tips on writing isekai'd nations

marko.karl

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so, i wanted to write my own generation of isekai but it's a whole nation, like a few others have already done on this site, giving my own couple of spins; as a history nerd I decided on a ww2 era, alt-history Italy; but starting to actually write this has been a struggle, I am not sure about what angle i should take about this, like should i focus more on some characters? go more for the bigger picture?

also how would the government deal with such a thing in an era before mass media were really a thing, and the most advanced communication device was long-range radios?
also, I am posting this thread pretty late and might go to sleep soon, so sorry If i don't answer fast
 

Ilikewaterkusa

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so, i wanted to write my own generation of isekai but it's a whole nation, like a few others have already done on this site, giving my own couple of spins; as a history nerd I decided on a ww2 era, alt-history Italy; but starting to actually write this has been a struggle, I am not sure about what angle i should take about this, like should i focus more on some characters? go more for the bigger picture?

also how would the government deal with such a thing in an era before mass media were really a thing, and the most advanced communication device was long-range radios?
also, I am posting this thread pretty late and might go to sleep soon, so sorry If i don't answer fast
The characters should be the focus. Because if you make the wider view the story it will suck because it’s just steam rolling. Like who would win Ron Paul with Hulk Hogan body, roids and an AR or some stinky malnourished guy with femdom fetishes snd doesn’t know what a shower is. They used to have like cable wires and the printing press still existed.
 

marko.karl

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The characters should be the focus. Because if you make the wider view the story it will suck because it’s just steam rolling. Like who would win Ron Paul with Hulk Hogan body, roids and an AR or some stinky malnourished guy with femdom fetishes snd doesn’t know what a shower is. They used to have like cable wires and the printing press still existed.
i actually did not plan on much steamrolling at all. but you have a good point
 

Daitengu

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Generally nation building is done as background info for the author to reference. Most of the info is left out of the story unless it becomes relevant.

Even ol Tolkien did it that way. The reason there's a world book at all is mainly because his son got his notes together and published it.

Think of it like DnD map making. The DM has all the info in a notebook, and it's referenced when the players make decisions that require it. Often 80% of the info goes unused.
 

Dr.AssDeer

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First off, this sounds amazing and I'm already interested.

I would say focus on IMPORTANT characters, like the general of an army or the ruler of this Alt-Italy, not some farmer in a random village in no-where-land. Although like anything, there are exceptions. If it fits with the plot and isn't shoehorned in, add it.

This is a bit more opinion based but I believe it still counts. Don't flip-flop between POVs in the same chapter too many times (2-3 at the most), even then I would suggest sticking to just one per chapter. This allows the reader to better understand the characters and the story, while not getting confused about what's going on. I would also suggest don't publish anything under 2000 words, but that's my opinion. I generally try to go for 2000-4000 words per chapter.

Assuming there is going to be magic, don't make it a hard counter to every single earth technology, that's extremely boring to read--at least for me. At the start, it will be difficult to fight against, like anything first encountered. But after a few months, new, basic methods of dealing with magic should start to roll out into the armed forces.

Moving onto the armed forces, this is where the Alt-history part comes in or we start to bend the reality stick. My understanding is that their air force was garbage and their army had constant infighting from the generals and officers (I might be completely wrong in saying this so take this point with a grain of salt). Here, you can either go with the realistic option and have this Alt-Italy work with this mess, or the pretext of this being an Alt-Italy and simply say at some point that these problems were fixed before this story started.

As for communication...I'm honestly not sure. All I know is it would be slow and it would likely take weeks or even months for news about anything to spread.

Hope this helps!
 
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marko.karl

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First off, this sounds amazing and I'm already interested.

I would say focus on IMPORTANT characters, like the general of an army or the ruler of this Alt-Italy, not some farmer in a random village in no-where-land. although like anything, there are exceptions. If it fits with the plot and isn't shoehorned in, add it.

This is a bit more opinion based but I believe it still counts. Don't flip-flop between POVs in the same chapter too many times (2-3 at the most), even then I would suggest sticking to just one per chapter. This allows the reader to better understand the characters and the story, while not getting confused about what's going on. I would also suggest don't publish anything under 2000 words, but that's my opinion. I generally try to go for 2000-4000 words per chapter.

Assuming there is going to be magic, don't make it a hard counter to every single earth technology, that's extremely boring to read--at least for me. At the start, it will be difficult to fight against, like anything first encountered. But after a few months, new, basic methods of dealing with magic should start to roll out into the armed forces.

Moving onto the armed forces, this is where the Alt-history part comes in or we start to bend the reality stick. My understanding is that their air force was garbage and their army had constant infighting from the generals and officers (I might be completely wrong in saying this so take this point with a grain of salt). Here, you can either go with the realistic option and have this Alt-Italy work with this mess, or the pretext of this being an Alt-Italy and simply say at some point that these problems were fixed before this story started.

As for communication...I'm honestly not sure. All I know is it would be slow and it would likely take weeks or even months for news about anything to spread.

Hope this helps!
first of all thanks!


This is a bit more opinion based but I believe it still counts. Don't flip-flop between POVs in the same chapter too many times (2-3 at the most), even then I would suggest sticking to just one per chapter. This allows the reader to better understand the characters and the story, while not getting confused about what's going on. I would also suggest don't publish anything under 2000 words, but that's my opinion. I generally try to go for 2000-4000 words per chapter.
i was planning on having just a few characters, even if I don't have all of them flashed out right now, and was aiming at 1.5k minimum to start, as I was always told I have a problem with way too concise writing.

Assuming there is going to be magic, don't make it a hard counter to every single earth technology, that's extremely boring to read--at least for me. At the start, it will be difficult to fight against, like anything first encountered. But after a few months, new, basic methods of dealing with magic should start to roll out into the armed forces.
i was thinking about something in the middle, sometimes it's gonna be a hard counter, other times it's gonna be a pain in the ass, but in general keeping it pretty balanced, not tipping one way or the other too much.
Moving onto the armed forces, this is where the Alt-history part comes in or we start to bend the reality stick. My understanding is that their air force was garbage and their army had constant infighting from the generals and officers (I might be completely wrong in saying this so take this point with a grain of salt). Here, you can either go with the realistic option and have this Alt-Italy work with this mess, or the pretext of this being an Alt-Italy and simply say at some point that these problems were fixed before this story started.
this is mostly correct. bar the air force, we had some really good plane, but never produced enough of them. regarding the army, most of the problems were from a mass of incompetent bootlikers getting in positions of power so Mussolini could have his ass comfortably protected. this led to many dumb decisions, like the idiot telling that the troop in Albania were totally prepared for an invasion of Greece. this is getting resolved (In part) before the story happens, by having fascism booted early, and the democracy restored. this leads to having more of the competent guys in charge, and the Italian army being better overall (decent tanks, including some mediums, and ditching the tankette much earlier then 1941; the navy getting some carriers)
this also has as a consequence that many important people don't escape Italy, one who may or may not be really important is a fellow based on enrico fermi (i am not using real names, for more flexibility, and avoiding mentioning controversial figures.)
 

Ilikewaterkusa

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i actually did not plan on much steamrolling at all. but you have a good point
It basically always evolves into a steam roll
first of all thanks!



i was planning on having just a few characters, even if I don't have all of them flashed out right now, and was aiming at 1.5k minimum to start, as I was always told I have a problem with way too concise writing.


i was thinking about something in the middle, sometimes it's gonna be a hard counter, other times it's gonna be a pain in the ass, but in general keeping it pretty balanced, not tipping one way or the other too much.

this is mostly correct. bar the air force, we had some really good plane, but never produced enough of them. regarding the army, most of the problems were from a mass of incompetent bootlikers getting in positions of power so Mussolini could have his ass comfortably protected. this led to many dumb decisions, like the idiot telling that the troop in Albania were totally prepared for an invasion of Greece. this is getting resolved (In part) before the story happens, by having fascism booted early, and the democracy restored. this leads to having more of the competent guys in charge, and the Italian army being better overall (decent tanks, including some mediums, and ditching the tankette much earlier then 1941; the navy getting some carriers)
this also has as a consequence that many important people don't escape Italy, one who may or may not be really important is a fellow based on enrico fermi (i am not using real names, for more flexibility, and avoiding mentioning controversial figures.)
Mussolini would probably declare a state of emergency and do through with the whole of his policy, and the economy would be like pre-war Nazi germany, growing massively by like 11%. While also doing economics, he would probably purge all the losers who are against him, and will greatly suffer because their outside funding from other nations are no more. Gone.
 

marko.karl

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It basically always evolves into a steam roll

Mussolini would probably declare a state of emergency and do through with the whole of his policy, and the economy would be like pre-war Nazi germany, growing massively by like 11%. While also doing economics, he would probably purge all the losers who are against him, and will greatly suffer because their outside funding from other nations are no more. Gone.
the problem is that mussolini was ousted like 10 years before the story starts in 1937
 

marko.karl

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Julius Evola revolts and replaces him
no, evola would be against the anti-mussolini coup, who is initially led by a group of generals and politicians, and planned by the heir to the throne. after the coup another famous Italian writer and poet would be elected as president, Gabriele D'Annunzio
 

Ilikewaterkusa

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no, evola would be against the anti-mussolini coup, who is initially led by a group of generals and politicians, and planned by the heir to the throne. after the coup another famous Italian writer and poet would be elected as president, Gabriele D'Annunzio
He doesn’t even known about Raphael Raphael Raphael…
 

TheEldritchGod

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Godzilla.

If you are in Korea, Godzilla is something that happens in the background. The story is about the people with their lives and personal drama and how it is impacted by Godzilla, but Godzilla is somewhere in the background. He's something that happens.

If you are in Japan, Godzilla is THE PLOT. Everyone talks about Godzilla. Everything thing that happens is about Godzilla. How to defeat Godzilla. How to survive Godzilla. How did Godzilla get here? How do we use these singing tiny girls to summon forth a giant moth to fight Godzilla?

Pick one.
Your story should be from 10,000 feet about how the nation steam rolls the fantasy world, or it needs to be about the MC or a group of MCs and how they had normal lives and how it has changed.

Because if it is about a group, we know the group, or at least one member of the group will survive to the end, but we don't know if that will happen to the rest of the country.

If it is about the country and that's the PLOT, then nobody is going to believe for one second that Italy will lose. Then you need to focus on HOW Italy wins, not IF they win. However, in this case, you can murder as many characters you want and people won't mind. Italy is the MC, and so everyone else is the secondary character and everyone knows they don't have plot armor, only the MC.
 

Ilikewaterkusa

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no, evola would be against the anti-mussolini coup, who is initially led by a group of generals and politicians, and planned by the heir to the throne. after the coup another famous Italian writer and poet would be elected as president, Gabriele D'Annunzio
Electing Annuzio would be a return to the status quo, he is quite literally Mussolini's mentor and he died in '38.

On Evola

Fascism, National Socialism and Race​

Despite later efforts to categorise Evola as a Fascist or National Socialist thinker, in reality ‘Official Fascism did not think highly of him’, while SS reports betray a distinct antipathy towards him. This is hardly surprising, considering the highly critical stance he adopted on a range of issues relevant to both the Fascist and National Socialist ideologies, not least that of race.

Benito Mussolini’s ascent to power was, to Evola's unapologetically aristocratic and monarchist perspective, inappropriate. Despite his sympathies for any who might stand against leftist and democratist forces, the Fascist revolution was, in a sense, a counterfeit one. It lacked any connection to a transcendent source of power. And though its early republican, ‘secular’ character was soon ameliorated through fusion with Italian bourgeois "nationalist infatuations", this also blunted whatever revolutionary potential it possessed.

For Evola the ‘true revolution’ - the one that ought to have taken place - was one “from above”, led by the sovereign himself. Still, it must be admitted that despite severe reservations, he did consider Mussolini's government as better than the alternative of liberal democracy or communism. His attitude to Fascism has been described as following the sequence of "first a great hope", then "the hope of making corrections of a traditional kind", then "a recognition that everything is lost", leading ultimately to apoliteia.

Disillusionment with Fascism led Evola to see Germany's National Socialism as "much more consequential". However, even in this case, the absence of any transcendent background to NS was to lead to the criticism of core elements of NS ideology: the great attachment to nature, a Fuhrer principle that lacked any legitimation other than that of the people and, not insignificantly, its purely biological racism. As with Fascism, Evola's ideas were just too different from official National Socialist thought.

This difference is perhaps most stark in the area of race. Although Evola recognised that race was important, it was "hierarchically below the all-important primal ideas". The biological element was never enough for him: "In a cat or a thoroughbred horse the biological is the deciding element, and thus the racial observation can be restricted to this criterion. This, however, is no longer the case when dealing with humans, or at least with beings that are worthy of that name. Man is indeed a biological being, but also connected to forces and laws of a different kind, that are as real and effective as the biological realm and whose influence on the latter cannot be overlooked." This nuanced stance also conditioned his approach to questions surrounding Jewish identity, character and influence.
__
For the author, the ideas "expressed in Revolt provided the foundation and yardstick for any kind of action: by shunning all compromises, illusions and pretences, the book pointed to those values never to be forgotten." Indeed, it is precisely due his to "shunning all compromises" on those ideas that Evola's relations with the Fascist and National Socialist governments were often tense - and occasionally hostile.
 

Kenjona

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I loved living in Italy.
Ok, most people are addressing the political side of stuff. Is this the Country including land going over, or just the people? Because either makes a big difference, in the 1930's to 1940's Italy is still a very agrarian nation. Which can be an advantage. Now one major issue Italy has had for generations, it has no major industrial resources in the quantities needed for 19th to 20th century industries. It has some, but they are usually poor in quality and quantity for an industrial nation.

Pluses: It has an Agrarian and fishing based society spread across all of its territory. It has the basic knowledge needed for a start up of a medieval country, if it is only the people that cross over. (i.e. Masonry, Forestry, Leatherworking, Shepherding, Farming, Fishing, Armory [Italy is known for quality Firearms and some melee weapons] and so on). Most towns are self sufficient within 10 miles of town center. Bigger cities require more territory to support of course. In 1937 Italy still had guns in most homes; however they did have national gun control laws since the early 1930's, so most police and Para military had lists of what families owned guns; or at least under certain names. But as you are talking 1937, how extensive they were I do not know.

Minuses:
Italy can easily break down into smaller political units; many territories are not very happy with the other territories nearby, only the national government held them together. Piedmont, and the Province of Carnaro for instance.
Italy has a very family oriented society and much of its industry surrounds particular families. It is very Catholic (more so in 1937), with very, very small populations of other religions.
It has two independent internal countries San Marino and the Holy See.
 
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