I've Heard Things About How Shady Webnovel Is So I Don't Plan On Posting There. Wattpad Loves YA And

I've heard things about how shady Webnovel is so I don't plan on posting there. Wattpad loves YA and Romance but it is a good place to gain an audience. RoyalRoad has a lot of LitRPG and some authors warn against posting there if you write GL or BL. I've never heard of Honeyfeed before; what's it like?

It's a Supernatural Mystery that kinda focuse on the city's cold cases. If not, a cold case is usually important to current mystery. I don't think I'll gain much readers on both websites but I should be able to gain some.

My minor characters are usually reoccurring so I don't have to write so many. Interactions between them and the main character are used to show the progression of main mystery; sort of like a progress bar in games when your following the main story.

I plan on editing up to one to two times before handing it over to some to read. If they notice anything; I see if it's something I have to edit. Is comic sans a good font for edits?

The supernatural part of the story is really important to story so it shows up both in the cover and synopsis but it's not the main focus in them. Should it be more upfront?

Sure, I'll be happy to do that. I hope you enjoy it.

I'm writing a mystery novel. It's outlined, planned, and in the draft stage. I'm making it a webnovel and want to if people have any tips? What website should an aspiring web-novelist use? What stories do best online?

LitRPG, Fantasy, and Asian based stories due well in my communities. Which one due well in yours? Is cultivation and isekia popular?

I have a lot of questions.

It's scheduled to published in later months in order to have a build up of chapters when I'm too busy to write. Is that a good plan?

That arcs and most of the characters are planned out. Some of the minor characters just have 3 main traits, an ambition, and relation to the main character listed. Is that a good thing to have?

What else should I do?

little ones, handle with care <3

HOW TO GIVE PERSONALITY TO A CHARACTER

Giving personality to a character is an essential part of character development in storytelling, whether you're writing a novel, screenplay, or creating a character for a role-playing game. Here are some steps and considerations to help you give personality to your character:

Understand Their Backstory:

Start by creating a detailed backstory for your character. Where were they born? What were their childhood experiences like? What significant events have shaped their life? Understanding their past can help you determine their motivations, fears, and desires.

2. Define Their Goals and Motivations:

Characters often become more interesting when they have clear goals and motivations. What does your character want? It could be something tangible like a job or a romantic relationship, or it could be an abstract desire like happiness or freedom.

3. Determine Their Strengths and Weaknesses:

No one is perfect, and characters should reflect this. Identify your character's strengths and weaknesses. This can include physical abilities, intellectual skills, and personality traits. Flaws can make characters relatable and three-dimensional.

4. Consider Their Personality Traits:

Think about your character's personality traits. Are they introverted or extroverted? Shy or outgoing? Kind or selfish? Create a list of traits that describe their character. You can use personality frameworks like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or the Big Five Personality Traits as a starting point.

5. Give Them Quirks and Habits:

Quirks and habits can make a character memorable. Do they have a specific way of speaking, a unique fashion style, or an unusual hobby? These details can help bring your character to life.

6. Explore Their Relationships:

Characters don't exist in isolation. Consider how your character interacts with others. What are their relationships like with family, friends, and enemies? These relationships can reveal a lot about their personality.

7. Show, Don't Tell:

Instead of explicitly telling the audience about your character's personality, show it through their actions, dialogue, and decisions. Let the reader or viewer infer their traits based on their behavior.

8. Create Internal Conflict:

Characters with internal conflicts are often more engaging. What inner struggles does your character face? These can be related to their goals, values, or past experiences.

9. Use Character Arcs:

Consider how your character will change or grow throughout the story. Character development is often about how a character evolves in response to the events and challenges they face.

10. Seek Inspiration:

Draw inspiration from real people, other fictional characters, or even historical figures. Study how people with similar traits and backgrounds behave to inform your character's actions and reactions.

11. Write Dialogue and Inner Monologues:

Writing dialogue and inner monologues from your character's perspective can help you get inside their head and understand their thought processes and emotions.

12. Consider the Setting:

The setting of your story can influence your character's personality. For example, a character who grows up in a war-torn environment may have a different personality than one raised in a peaceful, affluent society.

13. Revise and Refine:

Don't be afraid to revise and refine your character as you write and develop your story. Characters can evolve and change as the narrative unfolds.

Remember that well-developed characters are dynamic and multi-faceted. They should feel like real people with strengths, weaknesses, and complexities. As you write and develop your character, put yourself in their shoes and think about how they would react to various situations. This will help you create a compelling and believable personality for your character.

wuxia, xianxia, and cultivation differences meta

translations: wuxia 武俠, xianxia 仙俠, and cultivation 修真/修仙 (xīuzhēn/xīuxiān)

think i've seen posts on this eons ago, and i'm pretty sure there are tons of these online, but since this has been written up already let's just have another one.

wuxia 武俠

wuxia and xianxia sound similar, but basically for wuxia it is about the pugilistic world (江湖 jiānghú). It is relatively more down-to-earth, and people practice martial arts ("kungfu") in their current life -- they do not do it to become xians (仙) and gods (神) however.

Like Thousand Autumns and Faraway Wanderers/Word of Honor, it has more historical background and ties to the current court and kingdoms, because people are living in the moment and concern themselves with worldly issues.

Martial arts may seem unrealistic, but in view of chinese fantasy it would be considered "real". It consists of fighting moves and internal energy, which they call qi or nèigōng (內功), and at times you see people flying around, climbing hills and jumping across rooftops which is qīnggōng (輕功).

xianxia 仙俠

A level up would be xianxia, where characters in the story cultivate to become xians (and gods, like in the heaven official's blessing). They don't really care about earthly issues here now, because their ambitions lie beyond the current world, and cultivation, getting stronger, and an immortal life are majorly all their goals.

You may not always see them working towards that purpose, such as in mdzs they are considered a lower-xianxia society (低魔), meaning people don't go through all the steps of cultivation and only stay at the stage before the "golden core" stage.

In xianxia, characters still learn basic fighting moves aka. martial arts, but to direct the internal energy they use línglì (灵力), zhēnqì (真气), and fǎlì (法力), all xianxia terms you commonly see. "neigong" is practically nonexistent in this genre. That's why people building up their "neigong" instead of "lingli" are likely never going to be able to cultivate.

cultivation 修真/修仙

A subgenre in the xianxia category would be cultivation. Characters actively go through the stages of cultivation, and likely for the MC, because they are the main character, they successfully become a xian and exit the world at the end of the novel.

There are many stages of cultivation, usually defined at the beginning of the novel in the synopsis, and a typical example of the different levels would be this:

练气，筑基，金丹，元婴，化神，炼虚，合体，大乘，渡劫

And with a cursory search, an English translation would be something like this, albeit not with all the cultivation ranks identified.

Qi condensation (练气), Foundation establishment (筑基), Core Formation (金丹), Nascent Soul (元婴), and the names after that vary too greatly with translation and fandom so I'll jump straight to Immortal Ascension

extra info: getting into the philosophy of it all

It'd be interesting to note that the word "xiá" (俠) permeates all these genres. This is something akin to the concept of "hero", but not at all also, and I'd love to speak more on this but this post has already gone way longer than I hoped it would be, so perhaps another day.

Regardless, it is interesting to note that wuxia has a greater emphasis on "xia" than xianxia. (some joke that cultivation doesn't have the word "xia" in it, and much of that is because characters have foregone heroism and focused on gaining powers and working towards ascension instead). As a result, wuxia is more confucianism-oriented, though not without its taoism and buddhism influences.

xianxia, on the other hand, is mainly derived from "dào" (道), from taoism, which is another lengthy concept if I ever get to it.

And some may have heard of the "farming" genre, 种田 (zhòngtián). This has to do with golden fingers (mary sues) in imperialistic china, earning a wealth of money, and all that. It has nothing to do with cultivation, alike they sound in english.

that's it for now, hmu if you wish to ask/discuss!

(and apologies for the pinyin translations, hope it's understandable still! formally writing pinyin they are supposed to be two separate words not one.)

Thanks for the information! I'll go check them out and set some accounts up. I'll probably not use Webnovel; too many bad reviews for me to fully trust it. The tips about the font use are really helpful. Maybe changing them up once in whilebfor editing will help with that?

I'm mainly doing this to get over my perfectionism with my writing and to just see what happens. I want to see people interact with my works but that doesn't happen if you don't put it out there. So your excitement makes me really excited to write and showcase the world even more.

I was inspired to write a mystery story after playing a hidden objects game and that rolled out in to this. Lots of mystery and horror game references, like with FNAF for example. Agatha Christie and Carolyn Keene are some of my favorite authors that inspired me to write mysteries.

Some of the cases take inspiration from the games and other novels. I couldn't help it. Looking over the cases showed the inspiration. Buzzfeed unsolved is also useful when writing up both the cases and cold case for the setting.

I cuts down the workload enough for me to not have fits over it. It's also why minor characters are being used the way they are. Less of a workload in making new ones and it helps build up the world as well.

The Supernatural element is actually a really big part of the series. Both a way to gain evidence and witnesses but then the main character has to find a way to make it viable evidence that won't get thrown out. It's a useful tool through out the story and holds a major effect in almost everything. Especially when most of the other characters don't notice the Supernatural. It's fun.

Thank for the advice and support. I hope you end up enjoying it when it's out.

I'm writing a mystery novel. It's outlined, planned, and in the draft stage. I'm making it a webnovel and want to if people have any tips? What website should an aspiring web-novelist use? What stories do best online?

LitRPG, Fantasy, and Asian based stories due well in my communities. Which one due well in yours? Is cultivation and isekia popular?

I have a lot of questions.

It's scheduled to published in later months in order to have a build up of chapters when I'm too busy to write. Is that a good plan?

That arcs and most of the characters are planned out. Some of the minor characters just have 3 main traits, an ambition, and relation to the main character listed. Is that a good thing to have?

What else should I do?

show, don't tell:

anticipation - bouncing legs - darting eyes - breathing deeply - useless / mindless tasks - eyes on the clock - checking and re-checking

frustration - grumbling - heavy footsteps - hot flush - narrowed eyes - pointing fingers - pacing / stomping

sadness - eyes filling up with tears - blinking quickly - hiccuped breaths - face turned away - red / burning cheeks - short sentences with gulps

happiness - smiling / cheeks hurting - animated - chest hurts from laughing - rapid movements - eye contact - quick speaking

boredom - complaining - sighing - grumbling - pacing - leg bouncing - picking at nails

fear - quick heartbeat - shaking / clammy hands - pinching self - tuck away - closing eyes - clenched hands

disappointment - no eye contact - hard swallow - clenched hands - tears, occasionally - mhm-hmm

tiredness - spacing out - eyes closing - nodding head absently - long sighs - no eye contact - grim smile

confidence - prolonged eye contact - appreciates instead of apologizing - active listening - shoulders back - micro reactions