Writing Two writing tips

[ElijahRyne]

I have been reading too much Chinese stuff recently, so these points have became obvious areas of improvement in those things I have read. You probably know the difficulty of searching for a story where the MC doesn’t go from 100 elo-practically a Grand Master, or stronger, in ~10 chapters is. This is also applicable here, if not to a lesser extent.

1. When starting a story, it will probably benefit you to start off slow. Don’t get me wrong you do need a hook to keep people reading, but don’t rush into the interesting stuff if your reader is not invested in the world. Introduce the important characters, and allow the reader to get aquatinted to them before moving to the next one. Introduce the stakes of the story, arc, chapter, etc. essentially introducing what the goal of the story in the short/medium/long term. When looking into the successful stories like Stein’s Gate, Hunter x Hunter, Monster, Harry Potter (…ew), Percy Jackson, etc. They all have a hook, before going on a somewhat slow start. Sometimes the hook comes at the very beginning as in the first scene of HP, sometimes after a chapter or two of exposition like in Percy Jackson, Death Note, and Stein’s Gate, and sometimes it is slowly sprinkled in like in Hunter x Hunter and Monster.

2. When writing a scene ask things like: What is the purpose of the scene? How does it move the plot forward? Can I replace it with something else? The purpose of this is to make the story more efficient and to avoid bloat. Typically, in theater & film, the goal is to have every scene move the plot forward somehow, but since we are writing more for serialized fiction you don’t have to be that strict. The goal is to, at the very least, keep your book from reading like Victor Hugo where multiple pages interrupt the plot go on about why this room or wall looks as it does (Is there a crater on that wall? Let’s go over the entire battle of Waterloo, using ~100 pages, to explain it), unless your being payed by word then by all means. You might also have seen this bloat If you read a lot of Wuxia and/or action you will come into a lot of stories where someone is walking down the street, and a random thug attacks only to be killed in a couple pages/paragraphs. At most this will start a series of fights that have no effect on the story. As well as the ubiquitous face slapping filler. Again, if your goal is to write as many words as possible, fast, then you can ignore this point.

What are your thoughts on these points?

 

[Iamnotabot]

Thanks for the tip.

 

[Paul_Tromba]

Thanks for giving me the tips.
Edit: wait, not like that.

 

[Deleted member 54065]

I have been reading too much Chinese stuff recently, so these points have became obvious areas of improvement in those things I have read. You probably know the difficulty of searching for a story where the MC doesn’t go from 100 elo-practically a Grand Master, or stronger, in ~10 chapters is. This is also applicable here, if not to a lesser extent.

1. When starting a story, it will probably benefit you to start off slow. Don’t get me wrong you do need a hook to keep people reading, but don’t rush into the interesting stuff if your reader is not invested in the world. Introduce the important characters, and allow the reader to get aquatinted to them before moving to the next one. Introduce the stakes of the story, arc, chapter, etc. essentially introducing what the goal of the story in the short/medium/long term. When looking into the successful stories like Stein’s Gate, Hunter x Hunter, Monster, Harry Potter (…ew), Percy Jackson, etc. They all have a hook, before going on a somewhat slow start. Sometimes the hook comes at the very beginning as in the first scene of HP, sometimes after a chapter or two of exposition like in Percy Jackson, Death Note, and Stein’s Gate, and sometimes it is slowly sprinkled in like in Hunter x Hunter and Monster.

2. When writing a scene ask things like: What is the purpose of the scene? How does it move the plot forward? Can I replace it with something else? The purpose of this is to make the story more efficient and to avoid bloat. Typically, in theater & film, the goal is to have every scene move the plot forward somehow, but since we are writing more for serialized fiction you don’t have to be that strict. The goal is to, at the very least, keep your book from reading like Victor Hugo where multiple pages interrupt the plot go on about why this room or wall looks as it does (Is there a crater on that wall? Let’s go over the entire battle of Waterloo, using ~100 pages, to explain it), unless your being payed by word then by all means. You might also have seen this bloat If you read a lot of Wuxia and/or action you will come into a lot of stories where someone is walking down the street, and a random thug attacks only to be killed in a couple pages/paragraphs. At most this will start a series of fights that have no effect on the story. As well as the ubiquitous face slapping filler. Again, if your goal is to write as many words as possible, fast, then you can ignore this point.

What are your thoughts on these points?

This is true and can improve the story much. For the first tip, it can be summarized to 'Proper Build-up'. The second one is 'Purpose', like purpose that is connected to the story itself, not to your circumstances as an author (i.e. writing salary).

However, for most authors in sites like WebNovel, contracts force them to vomit chapters that has no purpose other than to prolong the series because it's money. The longer the series and the wider the audience, the better their exposure (and potential payout).

 

[Zirrboy]

If your frame of reference is cultivation, definitely.

But in terms of general writing, I find "introducing one character before moving on to the next" to be ill advice, with slow being similar.
If you can portray characters as they're changing something, or in interaction with others, why not?

Of course you can't got pedal to the metal all throughout the story, but from the context paragraph I'm inclined to believe your issue is supposedly gratifying conclusions being rushed without time to invest in the issue, rather than the necessity to write methodical, rigidly iterative exposition. Because that's the words I read.

 

[J_Chemist]

I always knew just a tip alone wouldn't be satisfying enough.

 

[NotaNuffian]

First and foremost, what type of shit are you actually reading for the power spike to be at chapter 10? The worst I had was MC being some top shit at chapter 30 and lo and behold, higher power ceiling because CN writers are absolute shit at power capping. Fuckers like to "destroy mountains and sever the seas, grasp the sun in their palm, rewrite universe with but a sneeze" and throw their works into the bin as soon as their MC reach that.

1. To me, starting off slow has its demerits if you cannot present to me, in a pausible and entertaining way, of why I should give my attention to the MC. I read CN for a good reason; braindead timewaster with MC in eternal pursue for power (which is synonymous to money). So give me an MC who is hellbent on becoming the murderhobo he is destined to be.

2. I have to agree on this portion, sometimes it feels like the author is trying to flesh out the world/ characters but it feel like I am watching paint dry. And yes, there is the standard padding of idiot mooks, but I managed to suspend my disbelief because it is a CN world where everyone is a cutthroat and "the way to rise up is to step others down".

 

[BearlyAlive]

If your frame of reference is cultivation, definitely.

But in terms of general writing, I find "introducing one character before moving on to the next" to be ill advice, with slow being similar.
If you can portray characters as they're changing something, or in interaction with others, why not?

There's normally a small margin of 3-5 characters that can be introduced or should be focused per "batch" depending on your type of story. You can name drop a few more if you plan to focus on them later on, but anything more and it turns into a blur.

But yeah, both Hook and Purpose are important and CN writers almost always fail at both. The hook also doesn't need to be something heavily plot relevant, it just needs to do a good enough job to set the tone of the story and set the focus on a major character or plot element.

 

[Le_ther]

I have been reading too much Chinese stuff recently, so these points have became obvious areas of improvement in those things I have read. You probably know the difficulty of searching for a story where the MC doesn’t go from 100 elo-practically a Grand Master, or stronger, in ~10 chapters is. This is also applicable here, if not to a lesser extent.

1. When starting a story, it will probably benefit you to start off slow. Don’t get me wrong you do need a hook to keep people reading, but don’t rush into the interesting stuff if your reader is not invested in the world. Introduce the important characters, and allow the reader to get aquatinted to them before moving to the next one. Introduce the stakes of the story, arc, chapter, etc. essentially introducing what the goal of the story in the short/medium/long term. When looking into the successful stories like Stein’s Gate, Hunter x Hunter, Monster, Harry Potter (…ew), Percy Jackson, etc. They all have a hook, before going on a somewhat slow start. Sometimes the hook comes at the very beginning as in the first scene of HP, sometimes after a chapter or two of exposition like in Percy Jackson, Death Note, and Stein’s Gate, and sometimes it is slowly sprinkled in like in Hunter x Hunter and Monster.

2. When writing a scene ask things like: What is the purpose of the scene? How does it move the plot forward? Can I replace it with something else? The purpose of this is to make the story more efficient and to avoid bloat. Typically, in theater & film, the goal is to have every scene move the plot forward somehow, but since we are writing more for serialized fiction you don’t have to be that strict. The goal is to, at the very least, keep your book from reading like Victor Hugo where multiple pages interrupt the plot go on about why this room or wall looks as it does (Is there a crater on that wall? Let’s go over the entire battle of Waterloo, using ~100 pages, to explain it), unless your being payed by word then by all means. You might also have seen this bloat If you read a lot of Wuxia and/or action you will come into a lot of stories where someone is walking down the street, and a random thug attacks only to be killed in a couple pages/paragraphs. At most this will start a series of fights that have no effect on the story. As well as the ubiquitous face slapping filler. Again, if your goal is to write as many words as possible, fast, then you can ignore this point.

What are your thoughts on these points?

For no. 2.

To summarize in my own analogy. I think writing is basically like chess in words.

Each move in chess is vital just like how a arc/chapter for a book. You may take a blunder or 2 but never take too much if not your going to fail.

The characters are like a pawn in the board. The king is your plot. Queen is your story direction. Bishops are your plot twist. Horses are your plot device. And lastly, your rook is the story anchor(the one that retcons some misforgotten details in the story).

Edit: yeah its a bad analogy but this is how I put most stories in a simple scale

 

[Disenjoyment]

Cultivation feels like such an easy genre but you’re right, its plagued by saitama syndrome. there shouldn't be this many people failing at it.

 

[ElijahRyne]

First and foremost, what type of shit are you actually reading for the power spike to be at chapter 10? The worst I had was MC being some top shit at chapter 30 and lo and behold, higher power ceiling because CN writers are absolute shit at power capping. Fuckers like to "destroy mountains and sever the seas, grasp the sun in their palm, rewrite universe with but a sneeze" and throw their works into the bin as soon as their MC reach that.

1. To me, starting off slow has its demerits if you cannot present to me, in a pausible and entertaining way, of why I should give my attention to the MC. I read CN for a good reason; braindead timewaster with MC in eternal pursue for power (which is synonymous to money). So give me an MC who is hellbent on becoming the murderhobo he is destined to be.

2. I have to agree on this portion, sometimes it feels like the author is trying to flesh out the world/ characters but it feel like I am watching paint dry. And yes, there is the standard padding of idiot mooks, but I managed to suspend my disbelief because it is a CN world where everyone is a cutthroat and "the way to rise up is to step others down".

It was a combination of twenty or so dropped novels in a row, culminating in Abyssal Lord of the Magi World. I feel as its first chapter should be extended into ~10 even if the set up was cliche, and you will know if you read chapter 10 of how fast the power escalated, assuming I didn’t misread.

 

[Temple]

1. Starting slow is a good tip for writing and building a good foundation for a story but a very bad one in terms of marketing for web novels. Authors, especially Chinese authors, want to catch the readers to continue the series. It's kind of like axing mangas in a sense.

The examples you gave don't apply to web novels. Stein's Gate is a visual novel game. If someone plays a game that they bought, they won't just quit after a "boring" first few minutes (Stein's Gate really is slow). They already bought it, so they'll play it, and then they'll get hooked on the good bits further ahead. The same thing happened with the anime. It was released per week and got people saying it was boring the first few weeks. But then it got completed, and that was when it became popular mainstream.

Togashi was already famous long before HxH, so readers are willing to try HxH. Of course, it turned out great. Monster (one of my favorite manga/anime) is really slow, and it's not mainstream famous as far as I can tell. Harry Potter and Percy Jackson are books. Same logic as Stein's Gate.

Look at the views of chapter one and chapter two of any web novel. There's always a sharp drop-off from the first to the second, and second to third, etc., then it levels off. For a web novel author, they need to front-load the first few chapters to stop readers from clicking away. In contrast, someone reading chapter one of Harry Potter (or any book) usually isn't going to throw it away after one pass.

By the way, I write slow-start stories, so I'm very much aware of how it goes by comparing my experience with other authors who do follow market trends.

2. The bloat is another symptom of the problems in the web novel industry, Chinese more so. They're getting paid by wordcount and they have contracts to release daily or something like that. They could go 3k to 8k words a day, even 10k. At some point, they'll just have to make up shit to reach that word count. That's the Chinese system, and that sort of bleeds to english writers too.

The way RR/SH works, you'll get more visibility by spamming chapters. If you can go daily, then it's better. And that's just for visibility. Those with patreons offering tons of chapters to get gain more patrons have to shit out those word counts because that's already their job. I know many authors (through chatting with them to discord) who suffer from burnout, but they can't stop. That's already a way of life. (I don't keep a fixed schedule by the way, and that's a huge minus to readers).

And this isn't just isolated to web novels. Web toons also suffer from this, with readers demanding more and more as a story becomes more popular.

Essentially, a web novel writer will more than likely bloat their works the more they get popular. Taking the time to slow down, plan out, make several edits, etc., are detrimental to success. You can try looking for the guides of big web novel authors about how to get big and they'll say editing is not worth the effort at some point, along with other tricks like spamming chapters, etc.

 

[Premier]

I have been reading too much Chinese stuff recently, so these points have became obvious areas of improvement in those things I have read. You probably know the difficulty of searching for a story where the MC doesn’t go from 100 elo-practically a Grand Master, or stronger, in ~10 chapters is. This is also applicable here, if not to a lesser extent.

1. When starting a story, it will probably benefit you to start off slow. Don’t get me wrong you do need a hook to keep people reading, but don’t rush into the interesting stuff if your reader is not invested in the world. Introduce the important characters, and allow the reader to get aquatinted to them before moving to the next one. Introduce the stakes of the story, arc, chapter, etc. essentially introducing what the goal of the story in the short/medium/long term. When looking into the successful stories like Stein’s Gate, Hunter x Hunter, Monster, Harry Potter (…ew), Percy Jackson, etc. They all have a hook, before going on a somewhat slow start. Sometimes the hook comes at the very beginning as in the first scene of HP, sometimes after a chapter or two of exposition like in Percy Jackson, Death Note, and Stein’s Gate, and sometimes it is slowly sprinkled in like in Hunter x Hunter and Monster.

2. When writing a scene ask things like: What is the purpose of the scene? How does it move the plot forward? Can I replace it with something else? The purpose of this is to make the story more efficient and to avoid bloat. Typically, in theater & film, the goal is to have every scene move the plot forward somehow, but since we are writing more for serialized fiction you don’t have to be that strict. The goal is to, at the very least, keep your book from reading like Victor Hugo where multiple pages interrupt the plot go on about why this room or wall looks as it does (Is there a crater on that wall? Let’s go over the entire battle of Waterloo, using ~100 pages, to explain it), unless your being payed by word then by all means. You might also have seen this bloat If you read a lot of Wuxia and/or action you will come into a lot of stories where someone is walking down the street, and a random thug attacks only to be killed in a couple pages/paragraphs. At most this will start a series of fights that have no effect on the story. As well as the ubiquitous face slapping filler. Again, if your goal is to write as many words as possible, fast, then you can ignore this point.

What are your thoughts on these points?

Feel like your 2 points conflict with each other. You can't "Start slow" and also "Cut bloat." The slowness is the bloat.

If you don't have a good hook at the start, you'll lose people. Stein's Gate has him find a dead body and engage in time travel incredibly early. Light gets the Death Note pretty quickly. Hunter x Hunter begins with him being saved from a monster and then going to hunter school. Harry Potter is weird from the very beginning. I'm not a big Percy Jackson fan, but I'll bet their plot gets going really fast too.

All of these things have an initial "Hook" incident, then a very short lead-up to getting back to that central idea. None of them take it slow.

The reader does not need to be invested in your world. They need to be invested in your story. Your world can be a colorful, well-realized, and clever bit of worldbuilding, but I won't give a shit about it if I'm experiencing it through a character who is just sitting around twiddling their thumbs.

 

[melchi]

I see Chinese web novels and think:

"Bow before me worm, I feel your weak chi, you are only on the boil water level of the culinary cultivation path. I however have advanced my foundation to the heavenly egg white rice omelet level."

So-and-so grovels, "Please master, I did not mean to offend by showing ketchup packets in your dojo"

Master chicken-burger cackles, "Insolence, you will pay for this offense."

Proceeds to NTR all of so-and-so's things that are NTRable.

 

[Empyrea]

I see Chinese web novels and think:

"Bow before me worm, I feel your weak chi, you are only on the boil water level of the culinary cultivation path. I however have advanced my foundation to the heavenly egg white rice omelet level."

So-and-so grovels, "Please master, I did not mean to offend by showing ketchup packets in your dojo"

Master chicken-burger cackles, "Insolence, you will pay for this offense."

Proceeds to NTR all of so-and-so's things that are NTRable.

Food based comedy cultivation novel. Could be fun, do you happen to remember what it was called? I imagine the protag seducing his goat and then using it's milk to make a dish that proves he's a better cultivator... since you mention NTRable stuff.

 

[melchi]

Food based comedy cultivation novel. Could be fun, do you happen to remember what it was called? I imagine the protag seducing his goat and then using it's milk to make a dish that proves he's a better cultivator... since you mention NTRable stuff.

Oh I just made it up on the spot didn't actually think of writing something like that. People might think I'm weird.

 

[Element.of.P]

Valid points but its kinda limiting.

A slow start is just one way on how to get your readers interest. A fast paced start that is jam packed with action would also work wonders if executed properly.

When writing scenes, it is good to have a purpose but it doesnt have to always be for the plot. Writing scenes can be used to establish your characters, well, characteristics. This doesnt advance the plot but it makes your characters feel more alive. If you just use scenes to advance the plot, your characters would lack depth.

It just all comes down to how well can the writer take advantage of pacing as well as story telling to give life to their work.

 

[ElijahRyne]

Feel like your 2 points conflict with each other. You can't "Start slow" and also "Cut bloat." The slowness is the bloat.

If you don't have a good hook at the start, you'll lose people. Stein's Gate has him find a dead body and engage in time travel incredibly early. Light gets the Death Note pretty quickly. Hunter x Hunter begins with him being saved from a monster and then going to hunter school. Harry Potter is weird from the very beginning. I'm not a big Percy Jackson fan, but I'll bet their plot gets going really fast too.

All of these things have an initial "Hook" incident, then a very short lead-up to getting back to that central idea. None of them take it slow.

The reader does not need to be invested in your world. They need to be invested in your story. Your world can be a colorful, well-realized, and clever bit of worldbuilding, but I won't give a shit about it if I'm experiencing it through a character who is just sitting around twiddling their thumbs.

I think you are misunderstanding what I mean by start slow. I meant to introduce important things before picking up the pace. In the first episode of Death Note we get an introduction to Light and the Death Note, in the second we are introduced to the reaction of his actions and L’s first move, etc. It takes ~6 episodes for L and Light to meet, and that is when the back and forth, imo, between the two truly begins.

Hunter x Hunter starts fairly slow, although I read the manga and watched the 99 anime until the end of the Hunter exam arc, so I may have a different experience from those who have only seen the 2012 one. It starts with Gon in his village. He yearns to become a Hunter like his dad. He meets Kite who sets him off on his journey. He goes onto a boat to get to the exam. He meets Leorio and they have an episode together, the same goes for Kurapika. If I am remembering correctly, I believe they have a couple of episodes traveling together as they search for the exam location. When they find it the exam begins and introduces all most of the important characters for the upcoming story. Hell, imo, the rising action truly starts after the Hunter exam shortly before the introduction of Nen.

Harry Potter has a chapter introducing Harry and his hardships before he is slowly introduced to the wizarding world. After you get a framework of what will happen next, you are introduced to Ron, Hermione, and Draco. Then they get sorted and the rising action begins shortly after.

Percy Jackson’s first chapter is the hook. He goes on a museum visit and sees his teacher turn into a monster. He manages to kill her. In the next 2 chapters it introduces the world around him, he is confused about why people don’t remember said teacher. He starts failing school, he sees three strange old women, and we are introduced to his abusive step father. At the end of the third chapter we are pulled into the more supernatural part of the world, but the rising action has yet to happen. He gets to the camp and is injured. The next 4 chapters introduce the more supernatural elements of the world, the camp, important characters, all as Percy gets aquatinted with his abilities. This culminates in the 9th chapter where the rising action starts.


All of these start slow by introducing each/most, important characters for the upcoming story/arc. All while dropping hints of what will happen next. In these stories this happens multiple times, the introduction of the chimera ants, the beginning of the next book(s) for both Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, and the introduction of Near and Mellow. It is funny how the one that rushed itself, Near and Mellow, is seen as where the story fell apart. Near and Mellow were not really fleshed out when compared to prior characters leaning hard on the reputation of L rather than flushing out their characters. Things happen fast with little reasoning,etc. I think we all know the controversy over the ending arc of Death Note.

All this is to say is that, if readers do not understand your characters, the world surrounding them, and the stakes of the story to those characters, then the story loses out. This doesn’t mean you need a full background of each character before starting the rising action, but that there at least needs to be the basic first date stuff, filtered out for what is important to the story of course.

As for cutting bloat, it means asking the purpose of each scene/chapter, why this should happen, what this effects, and if it makes sense to cut it or a way to convey that scene better. We arn’t screenwriters, probably, so we don’t have to be as rigid and efficient as they are, but it is important not to go on 100 page diversion about the battle of Waterloo if it has no importance to your story. Put most basically cut out the filler when necessary, I do however acknowlege that most people here write serialized stuff and may need to push out chapters because they are paid by the word, or that they need to update regularly and their next important arc/chapter is not complete and they need a chapter or two more of filler to finish it.

Of course these rules are not absolute, but I do believe that it is a good starting point.

1. Starting slow is a good tip for writing and building a good foundation for a story but a very bad one in terms of marketing for web novels. Authors, especially Chinese authors, want to catch the readers to continue the series. It's kind of like axing mangas in a sense.

The examples you gave don't apply to web novels. Stein's Gate is a visual novel game. If someone plays a game that they bought, they won't just quit after a "boring" first few minutes (Stein's Gate really is slow). They already bought it, so they'll play it, and then they'll get hooked on the good bits further ahead. The same thing happened with the anime. It was released per week and got people saying it was boring the first few weeks. But then it got completed, and that was when it became popular mainstream.

Togashi was already famous long before HxH, so readers are willing to try HxH. Of course, it turned out great. Monster (one of my favorite manga/anime) is really slow, and it's not mainstream famous as far as I can tell. Harry Potter and Percy Jackson are books. Same logic as Stein's Gate.

Look at the views of chapter one and chapter two of any web novel. There's always a sharp drop-off from the first to the second, and second to third, etc., then it levels off. For a web novel author, they need to front-load the first few chapters to stop readers from clicking away. In contrast, someone reading chapter one of Harry Potter (or any book) usually isn't going to throw it away after one pass.

By the way, I write slow-start stories, so I'm very much aware of how it goes by comparing my experience with other authors who do follow market trends.

2. The bloat is another symptom of the problems in the web novel industry, Chinese more so. They're getting paid by wordcount and they have contracts to release daily or something like that. They could go 3k to 8k words a day, even 10k. At some point, they'll just have to make up shit to reach that word count. That's the Chinese system, and that sort of bleeds to english writers too.

The way RR/SH works, you'll get more visibility by spamming chapters. If you can go daily, then it's better. And that's just for visibility. Those with patreons offering tons of chapters to get gain more patrons have to shit out those word counts because that's already their job. I know many authors (through chatting with them to discord) who suffer from burnout, but they can't stop. That's already a way of life. (I don't keep a fixed schedule by the way, and that's a huge minus to readers).

And this isn't just isolated to web novels. Web toons also suffer from this, with readers demanding more and more as a story becomes more popular.

Essentially, a web novel writer will more than likely bloat their works the more they get popular. Taking the time to slow down, plan out, make several edits, etc., are detrimental to success. You can try looking for the guides of big web novel authors about how to get big and they'll say editing is not worth the effort at some point, along with other tricks like spamming chapters, etc.

I mostly agree with the second point, but I think the 1st point is a bit to harsh on writing slowly. For example Death Note was the first work of Tsugumi Ohba (at least to our knowledge), YuYu Hakusho also started off fairly slow, and if you want an example of a serialized episodic comedy that starts off slow, you need no further to look at Saiki Kusuo or Gintama.

Valid points but its kinda limiting.

A slow start is just one way on how to get your readers interest. A fast paced start that is jam packed with action would also work wonders if executed properly.

When writing scenes, it is good to have a purpose but it doesnt have to always be for the plot. Writing scenes can be used to establish your characters, well, characteristics. This doesnt advance the plot but it makes your characters feel more alive. If you just use scenes to advance the plot, your characters would lack depth.

It just all comes down to how well can the writer take advantage of pacing as well as story telling to give life to their work.

Yeah, to an extent, something more fast paced that starts with the rising action, like Terror in Resonance, can work. The issue is that it can easily become harder for the readers to connect to the characters in the story if it doesn’t simultaneously tell their stories. Which, at least imo, will make it harder than the first method of taking it slow before starting the rising action. Think Tokyo Ghoul rootA for how this can backfire when not done right.

As for your second point I completely agree, as long as the scene flushes out the story it is probably not unneeded. Unless of course if you go off talking about how Jenna’s Grandma’s Cousin once gave her a flower, and why that was important to Jenna’s Grandma’s Cousin who we only meet once in a flashback. Once more I am looking back to Hugo’s Les Miserables and End of the Magic Era as almost perfect guides of what not to do when it comes to bloat.

 

[LunaSoltaer]

I know there are definitely changes in the two HxH animes. one main one is I think in the 2011 anime they wrote Kite out of the beginning arc, which caused a lot of watchers a lot of confusion when he suddenly shows up in Chimera Ant Arc and Gon's super friendly with him.

I definitely feel like I adhere to the first piece of advice in my novel a lot more than the second. My work has two starting points, one Prologue arc where the big bad of the entire story essentially burns the MC's village to the ground and goes on a monologue about how non-spellcasters are bad and need to be purged from the earth. My actual Chapter 1 starts 5 episodes later with the MC having just turned 18, and their friend, who hates them, is being invited to basically magic school. By some twist of fate, so does MC, despite sucking massively at it. I'm now on Chapter 26 and MC still hasn't learned how to actually control their Magick. They've had a lot of success in the 20s, largely because they were taught Magick entirely fucking wrong and have to re-learn everything, but there are still many mental blocks and they still get their arse kicked. Don't get me wrong, the MC is actually fairly powerful, but they have none of the skill and finesse, and they have a horrid disadvantage of not having access to Elemental Magick, which is a big fucking deal when you're fighting off a mage-supremacist.

The second part, yeah I need to work on that. I originally started the work a year and a half ago as a NaNoWriMo challenge, to get myself more used to writing, so I prioritized planning later. After some shit happened in 2022, it took me a year to get back to it, and when I did, I noticed several plot holes I get to seal up. One was a stupid mistake, like MC forgetting something about their classmate, but one is pivotal, and thank the Heavens I caught it before it became relevant! I feel I'm generally pretty good at making each chapter mean something, whether it be setting up a world building detail, or expanding on MC's adventures, lessons, and quests, but I need to work on my efficiency.

I suspect there is somewhat of a duality between prose and structure, in that a good story actually has both. There is a game called Parameters, which I think is playable entirely in Excel, that strips away all but the core features of a JRPG. While the idea is fun as hell, it shows that a lot of consumers appreciate some dressing alongside the substance. You can use this to capture aesthetics, and secure a vibe, which just tickles the inside in a fun way.

These ARE good tips, though. I feel like they have their exceptions, but they're like rules of thumb - You won't shoot yourself in the foot following them, but sometimes, if you know your shit, you can find edge cases and break the rules for everyone's benefit.