For a more effective writing strategy, I switch from Webnovelist to Light Novelist.
Why do I write? Because there’s stories to be written-! Ahem... No, actually, it’s just cause I feel like it and have no other real hobbies. I put way too much work in perfecting my craft to just suddenly drop it now.
Light Novels may seem like a step down to some, but have you SEEN the kind of freedom Webnovelists have? They could have terrible, terrible pros and grammar, yet instantly draw in a good audience.
At least Light Novels require me to think on my feet and I could probably commission some art for it after I’m done. Like a good little package.
I’m planning to rework An Adventure Beyond Greatness (but not An Identity Beyond Self, since that only needs some minor adjustments), and finish some knockoffs of works I liked over the years.
I know saying to a big audience that ‘I am writing a knockoff!’ is kinda misleading no matter how much you explain you’re not plagiarising, but hear me out.
By knockoff, I just mean that it has a lot of similar elements on the surface, but a different inside. Like a jam donut having a different kind of filling sometimes.
The current two works I’m working on is the LN version of An Adventure Beyond Greatness called ‘META Tensei: That Time I Broke My Hero’s Journey’ and ‘Anti-Martial Academy: PRiSMA Saga’... the latter being a knockoff I just talked about.
The world, characters, and story is different, but you’ll feel a lot of familiarity when you read the flow of events.
The reason I’m doing these ‘knockoffs’?
I don’t really have any good ones to be honest. Some can say I’m doing a cash grab (even though I don’t get paid to write) while others will criticise my style.
I on the other hand just see it as me just trying to recreate what I love about these stories.
The knockoffs are the following:
1. Anti-Martial Academy: PRiSMA Saga (Its heavily based on the events of Anti-Magic Academy: The 35th Test Platoon. A mix between a Visual Novel a friend of mine is working on and my own universe. The power system is a combination of our works, with some things just made to emulate plot devices in that Light Novel.
It’s story is also different, with the dynamic between the characters changing and some of the dumb anime tropes I hated being purged from the work.)
2. Imoogi Ascent (Inspired by Sevens... I think. Not sure because I haven’t really made any concrete plans besides mixing two Ero novels I worked on into one.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Sevens is the only well-constructed Harem Genre novel I can remember. I know most of you must be thinking ‘but isn’t HighSchool DxD also a good harem Light Novel? Well... I don’t know because my experiences of watching that show was a long time ago, way before I finished my pubescent period as a teen.
I remember the hormones driven me back then who gave 5 stars to any Anime showing boobies (shyly, I must add), so I can’t really remember if it’s good or not.
Maybe I’ll reread it and make this story a combination of the two. Though instead of past generation ancestors, I’m thinking really hard on what stand-ins to put. The only decided character is Kang Hyuk from Martial King’s Lewd Dreams.)
3. Akashic Records of the Hero (Now you may ask me why I chose something as flawed as Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor, but for me, more flaws means I can bring out more perfection.
I mean, just look at the Sakura Is Reincarnated fanfic. That only works because Sakura Haruno herself was a flawed character with great potential.
I’m going to use Rangers and Magical Girls instead of Mages, since I’m writing enough mages already. The main character will be ‘Brandon Volts’, a Mentor fated to die a Mentor’s death in META Tensei/AABG. This is not a spoiler since they’re all usually fated for death.
Unlike the Rangers and Magical Girls in the vicinity, this man will be a genuine Grand Hero... It’s a kind of parody on ‘manufactured heroes’ on a whole since to him: All of them are underaged and anyone attacking high school girls need jail time. Regardless if they’re from the dreaded ‘Forces of Darkness’ or not.)
4. Pride of the Underdog Knight (Yep, I’m writing this story again. No tournament arc, no unfunny incest jokes. Just an overdog rising to the occasion like in Chivalry of a Failed Knight. It’s basically as simple as that, with no world building done different from my last iteration.
I guess the only difference is that I know how to write Light Novels now.)
Lastly...
5. Re:Pain- Deja Vu in Another World (This is kinda special because it works as the last continuation of META Tensei and An Identity Beyond Self. The main character having already appeared in the latter while arriving in the events after the story of the former. The spin on this knockoff is that ‘he fell into his story’.
Not another random world, but the world the main character, Jordan Fisher, made on his own. He even possessed the body of a more unfortunate version of Subaru Natsuki in Re:Zero- Starting From Zero In Another World.
The whole plan is different from the offset because he already knows a lot of theoretical knowledge of this world. This is especially true for the first volume, which he’d already written and finished.
His time-related ability is also a lot different. It’s a more overt ‘Curse’ that let’s constantly be in a state of vaguely knowing five-seconds into the future, while being able to send his feelings of death back even further than that.
Pain and empathy will be a big factor in this story, as the character he created was built to have lacking empathy for others. His ‘planned’ character for his character was to gain more emotions.
This was mostly because of his curse of ‘Deja Vu’ (which predicts and dampens feelings) and more recently the curse of Sensory Overload (which increases his senses to an uncomfortable degree).
Besides the history of An Identity Beyond Self playing a big role, such as when he finds out the night sky is literally the corpse of a gigantic dragon, he also finds out his surrogate grandfather and the main character of an earlier work (Meta Tensei) play big roles in his story.)
That’s all I got for now. Like I’ve said before, the only ones currently being written is META Tensei and Anti-Martial Academy. I’ll only start these other works after finishing Vol 1 of this work.