Webnovel.Forum

Brainr0t Yeah, similar experience. I know a group who tried to collaborate and write a story together, but creative clashes and time differences end up tearing them apart. And there's another guy who tried to write a story based on someone else's idea, but he ended up losing interest, the other guy ended up complaining "this isn't how I envisioned it!" and they just gave up. I also know another guy who just gave up after 5 chapters, even though he and the other guy spent a week or 2 discussing the premise and ideas, simply because he lost interest after that. If it's not your idea, chances are you'll lose interest in the long run. Especially since you're investing a lot of time and energy into a project that wasn't originally yours to begin with, so you don't feel as motivated or attached. That's where contracts and payments come in, but that's another story.

I also wrote some stupid story back on Royal Road about a battle chef in another world because someone requested me to pick up that idea, but some chef guy there complained on Discord that only real chefs should write stories about cooking because the rest of us non-chefs have no clue, and I was forced to stop writing and delete my story. Okay, that was an excuse. I just got bored of the story after 20 or so chapters and couldn't see it going anywhere. I think it turned into an edgy revenge story (the premise was pretty much a rip-off of Shield Hero where he gets kicked out for having a useless skill - cooking) where he went and killed and cooked his classmates for trying to kill him for being "useless".

MAKKAPATI You know what...forget it.

Tomoyuki Not really, I just mean, Maka clearly doesn't understand shit of what's being said. Neither do I.

At least half of this thread is Maka repeating what he has already said, while completely ignoring the actual point.

So you're really interested in bringing on a writer, but it looks like you're not interested in finding readers? Because you should have at least a 200 word synopsis for that.

And I kinda want to hijack this thread because I like world building but not story building. So here's a writing prompt:

Have you ever wondered what happens to the souls replaced during reincarnations and transmigrations? What if they all ended up in another universe together, and using each of their unique skills (or lack thereof) created a functioning society to ease all the lost souls into their new environment?

Possible directions:
With skills from different time periods and civilizations, will the advanced technology be able to overturn ancient ideology or will fear of the unknown prevent an increased standard of living? Or did advanced weaponry create an imbalanced civilization?

What if society is beyond the turbulent stage and an official organization exists to provide "beginner island" tutorials and counseling to new arrivals? How does the story change when everyone around is aware that the soul is not the original, and where did the original go if this world is where the replaced goes?

If you decide the prompt is interesting and want to write it, reply with the link to your story. :)

KoraL Just a brief explanation regarding reincarnation, especially since it's an Asian concept and some misunderstandings may arise from it.

For most reincarnations, you don't simply replace an existing soul. In Buddhism, for example, the belief is that when you die, your soul continues to exist and usually exists somewhere (in Chinese mythology, you go to the underworld and wait in this super-long line to drink some soup/tea of forgetting brewed by Grandma Meng after crossing a bridge, and then you get reborn). It's more of a rebirth, where your soul is reborn in a new body, a new family, new time. You don't simply come in and replace an existing soul. The soul is eternal and indestructible, the physical body is not. Many religions state that reincarnation occurs many times - your modern life today could possibly be the hundredth time your immortal soul has been reborn and living in the material world. In Budhism, you get reborn and reincarnated again and again until you finally attain enlightenment and go to Nirvana - that's the goal of all practitioners of Buddhism. To go to Nirvana and break out of the cycle of death and rebirth.

The existing soul being replaced is transmigration. Usually what happens in most stories is that when the main character transmigrates, it's usually into a dead body. The previous soul in the body has gone to the underworld because he/she has died. In many stories, it's simply a reawakening - a rude shock to the head, and you suddenly regain memories of your past life (this is basically reincarnation, but skipping forward so that we don't have to go through the whole baby and child stage, which can be boring and tedious). But if you're worried about the replacement of soul, that soul usually just goes to the underworld or afterlife because it works on the premise of he/she died, and this random assassin/marine/soldier/martial artist/genius from another world also died and his or her soul decides to go into the dead body and reanimate it for some reason.

So you don't really need a society or universe at all. I hope this explanation helps.

KoraL I don't think parallel dimensions come into play when you return to a younger version of yourself. We call those second-chancers or second lifers, I believe. Rather than having alternate souls and dimensions, it's based off game logic where you pretty much load a game from a checkpoint or saved file.

I mean, you can, but what's so interesting about reading about a bunch of souls gathering in an alternative society or universe? Unless the story is about this poor soul trying to find a way to take back his body, there really isn't much you can do with the alternative universe because it's pretty much the same isekai template. For example: I got transmigrated into another universe because someone took over my body, so now I'm either going to turn into an overpowered god to rule over this new universe, or I shall live a slow life without being bullied in my previous life! In which case, the whole "new universe" and "original soul" become redundant. It becomes isekai all over again. You are just replacing "run over by truck-kun and summoned to another world" with "someone just forced my soul out of my body, and my soul got transported into another world." But the outcome and story will be the same. Are you ever going to make use of the fact that your original body got taken from you, or are you just going to live a slow life in this new universe like half of the isekai slow life protagonists out there?

Now, if your story is about the poor soul trying to take back his body from this powerful ex-god/ex-martial artist or whatever, that would make for a different, original and interesting story. But if you do that, the whole "other universe" becomes redundant. You need a reason for why the soul doesn't want to simply live in the new universe and take back his body. Maybe those whose bodies get taken by transmigrators are forced into hell, and to escape eternal suffering, they must find a way to regain their bodies from these audacious transmigrators who rudely steal their bodies from them? In Dead Mount Death Play, the guy doesn't want to take his body back from the necromancer lord who took over because his life sucks, and he instead pleads with the necromancer lord to help place his soul in a robot (for now he's stuck inside a stuffed animal as a gag). Apparently he wants to be a robot.

If you want to rewrite lore, you have to make it interesting. Changing the lore is itself pointless unless you can write a fresh, interesting story with the changed lore, otherwise you might as well not bother. Unless you do something interesting with your pasta monster, why would anyone want to read about a pasta monster? Is he going to pasta-rape girls? Is he going to become a god of foods? Will he create a world of food (where all the plants and animals are pretty much food-based, like seas of soup, plant creatures with literal peashooters, takoyaki with tentacles)? Or maybe the pasta monster is a dungeon core that creates a food dungeon? Will he evolve into some new dish? What's so interesting about a pasta monster?