More about Webserials.

[halfeye]

I check what must be nearer 100 than 50 webserials, though some of those don't seem to be updating any more. I'm going to mention less than 10 because I can't be bothered to do more, and they're definitely going to be in random order.

Peculiar soul: In this story souls are sort of superpowers, most people don't have one, when the user dies someone else can absorb the soul. Most of souls are weak, but there are The eight, which are very strong. Quite a lot of horrific content.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/42433/peculiar-soul

Ar'kendrithyst: Lots of magic, some swords, some dragons are gods, loads of other monsters. Quite a lot of horrific content.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/26727/arkendrithyst

Katalepsis: Lots of lesbians, two different sorts of magic, some horror, lots of metaphorical tripping over their own feet, lots of emotion.

https://katalepsis.net/

Cinammon bun: Cutesy adventure, cartoonish violence, the power of friendship.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/31429/cinnamon-bun

Forge of Destiny: Cultivaton is the only magic, sort of semi-Chinese atmosphere, much formality and ritual. Some violence and horror.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21...rge-of-destiny

Infinite Realm: Horrific. Cultivation, Classes and (Skills?) are three different ways to power.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/27...nsters-legends

A lot of those are on royal road, that's because most are, I don't particularly prefer it, I don't hate it, it's just where most of the webserials are.

[uncool]

So, question about each of them (especially Royal Road):
Do they seem to have some sort of overarching story arc in mind, more than “And then this happened”? That’s the tendency I’ve largely seen Royal Road serials fall into - a tendency to just add nearly-repetitive takes with very little thematic growth.

Beware of Chicken doesn’t quite fall into that rut, and Katalepsis doesn’t either (though I’m somewhat turned away from Katalepsis - it promises psychological horror while not really delivering on it well imo).

[Rynjin]

Much like anything else, the majority of stuff on RR is crap. I pretty much stick to stuff on TopWebFiction (and even a lot of those are crap) and ones specifically recommended to me by authors of serials I do like, because those are the ones most likely to break that mold you're referring to.

[halfeye]

So, question about each of them (especially Royal Road):
Do they seem to have some sort of overarching story arc in mind, more than “And then this happened”? That’s the tendency I’ve largely seen Royal Road serials fall into - a tendency to just add nearly-repetitive takes with very little thematic growth.

I think so, but then you can't really tell with anything that's not yet finished. I fear The Wandering Inn is going that route, it just keeps on growing, and the enemies keep on multiplying, but maybe it'll turn out all right in the end?

I'm not a very critical reader, if something updates I like that, if it's on hiatus I'm not so keen, and if it's finished then I forgot it already.

[endoperez]

Ooh, nice thread. I'm going to check out some of these, thanks for the suggestions!


There are a few other ones I'd like to mention. They're rather famous ones, though.


Mother of Learning
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21...er-of-learning
Originally posted on Fictionpress, later it's appeared on Royal Road as well. It's a completed fantasy story, and with a bit of editing it could be published as a book and honestly would do decently against other published fantasy authors.

It's about Zorian, a snappy, angry teenager attending a magic school where something goes wrong, and Zorian finds himself repeating the same month in some sort of a time loop, but he's not sure why that's happening or how long it's going to last. He doesn't know what's going on, he's too paranoid to ask for help, and he's patient enough to basically do the same thing over and over again. Eventually, he gets a few ideas about what's really going on, and starts planning. It's a power fantasy story with constant improvement, but it's also a slow paced story for the genre. So expect lots of time spent optimizing magic missiles and finding alternative attack methods instead of being able to just overwhelm enemies by spamming fireballs.

The story as a whole is an exploration of a magic system that loans heavily from D&D (with some sort of a spell point variant), a fantasy world, and growth. Zorian's power grows, his understanding of the world grows, and he also grows as a person.

Contains many deaths, sometimes gruesome, but the time loop thing makes it somewhat more palatable. Also lots of spiders, so arachnofobics might want to proceed with caution.

Worm (Completed)
https://parahumans.wordpress.com/
Dark take on superheroes, a very famous web serial. Includes all sorts of nasty stuff from bullying to natural disasters, from criminal gangs to world-threatening monsters, body horror, and themes of losing one's mind, control and/or humanity. The protagonist's power is the control of bugs, so also expect to read descriptions of swarms of bug doing various things.

Practical Guide to Evil (Completed)
https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/
A fantasy story where the tropes are real, and the people of this world know it. If you are granted a Role, you become a person who's potentially powerful enough to affect the world - but at the same time, the Role gets power over you. People become heroes and villains who embody specific character archetypes, fateful meetings happen in threes, and so on and so forth.
The protagonist is teenage woman, an orphan of a defeated kingdom conquered by an evil empire, raised in a well-funded orphanage and kept away from all... traditional jobs an orphan fated for big things might be expected to have. She catches an attention of someone powerful, from the empire, and becomes his Squire - the Squire to a Black Knight. A transitional Role, but not a weak one.
Expect themes of villains with noble goals, heroes with questionable methods, lots of fantasy tropes and parodies, characters who are painfully self-aware of their role in the world, leadership, training up a new squad in the Legion of Evil with sympathetic orcs, goblins, humans and undead, etc.

Beyond? by Andur
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/2850/beyond
Andur is a prolific writer. His stories often combine fantasy worlds, themes of reincarnation/transmigration/new starts in a new world, and long-lasting romance and love and relationships. Often, good endings are something you struggle for and have to earn.
Beyond? is a story about someone very powerful from a world that's dead intercepting a summoning ritual and using it to hitch his way out of his world, into a one that's more alive. While it succeeds, he realizes he stopped a demon summoning ritual, is now in a child's body, the little kid that was supposed to be sacrificed is crying and hugging him, and it looks like things aren't going to work the way he thought they would.
If you like it, you're in luck, because Andur has 14 released worked on Royal Road.

I haven't read it myself, but I know many people like The Wandering Inn.


Edit:
Oh right, almost forgot this one:

Threadbare
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/15130/threadbare

A rather typical power fantasy / progression fantasy story about a world with a magical "system" (blue boxes that show your stats and skills, RPG-style). The protagonist is a teddy bear golem who, at least in the beginning, has no idea what he's doing, so he stumbles around from skill to skill and class to class, becoming a chimera of random skills that somehow start synergizing.
It's been a while since I read it. I remember it being an entertaining read, but nothing groundbreaking. If the idea of a cute teddy bear riding into battle tickles your fancy, give it a read.

[verbatim]

Much like anything else, the majority of stuff on RR is crap. I pretty much stick to stuff on TopWebFiction (and even a lot of those are crap) and ones specifically recommended to me by authors of serials I do like, because those are the ones most likely to break that mold you're referring to.

I've taken a little bit of a look at several of these sites while working out some of logistics to a story I want to write (serial vs book, where to upload, legal rights on the popular uploading sites, etc) and from what I could find RoyalRoads was the best/least-worst place to start out for publishing original serials (there are better options for fanfiction but that is not something I'm interested in).

If anyone has any other sites they'd like to recommend I would be very greatful.

[uncool]

That probably depends on what your eventual goal is.

Do you just want a place to post something where you can be sure it will stay up? AO3 is probably the place.

Do you want to monetize an ongoing story? Patreon is probably the way to go, as well as RoyalRoad.

Do you want to build your brand? Personal
blog, possibly on WordPress or some similar site.

Do you want to build a community around your work? Forum-like software will help; Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, possibly Reddit (as in, making your own subreddit).

Do you want to post your work as part of a community? Established fora are your place. SpaceBattles or SufficientVelocity might work. Reddit also works if you can find a relevant subreddit.

[Rynjin]

There's also the fact that you don't have to stick to just one site, there's no exclusivity clause there.

[verbatim]

for me it's more about getting a story idea read by people (i.e., no monetary goals) moreso than establishing a personal brand or community. In my mind the latter two are things not to worry about unless people actually do start to show interest.

From what I found Ao3 and Wattpad have the biggest audiences but not necessarily the biggest audience interested in reading original fantasy.

[endoperez]

edit: Verbatim getting read

I recommend looking into various reddit story communities and either just posting the first few chapters of your story to the appropriate ones, or keep posting short one-offs to a few of them and see if they catch people's interest.

Tumblr also has a few authors posting short stories, which I didn't expect, seeing as it's an image sharing platform.

There's /r/writingprompts in reddit, of course, which is a fine place to practice writing but isn't very random. Expect simple twists on various story stereotypes and cliches, lots of takes on immortal and undying people, lots of prompts where you're suddenly the bad guy or get an evil power, or a supposedly bad guy / evil power is the good one, etc.

r/HFY (humanity f yeah) is mostly scifi stories about space-humanity who is suspiciously like space-USA overcoming various odds because, even though they look weak, humans are actually dangerous because big guns / lots of guns / big nukes / lots of nukes / only humans know medicine / only humans have factories / only humans have many languages / etc. Some of the stories are different, but the most common ones are rather derivative.
r/spaceorcs is similar, but more rough ideas and less full-fledged stories.

If you're familiar with the Asian webnovel tropes and communities, they post stuff at /r/noveltranslations. Over at /r/isekai they talk about the "guy in a different world" stories while /r/otomeisekai is the female variant (which commonly focuses on royalty, marriage, anachronistic dresses etc instead of action), there's /r/litrpg for the stories where you get a blue screen and your stats go up... And so on and so forth - each comes with their own in-jokes and expectations, so you can't sell the same story to everyone. However, if the story you want to tell has enough in common with a particular community's interests, that can be a good way to gain some initial traction.

Remember to look at review aggregate sites like Top Web Fiction, or perhaps NovelUpdates if your story relies on the tropes found in the various Asian web novels. They have people who like to read this stuff and might review and recommend and discuss new, promising stories.




I've read about 15 chapters into Peculiar Soul, mentioned in the first post.

It's set in a world reminiscent of World War 1, with some hints into WW2. The protagonist's nation has been at war for almost a hundred years, there's tons of propaganda, the whole nation from industry to military to educational institutions has been harnessed to empower their endless war, technology has progressed quickly and has brought cars, electric lights, steel ships, airplanes, artillery, long distance communication methods (telegraphs), etc. Themes of human exploitation and experimentation are also touched on, in mundane and magical means, including physical torture and different forms of mind manipulation and mind control.

At the same time, its magic system talks about inequality. There are 3.5 million souls that will be attached to a single person, each, who becomes empowered and gets magical abilities. There are more people than that, which means that once in the very, very distant past everyone had a soul, but as populations keep growing, now most people have never known an "ensouled" person.

Most souls belong to one of a few categories, but there are rare exceptions. The protagonist gets one such peculiar soul, and the story is about him trying to learn what it is, how to use it, and so on.

It reminds me of a various young adult books, which seem to be urban fantasy, alt-modernity or post-apocalyptic rather than a pure fantasy setting. It shares many of the same themes - critique of the status quo personified by the bureaucracy and/or government, cruel stupid and/or incompetent adults in power, surprisingly young main cast of characters, protagonist stumbling upon various rare and important people more often than you'd expect (and who are interested in opposing the current regime / state of the world) and so on.

It doesn't seem to be a bad story, but I'm not currently in the mood for that.

[halfeye]

I've read about 15 chapters into Peculiar Soul, mentioned in the first post.

It's set in a world reminiscent of World War 1, with some hints into WW2. The protagonist's nation has been at war for almost a hundred years, there's tons of propaganda, the whole nation from industry to military to educational institutions has been harnessed to empower their endless war, technology has progressed quickly and has brought cars, electric lights, steel ships, airplanes, artillery, long distance communication methods (telegraphs), etc. Themes of human exploitation and experimentation are also touched on, in mundane and magical means, including physical torture and different forms of mind manipulation and mind control.

At the same time, its magic system talks about inequality. There are 3.5 million souls that will be attached to a single person, each, who becomes empowered and gets magical abilities. There are more people than that, which means that once in the very, very distant past everyone had a soul, but as populations keep growing, now most people have never known an "ensouled" person.

Most souls belong to one of a few categories, but there are rare exceptions. The protagonist gets one such peculiar soul, and the story is about him trying to learn what it is, how to use it, and so on.

It reminds me of a various young adult books, which seem to be urban fantasy, alt-modernity or post-apocalyptic rather than a pure fantasy setting. It shares many of the same themes - critique of the status quo personified by the bureaucracy and/or government, cruel stupid and/or incompetent adults in power, surprisingly young main cast of characters, protagonist stumbling upon various rare and important people more often than you'd expect (and who are interested in opposing the current regime / state of the world) and so on.

I'm not sure about the young bit, I didn't notice that many young people (they're almost all younger than me, but I don't think any are explicitly under 15?), but otherwise that seems a fair expansion of my short take.

It doesn't seem to be a bad story, but I'm not currently in the mood for that.

My intention was to provide enough information that people could get a feel for whether they were likely to like the stories, not to say "you must read this", because different people like different things, and someone's going to hate at least one of the stories I mentioned.

[Tyndmyr]

Ooh, nice thread. I'm going to check out some of these, thanks for the suggestions!


There are a few other ones I'd like to mention. They're rather famous ones, though.


Mother of Learning
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21...er-of-learning
Originally posted on Fictionpress, later it's appeared on Royal Road as well. It's a completed fantasy story, and with a bit of editing it could be published as a book and honestly would do decently against other published fantasy authors.

Good news, it is!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...0of%20Learning

[endoperez]

I wanted to mention Peculiar Soul in a better light than "I read 15 chapters but won't be continuing for now", which is why I mentioned that it's just not the kind of a story I want to read right now.


I looked into Mother of Learning, and I could buy a physical copy through the kickstarter - and Arc 1 is also available through Amazon right now!

The cover artwork makes the book look rather Harry Potter -ish, which is probably a good thing from a marketing viewpoint. It does have many superficial similarities - a wizard from a "muggle" family going to an academy of magic, the protagonist is relatively poor and isn't happy about his family, etc. That said, it didn't have to be this blatant...

EDIT: I can't figure out how to embed the image, so you'll have to follow the kickstarter link.

[halfeye]

EDIT: I can't figure out how to embed the image, so you'll have to follow the kickstarter link.

That's something I do know. Please make sure you have the right to use the image in question before linking it. In firefox on Win7 (other browsers may be the same, or not) you have to right click on the image and select "copy image location" then put the cursor where you want the image in your text then click the insert image icon (two icons ahead of the quote icon) and paste the image location when requested.