Just like the title suggests, what would make it better?

Since i currently started writing I can't figure out what would really make it so 'non-cliché' like.

Thoughts on this?

Doing your original take on reincarnation is very difficult, since that kind of premise has been explored by countless writers these last few years. What you could do is to mix and mash different concepts to reincarnation to make your story more exciting. Like... Your main character that reincarnated became a grotesque tentacle monster (Maou Shoujo Makoto Chaos by meakashi), or your character had five split personalities before he/she died, and all of these personalities reincarnated into different bodies with their stories irrevocably tied to one another (now that one's free.). What I'm trying to say is you should look for inspirations in different media, put their elements to your story and add your unique signature, making a very unique tapestry woven exclusively by you.


Look, I'm no expert. I just started here on this site but I hope this helps.

'B4nd1t' pid='823774' dateline='1493638343' Wrote: Doing your original take on reincarnation is very difficult, since that kind of premise has been explored by countless writers these last few years. What you could do is to mix and mash different concepts to reincarnation to make your story more exciting. Like... Your main character that reincarnated became a grotesque tentacle monster (Maou Shoujo Makoto Chaos by meakashi), or your character had five split personalities before he/she died, and all of these personalities reincarnated into different bodies with their stories irrevocably tied to one another (now that one's free.). What I'm trying to say is you should look for inspirations in different media, put their elements to your story and add your unique signature, making a very unique tapestry woven exclusively by you.


Look, I'm no expert. I just started here on this site but I hope this helps.

When i'm thinking about it more, this concept of reincarnation is more about connecting to the reader, when he's normal in this normal world and no longer normal in an another world. Tangling with the concept would probably be a lot more original nowadays.

Theres no set way of going about this.

What I'd recommend, is checking out a bunch of different genres and understanding their inciting incidents. Try to either subvert a genre, or make fun of it perhaps.

I'd go with a different idea. Being reborn, doesn't mean someone has the skills from before, or the perhaps even the same interest. It could mean a simple aptitude for some things specifically, which translates into talent for a specific activity. It doesn't mean one will be all-mighty in that regard, but will pick up on things more easily. Or as in the Wheel of Time, Rand Al'Thor is reborn with the same amount of power that the Dragon had and he sometimes manages to pick up on some spells after Lews Therin takes over.

I don't know what's considered cliche in the reincarnation stories other than the normal cliches - dense MC, OP MC, illogical decisions, rich/powerful people are insufferable, misunderstandings that be solved in one sentence, blah blah, blah.

There seemed to be a lot of stories involving reincarnation or summoning to another world and I'm guilty for currently writing one.

Take my opinions as a grain of salt.

I don't think you can make it better, make it unique and different. Make some concepts or premise that haven't been written yet or told.

Is there any non-human monsters that haven't been a MC yet? Are there goals of the MC not about defeating the demon king or becoming an adventurer? I think there are a couple stories where the MC was receptionist at a guild and another running an inn.

Sorry if I didn't help much.

Well I can't tell you what isn't cliche but I can tell you what is cliche and I would still read
>given a level based world, much like a game
>reincarnated as a mob/monster
>as the opposite gender

I know it takes cliche to the max but (to me) I find it very interesting regardless.
of course given the actual plot isn't flat out identical to every other plot on the subject.. but I guess we're talking about the premise here, right?

'node.' pid='824972' dateline='1497037673' Wrote: I don't know what's considered cliche in the reincarnation stories other than the normal cliches - dense MC, OP MC, illogical decisions, rich/powerful people are insufferable, misunderstandings that be solved in one sentence, blah blah, blah.

There seemed to be a lot of stories involving reincarnation or summoning to another world and I'm guilty for currently writing one.

Take my opinions as a grain of salt.

I don't think you can make it better, make it unique and different. Make some concepts or premise that haven't been written yet or told.

Is there any non-human monsters that haven't been a MC yet?  Are there goals of the MC not about defeating the demon king or becoming an adventurer? I think there are a couple stories where the MC was receptionist at a guild and another running an inn.

Sorry if I didn't help much.

Nah, it helps a lot. Just reassurance is good enough in its own way.

---

'Seris' pid='824983' dateline='1497082578' Wrote: Well I can't tell you what isn't cliche but I can tell you what is cliche and I would still read
>given a level based world, much like a game
>reincarnated as a mob/monster
>as the opposite gender

I know it takes cliche to the max but (to me) I find it very interesting regardless.
of course given the actual plot isn't flat out identical to every other plot on the subject.. but I guess we're talking about the premise here, right?

To be honest, on the matter of levels, even in the real world most things are in levels of sorts.
Reincarnation as a monster  - don't have much to say about that, just if the monster has some drawbacks from being human then it is more interesting to me at least.

What I find funny is, the cliche practically throws the concept of reincarnation out of the window. Reincarnation with full memories of the previous life? This is like going to Heaven while staying on Earth.

With this in mind: There is a character living in a fantasy world. They're a typical representative of their race, born to a normal family and raised in the fantasy environment from start to finish. However, they're somewhat... Weird. Not quite right in the head. They sometimes have the most bizarre dreams of things and places that don't look real, strange intuitions, they suffer from derealisation at times. People find them strange, but otherwise they're a perfectly normal fantasy human (or elf, dwarf, beastman, whatever else).

That is until one day, a rift to another world opens and invaders start to pour in. Invaders armed with terrifying missile weapons, roaring monsters of steel that belch fireballs and weird insects with rotating wings on their abdomen that carry exploding cocoons under their limbs.

As it turns out, the protagonist used to be a human on Earth in the previous life. They remember nothing of it but still have a strong connection to Earth... And somewhere in there, someone used that connection to build a Black Mesa Research Facility and open a rift to the fantasy world. Before long, humanity from Earth starts an invasion.

Boom. A reincarnation story in the most literal sense :P

Most tropes (including reincarnation) are tools, and tropes are not inheirently bad for being a trope. Sure, making a more unique story with unique elements instead of typical tropes will make the story more distrinct compared to other stories, which in turn makes for easier advertisement and distrinct memories. On the other hand, tropes are recognized because they tend to be found in many places, are they are typicaly found in many place because they work well. As a parallel consider building some wooden furnature: You could use some special hand made tools for that unique rostique look, but if you used mordern tools instead, the quality of the product would be much higher.

Since a trope is a tool, the 2 main things you should remember are:
1) Dont choose the job for the tool, choose the tool for the job: Meaning dont build a story based on what tropes you want it to include, but build a story that happens to use tropes the tropes that make it the best story.
2) Chose the right tool for the right job: It seems a lot like the point above, but in point 1 we take the "story before trope", while here it is which tropes to use. For this example, you need to consider which tropes would help you the best in telling the story you want to tell.

A lot of it comes down to considering what a trope can do for your story, how it can help it, and why you might want to build your story in that direction. Since you will be taking an original story, and simply using tools to give it form, it does not become cliche from using those tools. If you instead started with the tools, as a set of pusle pieces, and tried to put them together in a form that would create some kind of "type of story", then you will end up with a cliche, because the most original thing done would be how the pieces are places, nd not the story underneath.

A general example could be, that if you wanted to build a story about discrimination, and how that affected the characters, then the story would be enchanhed by giving it a setting where such things are more obvious, such as ww2, fantasy world with different races, 1800 century america, or some kind of dystopia. If you instead started with the premise of I should have different fantasy races, and included the standard "dwarf vs elves" racial disputes, then that would just seem like a cliche, as it becomes some artifical piece that is included as the standard form of the cliche.
I have read stories of both of those kinds, and the difference can be quite obvious when reading them. Even if the things they do would fall into some tropes, it will feels fresh and not cliche (at least if done right).

For reincarnation specifically, you might want to consider what kind of effect it should have on the story, and if it even should be cliche or something else would give you a more dissirable result. It would also allow you to tweak it supple ways, which in itself will become those small changes that prevents it from being completly cliche.
Some typical questions to ask for reincarnation: "is this only as a way of introduction?", "does this affect the personality and/or hehavior of the mc"?, "is it there to explain discrepencies or possible plotholes?", "how does it influence my further storytellig, and why?", "is this a tool to make the character more relatable?", "what further plotholes does the use of reincarnation produce?", "do I use reincharnation as a part of the moral of the story?", and "how would the story be changed if it was not reincharnation, but something else?"
There are of cause more question one could ask oneself about the use of that specifict trope, but these questions should at least allow for some reflection upon why you might or might not wish to use it, and thereby maybe also inspire tweaks to optimize it for those effects.

'Eleven_11' pid='825090' dateline='1497349214' Wrote: What I find funny is, the cliche practically throws the concept of reincarnation out of the window. Reincarnation with full memories of the previous life? This is like going to Heaven while staying on Earth.

With this in mind: There is a character living in a fantasy world. They're a typical representative of their race, born to a normal family and raised in the fantasy environment from start to finish. However, they're somewhat... Weird. Not quite right in the head. They sometimes have the most bizarre dreams of things and places that don't look real, strange intuitions, they suffer from derealisation at times. People find them strange, but otherwise they're a perfectly normal fantasy human (or elf, dwarf, beastman, whatever else).

That is until one day, a rift to another world opens and invaders start to pour in. Invaders armed with terrifying missile weapons, roaring monsters of steel that belch fireballs and weird insects with rotating wings on their abdomen that carry exploding cocoons under their limbs.

As it turns out, the protagonist used to be a human on Earth in the previous life. They remember nothing of it but still have a strong connection to Earth... And somewhere in there, someone used that connection to build a Black Mesa Research Facility and open a rift to the fantasy world. Before long, humanity from Earth starts an invasion.

Boom. A reincarnation story in the most literal sense :P

Write it! That's a spectacular twist on the standard reincarnation trope.

As for the standard reincarnation stories, well in most of them the whole 'being reincarnated but still having memories' thing is superfluous. If you are going to have your MC decide to forget all the details of his former, or just embrace the new life, or it makes it hard for them to adjust to the new world for all of three chapters, you may as well just abandon the entire trope and find some other way to introduce your MC. In the vast majority of reincarnation stories, the fact that they reincarnated and somehow kept their memories is basically abandoned within the first few chapters and it devolves into a standard fantasy/xianxia/postapocalyptic or whatever. It is a fine line to walk in order to keep it relevant and interesting. Spectral Regalia did a fair job of it, with the MC using his knowledge from his old life to improve his situation, I stopped reading it when it took a dive into the deep end of xianxia and started getting a bit repetitive, but it is still a good example of a viable use of an overdone trope as an intro.

'Ninetails' pid='825550' dateline='1498350314' Wrote: Most tropes (including reincarnation) are tools, and tropes are not inheirently bad for being a trope. Sure, making a more unique story with unique elements instead of typical tropes will make the story more distrinct compared to other stories, which in turn makes for easier advertisement and distrinct memories. On the other hand, tropes are recognized because they tend to be found in many places, are they are typicaly found in many place because they work well. As a parallel consider building some wooden furnature: You could use some special hand made tools for that unique rostique look, but if you used mordern tools instead, the quality of the product would be much higher.

Since a trope is a tool, the 2 main things you should remember are:
1) Dont choose the job for the tool, choose the tool for the job: Meaning dont build a story based on what tropes you want it to include, but build a story that happens to use tropes the tropes that make it the best story.
2)  Chose the right tool for the right job: It seems a lot like the point above, but in point 1 we take the "story before trope", while here it is which tropes to use. For this example, you need to consider which tropes would help you the best in telling the story you want to tell.

A lot of it comes down to considering what a trope can do for your story, how it can help it, and why you might want to build your story in that direction. Since you will be taking an original story, and simply using tools to give it form, it does not become cliche from using those tools. If you instead started with the tools, as a set of pusle pieces, and tried to put them together in a form that would create some kind of "type of story", then you will end up with a cliche, because the most original thing done would be how the pieces are places, nd not the story underneath.

A general example could be, that if you wanted to build a story about discrimination, and how that affected the characters, then the story would be enchanhed by giving it a setting where such things are more obvious, such as ww2, fantasy world with different races, 1800 century america, or some kind of dystopia. If you instead started with the premise of I should have different fantasy races, and included the standard "dwarf vs elves" racial disputes, then that would just seem like a cliche, as it becomes some artifical piece that is included as the standard form of the cliche.
I have read stories of both of those kinds, and the difference can be quite obvious when reading them. Even if the things they do would fall into some tropes, it will feels fresh and not cliche (at least if done right).

For reincarnation specifically, you might want to consider what kind of effect it should have on the story, and if it even should be cliche or something else would give you a more dissirable result. It would also allow you to tweak it supple ways, which in itself will become those small changes that prevents it from being completly cliche.
Some typical questions to ask for reincarnation: "is this only as a way of introduction?", "does this affect the personality and/or hehavior of the mc"?, "is it there to explain discrepencies or possible plotholes?", "how does it influence my further storytellig, and why?", "is this a tool to make the character more relatable?", "what further plotholes does the use of reincarnation produce?", "do I use reincharnation as a part of the moral of the story?", and "how would the story be changed if it was not reincharnation, but something else?"
There are of cause more question one could ask oneself about the use of that specifict trope, but these questions should at least allow for some reflection upon why you might or might not wish to use it, and thereby maybe also inspire tweaks to optimize it for those effects.

I'm thinking right now about making a story where some "demon lord" (not in literal sense) is reincarnated and that he was just something something in the past who did something something for someone and that someone was someone special, thus that someone liked this now demon lord and gave him a world to shape. Of course the cliche of OP'ism characters will be there, but that's simply what i want to write, in time there will appear more and more characters who can reach up to him and stuff like that. I want to have a nice enough backstory to explain reasons behind this and that because plotholes and unexplained things or things that are just that they are, make me feel guilty.

All in all, that's a really nice reply, thanks a lot.

'Ledos' pid='825661' dateline='1498555102' Wrote:

'Ninetails' pid='825550' dateline='1498350314' Wrote: Most tropes (including reincarnation) are tools, and tropes are not inheirently bad for being a trope. Sure, making a more unique story with unique elements instead of typical tropes will make the story more distrinct compared to other stories, which in turn makes for easier advertisement and distrinct memories. On the other hand, tropes are recognized because they tend to be found in many places, are they are typicaly found in many place because they work well. As a parallel consider building some wooden furnature: You could use some special hand made tools for that unique rostique look, but if you used mordern tools instead, the quality of the product would be much higher.

Since a trope is a tool, the 2 main things you should remember are:
1) Dont choose the job for the tool, choose the tool for the job: Meaning dont build a story based on what tropes you want it to include, but build a story that happens to use tropes the tropes that make it the best story.
2)  Chose the right tool for the right job: It seems a lot like the point above, but in point 1 we take the "story before trope", while here it is which tropes to use. For this example, you need to consider which tropes would help you the best in telling the story you want to tell.

A lot of it comes down to considering what a trope can do for your story, how it can help it, and why you might want to build your story in that direction. Since you will be taking an original story, and simply using tools to give it form, it does not become cliche from using those tools. If you instead started with the tools, as a set of pusle pieces, and tried to put them together in a form that would create some kind of "type of story", then you will end up with a cliche, because the most original thing done would be how the pieces are places, nd not the story underneath.

A general example could be, that if you wanted to build a story about discrimination, and how that affected the characters, then the story would be enchanhed by giving it a setting where such things are more obvious, such as ww2, fantasy world with different races, 1800 century america, or some kind of dystopia. If you instead started with the premise of I should have different fantasy races, and included the standard "dwarf vs elves" racial disputes, then that would just seem like a cliche, as it becomes some artifical piece that is included as the standard form of the cliche.
I have read stories of both of those kinds, and the difference can be quite obvious when reading them. Even if the things they do would fall into some tropes, it will feels fresh and not cliche (at least if done right).

For reincarnation specifically, you might want to consider what kind of effect it should have on the story, and if it even should be cliche or something else would give you a more dissirable result. It would also allow you to tweak it supple ways, which in itself will become those small changes that prevents it from being completly cliche.
Some typical questions to ask for reincarnation: "is this only as a way of introduction?", "does this affect the personality and/or hehavior of the mc"?, "is it there to explain discrepencies or possible plotholes?", "how does it influence my further storytellig, and why?", "is this a tool to make the character more relatable?", "what further plotholes does the use of reincarnation produce?", "do I use reincharnation as a part of the moral of the story?", and "how would the story be changed if it was not reincharnation, but something else?"
There are of cause more question one could ask oneself about the use of that specifict trope, but these questions should at least allow for some reflection upon why you might or might not wish to use it, and thereby maybe also inspire tweaks to optimize it for those effects.

I'm thinking right now about making a story where some "demon lord" (not in literal sense) is reincarnated and that he was just something something in the past who did something something for someone and that someone was someone special, thus that someone liked this now demon lord and gave him a world to shape. Of course the cliche of OP'ism characters will be there, but that's simply what i want to write, in time there will appear more and more characters who can reach up to him and stuff like that. I want to have a nice enough backstory to explain reasons behind this and that because plotholes and unexplained things or things that are just that they are, make me feel guilty.

All in all, that's a really nice reply, thanks a lot.

I take it you plan to use reincarnation as a plot hole stuffing tool. It can work, but it is easy to overlook something and cause even more plotholes to appear. This comes from reincharnation having a possible major effect on the character, which means you will have to watch out for problems with consitency, and other effects your readers might consider as logically following from it.

Your introduction seems to mainly focus on employing a set of tropes (reincharnation, "demon lord", OP mc, mistaken past ...), but very little of what you expect to happen during the story. There are some details after the "something for someone, some some some..." part that I didnt really get, so I am just going to treat it as if those parts were cut out. The tropes are patterns in the stories, that are more or less common, and work as tools when writting, as the effects of them are somewhat predictable. While these patterns does tell us something about the story, it tells us very little of how we shoud expect the story to go. To understand this, let me show you a parallel where I have simply replace some of the tropes with some patterns, and see how much we get to know about the story:
"The mc takes a train (reincarnation), the station he left from was misspelled (mistaken past). He has dark hair ("demon lord"), and blue eyes (OP mc), and meets some people with green eyes at his destination (the other strong people)."
As you can see, we get some knowledge about the story, but we are still left without much knowledge about what the story is going to really be about. For most stories, this is the "conflict", which is the core of the story. There can be more than one conflict (most professional books focuses on one for each book), and they can be interweaved in complicated ways. There are of cause stories without a "conflict", and that group of stories have some overlap with the "slice of life" genre, though not necessariliy so (but those kind of stories are probably a bit far away from what I guess you want to make). The plot typically grows out of or partially out of the "conflict". We can consider the conflit as some kind of problem the faced in the story. It is often tightly connected to the motivations and goals of the characters.
Some possible conflicts for the kind of story you told could be, "redemption", "restoration of honor", "finding out what happened", "revenge", "identity crisis", "discrimination (if he/she has some feature left over)", "regaining power/something lost", "conforming to normality", "hidding power", "growing up again", and so on.

It is this kind of struggle or core concept of what the story is going to be about, that tells us what to expect of the story in terms of plot, mood, characterization, and so on. The tropes are then tools used to set up a setting/situation where thosre core concepts and "conflict" can be explored best.

My suggestion is to consider what kind of core "conflict"/concept you want to write about. Once you have this, and combine it with the setting you have already considered, then the plot of your story should flow much more naturally. If you have problems finding some kind of core conflict, then chances are that you will only get to write some introductory chapters, maybe a few more, but you will quickly run out of stuff to do and burn out, and the overall quality might be relatively amatourish. While you can get away without a "conflict", one still need an equivalent core concept, and that type of story is best left till after ones basic writing skills have reached a sufficient level of quality.

'Ninetails' pid='825669' dateline='1498578069' Wrote:

'Ledos' pid='825661' dateline='1498555102' Wrote:

'Ninetails' pid='825550' dateline='1498350314' Wrote: Most tropes (including reincarnation) are tools, and tropes are not inheirently bad for being a trope. Sure, making a more unique story with unique elements instead of typical tropes will make the story more distrinct compared to other stories, which in turn makes for easier advertisement and distrinct memories. On the other hand, tropes are recognized because they tend to be found in many places, are they are typicaly found in many place because they work well. As a parallel consider building some wooden furnature: You could use some special hand made tools for that unique rostique look, but if you used mordern tools instead, the quality of the product would be much higher.

Since a trope is a tool, the 2 main things you should remember are:
1) Dont choose the job for the tool, choose the tool for the job: Meaning dont build a story based on what tropes you want it to include, but build a story that happens to use tropes the tropes that make it the best story.
2)  Chose the right tool for the right job: It seems a lot like the point above, but in point 1 we take the "story before trope", while here it is which tropes to use. For this example, you need to consider which tropes would help you the best in telling the story you want to tell.

A lot of it comes down to considering what a trope can do for your story, how it can help it, and why you might want to build your story in that direction. Since you will be taking an original story, and simply using tools to give it form, it does not become cliche from using those tools. If you instead started with the tools, as a set of pusle pieces, and tried to put them together in a form that would create some kind of "type of story", then you will end up with a cliche, because the most original thing done would be how the pieces are places, nd not the story underneath.

A general example could be, that if you wanted to build a story about discrimination, and how that affected the characters, then the story would be enchanhed by giving it a setting where such things are more obvious, such as ww2, fantasy world with different races, 1800 century america, or some kind of dystopia. If you instead started with the premise of I should have different fantasy races, and included the standard "dwarf vs elves" racial disputes, then that would just seem like a cliche, as it becomes some artifical piece that is included as the standard form of the cliche.
I have read stories of both of those kinds, and the difference can be quite obvious when reading them. Even if the things they do would fall into some tropes, it will feels fresh and not cliche (at least if done right).

For reincarnation specifically, you might want to consider what kind of effect it should have on the story, and if it even should be cliche or something else would give you a more dissirable result. It would also allow you to tweak it supple ways, which in itself will become those small changes that prevents it from being completly cliche.
Some typical questions to ask for reincarnation: "is this only as a way of introduction?", "does this affect the personality and/or hehavior of the mc"?, "is it there to explain discrepencies or possible plotholes?", "how does it influence my further storytellig, and why?", "is this a tool to make the character more relatable?", "what further plotholes does the use of reincarnation produce?", "do I use reincharnation as a part of the moral of the story?", and "how would the story be changed if it was not reincharnation, but something else?"
There are of cause more question one could ask oneself about the use of that specifict trope, but these questions should at least allow for some reflection upon why you might or might not wish to use it, and thereby maybe also inspire tweaks to optimize it for those effects.

I'm thinking right now about making a story where some "demon lord" (not in literal sense) is reincarnated and that he was just something something in the past who did something something for someone and that someone was someone special, thus that someone liked this now demon lord and gave him a world to shape. Of course the cliche of OP'ism characters will be there, but that's simply what i want to write, in time there will appear more and more characters who can reach up to him and stuff like that. I want to have a nice enough backstory to explain reasons behind this and that because plotholes and unexplained things or things that are just that they are, make me feel guilty.

All in all, that's a really nice reply, thanks a lot.

I take it you plan to use reincarnation as a plot hole stuffing tool. It can work, but it is easy to overlook something and cause even more plotholes to appear. This comes from reincharnation having a possible major effect on the character, which means you will have to watch out for problems with consitency, and other effects your readers might consider as logically following from it.

Your introduction seems to mainly focus on employing a set of tropes (reincharnation, "demon lord", OP mc, mistaken past ...), but very little of what you expect to happen during the story. There are some details after the "something for someone, some some some..." part that I didnt really get, so I am just going to treat it as if those parts were cut out. The tropes are patterns in the stories, that are more or less common, and work as tools when writting, as the effects of them are somewhat predictable. While these patterns does tell us something about the story, it tells us very little of how we shoud expect the story to go. To understand this, let me show you a parallel where I have simply replace some of the tropes with some patterns, and see how much we get to know about the story:
"The mc takes a train (reincarnation), the station he left from was misspelled (mistaken past). He has dark hair ("demon lord"), and blue eyes (OP mc), and meets some people with green eyes at his destination (the other strong people)."
As you can see, we get some knowledge about the story, but we are still left without much knowledge about what the story is going to really be about. For most stories, this is the "conflict", which is the core of the story. There can be more than one conflict (most professional books focuses on one for each book), and they can be interweaved in complicated ways. There are of cause stories without a "conflict", and that group of stories have some overlap with the "slice of life" genre, though not necessariliy so (but those kind of stories are probably a bit far away from what I guess you want to make). The plot typically grows out of or partially out of the "conflict". We can consider the conflit as some kind of problem the faced in the story. It is often tightly connected to the motivations and goals of the characters.
Some possible conflicts for the kind of story you told could be, "redemption", "restoration of honor", "finding out what happened", "revenge", "identity crisis", "discrimination (if he/she has some feature left over)", "regaining power/something lost", "conforming to normality", "hidding power", "growing up again", and so on.

It is this kind of struggle or core concept of what the story is going to be about, that tells us what to expect of the story in terms of plot, mood, characterization, and so on. The tropes are then tools used to set up a setting/situation where thosre core concepts and "conflict" can be explored best.

My suggestion is to consider what kind of core "conflict"/concept you want to write about. Once you have this, and combine it with the setting you have already considered, then the plot of your story should flow much more naturally. If you have problems finding some kind of core conflict, then chances are that you will only get to write some introductory chapters, maybe a few more, but you will quickly run out of stuff to do and burn out, and the overall quality might be relatively amatourish. While you can get away without a "conflict", one still need an equivalent core concept, and that type of story is best left till after ones basic writing skills have reached a sufficient level of quality.

As you said - what i want to happen in the story, the conflict.

The conflict is that by somesort of inheritance (which i haven't decided yet, or just don't feel comfortable revealing) the whole world is rightfully to shape as this person wants to. But, here goes the but, he doesn't want to exterminate everything and just steadily reach for the top from somehwere in the middle (considering his power and all that).

He has companions or servants or whatever, thus losing them would be, well, a loss.

He may just sit quietly in his domain, at least he self-contemplates such actions, but considering that nothing or no one wants to do nothing, especially his servants who brought him back from god knows where (just a figure of speech, i have the place designed and all that) have waited a good, long time before they were able to bring him back, thus it would be a waste of energy (at least in the eyes of the MC i'm developing).

Plus a new conflict appears which is that lifeforms foreign from his domain are trying to invade him, to destroy him or get him out of this world once he becomes noticed. A new one would be that the characterisms in other characters (or his servants in this case) force him to change his approach from peaceful, non-harmful to cruel and chaotic, with which he has no problems, due to his past, it's just that those actions might seem a bit too chaotic, but, in the end, he can still find reasons why they are, well, reasonable.

In between these two conflicts, the conflict that he can't do nothing and peacefully live for whatever reason i'll figure out later and that he's being slowly invaded and taking no actions would just kill him and those around him. Currently, as plot ground for the NOW timeline, it seems fairly decent, at least to me.

Again, thanks for the reply, you're great.

'Ledos' pid='825673' dateline='1498595625' Wrote:

'Ninetails' pid='825669' dateline='1498578069' Wrote: ...

As you said - what i want to happen in the story, the conflict.

The conflict is that by somesort of inheritance (which i haven't decided yet, or just don't feel comfortable revealing) the whole world is rightfully to shape as this person wants to. But, here goes the but, he doesn't want to exterminate everything and just steadily reach for the top from somehwere in the middle (considering his power and all that).

He has companions or servants or whatever, thus losing them would be, well, a loss.

He may just sit quietly in his domain, at least he self-contemplates such actions, but considering that nothing or no one wants to do nothing, especially his servants who brought him back from god knows where (just a figure of speech, i have the place designed and all that) have waited a good, long time before they were able to bring him back, thus it would be a waste of energy (at least in the eyes of the MC i'm developing).

Plus a new conflict appears which is that lifeforms foreign from his domain are trying to invade him, to destroy him or get him out of this world once he becomes noticed. A new one would be that the characterisms in other characters (or his servants in this case) force him to change his approach from peaceful, non-harmful to cruel and chaotic, with which he has no problems, due to his past, it's just that those actions might seem a bit too chaotic, but, in the end, he can still find reasons why they are, well, reasonable.

In between these two conflicts, the conflict that he can't do nothing and peacefully live for whatever reason i'll figure out later and that he's being slowly invaded and taking no actions would just kill him and those around him. Currently, as plot ground for the NOW timeline, it seems fairly decent, at least to me.

Again, thanks for the reply, you're great.

I can see a few problematic details in what you have presented here, hopefully appart from it probablly not being my cup of the.


It looks like you have 2 main conflicts going on here:
A) A conflict of interest (One sides wants to invade, the other not to be invaded).
B) An emotional challange (dealing with hostiles while wanting to be peacefull).
Both of these are connected, but they form the story in 2 different ways. Conflict A is fine on itself, as long as the power levels of the sides is structure such that one can build a plot over that conflict (a OP mc that could just steamrole the other side would reduce the value of the problem as a conflict). It lends itself well to a plot based story. Conflict B is a nice type of side conflict to have going on (you get a very different genre when it becomes the main conflict), and it is heavily connected to the quality of characterzation in the story.

The problematic detail then comes from the timing of conflict B. There are a lot of qualities in the story that can enhance the effect of emotional conflicts. The more attached the reader is to the characters faing these problems, the more emotional impact it will have on the reader through empathy. On the other hand they are a great tool for enriching the characters themselves. This means that you both want to wait until later in the story with using such types of conflicts (to optimize the effect of them), while at the same time you want to use it early enough in the story that the reader can enjoy enriched characterization (in forms of relatablity/likeablity/depth) over a longer part of the story.
One would therefore expect it to be preferable to first build up some characterization before such conflicts were used, both to increase the readers emotional investment (this is one of the keys to unlock the door from decent/good writing to great writing, as it acts as a force multiplier) and to build the characteristic that is challeged (here that the MC prefers peacefull resolution). I would therefore recommend that you consider adding some smaller conflicts beforehand to facilitate character building. One would expect some kinds of issues to arrise while setting up his domain.
Are there sufficient food/water sources? What about construction materials.
How is his relationship to the inhabitants of his domain, and do they even know whether he exists?
What about the "wildlife", are there any, just animals or maybe even monsters and how do the inhabitants deal with them.
These are some of the problems that might arrise. They dont have to major problems needed to overcome, but they can provide the "conflict" which you use to build up the intial characterization on. A characterization spice that might be relevant here, is that most real people doubt a lot of things, and you can quickly add some character by having them voice rationel doubts to something (just dont go overboard and make them fanatically believe the opposite, keep it inside what could at most be considered paranoid). This can both generate depth by itself, but it also allows the author to show the depth in the character. Using this technique should also force you to consider the characteristic of the characters on a deeper level. The amount you apply it with is up to you, and it may be sufficient to just use it a little bit here and there, in the same way that you can give the impression of a brick wall in a drawing by only drawing a few of the bricks.

The next problematic detail is the part: "he doesn't want to exterminate everything and just steadily reach for the top from somehwere in the middle".
The problem here is that it is a very genre savy thing to do, in a relatively weird way, because it is not the choice people would naturally tend to do. It might be what you want to happen as an author and reader, but it is stated so directly that it breaks the suspense of disbelief. While it might be something a character may want to do, it would usually require some kind of strong reason, and typically also some sense of wisdom or stupidity. These are things that can be really hard to have build up enough up so early on in a story.
There are a varity of ways to tweak this, such that it does not cause such a problem, or just less of one.
The main idea is to apply some kind of restriction. If the MC doesnt have to make a choice that actively hurts them, most of the problem disappear. A form of this could be that he simply doesnt have full access to all of the powers, or only knows how to use a fraction of them, or maybe the powers are time or use limited in some way.
The next option would be to make him trade in power now for more power later on (my personal favorite). For instance, lose 3/4ths of your levels to gain double value per level (meaning he is at half power at the start, but will scale better), or opens the potential to reach higher levels of power. You can even use it to start building motivation for building his own power. Since you are expecting him to build a domain, you could also make him give up some initial power to make him able to grow his own power based somehow on his domain (for instance, if he is a god, then worship -> increase of power). Overall, this option makes it a rational choice, a removes most of the problem with it.
Another option is to use characterization to defend such a choice. He could be affraid of the power, and/or maybe the corruption power can bring with it. He might not feel worthy of the power (especialy after the event the lead to his prior death), or some other weird reason for it. Overall, it is quite hard to rationalize that specific choice, so this options should not be expected to do more than slightly mitigate the original damage.


Lastly I still somewhat get the impression, that you are describing how you want the story to be rather than describing the story you want to tell. You want your description of the story to be a description of your specific story, instead of something we could consider as a search criteria to find other stories. Are you writing "a reincarnation story, with dark past and domain building", or are you writing "that story, where he had to overcome X,Y,Z problems, with those other A,B,C other characters trying to ...". The imperssion is less pronouced than before, but I still fear that you might be walking in to a trap, or that I am just being an alarmist here.

Remember that these arent oh my god major issues, but rather things that I would suggest you to consider before rushing headlong into writting your story.

'Ninetails' pid='825864' dateline='1499105226' Wrote:

'Ledos' pid='825673' dateline='1498595625' Wrote:

'Ninetails' pid='825669' dateline='1498578069' Wrote: ...

As you said - what i want to happen in the story, the conflict.

The conflict is that by somesort of inheritance (which i haven't decided yet, or just don't feel comfortable revealing) the whole world is rightfully to shape as this person wants to. But, here goes the but, he doesn't want to exterminate everything and just steadily reach for the top from somehwere in the middle (considering his power and all that).

He has companions or servants or whatever, thus losing them would be, well, a loss.

He may just sit quietly in his domain, at least he self-contemplates such actions, but considering that nothing or no one wants to do nothing, especially his servants who brought him back from god knows where (just a figure of speech, i have the place designed and all that) have waited a good, long time before they were able to bring him back, thus it would be a waste of energy (at least in the eyes of the MC i'm developing).

Plus a new conflict appears which is that lifeforms foreign from his domain are trying to invade him, to destroy him or get him out of this world once he becomes noticed. A new one would be that the characterisms in other characters (or his servants in this case) force him to change his approach from peaceful, non-harmful to cruel and chaotic, with which he has no problems, due to his past, it's just that those actions might seem a bit too chaotic, but, in the end, he can still find reasons why they are, well, reasonable.

In between these two conflicts, the conflict that he can't do nothing and peacefully live for whatever reason i'll figure out later and that he's being slowly invaded and taking no actions would just kill him and those around him. Currently, as plot ground for the NOW timeline, it seems fairly decent, at least to me.

Again, thanks for the reply, you're great.

I can see a few problematic details in what you have presented here, hopefully appart from it probablly not being my cup of the.


It looks like you have 2 main conflicts going on here:
A) A conflict of interest (One sides wants to invade, the other not to be invaded).
B) An emotional challange (dealing with hostiles while wanting to be peacefull).
Both of these are connected, but they form the story in 2 different ways. Conflict A is fine on itself, as long as the power levels of the sides is structure such that one can build a plot over that conflict (a OP mc that could just steamrole the other side would reduce the value of the problem as a conflict). It lends itself well to a plot based story. Conflict B is a nice type of side conflict to have going on (you get a very different genre when it becomes the main conflict), and it is heavily connected to the quality of characterzation in the story.

The problematic detail then comes from the timing of conflict B. There are a lot of qualities in the story that can enhance the effect of emotional conflicts. The more attached the reader is to the characters faing these problems, the more emotional impact it will have on the reader through empathy. On the other hand they are a great tool for enriching the characters themselves. This means that you both want to wait until later in the story with using such types of conflicts (to optimize the effect of them), while at the same time you want to use it early enough in the story that the reader can enjoy enriched characterization (in forms of relatablity/likeablity/depth) over a longer part of the story.
One would therefore expect it to be preferable to first build up some characterization before such conflicts were used, both to increase the readers emotional investment (this is one of the keys to unlock the door from decent/good writing to great writing, as it acts as a force multiplier) and to build the characteristic that is challeged (here that the MC prefers peacefull resolution). I would therefore recommend that you consider adding some smaller conflicts beforehand to facilitate character building. One would expect some kinds of issues to arrise while setting up his domain.
Are there sufficient food/water sources? What about construction materials.
How is his relationship to the inhabitants of his domain, and do they even know whether he exists?
What about the "wildlife", are there any, just animals or maybe even monsters and how do the inhabitants deal with them.
These are some of the problems that might arrise. They dont have to major problems needed to overcome, but they can provide the "conflict" which you use to build up the intial characterization on. A characterization spice that might be relevant here, is that most real people doubt a lot of things, and you can quickly add some character by having them voice rationel doubts to something (just dont go overboard and make them fanatically believe the opposite, keep it inside what could at most be considered paranoid). This can both generate depth by itself, but it also allows the author to show the depth in the character. Using this technique should also force you to consider the characteristic of the characters on a deeper level. The amount you apply it with is up to you, and it may be sufficient to just use it a little bit here and there, in the same way that you can give the impression of a brick wall in a drawing by only drawing a few of the bricks.

The next problematic detail is the part: "he doesn't want to exterminate everything and just steadily reach for the top from somehwere in the middle".
The problem here is that it is a very genre savy thing to do, in a relatively weird way, because it is not the choice people would naturally tend to do. It might be what you want to happen as an author and reader, but it is stated so directly that it breaks the suspense of disbelief. While it might be something a character may want to do, it would usually require some kind of strong reason, and typically also some sense of wisdom or stupidity. These are things that can be really hard to have build up enough up so early on in a story.
There are a varity of ways to tweak this, such that it does not cause such a problem, or just less of one.
The main idea is to apply some kind of restriction. If the MC doesnt have to make a choice that actively hurts them, most of the problem disappear. A form of this could be that he simply doesnt have full access to all of the powers, or only knows how to use a fraction of them, or maybe the powers are time or use limited in some way.
The next option would be to make him trade in power now for more power later on (my personal favorite). For instance, lose 3/4ths of your levels to gain double value per level (meaning he is at half power at the start, but will scale better), or opens the potential to reach higher levels of power. You can even use it to start building motivation for building his own power. Since you are expecting him to build a domain, you could also make him give up some initial power to make him able to grow his own power based somehow on his domain (for instance, if he is a god, then worship -> increase of power). Overall, this option makes it a rational choice, a removes most of the problem with it.
Another option is to use characterization to defend such a choice. He could be affraid of the power, and/or maybe the corruption power can bring with it. He might not feel worthy of the power (especialy after the event the lead to his prior death), or some other weird reason for it. Overall, it is quite hard to rationalize that specific choice, so this options should not be expected to do more than slightly mitigate the original damage.


Lastly I still somewhat get the impression, that you are describing how you want the story to be rather than describing the story you want to tell. You want your description of the story to be a description of your specific story, instead of something we could consider as a search criteria to find other stories. Are you writing "a reincarnation story, with dark past and domain building", or are you writing "that story, where he had to overcome X,Y,Z problems, with those other A,B,C other characters trying to ...". The imperssion is less pronouced than before, but I still fear that you might be walking in to a trap, or that I am just being an alarmist here.

Remember that these arent oh my god major issues, but rather things that I would suggest you to consider before rushing headlong into writting your story.

While i did already start it, it is not full swing as I am a lazy writer and have other responsibilities.

The A-B conflicts create an another conflict, C. C expands into a-b-c-x-y-z and etc. The character may as well be described as insane, multiple personality disorder and such (B).
Problem A is just a spark, to ignite the story. A will become B which both of them will become C, as said.
a> The character has a problem with everything being delivered almost on a silver plate. Thus leading to problem 'a-'. Which could be webbed out into conflicts with the other friendly characters, problems he may cause and such.
b> The character loves children, in a fatherly way. See's potential in any kind of race which is more intelligent than a rabbit, even more ignorant than them sometimes. (This is based on appearance and what not). The problem is that his servants see otherwise, they try to fill up what they cannot comprehend in their heads, the orders or plans they were trying to do, forcing them to make mistakes so that the MC must adjust his ways of dealing with them.
c> While he may love children, he only sees them as one would see NPC's in a video game. Cute, charming, but of no real consequence if lost, just emotional one.
d> He sees his servants as more than NPC's, as they will be the only ones to actually comprehend his thoughts and "ethereal" voice. I will expand on the list later on as i make major characters and what not.
x,y,z> up for later thoughts, since i'm going to lose my train of thoughts for the reply.
(Note: hypocritical MC)

Emotional problems: MC - unable to get his thoughts together, his memories and if he does get them back, inability to put them together, creating somesort of tear jerker. These memories will create a side story from the time he was still aliive.
Side characters - stories of 'birth', inner thoughts and what not.

Relationship with the inhabitants would be hierarchical. Loyal subjects to the ruler. Obey without reward. This creates more inner conflict for the MC as he believes not worthy of such devotion, even if he sees most of them as creations of a game.

The game part and feeling about his servants. Feelings for friendly side characters changes according to him witnessing them evolve - in strength or thought processes.

Power: there will be restrictions 100%. Elemental, magic, strength and skill type. I am not going to make him overpowered to steamroll. I'm thinking more about making the side characters do more of the steamrolling rather than him. While with restrictions he still can "steamroll", but there will appear other unfriendly characters who can do the same and even negate his effects. Hindering the negations and thwarting others plans will be the job of the side characters. While the MC possesses power, he does not possess, well, smarts. He may be wise to some degree, but his plans are not micro managed. He will not be corrupted by the power and what not, as i think of him to be twisted in before his death, but that is left to be decided, as I modify the manuscript every day.

Also, while i didn't see you mention this, the cause for world building. Hidden identity or something on those terms.

BTW: the power will be based on somesort of system, kind of like a game as it is the power building premise, but the secondary goal of the MC would be to find out how and why these things such as magic work.

I hope i summarized everything well. For the end point: "a reincarnation story, with dark past and domain building", or are you writing "that story, where he had to overcome X,Y,Z problems, with those other A,B,C other characters trying to ...".
The answer would be both mixed in. A reincarnation story with a dark past and domain expansion while the MC and his servants try to overcome inner and external conflicts.

It's hard for me to fully reply to your comment as, while you may write it, uhm, fulfillingly, it makes me lose the point most of the times, as I re-read it around 3-5 times. I thank you for the comment, once again, but i ask and hope that you will reply again while making somesort of A)B)C) summary. While i said this many times, i can't say it enough - thank you.

I don't think you have to reinvent the wheel every time. It's like painting. You use the same colors as everyone else, just in different patterns and styles.

Resurrection is the theme, but you have variations on the settings (sci-fi, fantasy, modern day, ...) variation on the genre (comedy, romance, dark, horror, ...) and variations on the story you want to tell, like exploring the world, focusing on getting MC back home, focusing on a mission to accomplish inside the world, ...

I think that by combining many elements that by themselves would be generic, you can obtain something new.

maybe instead of ROB just pluck you out of the Void and give you whatever you need you do it yourself like you end up in the afterlife to be processed (like a huge waiting line) and you somehow get to the Bosses Room, find the Book of the Dead and Destroy the page that Detailed your Life. Now noone can ever find him again (Immunity to all Claurvoyance and stuff and even Death cant find him anymore or something like that) or somehow dont Drink Grandmas Tea that makes you forget your past life or something. Or Maybe the ROB/God whatever that processes you starts to hate you because the MC is a big Jerk that cant stop running his mouth and screw him over with a Curse or something that is NOT beneficial. He didnt planned it at first but MC is just so insignificant that he just pluck another out of the Void for whatever task there is when he gave him lip.

I like reincarnation stories - don't really care about them being cliche.  As long as you don't make them forget half their past life or make them an OP 3 year old (it's fine if they are a bit of a prodigy).  I could do without the male-reincarnated-as-female-is-now-trans/lesbian scenario, but it's quite rare to see a non-trans gay male MC, or a disoriented gendered human reborn as a member of a genderless species.  One thing I've actually never seen is the MC commenting about how dysphoria-inducing it is to go from having a libido to not having a libido.  Another thing that would be nice is if the race the MC was reincarnated into has some genuinely non-human instincts or biology, like a pack-formation instinct or an organizing-in-a-hierarchy instinct or a society where males form permanent teams not just for a sports or military purpose like in humans, but to obtain females that they share and co-raise children and maybe run a ship or a ranch/farm together.

Greatest Cliché Overpowered Main character .
its still fun to read but turns into slice of life with little tension.
I guess most writers forget how to create it without a sense of death or suffering.
When your more powered up then a minor deity its unlikely  as a scenario.
 
possible ways to progress OPMC

• romance ... but for the love of ... plz less harems more awkward 'I can explain..' no you cant lol


• cooking .. food ideas not already flooding books..


• woodworking ..  stick the desk talk about secret passage or a puzzle box ect.


• metalworking  .. casting, hammering and refining seems always fun.


• glass makin


• politics  .  so many catch 22 situations so little politicians get their comeuppance.


• religion .. create a cult , retell one as a new religion..


• moneys .. always fun to see a broke OPMC


• exploration .. the more places with the random bandit/goblin the better lol.


• respawn  ... this one can be great if the story doesn't get bogged.


• sudden illness .. not really often used maybe a bad idea for OPMC.


• cute monsters .. describe them and they better be fluffy (or scaly ect)