Writing How to transition

Agentt

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So, I am having trouble with my character realizing he is in isekai.

I know the cliche trope is that MC sees a dragon or a cat girl and is like
So this really is an another world.

But I am having trouble imagining that, and, well, I can't think of any other way for MC to realise he is in isekai.
 

SailusGebel

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Not so long ago, I asked a few of my acquaintances about the whole isekai thing. It was almost a dnd game for two with me being a dm. I didn't tell them about scenarios, and some of them don't even know about isekai. Most of them realized that they were isekaied(somehow transported into another world) the moment they saw that the world is different. It's as simple as that. In all those 'scenarios' the moment they reached out to people(who were different, like medieval or something like that) or find a strange creature, they were like: "Welp, I'm not in my world."

That is probably the most realistic reaction. If something magical happens to you, and you keep your memory, you would realize it's basically isekai in a couple of hours.
 

CupcakeNinja

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So, I am having trouble with my character realizing he is in isekai.

I know the cliche trope is that MC sees a dragon or a cat girl and is like
So this really is an another world.

But I am having trouble imagining that, and, well, I can't think of any other way for MC to realise he is in isekai.
*sees a giant dragon in the sky*
"Tom Howard, you son of a bitch. You've done it again"
Is my take if going for pure comedy.

Or I dunno. Theres also the good old "oh. Well. Fuck." Reaction.

Also, "...this definitely aint Kansas anymore"

And "motherfucker! Another world, really? Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of ridiculous shit is this?! Fuck!" The angry, incredulous option is also a good one.

Depends on the personality of your character, really
 

Legi0n

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Easy way? Look at the sky. Are there three moons or a purple sun? That ain't old good Earth anymore.
 

SailusGebel

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Yeah but, i can't imagine myself doing that
It's a self-insert novel? If it isn't, I can't see what's the problem. If it is, well, how YOU would understand you were isekaied? We can't answer this question for you.
 

Agentt

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It's a self-insert novel? If it isn't, I can't see what's the problem. If it is, well, how YOU would understand you were isekaied? We can't answer this question for you.
*~*
It's not a self insert, but doing that thing just seems...off? It feels like I am willingly writing a loophole, it doesn't fit well with me
 

Ddraig

<First Dragon of SHF> <Pokemon Goddess of NuF>
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So, I am having trouble with my character realizing he is in isekai.

I know the cliche trope is that MC sees a dragon or a cat girl and is like
So this really is an another world.

But I am having trouble imagining that, and, well, I can't think of any other way for MC to realise he is in isekai.
I mean one of the ways a lot of isekais approach this is by adding a goddess in the middle of the isekai thing - say konosuba for example.

For others, like re:zero, the instant change in surroundings + an hour or two of fumbling around gets the job done.

Third way is dropping down from the sky - see ngnl or tsukimichi
 

SailusGebel

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*~*
It's not a self insert, but doing that thing just seems...off? It feels like I am willingly writing a loophole, it doesn't fit well with me
Look, the thing is, if your mc is living in a city(even a small one counts), he is, for example, a teenager, or in his early thirties, he is intelligent enough to understand that he isn't in his world. It's the most realistic reaction. A loophole is when a freaking weeb or a high schooler doesn't understand what the hell happened. Right now, even if you don't like certain things, the internet will still shove it up to your throat. SO, there is no way he didn't saw fantasy things and so on.

MC can't be THAT ignorant about this stuff and life in general. A NORMAL person would think that he or she, was, for example, somehow kidnapped. BUT, whenever the mc sees something out of place, like different vegetation, a different sky color, the difference in the number of moons\suns, and so on, the said mc would understand that this isn't the world. The only way your isekai protagonists WON'T react like a NORMAL person is if your protagonist spent whole life in a closed-off environment in some forgotten village or something like this.
 

Underload

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Let a very young girl kill something very scary, like a bandit, if your story doesn't have monsters
 

sereminar

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Hmmm, it's a fair question. Realistically the chance of being knocked out and put somewhere else on earth is far far far higher than being on an entirely different planet.

And the thing about the earth is that it's stupendously diverse. With thousands of languages and religions and cultures and architectural styles and types of clothing and societal structures etc.

So like, unless the sky is purple or there are multiple moons or the sun is the wrong color or there are clearly fantastical monsters or something it's gonna be really tough to figure out.

And even meeting different people might not entirely convince you, unless you can actually understand their language and talk with them and stuff. That would be a pretty easy way to go about it. But like, if you can't communicate then chances are you could easily still be convinced that your on earth, just in a very different place than you're used to.

As for humans never looking up you could have an asteroid shower or something to grab their attention and get them to see a second moon or whatever.
 

ConTroll

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I mean, its pretty easy though isn't it? Unless your MC gets transported alongside the rest of the neighborhood they live in, making it so that nothing changes at a glance, they'd undoubtedly be confused, wondering where the hell they are and how they got there. This would lead to searching for clues within their surroundings.

If you don't want your cliche cat girl or dragon, then describe how foreign the surrounding area is. Grass is blue; mushroom eating a five-eyed lizard with insect wings; etc.
 

Biggest-Kusa-Out-There

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Do skills exist in your isekai world? Like game skills or smth? Have him identify/appraise something, or jump higher than he intended.
Have him feel the difference in gravitational pull, which feels like his chest is about to implode or smth.
Make him fall down/trip and he scratches his elbow or smth, then drink water from a pond and it heals?
Was it spring where your mc was at previosly and next thing its winter? Make him throw up and realize it's the same carrot stew he had for lunch, so not much time must have passed for someone to haul his body half a planet away.
Is the blistering summer heat not making him shield his eyes, and then notices a different sun in the sky?
Anything with human-level intellect by nature looks at the sky for guidance. Stars, the position of the sun/moon are really solid points of reference when you're lost in nature.
Is it raining men, hallelluyah?
Is a 50m tall titan about to destroy the wall of his city?
Does the sky have floating diamonds with a Lucy among them?
Was he previously deaf and now he can perfectly hear?
Did he wear glasses and now he sees with pristine definition?
Is his body no longer under the strain of years of bad posture?
Does magic exist? Have a woman hit on him if he's plain at worst.
I think those are enough to make someone realize something happened.
 

Cipiteca396

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*~*
It's not a self insert, but doing that thing just seems...off? It feels like I am willingly writing a loophole, it doesn't fit well with me
It's not a loophole, because literally everybody would notice if they were in a different world. It's far more uncommon to not notice. Even before I knew what anime was, my parents taught me about the constellations. If I looked up and didn't see a single one I recognized, or noticed unusual patterns that would have had names if they'd existed before, it would be obvious that I was on a different world.

Everyone has little things that are familiar to them, and if those things vanish, they will notice immediately. Maybe they won't know why they're panicking, but they would.

It does make some sense if you happened to get dropped in a place that has the same flora and fauna as Earth, the same color sky and sun and moon, the same language. But that's far too many coincidences. It's impossible to get them all right, and if you're in a simulation that's an exact copy of Earth, even then, it would take sooo much effort to convince you that nothing is wrong. The only way to pull it off is if they woke up in the same bed, used the same toothbrush, interacted with the same people they always do. And that just isn't how Isekai normally works.
 

Snusmumriken

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There is always an option of starting the story later - with MC being already in a new world and aware of it, If some background information would be necessary in the future, it would always be shown in flashbacks.

Honestly speaking 80+% of isekai that I've seen could work absolutely fine with few early days cut out. And most of these rely on the very common settings to start the story
 

K5Rakitan

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Use the five senses. Something will be different.
 
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