent and threatening antagonists that push MC to his limits.

>>24725325
Also read Worm

>>24725318
Don't read Worm. In fact, read nothing that that hack Wildbow has ever put out. It's just edgy slop with nothing to redeem it.

You know who loves Worm? Spacebattlers. Do you want to be a Spacebattler, anon? I don't think so.

>>24725344
Yo know what space battlers also love? Drinking water. Stop drinking water right now, you don't want to be a spacebattler

would you still love me if i read worm

Superhero stories are boring.

>>24725314
PGTS is way better than anything else I've read. It's way better than MoL that's for sure. It's not finished tho. And seems like it won't be for a long time. Author releases 1 chapter in 4 days but the stuff that's written is peak.

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>>24725535
*Blocks your path*

>>24725552
This is slop. But fun slop.

>>24725552
This is even worse. If a story description or title contains the word villain it villainess I don't give it a second glance.

>>24725539
imo PGTS was A tier but not S tier. It has decent prose and plotting and characters and such, but in the entire series there was only one 'wow' moment for me, the string scene (iykyk). it does have some consistently fun gimmicks with the mistaken identity stuff

>>24725356
Nice try, Spacebattler, everyone knows they're only allowed to drink cum, jizz and sperm exclusively

need a list of things that make /wng/ immediately not look at a novel so I can write something that offends nobody sensibilities and sucks in every possible way as a result

>>24725721
pick any word starting from a to z

>>24725721
>superpowers
>passive protagonist
>possibly feMC
>NTR
>DEI or conservative real world politics stuff
>MC is a writer (it just takes me out of the story)
>cliches like "you can't kill him or you'll be just like him!"

>>24725615
what the hell is S tier then in your opinion?
Also you mean the aberrant strings?
It's just consistently good, that means more for me than some sparse wow moments.
The way MC progresses is also pretty good. Magic system is top tier.

>>24725748
amongus

>>24725928
Passive MC

>>24725867
Why does the MC being a writer take you out? I've read a few that do it well enough. I've also listened to one that was so god-awfully cringe, I felt real physical relief I didn't buy it.

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>retarded mother flushing money down the toilet on pyramid scheme while whining to me that I'm not contributing enough to the household and whining to my roastie microsoft daycare-job sister who in turn again whines at me
>want to go back to story I hiatus'd
>but need cash mone and know that starting a new one is the way to get that

>>24725552
>aislop
>all rights reserved
nobody tell him

>>24724704
I had the same idea for my own first story, and did basically the same thing. The title declares how the story ends, and the tension comes from the mystery of how it happens and how close he comes to dying over and over. Unfortunately it's a bit of heavy misery wanking for much of the beginning, but there's a lot of catharsis at the end when my MC overcomes his initial poor start.

Make sure you put some cool moments in at regular intervals to keep readers entertained.

>>24724725
>That's a self-defeating plot structure: all throughout your book,.readers will know, no matter how bad things get for the MC, that he survives in the end, thus reducing tension. You can pull it off sometimes, but you really need a good reason to do it like that
There can be tension in other ways, and realistically, readers know that the main character WILL survive the story to the end. Nobody really thought Naruto was ever going to die during his story, readers stayed engaged to see more ninja powers and cool fights and resolution to emotional drama.

>>24725314
>Ar'Kendrithyst
number crunching fan?
if you end up liking it, try Delve

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>>24725356
Why tf would I drink water when energy drinks are so delicious?
4100 words written today btw, two GREAT chapters.

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>>24726220
>4100 words in a day
That is some good shit, Anon.

Any decent officially translated JP LNs outside of the big 5 (Mushoku Tensei, Bookworm, Spider, Apothecary, Slime)? I tried a few but they were pathetically bad. Just tell, tell, tell, and/or eye-rolling power fantasy ('everyone clapped'-tier).

So, I have 50k words of my first draft that's been sitting on the docky for a month now. I've been looking over it with fresh eyes, and it's pretty bad. What should I do? Clean slate re-write of the same story? Try to edit it to something presentable? Abandon it and start something new? Continue writing the next arc?

>>24726256
Post the first chapter here and let us read it. Sanderson said you're gonna have five bad novels in you, so it is what it is.

>>24726150
nice blogpost shitass
post your sister's tits

>>24726256
How do you expect anyone to answer such an open-answered question anon? What went bad? The structure, the prose, the pacing, the plot, the character introductions, etc? Presumably anything can be saved, unless it is catastrophically bad.

>>24726264
I don't wanna post it, it's too cringe for anyone but the google execs that spy on me to see. It's also a fanfic, which doubles the cringe levels.
>>24726272
So, a few things. Characters feel flat, including the MC the pacing is all over the place, and most importantly the emotional state of the MC is schizophrenic jumping back and forth inside the same scene from one emotion to a completely different one; while also somehow being flat as cardboard all the same. And the dialogue feels like somebody transcribed a five year old playing with dolls. The plot is decent, at least for now, though the main villain of the arc, I think is not doing much for most of it and only starts doing evil shit near the end, I think I need to add some interactions with the MC. And then there's a bunch of other characters that are, like, there, but they don't do anything relevant. And then when the MC makes risky decisions, there's no real consequences. So I guess the plot isn't actually fine now that I think about it, it's shit too. Idk. It's just bad

>>24726304
>I don't wanna post it, it's too cringe for anyone but the google execs that spy on me to see. It's also a fanfic, which doubles the cringe levels.
There's nothing we can do for you. I guess my advice is don't write fanfic?

>>24726137
Because it reminds me that I'm reading a novel. The same happens whenever I read references to "this is just like my fantasy novels I read". I think referring to anime/manga wouldn't have that effect, but it does with novels.

>>24726319
If I also have to make my own characters, it feels like they're gonna be even worse. Here I already have a template to follow of a character that I really like and that captured my imagination, and I'm still failing miserably. Just imagine if I have to come up with one on my own.

>>24726365
>rentry.co/RRBasicGuide
I looked this as someone who reads, but I just search by "completed stories" mostly, although I put some stories i see into my read later list. Is there such a huge reader base for unfinished stories?

>>24726201
This has been a misunderstanding. I was replying to the guy that told me to at least have an ending in mind for the story. That way I would know what to work towards. I just threw out an idea for an ending.
>>24726255
Death March. It's much better than what the anime was, but it's slice of life. The world has some pretty dark undertones, but the author skips over it. Supposedly the original JP prose is pretty bad, but the translation was pretty alright. Here's the WN:
>https://www.sousetsuka.com/2018/08/death-march-kara-hajimaru-isekai_28.html?m=1

The WN and LN supposedly differ. I haven't read this story in like 8 years, so I'm unsure. I just know that I liked it back in the day. Ironically, it's a bit like max level archmage - MC is a very powerful individual, but unfamiliar with how to properly use that power.

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>>24726256
>mfw I write 50k words and realize my plot only happened because I wrote the villain as an idiot and he could have easily won if he did something a teenager could account for

>>24726375
>I just threw out an idea for an ending.
Fair enough, but you can also rip off really common plots for isekai. Have to find a demon lord, looking for a way to return home, etc. If it's native fantasy, you can copy common plots from there, too. Ripping off is part of art, especially when you're just starting.

>>24726371
Then you miss searching for long running series with many completed books with resolved stories or volumes.

>>24725344
I don't plan to read Worm but I find it funny you mention Spacebattles because I'm the only person on /lit/ who has read the entire Xeelee Sequence.
>>24726215
More in the mood and more willing to try longer slow-burn shit out of my realm of usual taste.

>>24726371
Of course, otherwise there wouldn't be a whole market in selling chapters in advance or books from fictions that haven't ended. There are people who read completed stories, but the vast majority reads stuff that still hasn't ended.

>more comments about the shitty pacing
>literally right before the pace picks up
It's painful not to spoil my own story, and I don't want to accelerate posting and give up precious backlog.

>>24726440
Literally every single scene should have 'good pacing'. If you're writing bad pacing on purpose you're doing it wrong, and if you're defending that as a good thing then you need to really change your mind. I can read a dozen chapters of the beginning of e.g., Les Miserables, just doing worldbuilding or characterizing side-characters - the most boring subjects possible - and it still isn't boring or has pacing issues because the guy is a good writer.

>>24726215
NTA, but Delve's premise is boring because he's a support. The worldbuilding also makes it seem like becoming a support is just beginning everybody's bitch. I cannot for the life of me understand why so many people write protagonists like that. Have the authors never played MMOs with supports? They are always the most boring role that have to rely on others for all kinds of shit, because the devs inevitably don't account for them when creating solo content.

>>24726256
Any time you feel self-doubt, just go to RR and see what's on rising stars. Realize you're probably writing better than they are, and accept it's all luck beyond following the guide.

>>24726567
>Realize you're probably writing better than they are, and accept it's all luck beyond following the guide.
how the hell do you conclude it's luck, rather than writing quality not being the determining factor?
it's very obvious that content and presentation is what matters, not quality

>>24726576
>Why did you not determine quality to be the reason?!
>Content is what matters, not quality!
This post contradicts itself.

>>24726591
only if you're stupid tbdesu

>>24726576
laughably naive

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I'm just not a good writer. I refuse to plan beats out, so most of my story is just the hero being reactive to my latest asspull, and then I try to write my way out of it. My novel is just 100 episodes of a syndicated sitcom where nothing changes and no lesson is learned.

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If a fiction doesn't make it to RS, it's because the game is rigged.
If it does, it's proof of rigging.

>>24726459
You're 100% right. I'm already planning a rewrite although I think on a chapter to chapter basis the pacing is okay. My MC just got stuck on Namek. I'll probably compress the volume to 75% of its current wordcount in the end.

>>24726601
>I'm not stupid you're stupid.

>>24726480
Can you recommend any stories that get the feeling of an MMO right? They were never my thing, but from what I've heard I think some of those dynamics would work well for one of my ideas.

>>24726749
Infinite Dendrogram is best in class imo

>>24726137
at least one writer MC paperback was good I read back in the day.

>>24726304
>And the dialogue feels like somebody transcribed a five year old playing with dolls.
cardboard dialog, I got the cure. When you are working up your character figure out a person IRL and use their way of talking, what they would say, mannerisms, tics, etc. It gives the character instant flaws and things.

>>24726375
>I was replying to the guy that told me to at least have an ending in mind for the story. That way I would know what to work towards.
solid advice. It helps prevent the sprawl.

>>24726427
>Of course, otherwise there wouldn't be a whole market in selling chapters in advance or books from fictions that haven't ended. There are people who read completed stories, but the vast majority reads stuff that still hasn't ended.
honestly what is the fucking difference if you read it as its being written or if you find the *same* story two years later and check it out. You're reading the same story.

>>24726787
People are impatient. Some pay more for a game just to play a week earlier.

>>24726787
the difference is you can read 40% of the story or 100% of it TINA
also high chance of the story never finishing

>>24726787
>honestly what is the fucking difference if you read it as its being written or if you find the *same* story two years later and check it out. You're reading the same story.
There's a sense of community. Big stories like BTDEM, and I assume others, have discord communities where people theorycraft, hope the author notices them, make friends, share fanart, etc. Will anyone even bother to read BTDEM in two years? Maybe, but probably not.
Sure at a personal level, you can go and read Harry Potter today and it's the same book, but the experience is NOTHING like reading it when the movies were coming out and books 4, 5, 6, and 7 released. Those were EVENTS. Midnight releases FOR BOOKS. Some people made lifelong friends from those events.
And even then, there's a qualitative difference being at the bleeding edge of literature and creativity in writing. Reading what was the bleeding edge two years ago has a way different context and impact compared to reading what's the bleeding edge today.

>>24726617
I've thought about it and decided that although I'm going to do the rewrite, I'm going to keep to my current posting schedule rather than speeding it up. I don't think accelerating the ending is going to do much at this point to retain or gain new followers/readers. I'm guessing it'll be better to keep going slow and steady and then use those future chapters to spam shoutouts for my next story at the beginning of every other chapter. The alternative is doing a full rewrite to make the beginning somehow more engaging (possible but I think it would fuck up the pacing and arc of the story even more).

My readers will have to deal with it I suppose. If they drop right before the cathartic payoff starts happening, that's on them. My next story will be more gripping.

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https://rentry.co/uoktbbvt
Next chapter out of the way. Here's the first 4 so far.
https://rentry.co/5tiktkb2
https://rentry.co/qqp5kvmm
https://rentry.co/zftextrv
https://rentry.co/4bxhobct

Ok, I read a story that's clearly AI written just now. The AI prose is grating. It's "good", but the floweriness of the prose is so ubiquitous that the prose is grating. I would much rather read "he yelled angrily" and tell, don't show than this.

>Freedom tasted like sweat and torch smoke — and looked suspiciously like cleavage.
>The dungeon jailbreak was officially underway. No alarms yet, but every step felt like dancing on the edge of a knife. >Damien led the way, slipping from shadow to shadow with Shadow Meld flickering around him like a loyal ghost. His boots padded silently across old stone, heart steady, eyes sharp.
>Behind him, Princess Irene moved with regal purpose despite her dress being halfway to tatters. Her bindings sparked every few seconds — those mana-suppressing cuffs doing just enough to annoy, never enough to help.
>And then there was Rinna.
>Walking like the hall was her catwalk, like danger was her perfume, and like her chest bounced on cue.
Fucking kill me.

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>>24727110
AI isn't the problem here

>>24727116
No, it's definitely the problem. This prose looks exactly like what AI writes. The "author" probably prompted with "write a scene where the 3 characters escape the dungeon using Shadow Meld" and the AI responded with that. The prose, specifically, is the problem.

How decent of a gimmick would this be for an OPMC game isekai WN?

>MC plays an open world fantasy game ala skyrim for pretty much ever
>Wakes up one day in his max level melee/warrior class game character
>There is, however, one small issue
>The MC set this character’s age to the absolute maximum for shits and giggles, since age was more of a flavor thing in the game
>The first thing the MC notices are the overwhelming effects of old age upon him
>MC’s thoughts start occasionally wandering as he walks, since anything faster makes him feel uncomfortable
>This does not, however, change the fact that his character is a max lvl game character
>Shenanigans ensue
>MC, who already liked to LARP as an elder despite being in his 20’s before getting Isekai, now lives his LARPing in a fantasy world

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The early parts (underground arc) of this is genuinely THE best webnovel i've read, literally perfect. romance, characters plot pacing and climax you name it the authors nailed it.

Then he stopped being a skeleton, got transformed into a shota and it turns into harem misunderstanding slop. what the fuck is wrong with the chinese.

>>24727126
He's an undead, he needed to bone someone.

>>24727110
Most of it is fine, at least its communicating "something" even tho its ineficient. With the glaring exeption of "just enough to annoy, never enough to help" which is grating since it says nothing, pure unadulterated slop.

>>24725535
The worst I have found by far is Super Supportive.
>I still sometimes fantasize about having a strong power in that universe just so I can kill the protagonist.

>>24727172
beat his ass in gym class

>>24725535
how come there aren’t that many OPMC wns in the superhero genre?

>>24725325
lord of the mysteries

>>24727185
writers prefer spidermans over supermans I guess

>>24726215
Very fucked up that Delve's protagonist has basically the same build early on with Ar'Kendrithist's Sexy Gay Orc Sewermaster guy. Complete with the same obsession over calculating mana regen math. Which one came first?

>>24727110
>>Walking like the hall was her catwalk, like danger was her perfume, and like her chest bounced on cue.
lol

>>24726304
>It's also a fanfic, which doubles the cringe levels
You've got it backwards. Fanfic has 100x the allowance for cringe as original fiction does. You can post all the cringiest shit you've ever thought of on ao3.

>>24727207
>ao3

>>24727110
Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with AI text, but to me this reads like normal amateur purple prose. The sort of thing that happens when someone has read nothing but translated LNs.

>>24726480
Supports are also the most OP / must-have role despite all that so it makes sense that a minmaxed buffslave would show up when someone tries to write a story about "MC uses his Huge Gamer Brain to create a build way better than all the rest of these fags ever thought of". especially if they try to include actual credible game mechanics to optimize instead of the normal litrpg slop path of giving the MC a random special snowflake unique class or cheat skill

>>24727216
it reads like goonshit

>>24727123
>young guy larping as an old man
but what does that add to the dynamic?
I'd rather read an opmc slop about an actual old man MC.

>>24727216
Purple prose is a specific kind of dogshit prose, my dude. Yes, this is shit, but it's not that specific kind of awful.

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>>24726925
https://rentry.co/3kx4cfqk I'm on a roll. I hope (You) are too.

Currently looking through various Royal Road site stats. May post a spreadsheet sometime. Interesting stuff. It can mislead, but so can ancedote. Their advanced search and other features have troublesome problems.

>>24727246
I love stats

Question: For a LitRPG, what structure would you rather read?
A)
Chapter 1: Prologue (Lab incident, monsters, sucked into a portal)
Chapter 2-12: Grinding
Chapter 13-24: First Quest
Chapter 25-35: Grinding
Chapter 36-47: Second Quest
B)
Chapter 1: Prologue
Chapter 2-16: First Quest
Chapter 17-32: Second Quest
Chapter 33-47: Third Quest
C)
Chapter 1: Prologue
Chapter 2-12: Act I (Behold, a new world)
Chapter 13-24 Act II A (Grinding and new allies)
Chapter 25: Midpoint (Twist)
Chapter 26-36: Act II B (Villain is strong AF)
Chapter 37-47: Act III (With the power of anime, I cast ye down!)
>Why 47?
Yeah, I ain’t writing anymore than that before publishing on RR
>Stop overthinking and just write.
Already published a 70 chapter story to little fanfare a while back. This time, I want to get it right.

>>24727265
as a reader what the fuck do I care about structure

>>24727265
No amount of structural fuckery will save you if your writing is dull dog shit

>>24727265
Why are you planning a story that ends as a web novel author?

>>24727290
People said I was good in the last thread. Don’t know how true that is, but still . . .
>>24718253

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>>24727233
>>24727233
https://rentry.co/4pkox2st last chapter of Yellow Typhoon adapted into A Game of Cosmic Titan overall, funny both versions also ended up 7 chapters long. Now to tackle the chapter everyone said was way too cheesy.

>>24727265
neither quality nor success has anything to do with this nebulous horseshit

stop buying into the the literary equivalent of corporate buzzspeak

Just found your thread.

Who are the people shelling out 100s of dollars a month to no name shitty fanfic writers in 2025?

I mean who is the demographic? I'm actually curious, I thought ADHD and LLMs killed self-published authors.

>>24727339
just shows how out of touch you are with reading

>>24727346
You're probably right. Nowadays I don't read anything but soviet era scifi.

But you didn't answer my question.

>>24727349
people who like reading are the demographic

>>24727351
But why are they subbed to a Patreon instead of just buying books on amazon?

>>24727110
name of the wn?

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>>24727396
>buying books on amazon

>>24727396
fomo

>>24727396
to support the author

>>24727396
Are you new to fan culture?

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>>24727265
Stop. Instead of planning a chapter based structure, what you need to do is plan scenes. Every scene in your story needs a purpose and they need to be interesting enough on a rolling basis that the reader stays interested.

A lot of people like to create some kind of a table of their scenes to evaluate what the purpose of the scene is and whether it's truly necessary in the story.
Eg something like pic related, but usually more comprehensive.

Scenes are about change, that should be in your table.

Here's some article about writing a scene: https://www.quillandsteel.com/blog/fantasy-scene-structure

>>24727401
Fuck. I forgot this was the WN thread. Sorry. I kind of forget that these should go into /sffg/.

But the story is Dungeon Break: A Royal Scandal. I think it's on Amazon or something.

>>24727465
Thanks anon

>>24727303
>Waifu A
>Isekai
I can't judge, because I wouldn't even touch it with a 10-foot pole

>>24727216
This is the kind of prose AI comes up with. The problem isn't that there are passages like this here and there, it's that every passage in the story is like this.

>>24727422
I mean, I understood how onlyfans could serve gooners with content for money. This feels similar. But for some reason I thought there would be no market for it.

>>24727216
AI prose has this weird, infinite positivity. Every line is like sung in a musical, just nonstop hypest moment ever. Every character is super nice and playful. It's repulsive

>>24727482
Subbing $5 or $10 a month is nothing to a lot of people, especially to get the niche story they enjoy at regular intervals.

>>24727299
Nta, but I have plots I want to put out into the world. Milking the same story forever sounds more soul sucking than a nine to five. The most volumes I'd ever consider making for one series is six, and that's if it was really successful.

>>24727506
NTA but I'm planning to launch a new story in the coming months and I'm considering upping my batreon price from $5 to $10, is $10 on the upper end of the common pricing pattern or will it be fine? Of course I'll avoid pissing off my existing subs and ensure they stay subbed by grandfathering their lower priced subs in.

>>24727339
>LLMs
AI might be the biggest meme in existence.

>>24727595
Starting at a higher price is one thing but suddenly doubling the cost will lose you subs and piss people off. So unless you have a popular series with a large userbase that can suffer a few losses it simply doesn't make a lot of financial sense in most cases.

>>24727612
I could have it so both my existing and new series is $5/mo to read ahead and then have a combined package for a "better price" something like $8/mo
Same effort and 80% of readers will go for the more expensive one probably

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>click on cool sounding western cultivation novel
>look inside
>prose is a near 1:1 match with poorly translted chinese
why

>>24727685
They literally can't help it. I had to stop reading translated shit because it was also bleeding into my writing.

>>24727664
That works.