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Carl.

Ideal Story Setup
>Overlong Prologue (5000 words, none of it will be relevant)
>First arc (introduce your main character and three members of his harem, 5 chapters MAX)
>Second arc (kill the main villain)
>Third arc (Drag shit out for ages and pretend you're building to something, never actually do that)
Recipe for infinite success

>>25353459
Everytime I see this at a bookstore, I make sure to visibly scoff and shake my head.

>>25353461
Okay.

>>25353461
omg hes so dreamy...

>>25353461
based if true

Hey guys. I was wondering if anyone would be willing to take a look at a draft for a first chapter. I'm mostly wanting to know if it's in the 'Yeah, I'll read more' area, but any feedback is appreciated. It's for a dungeon core story.
https://rentry.org/Dcore

>>25353511
Looks about right, clear prose and you actually understand what a system is unlike the FIGHT guy from last thread.
I do want to see what he does as a dungeon. Though personally I prefer shorter pre-amble before the truck-kun part and more of them adjusting to the new reality before you introduce the first problem at the end of the chapter.
I'm not sure If that view is the norm though. The way you've done it you now have to have them adjust in chapter 2 and then introduce the first threat there.

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>A tear broke out, and she wiped it away.
nooooooooooooooooooo, my autistic op archmage queen is crying

Why are the worst power systems (litrpg/cultivation) the most popular in WNs? The former is literally just numbers go up, and the latter is basically the same but giving the numbers retarded names like "qi refining" or "nascent soul" or some other stupid shit. The only litrpgs I've enjoyed are those that where the litrpg part is basically irrelevant to the story (like konosuba), and 90% of cultivation stories have to have some stupid system gimmick because let's be real who's going to read a story about meditating to go from Arbitrarily named Cultivation Stage #1 to arbitrarily named cultivation stage #2

>>25353614
as far as I understand it, cultivation is based on a pretty well rounded out system since it roots to actual chinese mysticism shit
there's litRPG with extremely fleshed out and autistic systems
the reason that most litRPG and cultivation have shit systems is because their authors don't give a fuck and just want on the gravy train
if you don't actually care about effort/depth and just want original systems, completely original power systems are pretty rare

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>>25353614
They're too lazy to learn and implement the 3 rules of magic in their writing.

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I get to finally write the chapter where the big titty waifu comes like a wrecking ball in the mc's life bros. I'm so excited. God I just want to launch part 2 RIGHT NOW but I'm still waiting for the final rendering of its cover art. Getting back into writing after a small hiatus and that it's nearly done so maybe I can resume serializing with part 2 within the next few days with a tiny backlog ready. hypee

>>25353671
How big are we talking?

What are gu?

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>>25353752
gu are the essence of heaven and earth

>>25353671
Based. Enjoy it anon. I wrote that chapter before and it was great. I'm gonna do it again too, fuck what my readers will think.

It's a real shame that america, really the entire west, doesn't have as good of a wn to actual novel pipeline like in Japan, I feel like that makes people more likely to read wns over there.

I sometimes feel my motivation slipping that hardly anyone will read what I make because of that.

>>25353781
DCC and now archmage are setting a precedent
more importantly, get over yourself. how many countless hundreds of thousands of artists do you think have died in complete and utter obscurity? you're not special
what kind of faggy ass mentality is it to let other people's attention decide what you do or do not do with your life. if you want to write, just write

Is there some app i can get, and then download things i find on, for example archive.com, and save the file in my app?

>>25353788
It's particularly attention or fame or whatever, I just like when people discuss what I write, it's fun to see people care about what I make is all

>>25353793
*it's not particularly

>>25353792
Extremely vague question but you probably want Calibre on PC and ReadEra or BookFusion on mobile (latter has a Calibre sync plugin).

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>>25353461
CHAD

>>25353841
I look like say and do this

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>>25353450
I think I'm getting the hang of LITRPG
But I presume they typically lean more on strategic decision-making?

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Is the physical copy of LOTM worth it? I heard the translation is different. Havent read it online yet

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>>25353861
>literally harry dresden
I joke but, I hope you're not as delusional as gif related. I used to to go to book clubs or weeb groups and I think he's fairly normal compared to those individuals.

>>25353759
What is a man?

>>25353965
BRING BACK MENTALLY DISABLED

>>25354052
Claude said that (and referring to Goblin as having Down syndrome) was problematic.

>>25354141
Claude is fucking gay, stand your ground. That shit was funny as Hell. If anyone gives you shit, you're writing winnies on RR. You clearly have autism so you have the pass to use those words, and if you refuse to believe you have it then my autistic ass gives you the pass.

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>>25353450
>[Embed] [Embed]

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I'm listening to Super Soldier in Another World by Nivilack Werdrite currently.
It's peak so far. toughts?

https://old.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/1cdejeu/how_to_selfpublish_101_publishing_an_ebook_in_5/
Hope it helps somebody.

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>>25353752

>>25354214
ok, but what would Spectral Soul do?

How large a cast can you have before readers have a problem with it? Assuming TWI is an extreme outlier. I have three main POV characters and am trying to figure out how much of a supporting cast to give each of them.

>>25354241
be sure to give each of your female cast members a giant insectoid fuck buddy. describe the sec scenes in graphic detail.
bug fucking is really popular with the web novel audience

>>25354247
One of the POV characters is the MC's big tiddy giant spider waifu, so I've got that covered.

>>25354241
>three main POV characters
Dead on arrival

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>decide to write again (I am gonna do a web novel)
>old ideas are old, don't feel the spark, need to make something fresh
>work on tons of world building and story planning and character brainstorming and power system stuff and and and
>it's a lot of data
>the story structure is a lot and would take even more planning, way more, to make it fully complete and consistent
>not to mention I'd have to do research to see how other writers handle common and major writing problems
>that's a lot of effort
>don't feel like doing that
>just want to write
>but don't know what to write
>brainstorming an idea just makes me not want to write the idea because there's too many things to remember about it and get right
>still want to write
>not sure what to write
>"just write anything, it doesn't matter!"
>can't pick anything
Okay so what's the best way to kill myself? I live in the UK if that helps.
(If you can't help with that I am taking advice on what to do or even suggestions on what to write. Heck I have half a mind maybe I need to find someone else to do all the thinking for me and I just do the implementation.)

>>25354329
If anyone were to tell you what to do and how to do it, you'd want to do it even less

>>25354329
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide_poisoning

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>>25354333
>trips of truth
Perhaps you are right.

>>25354329
I hate Howie posts
Just sit down and write
>I can't
Shut the fuck up, you pathetic invalid. Yes you can

Would you guys be interested in a monster romance, where the monster borderline the animal and she's stinky and covered in blood most of the times?

>>25354366
If you want to write your fetish, best of luck to you. Just know the audience is you and one other basement dweller in india.

>>25354366
Scribblechub and archiveofourownfetish will welcome you with open appendages.

>>25354329
Just write the scene. Fuck all that other stuff, you'll change your mind halfway through writing on some of it anyway.
>work on tons of world building and story planning and character brainstorming and power system stuff and and and
>it's a lot of data
None of that shit matters unless it's in a scene anyway, in which a character desires something, does something, and faces conflicts thereby.

You can literally skip most wordbuilding by just inserting vague references to other things and then forgetting about them. That's functionally what Tolkein did. Yes, there used to be dwarves in Moria. So? It's not actually very relevant to the Journey of the Fellowship. Yeah Tolkein had this whole history written down about it BUT IT DIDN'T MAKE IT INTO THE BOOKS.

He could have simply made it up as he went and left it behind as the Fellowship traveled away from that location. Moria has LITERALLY ZERO impact on the two other books in the series.

Anyway a scene is one or more characters with desires who do something and are involved in a conflict. The plot is them doing things to try to get what they want. The scene should end with some kind of resolution to the conflict, whether that be successful desire satisfaction, or failure and frustration. Once you have the cool scenes written you can link them together into a story.

I enjoy Sky Pride well enough. But I dislike the author advertising his patreon after damn near every single chapter. And that he never went back to proofread anything. Still obvious typos and grammatical mistakes midway through book 4.

>>25354520
Thanks, I think I will try to do something relatively simple and go for a chapter a day over thirty days, probably without advance planning for a bunch of it and without much regard for quality. Having that as a test run should help get me back in the habit of writing again, and maybe after that it will be easier to do a project, or even stick with this one. It's gonna be super tropey though.

>>25354560
>I dislike the author advertising his patreon after damn near every single chapter
Warby is such a hustlebro colluder he literally caught a tempban from RR for it

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What a scam that they make you pay by the view and not by the click.

>>25354580
is that not how literally all ads work

>>25354562
Keep in mind you can also write out of order. Feel like writing the end first? You can just do that. No need to write in the order the book will be at publication.

>>25354575
lolwut? I shill my patreon and amazon after every single chapter without fail. I see plenty of other people do it too. It's not against the rules.

>>25354580
Too much variance in CPC. People submit shitty ads and get 1/10th the clicks of a good ad - why should we have to subsidize the retards? Because that's what would happen, RR would have to raise prices if it was CPC because so many of you cretins put out boring worthless ads

>>25354581
No in fact most are CPC like Amazon and Facebook and I think Google too

>>25354581
Kind of sort of. Amazon, Facebook, and Reddit make it so you set a daily spend cap then run it either indefinitely or for a set schedule, and you're charged per click based on several factors. RR makes you pay for a set of impressions (Just your ad showing up on a session) instead. Both have their uses. The former can maximize impressions while the latter lasts longer.

>>25354583
>I shill my patreon and amazon after every single chapter without fail. I see plenty of other people do it too. It's not against the rules.
Not what Warby got banned for. He was part of the OG cabal that was an actual, legitimate cabal that manipulated shit, enough that he and his cronies all got temps and permas
He's why RR admins are in the cabals these days, to oversee

>>25354593
Oh, /that/ cabal. Yeah I heard about them. Some author preemptively blocked all the top rated authors, published, and rocketed to the top without all their hate collusion ratings holding him back. Then of course they made it so you can't preemptively block people...
Personally I think it's bullshit. If I know a user is a shithead and want to block them, I should be able to. Fuck haters. They can read but I don't want them dirtying my work with their grubby rating fingers. They can go to goodreads to do that.

>>25354597
>Some author preemptively blocked all the top rated authors,
I thought this was LJAmber and that was recent, not related - the other cabal was years ago

Any recs for webnovel with either good translation or written by an ESL that knows what he's doing? No interested in slice of life btw.

Currently giving Timeless Assassin a go but it's not hooking me.

>>25354329
Cultivator. Write a cultivation story where the protagonist doesn't get some retarded rare manual, but ALSO write it without getting bogged down in retarded side quests. And also don't make the MC's main technique just fireball. Have MC hone one established technique to where it's terrifying, maybe Thunder Palm? Dunno up to you. Point is "try to write a cultivation story without falling into the tired tropes OR falling into reddit onions tropes"

>>25354613
I'm ESL and regularly receive positive feedback on my prose. Read Retribution Engine.

>>25354597
>>25354602
/r/ing moar RR lore

>>25354618
36 pages worth of chapters is an insane treasure trove, but I don't read novels with female protags because I can't self insert.

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>no autistic girlfriend to intellectually destroy your naysayers

>>25354628
based retard

>>25354628
ok fine
i have Puppetmaster: Army of One with a male protag, much less content but nonetheless present

>>25354329
You're planning too much. Look into discovery writing and try that for a while. Maybe the flashlight method too. After trying that for a bit see if you can find your personal balance of discovery and planning. You can make a note of some vague lore or world building tidbit without fully fleshing it out on the spot. Only flesh it out if it comes up again and becomes relevant to what's actually happening in the story. Otherwise leave it for later if ever. Tldr: you've already pinpointed what's stopping you from writing. Stop doing it you idiot.

Sabriel mogs your favorite male MC

>>25353567
Excellent.
>Though personally I prefer shorter pre-amble before the truck-kun part and more of them adjusting to the new reality before you introduce the first problem at the end of the chapter.
>The way you've done it you now have to have them adjust in chapter 2 and then introduce the first threat there.
Understandable, and I do have that in the second chapter. I just wanted for there to be something that gives weight to the isekai. I'm well aware that some readers want it to get rolling immediately, so making sure the intro was at least tolerable to those types was important.
Thanks!

>>25354701
wrong general

>>25354707
Put a tripcode on, pal.

>>25354709
It's at least two of us trying to shoo the tradfags away but probably more like 3 or 4
First time I've done it in weeks but I always agree with the sentiment. Go to sffg if you can't even come up with one webnovel fmc you like. Why use Sabriel?

>>25354718
Sabriel enters the plane of Death within the first few chapters of her first book and has to figure shit out alone. In a world of poor books, she is a GAR female protag and mogs most maleMCs that shitposters latch onto.

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>>25354580
OH NO!

>>25354724
she is also from a trad series
reread my post since you completely missed the point somehow

>>25354726
I deliberately ignored the rest of your post because your foundation of "femMC shitposting" is unstable. I'm glad you caught on. Spend more time lurking and cultivating high-quality posts.

>>25354730
retard. this has nothing to do with fmc. it has to do with you not using a web novel protagonist as your example
Go the fuck back to sffg, you are off topic

>>25354733
But I don't care about your shit post! Discuss some webnovels you enjoy or did not enjoy instead of "my entire post is "femMC bad!""
Stop responding and reflect upon your poor life choices. Everybody a warrior behind a keyboard.

>>25354736
Are you actually mentally deficient? What do you think is happening right now? I am pro FMC you drooling retard, Jesus Christ

>>25354724
>>25354736
I swear every /sffg/ refugee has the cognitive capacity of pre amoebic life

Yet more proof sffg ruined this thread

>>25354597
>Then of course they made it so you can't preemptively block people
that's shitty and bizarre

>>25354602
It really doesn't help that LJamber is also an insufferable schizo.
Also seeing kana coping about it in cord was funny and infuriating at the same time

>>25354329
>>25354520
I feel like more people would enjoy writing WNs if they didn't focus so hard on setting things up and rewriting.
Treat WNs as just a published form of an early draft. You'll get way more creative if past chapters actively hinder what you can do with your magic system, characters, or worldbuilding.

Then, when you want to try and publish it, you can clean it up, which will be far easier now that you have a finished work, instead of trying to perfect your prologue.

All this talk about female main characters got me to look at my outline, since I don't have any female characters in my story so far (aside from a currently bit player princess that only appeared in one arc of the story).
The only female leads appear for
>the sixth (planned) arc, and she turns into a boy at the end so it doesn't really count
>the tenth arc onwards adds two girls to the cast, but one of them is actually a boy pretending to be a girl
>the sole girl in question primarily exists so there can be some kind of romance arc
Maybe I'm just sexist.

>>25354994
Thanks for your input, tranny

>>25354997
There actually is narrative purpose for both of the "actually boys" instances.
The first is to introduce the idea that heavy body alteration potions can save someone from dying. The whole thing is a screw the audience joke, since I've already introduced the potion in question and set it up that one of the main characters might take it for some reason.
The other instance is just because the boy didn't want his sister getting raped.

>looking forward to Saving the School chapters every week
>latest published chapter:
>18 days ago
If this gets delayed again I'm AI getting the next chapter and posting it in the comments.

>>25355024
Based. Make it a lewd handholding chapter with Mia, please.

How do I come up with a personality for my MC and the side characters? I know what needs to be happen in the story, but I can't really decide on a personality. It just feels so fake.

>>25355041
of course it's fake dipshit you're creating the characters they won't be real until the story is properly substantial

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Novelpia global has zero censors set up what the fuck is this kek. Saw "Nigga" being used in a novel too.

>>25355041
For the MC, it helps to stop and think about how they factor into the plot. Why are they getting involved in anything rather than staying home and eating chips on the couch like a normal person? From there, you can start to extrapolate details about their personality.

Is the MC involved because they want money? Then why are they so desperate for money? Do they have family they need to support, are they tired of living in poverty, are they just greedy? Then you can take it a step further; How does he feel about his family and his role as breadwinner, what about poverty upsets/scares them the most and why, what purpose bellies their greed and what will they do with those riches when they get it? Then for plot points, ask yourself how the personality you've created would react to those events. Does the greedy MC care when the capital burns down, or does he see opportunity he can capitalize on? Does the impoverished MC see something of himself in the peasant being beaten by the Asshole Young Master, and that's why he chooses to rearrange the young master's face?

For side characters, similar idea, just ask yourself what their motivation is for getting involved in the story where they do. It can be simple or complex, just remember the audience doesn't care so much about the life story of an innkeeper who shows up once, but they care more when it's a recurring important character.

>>25354329
You are not a writer. I recommend taking up tattoos as a hobby.

>Finish first chapter in a day
>Reread, proofread, edit, and take feedback from readers
>Easy so far
>Second chapter
>Fucking stumped

I know people say the first and/or last chapter is always the hardest, but it's the second that's stumping me. Constantly fretting over making everything "perfect" has always been a bad habit of mine for a long time, and it always ends in me just putting it off until "inspiration" hits (which ends in me dropping it altogether to do other stuff before remembering I was going to write something, rinse-repeat). I'm trying to curb that bad habit by telling myself "whatever's perfect in my head is automatically worse than whatever's on page, because at least what's on page exists", but it's not easy.

Any advice or tricks you guys use to make yourselves write when the brain's not cooperating?

You just write and it naturally comes out. Nothing will be ever achieved until start writing.

>>25355145
but what if I fail the dao merge...

couldn't write because i was busy masturbating

For those of you who are stuck with writer’s block or whatever, try writing non-linearly.
Start with a simple outline. Add more bullet points. Then add more. And more. And more.
Expand the parts you’re interested in. Add a bit of dialogue here, a description there. Move, shuffle, or cut the parts you hate, and replace them with something else.
Keep moving up and down your outline, improving it piece by piece. Work on whichever scenes or aspects interest you most that day.
Maybe you just watched a spy flick and suddenly want to write the cool chase scene in Chapter 9. Do it.
Maybe you’re feeling down and want your main character to feel just as miserable. Pour that bitterness into the sad scene you’ve been planning.
Maybe you’ve written your main character into a corner. Go back and have him pick up a bomb in an earlier chapter.
Eventually, you’ll have so much written down that you can simply remove the bullet points and call the result your first draft.
Think of it like painting. Sure, you could focus on rendering the perfect left eye, then slowly work your way across the rest of the canvas.
Or you could grab a thick-ass brush and smear paint across the whole thing at once. Then, over time, refine it until it resembles a portrait.
And before you dismiss this approach outright, ask yourself: what do you have to lose by giving it a shot?
It’s probably a better use of your time than staring at a blank page and waiting for the perfect words to magically appear.
At worst, you’ll still end up with a more detailed outline than the one you started with.

>Hit rising stars for my genre
>Even though my winnie's twice over the 4 week time window
So is time not an actual gate for RS or is it that requires a greater scale of growth over time to still hit the board?

>>25355116
The problem is that my MC didn't have a choice in getting into the story (other than giving up and dying). It doesn't really give me much insight into what he's like.

I have some traits in mind, but it's not really a personality.
Maybe I need to just steal a character's personality from some random story I read. That would be more comprehensive than trying to come up with it from scratch.

>>25354241
People keep saying amateurs should avoid multiple POVS
For a long time, I detested that advice, but after trying it out, I concluded it is solid advice because multiple POV tends to convolute the story for no real reason.

>>25354173
Not the first time

>reading a Korean webnovel on some website that probably MTLs everything and rarely does a quick one over
>sudden gachimuchi reference out of nowhere
I really wish I could find out if this is the result of a shitty translation or if the author really did make a reference to that.

>>25355288
If the story only has one point of view it's going to be pretty jarring when I spend 8000 words on two nameless soldiers talking about the economic impact of disrupted trade routes, leading to a chapter about a farmer getting executed for poaching on the king's land, which causes his son to become a shiftless bandit, then slowly rise to power as a minor warlord before attacking the MC's caravan.

>>25355460
As exciting as a historical report of the flow of bananas in the roman empire and it's economical impact.

>>25355439
If it's Korean, it's more than definitely legit. Asian nerds love that shit.

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>>25355460
Anon unless that warlord is a recurrent character, you just committed a deadly sin.

>>25354241
>three main POV
Don't do it. Kill your darlings so its only 1 pov and 1 pov only. It's OK to make at maximum 1 or 2 other pov chapters but you absolutely must go right back immediately to the main MC.

>>25355439
I've read maybe eight or so Korean mtls and 2 of them mention big black rods in the first chapter as a joke.

>>25355478
It wouldn't surprise me, I just feel like I would've seen it before at this point. I've already seen like, 2 or 3 references to Bazz from Concord, so I'm aware that at least some of our memes are universal.

>>25355207
Time is a big factor for front page where competition is hot. You can't even get on it without 10k words and the ones with 20k are going to push you off even then.
To get on the genre specific RS there's a way lower barrier. You could release one chapter a week and get on.

I heard web novel has a really shitty system where you basically don't even own the story you post there. Is royal road or scribble hub better than that?

>>25355497
He dies off-screen after the one encounter with the MC. But the war that ultimately caused that chain of events was started by the MC's love interest in an attempt to avenge his apparent death, so there's dramatic irony there.

>>25354613
>ESL
Maybe Walker of the Words. I haven't gotten around to reading it but it's on my list. In terms of English writing by an ESL it's considered far above average especially on WebNovel. I've heard it starts out really slowly but gets good after 200ish chapters and then gets bad again after 1800 because either the author started using AI or the Webnovel.com staff started taking over the writing.
There's also Rise of the Worm Sovereign by the same author, heard first 30 chapters are a slog because the MC is literally a worm and has a glitched system.

>>25355556
ya

>>25355558
>He dies off-screen after the one encounter with the MC
Yeah, delete that entire sequence.

>>25355556
Scribblehub is actual dogshit. RR is vaguely better. At least on RR you own your shit.

>>25355556
Yeah Royal Road is monetized through readers or authors buying premium or authors buying ads.
Meanwhile Qidian chinks: https://writerbeware.blog/2023/01/20/bad-contract-alert-webnovel/

>>25355565
thanks, I'll check it out

>>25355571
Does scribble hub do the same shit as web novel, or is it bad in a different way?

>>25355593
try reading
https://www.scribblehub.com/terms-of-service/

>>25355596
That doesn't seem too bad, nowhere near web novel for sure

>>25355596
Didn't you hear?
We don't read 'round these parts.

>>25355460
There are no circumstances where that kind of bullshit isn't jarring, what were you thinking?