Chapter 3: Misconceptions, Part 2
Just because it's popular doesn't mean it has good quality. Keep that in mind.
A book may be popular because it's used as a time pass, nothing more. I.e. when they find a better time pass, they'll drop or forget about your book.
Eventually readers will get sick of all the wish fulfillment and self insert novels and will think of them as time passes while looking for something of decent quality.
So ye, if you're cool with just doing what a few thousand others do then you probably shouldn't be here because the quality of your work will end up improving.
Now for more info about wish fulfillment / self insert novels...
If you're cool with cycling readers every year, then keep writing it. A year may seem like a long time, but that also means if your new novel gets less new readers who enjoy WF and SI than those who leave to find something better, you lose money.
Having something unique + good grammar is the min for them to keep it in the back of their minds. It's most likely to be good enough as of this post date (11/30/22) due to the average WN quality, but if that rises or the reader's standards stop being basement low, then you're screwed.
That brings me to cliches...
They're good and all, as long as you change them and "do them right." That means the cliches aren't just forcefully inserted in there but flow with the overall story and maybe even contribute to a character's growth or plot.
Don't forget to add a unique element. So instead of summoning the hero in a typical isekai novel, the Demon King's spies modify the circle and Demon King gets summoned instead. Then you'd have a novel of the Demon King reshaping the land, maybe even ruling it better than the nobles, who knows?
Or you could have the spies mess something up, so the hero's body is still summoned, but the Demon King's soul is inside of it whereas the hero's soul just moved on to the afterlife.
Ain't no way a NORMAL soul would be able to handle all that dimensional redirection with a poorly modified summoning circle. If it wasn't poorly modified, this mix up wouldn't have happened. Change the intended hero to some being with a decently powerful soul (say... a cultivator?) that ends up occupying the Demon King's body and now you've got a new plot line.
But the MOST IMPORTANT thing: make sure your cliches are not overused. A joke loses most of its comedic value when it's said twice, and by the third time don't be surprised if people tell you to shut up.
Cliches are the same.
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Just because it's descriptive, doesn't mean it's long. If you maintain that mindset, then your style will stay stagnant.
----- Example
"I never waited for my Irish Cream coffee to be the right temperature, with a storm happening outside and my fireplace crackling." — Stephen J. Cannell
----- Notes
Because it's just a sentence and lacks further context, the image will vary per person. Could be a cottage in a storm with the boi chilling on the recliner in front of the living room or the boi chilling in a bar with the fireplace behind and a storm outside.
Either way you have a setting, mood, character action, and some background details in a sentence.
----- Example
Legend has it, on a bloody sunset that leads into a blood moon, within mounds of flesh and blood soaked plains, the Flower of Chaos blooms.
----- Notes
We got an eerie atmosphere, some background info w/ inference, background scenery, and eerie plant action. Obviously it's just an opening sentence, but this boi sets the stage for a horror story, an arc, or even an entire book depending on how you play out the next paragraphs. All from one sentence.
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I know it's crazy, but never assume the readers are less intelligent than you are. No matter how nonsensical they act. Their intelligence often matches what they're reading, and since the majority of ebooks they read require their brain to be turned off, their brain stays off...
Hehe, jokes aside, their intelligence will usually match what they're reading bc that's how intended audiences work.
If you start off with a simplistic style, not as in "WN Style" but easy to understand and concise style, then slowly ramp it up to a complex style that doesn't hand feed everything to the readers, their minds will follow.
Side note: I could easily use a simplistic style to make a book with paragraphs with at least 4 sentences each. It's not "WN Style" anymore (petition to rename to "WN Format"), but it's still simplistic... Anyways, that's basically just traditional books meant for 10-12 year olds
It needs to be done slowly though unless you only want bois with med-high reading comprehension from the start. (If you put water and a frog into a pot then boil it with the frog in it, it won't jump out)
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Next bit: the "medieval" era y'all put in.
That is nowhere near the true medieval era. Those were the hecking dark ages. If you're thinking it's just the 1400s, go do some more research. The 1400s were just the end of the medieval era, the bottlecap of the drink so to speak.
The era started roughly after the roman era fell (500-1400 or 1500). They're also known as the Middle Ages.
Having paved roads and sewers were a luxury. Grand Fancy marble castles? In ruins. Best you could get would be giant stone castle with fur and cloth tapestries to keep the heat from leaving. /s for only 19.99 /s
Swords were romanticized by the nobles because they were expensive back then so having one at your side made you of high status (like flexing an expensive car). The true dominator of that era were the spears.
Flails and warhammers needed to be paired with heavy armor to keep the weapon from flinging the user around so they weren't as common due to how expensive the equipment was. They were basically an elite troop.
I don't know how they paired well against spearmen since I doubt the generals sent them to their deaths like that and just sent in cavalry instead. Everything has its counter, but the spear was the best overall weapon due to it's reach and versatility. (think why you see palace guards having spears instead of swords... you'd think if swords were stronger they'd use them, right?)
Anyways, back to the lifestyle of medieval era. Hygeine was piss poor (pun intended). The byproducts of the human body were yeeted out the window from a bucket, literally. That's one of the reasons why the streets looked like they were covered in mud if you ever see a proper medieval era shown.
The most common thing they ate was meat. I think they had roughly 5x more meat than a modern person does daily and very little veggies and fruits.
The average lifespan was so low because babies dropped like flies. It wouldn't be uncommon for mothers to distance themselves from the child for the first two years and leave its care to a trusted friend or handmaiden (forgot the actual term but there is one for "substitute mother" that takes care of breast feeding and such.).
They'd do this for the sole reason of preserving their mental health since the chance the baby dies before 2 or 3 were very high and thus it was common for a wife to give birth to at least 4 children. Rather than going through the heartbreak and death of a child 4+ times, they'd rather leave it to someone else until they know the baby will survive.
'Tis cruel but also necessary since they didn't really have therapists and mental breakdown could spell suicide.
Ah ye, books were rare because they used parchment and leather instead of paper. Thus there was a lot of illiterate people and the overall intelligence tanked so the masses were easier to control back then. Can't forget about that.
(side note: tv shows the witcher and Merlin did it really well).
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