I've been wanting to write an Isekai LN, but I don't want to write a bad, self-indulgent one. I want to write one people would actually want to read.
So I've been working on the list of things I've hated the most about the Isekai genre/setting itself.
Let me know If I missed anything, or even If my list is out of order.
>I don't want to write a bad, self-indulgent one.
>I want to write one people would actually want to read.
what the fuck OP
> 13
>no traps
> feelsbadman
...
I'm a sexually deviant monster who can only get hard at the idea of someone genuinely enjoying something I wrote.
STOP KINK SHAMING ME!
Use a bingo format instead so we can play guess the isekai
bait and switch man, make him the light protoganist and give him and overpowered ability
then break him against the rocks with 10 others who are just better skilled. Then make twist him like a sponge till at the end he might just become a decen character
whenever you read any of these garbage ln's you always feeel the point when they can change to be good for yourself. SO just hook and twist
What do I put as the Free Space?
Rule #1?
I'd like to avoid giving the MC any overpowered abilities/skills/items from the beginning
this good?
Wow this is a really good list op. Hard to thing of anything to add, but maybe
27: All fantasy races must be generic, tolkien-esque?
28: There must be a Demon Lord
29: Conflicts must be black and white
30. Villains must all laugh evilly, and be rapists, so we know they are evil.
31. Country's must fall into set stereotypes. (I.e. The Merchant country, the mage country, the militant empire, etc.)
>Country's
>I'd like to avoid giving the MC any overpowered abilities/skills/items from the beginning
overpowered is context dependant and sacrifice dependant, and possibly skill depednant as well as might not be an inherent trait meaning it can be passed around. Shift those variables and you can actually write a dynamic narrative
Example, berserk, best swordsman in the world at the end of golden age, pretty much no other midlander could beat him. Until--
I was typing quickly! I swear I'm not ESL!
#29 and #30 tend to go hand in hand
I'll add #27, #28, and #31, after a bit of editing
>*Cunt Trees
Why Do You Write Everything Like This?
It seemed like a good idea at the time
Is that the title of some new isekai LN?
Nah, That Posts Doesn't Have Enough Exclamation Marks to be Called LN Titles!!
How would you avoid number 22?
I'd read it.
I've been coming up with stories for years and what's hard is coming up with an interesting idea and then making it work in the long run.
Like you know those...
>Write an Anime
...threads, that's a good example of what I'm trying to say. It's easy to come up with an interesting premise. Like let's say you want to do a genderbender where the MC get's reincarnated as a girl.
Cool, right? But is that your only gimmick? Can you write 50 chapters of story around that? Then what happens? How do you explore that premise OR does it just devolve into generic shit?
This isn't SJW nonsense I promise, but maybe you explore the emotional impact of suddenly having your identity change. Maybe you address the limitations in combat ability between a female and male body. Maybe your character has to find a new way to fight after getting simply overpowered by a man despite having superior skills.
Your #1 goal is to not betray your premise and your #2 goal is to actually make a premise that won't require you to betray it. Spend time before you write just playing out the entire story/arc in your head & see if by the end your initial hook is still relevant.
And then lastly either build your world around your characters or build your characters for a world you've created. IE if you character uses magic make a world where using magic isn't just medieval times with wizards; but imagine what earth would be like if cave men discovered fire magic instead of just fire... for example.
>pic unrelated
Mind your spacing motherfucker.
>>This isn't SJW nonsense I promise, but maybe you explore the emotional impact of suddenly having your identity change. Maybe you address the limitations in combat ability between a female and male body. Maybe your character has to find a new way to fight after getting simply overpowered by a man despite having superior skills.
That's all just fluff. None of this would be required for a good story. What is required is an introduction, a climax, and a conclusion. All that shit you listed doesn't address the core problem: that none of that even constitutes a story in the first place.
That's why oneshots are usually much better, they tend to not dick around unnecessarily
>None of this would be required for a good story.
Not him but I disagree. Even though those things wouldn't be strictly necessary in a genderbend story, they could very well make it worth reading on their own.
>5
Most just explain this with "translation magic". However the second part of this bit pisses me off sometimes. In the Realist Hero, this on character apparently has a kansai dialect, for no good reason, while her family appears to have a "standard" dialect. Like, where the fuck did this girl pick up a dialect that different?
Fuck, people don't know how dialects work.
>8
Ah yes, this cliche. What the fuck is up with this? Does Japan think this was actually a thing in real life? Do they think that in a world of magic, an "adventurer's guild" is just natural? The entire concept is fucking retarded. The most sensible versions of this have been in Death March, where there are "Hunters" who only really hunt monsters for money, and then "Explorers" who regularly dive into labyrinths, and in both cases the Guilds are managed by the country.
But plenty other series, this generic "Adventurer's guild" is some kind of multi-national corporation, which is complete bullshit.
>10
How many people are from another world is irrelevant. There are shitty isekai stories that do either one.
>22
But why? I mean, sure, it's not realistic, but you don't really need this kind of extra drama. Just assume whatever supernatural force sterilized the MC before bringing him to the other world (assuming it's a summoning/transfer, and not a reincarnation, in which case this point is null anyways)
Then again, that still means the MC is exposed to Medieval hygene, and for some reason gets by fine for some reason. I guess plot armor comes with super-human immune system.
>25
A lot of shitty isekai do the exact opposite; the deity "accidentally" kills the MC, and then revives them in another world with some broken cheat to "make it up to them", even though no self-respecting deity would bother paying back some mortal for an accident. Just return them to the cycle, and be done with it.
>How would you avoid number 22?
As in "How would you be able to write a story where the appearance of the MC causes an epidemic?"
I've been doing a little research on zoonotic diseases, the best way to avoid an epidemic in the is to have the MC be surround by genetically dissimilar humans. Downside being the MC not being able to breed with the isekai humans.
>This isn't SJW nonsense I promise, but maybe you explore the emotional impact of suddenly having your identity change. Maybe you address the limitations in combat ability between a female and male body. Maybe your character has to find a new way to fight after getting simply overpowered by a man despite having superior skills.
You could achieve the same effect by having the MC lose an arm, or even being unable to use magic after relying on magic for everyday things/survival
>And then lastly either build your world around your characters or build your characters for a world you've created. IE if you character uses magic make a world where using magic isn't just medieval times with wizards; but imagine what earth would be like if cave men discovered fire magic instead of just fire... for example.
That's actually what I started writing a while ago, I have how I wanted magic to work in my world in a text file somewhere.
Well sure, the devil is in the details, I suppose. The point I was trying to make is that all that stuff isn't a story in itself, it's something you would add to a story if you actually had one. All those create your own anime threads just list things like details or settings that might be interesting but are not in themselves a story.
If you wanted to create a story with those things you'd need all the components of a story, like so:
>introduction
My dream is to attend prom with the girl of my dreams! But somewhere along the way I found a magic lamp and accidentally turned myself in to the girl of my dreams. Oops!
>climax
Prom is fast approaching and I'm still stuck as a girl! What will I do? Ah forget it, I'm taking my best friend (male) instead and going to make the best of it!
>conclusion
Prom was better than I could have imagined! Maybe being a girl isn't so bad after all?
Along the way you can explore themes like the emotional impact of the identity change, but those themes would just be details to fluff up your story and make it more interesting. Whether they are present or not, the story at its core remains the same. But, as you say, they may very well be what makes the story worth reading.
>Prom is fast approaching and I'm still stuck as a girl! What will I do?
If I were writing that story, I would have diverged right At this bit up here.
I would legitimately be freaking out, If my physical appearance was that of an already existing person it would create many problems.
If I were stuck as the other person, the first problem would be convincing family and friends that "I am me" and not "Whats Her Face" if I fail at that, I lose any real connection to who I was before, and any proper place along with it.
I would then be forced to find a "place" to be and an identity to go with now that I knew I was unable to go back to who I used to be, while watching my family and friends frantically searching for "me"
You can write a story from here
>You can write a story from here
>draw the rest of the owl
But no, seriously, this is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. You're picking out one interesting plot point and saying "wow! wouldn't this be an interesting story?" when that is just one small part of an actual story.
You fucks put me in the mood of reading genderbender again, you better take responsibility