Question Why is it hard to find good novels

What did you honestly expect from the ratings system? Firstly most of the novels on NU are likely rated at the 30-100 chapter mark long before many of the stories or authors reveal their biggest flaws. Second how many people actually go back and change the ratings on novels they dropped. Third anything that touches an enjoyed niche is going to be given a boost because people are more forgiving towards things they are interested in. Fourth as far as Nationalism and Mary Sue are concerned Release that Witch is so far from the worst offender that many of the reviews may not even be subjective but comparative, the fact that you complain about it means that you haven't actually read the true crap that exist on NU and trust me there are much, much worse novels on NU. Finally the pure ratings shouldn't be trusted, especially as the landscape of translated novels has changed. I've rarely found a novel that receive only positive reviews and even then I search for the imperfect reviews. Not the ones not the fives, but the twos, threes, and fours.

Beyond that what makes a novel good isn't any technical expertise or critical acclaim, it's whether it's target audience enjoys it. There are many critically acclaimed works that a lot of normal average people just can't be bothered with, because regardless of the mastery of the work it doesn't appeal to them. I mean there are technical aspects you can analyze and appreciate in works of fictions but mastery of those doesn't necessarily mean the work is enjoyable. In that regard subjective reviews are more helpful than objective ones. you just need to actually read them. Rather than worry about the novels ratings I think it has far more value to be able to give hidden personal ratings to reviewers or use analytics so that you can generate a score from people who appreciate the same thing you do.

Arguing for objective reviews instead of subjective ones is all well and good except it requires a standard of reviewer that NU isn't equipped to enforce and even if it could those sorts of systems have their own issues. One of the biggest being that most people just don't care. The state of the film industry should make that more than abundantly clear. Of course I could go even further than that and say that a fair number of the works on NU are technically either amateur or just barely professional by technicality writers. If you put those sorts of work under a microscope like you think should be done it just follows that the vast majority will be found wanting.

I mean I can think of a way to even out the score a bit, maybe. For incomplete novels adjust the weight given to ratings based on the time elapsed or chapters released or chapter milestones since the rating. Depends on how far you want to go with it but the point is to make it so that ratings given when the novel has 30 chapters out has less of an effect when the novel has 1000+ chapters out. The problem is though that nothing enforces someone actually reading the chapters so it's hard to say how fair a review is. I mean you are complaining about Release that Witch but I don't know if you stopped after 1 chapter, 10 chapters, 100 chapters or if you've completely read the raws. And it's basically impossible for NU to track whether you actually have or haven't.

 

Thing is that is hard to measure a "good novel" from an objective standpoint.

 

Which is my point. Here on NU, the only acceptable rating is 4 and 5, just the two of them. On a 10 star rating, the acceptable rating is 7, 8, 9, and 10. Yes, the point is that it's twice as much. 4 and 5 means you're basically forced to choose between Good and Masterpiece. 10 star rating is still bad since people don't rate it honestly as well but at least there's more room for them to choose how much they like it. 7 is acceptable in a 10-star rating, but would you read a 3.5 star novel on NU? I don't think so.

 

Rec me "good novel"
Currently im reading.
Black iron glory
Overgeared
Black tech internet cafe
Cultivator chat group

 

Cause there are too many loli novels.

 

That's why the Series ranking is based on activity and not ratings. But I do believe that it still has to be at least 4 stars to reach the tolerable level.

 

Used to like certain books because they were similar but now that they're being mass produced, I'm finding them rather boring.
Which then makes me look for other types of books.
And so the cycle continues~~~.
If you're like this as well then yes I can see why you say such things.

 

Just read novels on AsianHobbyist

Jokes aside, you are using NU wrong
Instead of looking at ratings use the series finder and include and exclude tags as you see fit
For me, I exclude loli, shounen ai, yao, yuri, shoujo ai and slice of life

I will add that negative reviews are usually the best to read. People have criticized and rated a novel poorly for having all the attributes that I wanted.

The easiest solution to finding good novels is to take a break.
You are most likely jaded @Vanvil

 

I agree that the 1-5 stars system tends to make the ratings more extreme, especially with new novels or ones that are just starting to get attention. I usually pay more attention to 4's and 3's, since a small total number of reviewers that rate something either 1 or 5 makes "ok" novels look like either a masterpiece or a piece of crap.
Tho one thing that I'll never understand is why would someone rate a novel with either 1 or 5 stars with only 1 chapter released (true story).

 

No one gonna comment about how OP disses Release The Witch?
A nationalistic story and mary sue? Have you read any xianxias or wuxias?
The majority of even the best ones have more badly written nationalism and cases of mary sue/ plot armor in an arc than RTW does in an entire story

Genuinely a really good piece of writing compared to the vast majority of novels here by general use of literary devices that you won't commonly find...
Do you at least have a standard of what is greatly better than this ('ok' novel that shouldnt be 4 stars, what is then)?

 

It depends and I think Release That Witch is pretty good compare to the other bunch of utter trash. I will use it as an example.

The basics of a "good" novel would have at least some or all of the following:

#1 Flow. Probably the only requirement for any web novel. Sort of like something you keep reading without stopping. Bad novels would randomly plug in stuff that disrupt the reading and cause you to loose interest.

#2 Proper story. This is the basics for a novel. You sort of want something more than "monster of the week" in a lot of web novels. Most novels fail at this so they just introduce one villain after another for the MC to crush. RTW actually has a story. It's not an amazing one but decent enough. Star War story is about a young prince educated by an old wise man and obtain Excalibur to defeat the evil wizard only to realize he was the old king himself.

#3 Character development. Essentially the life of the characters themselves. They need to have their own thoughts, life and actions. Usually it would be their back story, their philosophy, their moral, their purpose...etc. Most web novels just have the MC and a bunch of brainless zombies following the MC or fodder to be defeated by the MC. RTW actually has side story telling about characters other then the MC. They have too many characters but they are decent enough to give depth to the characters.

#4 Underlining story. This is like the overall big mystery of the novel. Sort of like the big question of why all of the events in the novel is happening. It is easy to make for a veteran author but hard to make it good. RTW big question is why the world is the way it is. Why do magic exist and why do they have such restrictions?

#5 Elements of mystery. Sort of the extension of the above. The real story underneath the story would sometimes expose itself and the MC would gather clues about the hidden secret. RTW used the ancient civilizations as the clues.

#6 An End. Everything needs and ending. A good story needs an end. Most web novels are written to be as long as possible so the author can milk it for all it's worth. They are like TV series on the 7-8th seasons and you don't see an end to them. RTW ending wasn't good. It felt rushed. The author wrote himself into a corner after he ran out of bad guys and had to invent new ones. He should have ended the story after Taquila and start a new arc with new bad guys.

 

I'd like to add to this. In my opinion, characterization is the absolutely most important element in storytelling; more important that plot, or theme, or action, or any of that. If a writer can succeed with his characters then I'm willing to forgive a lot of other faults. What I look for the most out of characters is that they can be convincingly portrayed as real people, with their own personalities and motivations. These elements should permeate them to the extent that they should inform just about everything that the characters do and say. The converse is also true as it's hard for a book with poor characters to be any good.

Unfortunately, it's all too common for writers, particularly otaku writers, to assume that archetype is the same thing as characterization. And that all you need to compose a character is to take an archetype and add a few quirks. The end result is often very thin characters that have very little substance so there's not all that much to get out of the scenes they're in. Possibly even worse is the tendency to create protagonists as blank slates for the reader to project themselves into. It's a terrible practice and it makes for bad reads.

 

Oh noes evil nationalism , call the sjw police quick, and who's a Mary sue?
The first witch? As far as I remember she develops as a character , much different to the concept of mary sue. Mary sue is perfect, the witch has to learn everything from scratch.

 

It's not that uncommon for writers to use stock characters for their stories. People recognize stock characters and would have their imagination fill in the blanks for the writers.

Good writers tend to develop the characters a bit and change them to mask the flatness of the characters and would focus more on their main characters.

Example of stock characters would be the "Popular Girl", "Sportsman", "Honorable Prince", "Local Bully", "Wise old man", "Reliable Friend"...

Of course, a story with nothing but stock characters would be very flat.

 

RTW is just a bunch of copy paste from Wikipedia. The amount of info dumps is insane. that's why I dropped it.

 

Nah, I can't agree. While it's sort of natural for beginner writers to just use archetypes instead of creating proper characters, their books still suck because of it. It makes their characters boring and uninteresting because there really isn't anything for the reader to hook into. Even putting a bit of effort makes a huge difference in this case, and I've see a ton of examples where it's done correctly, and a ton more where the author fails.

The odd archetype is fine for unimportant characters but that's because the reader isn't really supposed to care about them to begin with so the speed of communication is actually worth something. But any important characters require more effort and doing otherwise is the fastest way to get me to drop a book.

 

Anna?

 

Its easy to avoid shit novel
Just dont read japanese ln that have a crazy long title or avoid chinese novel with suspicious cover pic and title altogether (chinese novel have 98,9% chance to contain a chunk of nationalism and mild racism alloy)