How to Write a Successful Story on RRL

You decided to write a webnovel and want to be successful? This is the guide you've been looking for!

There are two ways to write a story that will be successful on RRL:

1. Write a splendid novel with excellent grammar and style, realistic characters and an original, interesting story.

2. Write following the trend of the moment.

While the first point is self-explanatory, this guide will focus on the second way to write a successful webnovel so read carefully.

1 What to avoid:

The first thing that you have to know is which things to avoid in your fiction, so that your novel won’t be submerged by 0.5 star ratings. Those things are:

1. A female lead.

2. The genderbender tag.

3. Yuri/yaoi.

While we all know that people hating on these things are being sexist, homophobic and, in the case of yuri, committing a crime against humanity, RoyalRoadl is full of those kinds of people, so if your fiction has any one of those three characteristics you will never see it be in the front page of the site.

You also don’t want to scare people off with reality, so no cheating, especially on the MC or you will have a crowd with torches and pitchforks shouting NTR at your door and you can’t have rape or any other traumatizing event affecting your main characters in any way.

You think that your characters risk being plain like this? Don’t worry, your fiction will still be a great success as long as it contains the following:

2 What your fiction must have:

This part is the part on which you have to focus the most on, because it will be what will make your novel a great success in the face of all those people who struggle to get even one follower.

Don’t worry though, it’s really easy, you just have to make sure your fiction contains:

1. A lead character who obviously has to be:

a. Overpowered.

b. Male.

c. Between 14 and 20 years old.

d. A virgin wimp who wouldn’t know how to talk with a girl, even if he got a guidebook, at the start of the novel.

e. An oblivious playboy as soon as you get 2 chapters into the story

f. Super intelligent in the eyes of other characters even though in a real-life situation he would be considered as smart as a broken chair

2. As an alternative you can have a non-human lead, in this case make sure he still behaves like a teenager with all the characteristics listed above, independent of the fact that he is actually a zombie/slime/god/ballpoint pen.

3. A harem, everyone loves harems apparently, make your MC loved by all the girls who travel with him, even those who hated him when he first met them.

4. A fantasy LitRPG world, to achieve that you can choose between:

a. Virtual reality

b. Summoned hero

c. Reincarnation/transportation

Any of them are good as they are only excuses to slam a status screen in the middle of your chapters and allowing you to ride the wave of popularity of the genre. It doesn’t even matter if you choose a VR setting and your game would be totally unbalanced crap if it really existed, just choose the one you like the most and the readers will love it.

5. Lots and lots of situations that would leave any normal human dead in a corner of the street, indistinguishable from mashed potatoes, that your MC solves without breaking a sweat. And remember that if your MC really shouldn’t be able to come out alive you always have luck, magic and the power of bullshit friendship to deus ex machina your characters out of that situation.

I know what you’re thinking “what about the plot, the character development and all those things which are the core of a novel?”

3 Plot, character development and all those things that should be the core of the novel:

So… we already discussed the setting and some core features your lead character should have. Now it’s time to talk about the other characters.

If you introduce a female character she must be either:

A. a member of the protagonist’s harem

B. an enemy

C. a loli

D. all of the above

If you introduce a male character you have many more options which are:

A. the shitty noble/knight (the recommended dose is at least two shitty nobles every 300 pages)

B. the good noble/knight

C. the strong, strict mentor who cares deeply for the MC (It’s recommended to have him die one or two arcs after he stops being useful for extra feel factor)

D. that guy who is always there around the protagonist and his group that no one cares or remembers about

E. an enemy who can be either a ruthless bastard or a good guy who made the wrong choice and will be saved by the MC.

F. The nice shopkeeper who always helps the MC and his group

See? It’s really easy to develop characters. Now, for the plot, follow these instructions really carefully:

Wasn’t it really easy? Now you just have to throw random events at your characters and introduce new harem members now and then and your story will be great.

A really important part of your work will be worldbuilding. You’re setting your novel in a new fantasy world completely different from ours; your readers will want to feel like they are in that world and know as much as they can about it.

“But Oinos, how can I make a realistic fantasy world?”

The answer to that is really simple my friend: plagiarism. Take a medieval world, add magic, demi-humans, racism and a big bad empire. Your world will soon start to be indistinguishable from all the other fantasy worlds and readers won’t even notice you’re copy-pasting the lore of other novels into your work.

Now that the setting, plot, and characters are set let’s focus on another part of a novel.

4 Grammar and style:

You think your grammar sucks? You have a knowledge of the English language comparable to that of a T-shirt tag? Do not worry!

Your novel doesn’t need excellent grammar to be popular. Writ laik diz yu can and no one ker will.

I’m serious, don’t bother improving your grammar and style. Almost no one is going to care and those who do are going to see their comments and reviews buried by those of your fans.

Write as you like, shift third person with first person mid sentence, change POV three times per chapter, make up words when you don’t find the right one. You will be remembered for ages as the best author of the decade.

And now a hot topic.

5 Sex:

You might want to write a romance that ends well, with the two characters involved starting a relationship long before the novel ends, which means you will have to write or hint to sex scenes here and there.

HOW DARE YOU!

You can’t write about normal relationships! What are you, crazy?

Choose, you either write over-the-top porn or have no sex scene at all.

Geez.

Now you’re ready to write the most popular novel of all time! (Except for those novels whose author is dead, you can’t beat dead people in popularity, you stupid.)

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What? You’re still here? Go write something! Oh, you think this guide will just make your novel the same as a badly translated Japanese webnovel, and a shitty one at that?

Well, no shit Sherlock. I told you how to write something popular, not how to write a masterpiece. If you wanted to write something good you would be checking Unice’s Night School subforum, not this dumb guide.