So I have decided to write a short web novel about things that are terrible to read, but I will write it seriously. It is going to be a system novel because I hate those. Throw out a few ideas for things that you feel ruin great stories and I will pick a couple to include in my system novel. Help me write the worst web novel, ever. Link to the story: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/51354/kfc/chapter/844150/the-terror-of-transmigrating
Harem, unnecessary female companion, useless companions in general, unnecessary romance, obligation to take care of someone, falling for beauty, not grasping benefits when they are there, not willing to sacrifice those closest for the end goal. These are just some things I find annoying,
Garbage romance(includes dense MC, one dimensional love interests, misunderstandings nonstop until the end), surprise gay for no reason whatsoever(absolute retardation that killed one novel in RoyalRoad gaining traction), asspulls so retarded I can see the MC's gaping asshole, the most retarded and spineless MC the world has ever seen, murderhobo MC, rape at first sight which then turns into romance.
Brainless relatives that serve no other purpose than insulting the mc and simultaneously wanting to leach off their wealth/status/etc.
Honestly, some of the worst things to read can be simplified down to "bad writing". Repetition is bad, but many popular long running stories follow a formula, such as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which shows it can be fine if done well. Harem is often touted as being bad, but it's usually just that harem stories are written with less than half an half-hearted attempt to make the harem members proper characters, instead of eye candy. If the harem characters are actually written well, it IS possible to have a good harem, particularly if said harem is plot relevant. So, yeah, my suggestion is just find things people tend to abuse to compensate for their poor writing to try to use as the basis of a good story. Other than things like Repetitive Story Structure, Harem Building, and Power Fantasy, I would have to suggest certain common subthemes, like "Tournament Arcs", "MC Suffers Early Story only to Make/Watch Everyone Who Did Mean Things To Them Suffer When They Become Powerful/Successful" and "Hypocritical 'Sexism' Where Girls Can Do Anything, But ANY Guy Doing Something Slightly Wrong, Even By Accident, Is Permission To Punish In Extremely Aggressive Ways (aka 'I got thrown across the room and landed on top of a girl's chest, so it's perfectly alright for said girl to slap me for being a pervert, despite everything that lead up to said situation')".
Early, unresolved trauma. Things that make you put the novel down or really make you want to. Certain horrible scenes even elaborated on that would disgust most people and leave you wondering why the author ever wrote it. Author amnesia - where between chapters or even a few apart characters forgot openly stated facts. (Because author forgot) so they act like it's a surprise they never knew or never react again. Especially with plot points, or relationships. Have any romance scene or confession with MC be treated as a different person was there every few chapters.
no character development, sidecharacters just to applaud the MC or being killed by him young masters with some short fuse after young masters with jealousy, after young masters without real reasons to become hostile, "oh i need a super rare flower lets go on a walk in the woods - oh look what i found" like kind of plot armor might be called effordless gains if you really want to piss me off do it like age of cosmic exploration inconsitant story and so backed with nationalism and racism that i guess the author must have some serious mental problems ...
Wow, great stuff! By great I mean terrible, this is going to be the worst! Ok so far it looks like my system novel will have a dense, racist, patriotic main character who suffers from unresolved family trauma from his trash family which turns him into a murderhobo which causes every beauty and even a dude to fall in love with him as he face slaps his way through such forgettable experiences as the family tournament, the village/town tournament, the sect entrance tournament, the sect vs sect tournament, the once every ___ years secret realm that just happens to open as our hero arrives... Some things I am considering right now are making arbitrary power levels like level 1-9 where 9 is super rare until the hero gets to it and then there will be new levels and every character the hero meets will be thinking a level 9 is an ant. Keep hitting me with suggestions, it's bad so far but I feel like it can be much worse.
A great row of experienced and "wise" people turning complete wacko about the mc because they're so fantastic oh wow never seen before talent
did i mentioned cooking ? at least 1 chapter per break the mc takes to describe pointless cooking and how delish it is (can be easy combined with nationalism/patriotism as it must be the best dishes ever/over all the world (imagine mr ex president prising a big mac ... )) or monologues you know wortenia senki ? nothing happens for several chapters but that nothing is repeated in at least 2-3 chapter worth of monologues
Oh, god, this does bring memories of a minor peeve I have when cooking comes up in most Isekai. Specifically the use of spices and spicy foods, like curry's. Ignoring that most civilisations used whatever herbs and spices they had available to them to cover the taste of meat degrading over time (because magic refrigeration/freezing, which isn't actually used in most of these stories before the MC shows up because everyone but the MC is an idiot from a western culture, and only Asians/Japanese/People From Earth get to be intelligent), if they introduce spicy foods and ingredients to people who have NEVER had them before, their reaction won't be "delicious". It would be "My mouth is burning! Why did you set it on fire! Why does water make the burn worse!"
Ok the food thing gave me an idea for the main character... What do we know about the main character? He's dense. He's patriotic. He's racist. He has unresolved family trauma... I'm thinking he's a hick from a southern US state. "Y'all got anything else besides that there Chinese food?"
If you're doing that, then make it so that they are experienced in Backyard Barbeque of anything and everything, and experienced enough at cooking to make their own burgers from scratch (excusing making bread & mince), whole hog spit-roast pork, and a few different sauces. Simply to ensure that they have SOMETHING they can eat, even if it's self-made. Whether or not they have experience in making their own home-made beer or spirits is up to you.
bruh making it as a southern hick will actually make it good so just use a generic chinese without a life that will create a bot to specifically spam anime streamers because they mentioned taiwan accidentally. Southern boomers that just want to grill and got isekai'd is an interesting premise though.
Oh you are giving my hero too much credit. He's going to be more of a hotdog and hamburger gourmet. Look forward to Chinese people going crazy for his invention of the hamburger. Also, wait until you see the cultivation world go crazy for mac'n'cheese and red beans n' rice. I'm also going to have our young master introduce modern luxury in the form of the urinal as an homage to all those Japanese authors who like to invent hot springs and public baths in European-based fantasy stories.
And here is the link: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/51354/kfc/chapter/844150/the-terror-of-transmigrating
Update: I have written 17 chapters so far, 25,000 + words which is about the halfway point for the novel. I plan for it to be 55k words or about 200 pages printed. What has happened so far... Trampas, the main character has a harem. He uses Professional Wrestling to defeat martial artists. He is a racist. He is a proud American and routinely lets people know that. He invented the Cheeseburger and Onion rings which the natives loved. He had the battle flag of the confederate army sewn to the back of his tang suit (which he ripped the sleeves off). He introduced American country music to the natives (which they loved). He introduced the mullet to the natives (which became the hairstyle of choice). I have started to bring down the 4th wall. I have started the introduction of the main enemy which will be... *drum roll* the author. Me. The worst kind of self-insert. Reactions so far have been mixed. The first couple of chapters had a 5-star rating. I then posted a few times in the Royal Road Forums and then someone I pissed off used his alt accounts to drop the rating down to 3.25 stars. (Seriously, the four bad ratings all came within 5 minutes, and then someone else gave a four-star rating to boost it back up for some reason, whatever.) No reviews, over 1100 views so far with the individual chapters showing that I have somewhere around 30 active readers. I have between 7-8 active followers of the story. Two favorites. Considering this novel was written with so many terrible components leads me to believe we can no longer trust in humanity.
A terrible story that's purposefully utilizing terrible tropes isn't in and of itself terrible, particularly when it's basically pointing out the fact that everything's terrible. I haven't read it myself because I can't handle the type of MC you created, but the end result is simply what I first stated. The worst things to read come down more to "bad writing" than the tropes themselves. The story you have proposed utilize all the horrible tropes of Cultivation Novels, sent through a MC who is obviously designed to make fun of said tropes. Basically, you've made a Comedic Parody of Cultivation Novels, instead of a Terrible Cultivation Story. Sure, you have all the terrible components that are often in these stories, but you're aware of them and are shining a colored spotlight on them rather than pretending they're a normal part of the world. In short, despite writing a story that you aren't presenting jokes in, the environment you have created in your story is enough of a joke for people to find your story funny. Hopefully, for the majority of your readers, at least. I wouldn't be surprised if there's one or two who really are "America F YEAH!", though.