Discussion Is it posible to write a good harem with over 50 women?

I have seen how many people have said that a good harem must have maximal 3-4 to work. I understand that it's much easier to flesh out 3 or 4 girls that let say 50, but I think that it's possible to write a good harem even if the harem is made of 50 or even 100 women. However, there are a few things that need to be present for a harem of that size to work:

1. The story needs to be long enough to flesh out all 50 heroines and their relationship with the mc

2. The author needs to find a way to give every heroine as much screen time as posable

3. The protagonist must desire to have such a huge harem and to also be smart and a hard worker

4. The author needs to flesh out the relationship between all or at least many of the girls

5. The harem must be an important part of the story

What do you guys think? Is it possible to have a well-writen harem with over 50 women and if yes, what do you think it needs to don't feel like a mess?

 

I doubt there such thing as a good harem novel with 50 or more girls, and why 50? even a football team doesn't need that many members

 

I think the MC in Ancient Strengthening Technique has over 50 women by the end. Pretty much every arc is centered around a heroine's plight.

The biggest problem with it is remembering all of the names and which one is which.

 

Only if the women don't individually matter to the storyline and only show up as a plot point or run on joke. Like on phinius and ferb where one of the characters has family everywhere or on Pokemon where there is an officer Jenny and nurse joy in every town. They can have individual stories but they can't matter.

 

If you mean maxim, that makes no sense, because 3 is barely a harem.

4 or 5 girls is the generally agreed ideal number for a harem story, but 6 or 7 can work very well too. more than 7 is definitely trickier though, and more than 10 should only be attempted by extremely skilled harem writers.

However, 50 girls is too much: because, although it is possible for the world’s top harem writer to write it ‘well’, over 90% of readers would forget a few: for them, the story would be more confusing / clustered than if the number of girls is less than 30.

for a story to work as a large harem story: most of the haremettes have to interact constantly with each other, and many of them should have close established relationships throughout the story- friends/relatives/rivals/enemies/master/disciple/servants/etc.

 

The problem that people run in is giving a true personality to a harem character. The standard of that is you should be able to write a scene and the characters action and personality pops out to the point you dont need a name to go with it. After that you have to give each character enough screen time so that you end up forgetting a character which means that they must have some action ever 100 chapters. The best way to do that is to make it a group of revolving harem hence maybe the mc interacts with 10 at a time and you have arcs of around 20 chapters each. As long as you are confident in advancing the relationship every arc and maybe have intertwining arcs then it might be possible but you will need to write your god dam balls off and you won't be able to pull any I miss her cause she died since that is the fastest to get forgotten

 

it's possible...but the relations beetwen the womans that are unrelated to the plot, should be put aside as side chapter for those who are interested. Otherewise it's will end full of fillers...e.g. if two womans fight among themself, you can put a side chapter with this scene and can be commedic or drammatic undertone so that the chapter is interesting(depend wich tipe of novels are you writing).....but even these scene can only used occasionaly...

additionaly there should short...i repeat "SHORT" POV of those said harem member otherwise with 50 the MC will not have even one chapter, if there are long POV people will not remember the plot

the most important part is that the names should be easy to remember and girl with different personality, otherwise i will not able to differentiate beetwen them and the harem become pointless...

 

I don’t think it’s really possible. The only kind of scenario I can see it sort of working out is like those female MC transmigrating world jumping novels but with a male MC who lives through multiple lives with either a single waifu or a small group of waifus in each life. But this doesn’t exactly count as a harem since it’s not having all 50 waifus at once.

 

Might be possible if the story does something simular to one piece (just that, harem members = pirate/crews). Tho there is still a need for a skilled writer, editor and other helpers.

Not imposible, but far from something an avrage writer could do. There is also the problem with the lenght of the story (well readers of C WN should be able to read it all).

 

Uhm... harem already hurts a story, so why push it to be even more hurtful?

No, the opposite. If you REALLY want to have 50 women, than just make most of them addons that they receive as part of some political marriage and forget them. While fleshing out characters is important, you are wasting people's time trying to flesh out all 50 of them. Not to mention people will still forget who they are 1000 chapters later. So if you must have a ton of harem members, then get rid of the none important ones to the wayside as quick as possible.

Then all you are gonna be doing is reading about the harem members 90% of the story.

That just makes the character look like a snob.

Then you might as well forget about the MC and make a story about the harem itself and its inner workings.

So again, might as well make the harem the story itself cause your not gonna get anything else written if you go that route.

The answer is no, but if you want to do damage control. As I mentioned, scrap all the none important people quickly. Focus on the core harem members and call it a day.

 

Also I need to mention, the best part of harem stories is fighting other people about who the best girl is. And if there’s a story with over 50 girls, then when it comes to fighting over who’s best girl, then these kinds of saddening fights will happen.
Person 1: “Waifu A is the best!”
Person 2: “No waifu B is the best! Fight me!”
Person 3 “No waifu C is the best!”
Person 1 and Person 2: “Wait, who the fk is waifu C”

 

I Think it is possible. But you need to keep all infos of the Harem members and you need to have them group up with each other. For a good harem it isn´t needed to have the Harem in every Chapter but, it is needed to have them Play a Role aside from Harem member in the Story/Novel. You would need to slow Add the Harem members to the Story/MC. The Key that i often see in such cases is while, the Male MC is the Focus of the Story, he isnt the Sole focus. The Novel can be focused on the MC only (Like in most Novels) or it can Focus on the MC and the People around him (His Harem in this Case).
Endless Path : Infinite Cosmos - This Novel has a Big Harem (30+) with a Very Reality like Part with the Harem.

 

TBH, IDK. From writer's perspective, it would probably be very hard, esp arranging the relationship angle w/o making too much drama + to arrange their personalities & looks
IMHO the ones w/ good story & more than 4 members of the harem would probably the mangas Negima, TWGOK & the novel Sevens. Other than that, it would be Bakarina's black hole harem
As for the largest one that I know, it's probably 108 Maidens

 

Your question is wrong. Let me fix it for you: "Is it possible to write a good story with over 50 characters."
Answer: Possible but not likely, at least with good characters. Characters need proper arcs, personalities and plot-time to shine. The more you add, the harder it its to flesh them out or tie them to the plot.
Harems are the same as every other story. 3-4 main girls would have more time to be developed, while 50 would have so little time to do anything meaningful, plot wise, that no one will remember or care about them.

 

Probably Road to Kingdom might be the most successful I know of that you might be interested in.

Man literally slept his way with hundreds of women, most of them then either becoming his or otherwise as his vassals / subordinates
Though, that means most of them are only mentioned for at best 3 chapters in a row, and then possibly every so often later on, but he's got a 'core group' which is featured way more often, and it's currently at ... 20-30+ I think.

Though, he hasn't really married many of them, but everyone who knows him has pretty much given up on keeping him chaste / satisfied with them ( impossible really)

 

honestly i'll be more interested if there is only one heroine with the ability to change look, figure and with different identity and scam the MC making him think he is fucking 50 differfent womans....

 

Nanairo Karen : https://nhentai.net/g/82629/ has two sequels: so total 3 volumes.
same author/artist as dance in the vampire bund

 

I think that if the main character is an emperor or something and his harem isn't gone into in much depth then it could work.

Flesh out a few of the girls who are relevent to the story or who the mc favours and just have passing encounters or mention them as side characters with the others. Things like "one of my wives named Rose mentioned to me that she noticed unrest within the servants" or something like that.

After a long time into the story, we would remember some names that are repeated and could get some kind of idea of a few of their personalities and circumstances.

I think the key is to tell, not show. The author should flesh them out in his head and get an idea of how the whole dynamic works, but only a fraction of that would actually go into the story directly. The harem should not be the central part of the story.

 

I doubt it. No matter the story. Harem or otherwise. You can’t given the character a well rounded development that stands out to 50+ characters. Not only is it impossible. It’s actually a deterrent. You can’t care about that many characters all at once. It’s normally unfair to the ML, MC or just strong side leads.
So my answer is NO. Even 10 is pushing it.

 

I'm 100% certain that there is a novel with basically that premise, unfortunately I can't remember the name of it...also pretty sure it was dropped by tl lol.