How can I learn to recognize why my writing is boring or bad?

[Corrigible-steel]

Sailus gave you a task, better work on that one.

Remember, you're not experimenting, you're writing.

Also, for the system stuff, just have a skim knowledge about it and learn later.

Now the main question is...


Are you exhausted? Are you having burnout?

You f*cking cheeky bastard.

Guess I'll put Webnovel on my chap-publisher-site lists.

He he?

 

[Nolff]

He he?

 

[Corrigible-steel]

View attachment 31815

Nope, I am as straight as a pole could be

 

[Nolff]

Nope, I am as straight as a pole could be

You do know that lust can bend even the straightest man on earth?

 

[RedMuffin]

Bob smirked as he rose from the bed, steam rising from his loins after his latest conquest.

Ding!

A translucent screen popped up in front of him, casting a soft blue glow on the voluptuous buttocks of the red-haired woman panting beneath him.

[Congratulations! You have leveled up!]

[Reward: 3 Skill Points]

Bob leaned back, satisfied at last. He'd spent the last three hours grinding his way to level 2, no thanks to the System he'd acquired: [Harem Protag Sex System]. Although he'd been gifted the cheat skill [Women Instantly Fall in Love With Me For No Reason], he had one major issue with accumulating experience so far.

Stamina.

But that problem's about to solve itself. Here I go!

Bob jammed his finger against the "+" button next to the [Stamina] stat rapidly, his fingertip oscillating with the speed of a fully laden swallow thanks to the [Fingering] skill he'd leveled earlier. With that taken care of, he dismissed the screen and rose from the bed.

It was time for another conquest.

---

It's not that hard, I promise you.

This is plagiarism, kind of, since I saw the same scene in another work... O-Of course, it was only for research purposes on this peculiar subject.

 

[HungrySheep]

This is plagiarism, kind of, since I saw the same scene in another work... O-Of course, it was only for research purposes on this peculiar subject.

I made it up on the spot, so it's scary to see how copy-paste the genre really is.

 

[Nolff]

This is plagiarism, kind of, since I saw the same scene in another work... O-Of course, it was only for research purposes on this peculiar subject.

I sense double meaning...

 

[Bartun]

Guilty of the same sins as you.

 

[miyoga]

I'd absolutely take Sail's advice to heart on this, Rookie. Stop writing the main and write LITERALLY anything else. Want to do a litrpg but hate the thought of creating and maintaining a system? Make an arbitrary system controlled by some "overseer" type person who gets bored and just messes with people's stats. Heck, make the entire story about that one guy (or gal) who messes up/around so much that the female love interest gets called in to try to sort things out and only makes them worse.

I've only written 2 shorts, one had a system where I couldn't be bothered because it wasn't the focus, just a tool to help progress things ever so slightly. I could've left it out, but I wanted to take the piss out of the genre for as many bad/unbalanced systems as are out there and for as prevalent as it is. The other, in the same universe, doesn't have the system. One is a comedy, the other is more of a Greek comedy. Both of them combined have as many pop culture references as the movie "Ready Player One" and, most importantly, I'm using them to just set up a playbox universe where I could potentially write a long-form novel.

In other words, they have no purpose other than to put words on digital paper and to hopefully make people laugh. So like Sailus said, just write whatever and see how it goes. And don't make any excuses for not doing it either... just needed to edit this sentence in.

 

[cabbag3]

I made it up on the spot, so it's scary to see how copy-paste the genre really is.

Really? Do you mean litRPG in general? Cause if not, I guess I need to read more smut litRPGs then. Any suggestions?
Tho I don't actively read them, the only smut litRPG I read was one where the guy gets pornstar system or something? I forgot the title cause it was more of an accidental read and I surprisingly enjoyed the balance between Smut and Systems stuff.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

The way I understand it (and keep in mind, it mostly stems from doing reviews on RR), there are two types of the System. Individual (when the MC gets access to it) and Communal (where everyone gets access to it). So upon receiving SailusGebel's advice, I have decided 'Communal is too hard and complicated! I never was in a role of DM; what can I do here?' and went with Individual.

The biggest problem with a System I'm discovering myself - the longer the story gets the more important it is to have a separate "character sheet" for any characters who grow. Do not insert them in the story, just keep them to the side for reference, and pull up the relevant sections whenever something changes.

I admit, I got lost in the numbers in chapter 15 and understood that I wasn't really enjoying justifying to myself why the MC simply can't gring himself to being OP. Facing this problem, I decided to try a different approach. Instead of numbers for stats, I tried to use 'traits'. Sort of run of creativity rather soon here.

Mine (about two or three weeks away from being "shareable") kind of gets around the "grinding" issue in two ways:
1) The MC is not a gamer, so just would not think of it, and
2) The improvement system is adapted (and simplified with a few tweaks) from an existing role-playing game (Aces & Eights, from Kenzer & Company if anyone really wants to know) - so it is based on completing tasks, with most rewards being either one-time awards or they have diminishing returns (a concept borrowed from another game, RoleMaster from Iron Crown Enterprises).

 

[LoneQuack]

You do know that lust can bend even the straightest man on earth?

View attachment 31818

As a multi-millionaire entrepreneur once said: I'm so straight, I could such a dick and it wouldn't be gay... you take your garbage out, does that make you a garbageman?

 

[Tyranomaster]

The best thing you can do is practice mindful writing. You are the habits that you build. If you just write a bunch and don't think about it, all you are doing is cementing existing habits. Mindful writing is very slow, and honestly, very frustrating. It's the only real way to build good writing habits.

As you build the good habits, you'll get faster at them, until you're fluent in a better writing style. Perfect practice makes perfect. Bad practice makes bad.

 

[xax]

Read more things. Read things outside your comfort zone. Read traditionally published stuff. Read short stories. Read weird internet fiction. Go to Project Gutenberg and read some old adventure stories, or horror, or romance, or whatever! As a writer, you are the sum of everything you've ever been exposed to, which means limiting yourself to progression fantasies and litRPG smut (or whatever) profoundly hamstrings your growth. Scribble Hub, RoyalRoad, Webnovel, all these sites are kind of genre slums full of extremely bland, inoffensive writing that is not really trying to do anything. Read something that has something to say, and then think about it, and then try to take those lessons home into your own writing.

Even sticking to, like, fairly easy-to-read digestable fiction, read some Diana Wynne Jones! Read some Ursula K Le Guin. Read some Isaac Asimov. Read 'The Name of the Rose' by Umberto Eco and learn to enjoy that one chapter that's a single enormous paragraph describing in exhaustive detail a stone engraving, or at least try to understand what he was trying to convey with that. It's only by reading other works that you can develop the critical insight necessary to structure your own writing. Definitely don't try to churn out whatever low-effort slop you think might be popular.

One thing to really hammer home as an artist of any stripe is that you basically have no control over how your work is received. 'Good' is something you can make your own internal judgment about; 'popular' is a completely different thing that has to do with how other people receive it. Ultimately, you can only follow your own judgment as to what to create, which is why it's important to have a breadth of things to draw on.

 

[lambenttyto]

Editing doesn't improve a novel, and you won't learn by editing. You learn by writing. Write some new stories and improve with each story, take note of the things you didn't do well in your previous stories, try to focus on a single aspect and do it as best you can.

 

[ikos]

I always like just reading my work to myself, out loud, as proofreading. It helps to find clunky paragraphs and phrases.

 

[Nolff]

I always like just reading my work to myself, out loud, as proofreading. It helps to find clunky paragraphs and phrases.

We all did buddy, we all did that out of our narcissistic self.

 

[Samsonchui]

Alright, so I just finished reading the first three chapters and honestly, it's not even bad. It's actually quite well-written aside from a few strange formatting quirks which I simply assumed were stylistic choices. However, the density and format of the paragraphs are particularly chunky and one absolute CHONKER that stood out to me was this one:



This is a MASSIVE paragraph. A goliagraph, even. It also contains several sections of speech (grammatically, it's fine since it's the same person speaking) which would read much smoother if separated. It's important to keep in mind that most readers are either reading in class/at work/while shitting on their phones, so separating your paragraphs will help immensely.

This is something I've seen throughout the chapters I've read. Here's another example from the very start of chapter 4:

Usually, you don't want to start off with a massive block of text.

Outside of this, I can't really find much fault with the writing itself. It's certainly not a grammatical mess, and I don't see any weird shit that might turn readers off (though, one of the most popular books on this site has a pretty damn weird first chapter in my opinion). The dialogue isn't terrible, and there's really nothing wrong with the writing itself.

As for why I didn't keep reading? I felt I'd read enough to see that it wasn't your writing that was the problem. Other than that, I'm clearly not the target audience of this novel, so any story-centric criticisms from me wouldn't be useful or helpful to you at all. That said, the plot progression seems slightly slower than most readers would like (since they're used to fast-paced power progression novels), but that's the tradeoff for the lengthy descriptions you've got in each chapter.

Well done this is what I noticed too!

 

[Daitengu]

Generally speaking, antho and were-beasts are niche.

I say this as a former World of Darkness player. For every 100 D&D elf and human player, there's 1 WoD player. And most WoD players are vampire players. The Werewolves, changelings, wizards, wraiths, demigod, and demon players combined don't amount to the amount of Vampire players.

World of Warcraft has the problem of population imbalance between horde and alliance because people prefer humans and elves to play as.

You could have the best writing in the world, and you won't do as good as a mediocre story featuring more humanoid characters.

 

[HungrySheep]

Generally speaking, antho and were-beasts are niche.

I say this as a former World of Darkness player. For every 100 D&D elf and human player, there's 1 WoD player. And most WoD players are vampire players. The Werewolves, changelings, wizards, wraiths, demigod, and demon players combined don't amount to the amount of Vampire players.

World of Warcraft has the problem of population imbalance between horde and alliance because people prefer humans and elves to play as.

You could have the best writing in the world, and you won't do as good as a mediocre story featuring more humanoid characters.

Because no one wants to run Mage and Demon. It's a quick way to get aneurysms.