Discussion Plot Development that make you drop a novel

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Fluffy Jellyfish, Oct 3, 2018.

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  1. pkhyber

    pkhyber Well-Known Member

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    I usually drop novel when translator butchered it -novel saga whatever.
    I am usually good with whatever author is writing

    But no definitive ending in mind and keep writing without knowing how are you going to finish - dropped ie bringing farm, invincible, chaotic sword god
     
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  2. mrttao

    mrttao Well-Known Member

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    Hypocrite MCs ruin it for me.
    I actually love a good villain MC (like reverend insanity, or warlock of the magus world), but if the MC is evil and the author, bystanders, world, and MCs own monologue keep insisting he is a righteous hero it ruins it and usually results in a drop.

    Also, idiot plots which only work because the MC, the villains, and the world in general are all idiots.

    And excessive word padding.
     
  3. mrttao

    mrttao Well-Known Member

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    This reminds me of Desolate Era where it is a plot point that MC was literally a SAINT from modern day earth (and due to said sainthood got a cheat while reincarnating)

    After reincarnating with his memories intact he sees all the atrocities of the local primitives he reincarnated into and basically goes "eh, I guess since I reincarnated I will live by their rules now; nothing wrong with some genocide and slavery"

    Seriously jarring considering we are supposed to believe he was a modern day saint. Granted, I like the xianxia flavor of xianxia settings... but if you want to adhere to that then FFS don't make the MC reincarnate from modern day earth. Or make whatever he was before reincarnating something that justifies such a view.
     
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  4. prongsjiisan

    prongsjiisan Apostle of Violence

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    Wimpy Japanese MC that too scared to do anything.
     
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  5. Talentlessfool

    Talentlessfool New Member

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    There are really only two things that get me to instantly drop a novel.

    First, the instant MC personality 180.
    Like in Spirit Realm, we spend 100 or more chapters getting to know the MC's personality and how he is actually a reasonable person who doesn't commit overkill upon his enemies. Then at some point, his seal on his past memories breaks/weakens and then BOOM, instant 180. "They insulted me? Penalty is Death" level of mass murdering idiocy. Another Example would possibly be Demon's Diary, the being that infiltrated his body in an earlier arc is now in control of his body, mocking his accomplishments and doing whatever he wants with the MC's stuff, I'm currently withholding judgement as the translations have only recently been picked up again so I'm not certain how this will play out yet, but it is incredibly jarring.

    Secondly back to the overbearing Male Lead that is frigging everywhere in female MC cultivation novels. the FL is more often than not supposedly some bad-ass high ranking assassin who grew up in the underworld of a modern world who has seen all the bad dark side of what can happen to women and men in such a place. Yet she somehow falls in love with some dickhead who does not know how to respond to being told no, constantly molests her because she doesn't have the power to stop him and acts like a pouting baby when things don't go his way or she hurts his feelings.

    It is practically textbook abusive relationship being described and held up as what women should want and it is incredibly stupid.
     
  6. mrttao

    mrttao Well-Known Member

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    And for some reason, all (hyperbole, but definitely over 90%) of the female leads xianxia stories do this! This is maddening!
     
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  7. xchronicles

    xchronicles Well-Known Member

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    • Characters inconsistency
    • Too much face slapping with no actual plot
    • so much build up for a scene but then it turns put anticlimactic
    • MC's road is too smooth. Always lucky or something.
    • overused ideas
     
  8. krossite

    krossite Active Member

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    For me,it's not quite plot developement, but lack of interesting developement happening and/or the direction the plot and it's implementation have been going and doesn't looks like it's going to change that makes me drop them, as I can kind of expect some common development of such stories to happen, and some of them can be tolerable or even entertaining if done right. Also if someone (most of the time it's the MC) get something they never work for to deserve it,by honest or even evil means, would really irritated me, but may not be enough to make me drop the novel.

    The novels I drop and the reasons for that are ;

    I never really like the MC,mostly because there wasn't much reason to like him.His pre-isekai life is pretty much completely ignored. All we know about him is that he live in some rural area and got killed be a billboard, no aspect of his personality seems to be shown unless he was a psychopath like he seems to be in the story.
    The story goes that the MC got hand over an OP body,OP magic powers and OP items of the most powerful wizard in that world and then also get a griffon, regard as somthing like a super powerful beast a little lower rank than dragons,then proceed to live as some random adventurer without really trying that hard to hide his power,including such obvious thing as parading said super powerful griffon around everywhere he goes. His interaction with everything seems to mostly be try to get more magical power and nothing else. No reasons as to why he wants more power or what he'll do after he got more/all the power, not even put in any efforts or having fun doing it, just keep getting more as he came across the power sources like a robot with limited programing doing his task.
    The world itself seem reasonably interesting, but as MC never try to explore it beyond his random adventurer questing, they never really meant much.
    Side characters are also like the world ; reasonably interesting and some have potential to make the story fun,but MC never bother to try to interact with them outside of group questing so we never get to kmow them outside of their job.
    Also,everyone (mostly the MC) seems to only ever smile wryly. Almost everytime someone smile they just "make a wry smile" , I don't recalled another type of smile being made in that story.
    Any or a few of that by itself I can tolerated, but all of them constantly showing up and no indication of changing anytime soon? No,thank you.

    I drop it about when the MC and the princess is going into a dungeon to get some super rare stuff and just fought a bunch of mushrooms. And from what I saw some discussions about it, it seems to be going downhill from there.

    This one actually seems promising ; A man from another non-earth world with monster got summon to another world with monster by a kingdom that's trying to re-rolled summon hero, got abandon when he seems to not be the one, turns out to be the one, proceed to try to live a slow-life in some rural town with his new wife.
    As a slow-life story, I do expect the story pacing to be quite slow and laid-back. But slow-life story usually works by making us care about the characters so that just watching them living their life is enjoyable. This story simply bore me with not much of interest happening, no problem with lasting consequences and just a bit too boring characters.

    I drop it around the time the demon king start showing up to hang aroung MC's house. All in all not that bad a novel, it's just a bit too boring for me.

    A power fantasy story that went just a bit too far and get cringey. An earth top-tier guild master in a MMORPG make his guild entirely of NPCs that's just as strong as other comparable players get transport with his entire base and members, claim some too-dangerous-to-claim-by-other-nations land and make a country of their own.
    The characters are barely interesting, with the guild lead by a pay-to-win player from a seriously broken game who, props to him, handle things quite well,and actually don't spent that much time being a random adventurer before revealed himself and all his OP glory to the world, and did make his own nation in a week. The NPC members are, of course, totally loyal to him and the female members are eagerly getting in bed with the MC in a threesome rotation because the queue would be too long, with about half guild members being female and all. The locals are pretty generic and don't get much screentime to actually be much.

    I drop it after said nation-in-a-week is done and the chapter start with him woken up in bed with last night's rotation of threesome which includes a loli-type member and it became obvious the author is just going to keep doing this. This point is actually only some two-digits chapters in and the story might even get more entertaining after that. I think I drop this mostly because how much I hate the idea of such a broken PTW game this novel hint at existing more than the cringey power fantasy aspects, although it certainly didn't help. This might be a fun read for someone else.

    This one have so much potential...
    MC got isekai-ed into a world based on game (novel?manga? I can't remember) with storyline that, if left as is, will result in him and main villainess be strip of their noble ranks and exiled. As MC got there as a child before the game's event , he still got some time to prepare for his eventual ruin by improve his own poor territory and learn a trade as blacksmith. That world got magic so he also learn some of that too, further improve his land and his craft.
    His relationship with other characters and those characters themselves are also reasonably good, each with their own personal goals and are nice people overall. Between the MC's and friends school life and territory management is also nice and entertaining, even with typical Japanese author's cliche trope of hot springs being awesome.
    All these are good and entertaining, but there is one glaring fault - the MC , specifically his mental attitute that, despite being at least a high schooler in previous life and has been living in that world for about a decade, never seems to grow beyond that of middle schooler's. While capable enough in work and study, he never seems to think his actions or course of actions he could take through, prefering mostly to deal with problems as the show up, but not really trying to bring his full potential to fix those problems either.

    I drop it sometimes after an incident where his friend's plants that MC hire him to grow got stolen by bullies who also beat his friend as he try to guard them. And instead of, say, go tell the teachers that the bullies stole his stuff and let them handle that, the MC decide to put on a shoddy monster costume and try to scare the bullies (that's the whole plan.just scare them.nothing plan after he goes "boo!"no follow up.no escape strategy.no backup.nothing.). And when the bullies predictably cast fireballs at him and burn his costume,revealing his identity as a rather high-ranking up-and-coming noble, rather than try to threaten or negotiated with the bullies, he just goes "hit me all you want,just don't hurt my friend anymore". And he proceed to get the crap beat out of him untill he passed out.
    If I was there I'd join those bullies, but I'll settle with just droping this novel.
    I think there're a few more, but it seems they were so bad I forgot about them.
    edit.just remember one more novel I drop.
     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2018
  9. ZeroBlink

    ZeroBlink Well-Known Member

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    I don't drop a novel instantly , it's always an accumulation of things.
    Some of the trends that annoy me in an average novel here are:
    1. Too long of a description of an advancement explaining different stages over and over again , while continually over-complicating things.
    2. Recycling
    3. Poor side character development , I'd much rather hate a character than feel indifferent towards one and there are a lot of characters that seem to be pointless to me. People tend to complain that MC's often do not go back to their families or loved ones , but from my perspective in a combat oriented novel individuals without proper power levels are dead to me. Too much focus on the fodder is also annoying
    4. Stupid Mc's , the novels here are plagued with that , because authors seem to struggle to introduce conflict into the story , so they dumb down the MC. It's easier for an idiot to cause trouble accidentally or without reason. No planning needed.
    5.YOU DARE? ... NO U DARE?
    Now that I think about it there is one sin that I do not forgive.
    Off-screen power ups or power-ups trough time skips WITHOUT training montage.
    I could read training chapters all day long.
     
    Last edited: Nov 4, 2018
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  10. purit2006

    purit2006 Well-Known Member

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    This happens a lot in CN novels IMO. FML is very intelligent,calm,calculating and reasonable but when she met a male lead (often characterized as cold-hearted warmonger general of sort), she just straight up went dump and proceed to start an endless bickering with ML into infinity. Most of the time ML always get away with everything tho. Dude, where did your brain run off to lol. The novel had such great potential.

    In the end, i understand that this is always a thing. I mean, u can see this similar pattern throughout these type of novels right? But again, it's a bit too much for me and i start dropping them when these events start showing.

    It'd be very very interesting to see a CN novel within the current genres but without all these similar romance tropes.
     
    Last edited: Nov 20, 2018
  11. KiKiYul0505

    KiKiYul0505 Member

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    I drop a novel when my ship dies. 。・゚゚*(>д<)*゚゚・。
    It doesn't happen that often but sometimes the female MC dumps the perfect match for herself and gets together with a bastard.
    Chaos of Beauty is the book that ruined it for me.
    She actually got together with the prime minister who cheated on her with another woman instead of the general. I felt so betrayed since I thought that they would actually get together. They were so cute together but... *cries*
     
  12. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    In their defense, such stories are supposed to be daily releases so you do not notice it. It gets problematic when you have to wait weeks or even days for a chapter.
    For me it is rape by the protagonist, Wei Xiaobao from Duke of Mount Deer is the exception though.
     
  13. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    About the female lead, it is like incestuous relationships in media. People will not be involved in them but the taboo, fantasy is exciting
    Same with BL, it is usually consumed by women who I am sure are not interested in a threesome with them being the idle party haha
    To me it is just extreme BDSM that you cannot emulate in real life but can in novels
     
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