CarburetorThompson
Fuel Atomization Enjoyer
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2022
- Messages
- 1,214
- Points
- 153
A character needs to struggle. If they don’t then your story is uninteresting. Often see someone struggle for the first few chapters and never have any issues ever again until they become a power that no one can compare to. If your character powers up but the threats stay the same your story will be boring and predictable.
You don’t need to show a giant excel spreadsheet for every little stat change. If you want to then include at the bottom of the chapter so it doesn’t mess up pacing.
Character choice shouldn’t just matter, but should be difficult. Choices shouldn‘t be picking between S Rank Swordsmanship or S Rank Alchemy. Make it engaging like mc can level up swordsmanship to save the city from being destroyed, but if he does he can’t use alchemy to cure his mother’s rare illness. The best stories have the characters make decisions that even the reader would struggle to make. You want to face the characters with a choice in which every option is equal awful.
Not sure if any of you have played D&D. I did very briefly (not really my thing) but there is two leveling methods, one where you get exp from killing monsters, and milestone leveling, where characters level up after progressing through a certain story event or encounter. Not saying to get rid of exp, because I know litrpg authors never will, but power gained should be more related story progression, than having a character sitting in a field killing wolves for hours of off screen time between chapters.
Dungeons are cliche. Most common troupe is that dungeons are a coalescence of evil mana or something that takes the form a cave or building full of monsters. Often times with little else in way of explanation. If you’ve played any mmo (thats not Korean) you’ll encounter dungeons, but dungeons in them aren’t just a convenient cave shaped loot piñata. Dungeons are actually related to the story. You don’t go to the Deadmines to kill Edwin Vancleef and take his sword and red bandana, you go the deadmines to kill vancleef because he made a giant dreadnought filled with cannons to level Stormwind City to the ground (and take his sword).
The rest are personal preference, but because my opinions are the correct ones you can just take it as fact.
Flash forwards are lame. Especially if you foreshadow some horrible event, or give a glimpse at the characters in despair, only the next few chapters to reveal or be a giant nothing burger with no actual consequence than you are a bad author and should feel bad.
Predestination stories where characters class is determined from the moment they are born are bad. Also if the weakest skill is actually the strongest it’s not the weakest skill, and if a character is a low level but has high stats you’re pigeon holing yourself into a beaten horse of a cliche that makes your story more predictable then the outcome a Toronto Maple Leafs game after I take a prybar to the legs of every offense man.
Limiting character agency is a good thing, but agency shouldn’t be massively limited by the rules of the universe. Falls into why predestination stories suck so much. I don’t want a character to be prevented from achieving goals by either a cosmic force or some god, that’s not fun to read. Those stories are like if I was prevented from going to business school because the weak atomic force said so.
Wrote this while waiting for someone to get out of the 1 shower in my building with water pressure that isn’t comparable to what you’d find in a Siberian gulag. I took all my unhinged anger and just funneled it towards litrpg fans.
You don’t need to show a giant excel spreadsheet for every little stat change. If you want to then include at the bottom of the chapter so it doesn’t mess up pacing.
Character choice shouldn’t just matter, but should be difficult. Choices shouldn‘t be picking between S Rank Swordsmanship or S Rank Alchemy. Make it engaging like mc can level up swordsmanship to save the city from being destroyed, but if he does he can’t use alchemy to cure his mother’s rare illness. The best stories have the characters make decisions that even the reader would struggle to make. You want to face the characters with a choice in which every option is equal awful.
Not sure if any of you have played D&D. I did very briefly (not really my thing) but there is two leveling methods, one where you get exp from killing monsters, and milestone leveling, where characters level up after progressing through a certain story event or encounter. Not saying to get rid of exp, because I know litrpg authors never will, but power gained should be more related story progression, than having a character sitting in a field killing wolves for hours of off screen time between chapters.
Dungeons are cliche. Most common troupe is that dungeons are a coalescence of evil mana or something that takes the form a cave or building full of monsters. Often times with little else in way of explanation. If you’ve played any mmo (thats not Korean) you’ll encounter dungeons, but dungeons in them aren’t just a convenient cave shaped loot piñata. Dungeons are actually related to the story. You don’t go to the Deadmines to kill Edwin Vancleef and take his sword and red bandana, you go the deadmines to kill vancleef because he made a giant dreadnought filled with cannons to level Stormwind City to the ground (and take his sword).
The rest are personal preference, but because my opinions are the correct ones you can just take it as fact.
Flash forwards are lame. Especially if you foreshadow some horrible event, or give a glimpse at the characters in despair, only the next few chapters to reveal or be a giant nothing burger with no actual consequence than you are a bad author and should feel bad.
Predestination stories where characters class is determined from the moment they are born are bad. Also if the weakest skill is actually the strongest it’s not the weakest skill, and if a character is a low level but has high stats you’re pigeon holing yourself into a beaten horse of a cliche that makes your story more predictable then the outcome a Toronto Maple Leafs game after I take a prybar to the legs of every offense man.
Limiting character agency is a good thing, but agency shouldn’t be massively limited by the rules of the universe. Falls into why predestination stories suck so much. I don’t want a character to be prevented from achieving goals by either a cosmic force or some god, that’s not fun to read. Those stories are like if I was prevented from going to business school because the weak atomic force said so.
Wrote this while waiting for someone to get out of the 1 shower in my building with water pressure that isn’t comparable to what you’d find in a Siberian gulag. I took all my unhinged anger and just funneled it towards litrpg fans.
