Discussion Do you think harems stories are easier to write?

I sometimes wonder if the reason why there are so many harem stories is because that type of story is just easier to write. In my own attempts at writing I’ve found that the first part of a romance is easy to write, but after that the actual relationship part is much more difficult. Maybe the reason why there are so many bad harem stories is because writers want keep doing the easy beginning part over, and over, again without having to do the more difficult real relationship parts later. Anyways, just some thoughts I want to throw out there to see if they stick.

 

Oh, definitely not easier. Much harder in fact. It doesn't help that most harem writers are either very unskilled or just massproduce to feed the audience. Just check 95% of harem stories on NU. Girls/Women? Eh, no. Rocks with the personality of a cardboard piece? Yes, very much so.

 

Kinda. I'd say writing a harem is easy. Writing a good harem is hard. After all, how many women would be happy with their Boyfriend/Husband having other women? Besides, women in the harem usually don't get much character growth beyond their first "I've met you and now you enter the harem" which makes them quite boring.

 

I’ve been stuck trying to write an Organization XIII x @Melodious Nocturne story since March. And it was supposed to be part one of a two-shot. I just want to finish the story and post it. (╥﹏╥)

 

I think that it really should be much easier.
1. If it's only one heroine you will need to introduce much more details about her into the story. (Detailed background, often switch to her PoV, deeper level of interaction with protagonist etc)
2. You will need to find a reason to insert her into every arc.
3. Most of protagonists are op with cheats so normal heroine simply can't follow his pace / level-up speed. Most of the time it can be counted as a blessing if she isn't a burden. Otherwise there will be typical arrange marriage / kidnapping arcs.

 

Definitely easier if it is a power fantasy where there is no frequent/continuous interaction between the partners
Harder if the story is based on the interactions of the cast

 

Harem stories are hard as hell to write, it's why you pretty much never see a truly good one. Having a wide array of important characters you need to keep diverse and interesting, 'easy'.

Like i read my fair, and 17 other people's, share of trash isekai harems. However I will never ignore that they are objectively badly written. I always just turn my brain off a bit and give them a pass since I know its almost impossible to do it right.

To actually write a great harem series you'd have to go tolkien on it. Write a story for every single one of your harem members, not to be released, just to form the world you plan to build, and then merge them into your story. Then make sure to keep track of each of their individual personalities, all of their motivations that got them to their current point, and even their insecurities and weaknesses. Finally flesh all this out in a way that's pleasing to the reader and isn't just a 400 page info dump when you introduce 3 of them.

Remember in 10 days, don't tell the nut house I talked to you.

 

.........QωQ......... *whispers* Burn it...

 

I mean honestly this is pretty clear. To write an objectively good harem story is extremely difficult. But a lot of responses here are forgetting that the writing does not have to be good. It's way easier to hook and keep a lot of readers by dangling carrots of new girls in front of their noses every 200-300 chapters for that romance rush and then moving on without any further activity with that character. Need another romance hit? Toss in another girl with the same or slightly different personality, and boom, you've got yourself something people will keep reading.

So really, in summary, it's a lot easier to write trash than a good story. And stories happen to get views even with trashy harems because, reasons (I'm really not so sure myself). Even if you screw up your harem such that it becomes trash, you lose nothing, and if it's good, it's even better! Thus, there is no doubt that writing a harem story is easier when it comes to making a story with the intention of attention.

 

It's easy to write a harem novel and put zero effort into it, but anything that you put zero effort into is easy to write. And so the only proper way to determine whether a particular story mechanic is easy to write is to see how difficult it is to write well. Just by looking at how rare well written harem stories are should tell us that indeed, it's very hard to do so.

 

Harem stories are extremely hard to write. Romance in general is probably one of the hardest, and harem multiplies the difficulty by the amount of harem members.

The problem is, what you see most "harem story" authors write is closer to pokemon. Gotta catch them all! Where MC tries to collect the full list of waifu-mon.

And children's collect stories are really really easy to write. Only difference is you upped the rating from little children to horny teens.

 

There's so many harem story's not because it's easier to write, but because it's an easy audience pull for a lazy story. GOOD Harem Stories are harder to write, as you need to introduce interesting characters, balance them out, have emotional dynamics between all of the characters, in addition to all the rest of everything else a normal story has, which is why they're rare. STANDARD, aka, BAD Harem Stories just throw half a dozen cardboard cut-outs of women with standard personalities at the protagonist (if not dozens for collect-wifu-harem stories, the ones where the protagonist gets a new Wifu every arc), and go about the, often bad, story while utilising ecchi scenes as bait.

Basically, there's a known market where people care more about the girl's appearance than them being people, and there's a whole bunch of people lazily trying to cash-in on that... and succeeding. That is why there's so many Harem Stories being written and published. Even if your story is complete trash, if there's good enough "eye candy", there's a chance it will be picked up and published by some company, potentially even becoming an anime, for no reason other than "people will pay for the eye candy".

 

It depends on how you count a harem, do you mean rocks with no personality and the MC just gets any reoccurring girl for no reason? Then yeah sure. If you mean girls with actual interesting background and development then no since developing characters is something that is hard to do. Especially if you actually try and give the "competing" girls all a fair amount of screen/viewing time so that you can actually develop their characters and personalities.

If you mean the latter than yes that is harder than writing a normal romance or a story without romance held within it. Since a. realistic romance is hard to write in and of itself and b. it's hard to write a convincing story with proper character development where the girls/guys would realistically be willing to share the man in the scenario. Oh and of course, writing an interesting story outside of all that stuff ongoing in the scenes at the same time if they are writing a story that isn't just about the harem.

 

Harem is harder without a doubt.

Basically, any harem story will have at the very minimum a main cast of 4 characters (Protagonist + 3 harem members) that need to be properly developed, receive appropriate screentime and be relevant and likeable throughout the story. And that only gets harder and harder as the harem size grows.

Meanwhile, non-harem stories will usually focus on one main couple and a couple of friends that work as sidekicks. Their relevance to the story will usually be significantly smaller than the main couple's so it should be much easier to write about them.

Essentially, having less people in the main cast makes the story easier to write by default, so harem is automatically harder.