5 Things I Learned From Writing a Failed LitRPG Novel

For the past 2-3~ months, I’ve been writing and publishing the novel “Fateweaver” to Royalroad.com. The start was slow, but thanks to shoutouts and some early momentum, I managed to get up to 23/50 on Rising Stars. As of the time of writing, I have 547 followers and something like 83k views. Not a bad run… but at the end of the day, not enough to convince any publishers this is worth taking a risk on, and not enough to build a sustainable income off Patreon.

So, what went wrong? What went right? These are the questions I plan to answer in this blog post.

1. Understanding Your Genre Is Essential

Shocker of all shockers, writing LitRPG is going to carry a story farther than it has any right to go. My opening was dogcrap. I failed to communicate my premise effectively, I failed to hook the audience, and I failed to give the readers to get invested in my MC emotionally.

So why did I get as far as I did? Simple. I succeeding in hitting a handful of the essential points that readers are looking for when they come to Royalroad: a powerful protagonist, the fantasy of being strong, and a sense of justice served among other things.

I would estimate that this is only 50% of what is needed for financial success on this platform, but that 50% will get you pretty damn far.

Of course, there were parts of my genre that I failed to hit. This leads into my second part.

2. You’ve Got to Make Some Promises…

This kind of links back into the failures of the opening in my story that I mentioned earlier. Promises are the thing that hooks the reader. They say to the reader “Hey, if you read this story, you’re going to get this emotional experience.” Not only do they give the reader a chance to get a taste of your story, they also prime the reader for when you slam them with the pay-off.

I didn’t have very many clear promises. I had a vague character arc hinted at in my opening and something vague like “adventure”. Beyond that, I don’t think I really had anything else for readers to latch onto. I had some stuff in the blurb, but that’s just not enough.

If I were to do it again, I would add several more promises, and I would make it as crystal-clear as possible. I would hammer the MC’s character flaw. I would add in another character so that its clear there’s going to be relationship drama. I would hint at the mysteries of the fantasy world and imply that the MC is somehow linked to them.

I would also, of course, promise the more combat focused stuff, perhaps by mentioning the MC has combat experience or maybe having a fight as soon as the MC is Shanghai-d into another world.

3. …And You’ve Got to Keep Those Promises

Of course, all the promises in the world don’t matter if you don’t actually keep them. I think this one of the areas where I failed most significantly. I failed to keep the promises that I set up for my readers. The biggest example of this was when I implied that the MC would seperate from the group and go off on his own in a “solo arc.”

After a chapter, I had a few of those people he ran away from drop right back in and join him further. This was a mistake. Flat out. The readers were expecting cake, and I gave them a hamburger. Are either of those things better? No, but you can’t blame the reader for scrunching up their nose and saying “this isn’t what I asked for.”

There are some writers who do succeed in subverting expectations in the manner I’m describing, where the reader is pleasantly surprised and actually enjoys the story even more as a result of the surprise. But those guys do it intentionally (I didn’t do it on purpose, I didn’t even realize it was an issue lol), and they’re also way better at stringing readers along and convincing them that they really did want that cheeseburger. Perhaps, in the future, I might try doing it on purpose, but as I am now, I don’t think I should be doing that if I can’t e ven normally deliver on promises.

4. Marketing Will Not Save You

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I really did think that in terms of writing skill, I was “competent”. Not an expert, by any means, but enough to tell an engaging tale and keep people hooked. I thought that the only thing I needed was to be able to market effectively.

So that’s what I did. I took out ads and I inveested in a high quality cover. My ad had a relatively decent CTR of 1.87% or so at its peak. As of right now, its hovering around 1.2%~. I also invested an enormous amount of time in shout-outs. I spent, like, two hours daily just emailing authors asking them to tell their fanbase about me.

This was probably a waste of time for me. At least in the case of Royalroad.com, the site will award good writing through its discovery algorithm. If you’re converting readers to long-time followers, then it’ll shoot you up a list called Rising Stars, guaranteeing fresh eyes on your story.

I got onto Rising Stars. I bet I would’ve without the marketing push. And guess what? Even if I dumped 1000 dollars into marketing, I don’t think it would’ve made much of a difference. Why? Because when it came down to it, my story just did not have the ability to convert. There were fundamental problems with the opening that capped the growth of my book.

You’ve got to have strong fundamentals. Quality fiction (on sites with a strong discovery mechanic) will speak for itself.

5. You Have a Writing Superpower

No, really. We all do. And if I’d figured this out earlier, I think I would’ve had a hell of a lot more success in my story.

Fateweaver, from its inception, was designed to be a write-to-market book. From the start, my goal was simple: write a bog-standard litRPG that follows all the tropes so that I can make cash. And you know what? I don’t think that was a bad approach. I think for some writers, they can do that and achieve major success, not just finacially, but artistically.

But I can’t. At least, not the way I was doing it. Perhaps, if I had a deep, deep understanding of the genre, I could’ve pulled it off. If I’d read, say, a thousand litRPG books and analyzed them in and out, I would’ve been able to write something successful.

Instead, what I was mostly relying on was a superficial understanding of the genre, and it showed. The first arc of the story was hollow, and the readers could tell.

But something odd happened in the second and third arcs. I noticed a change in my comments. People would actually get excited about moments in the story, they’d be invested, they’d be theorizing. Things like that. What was the difference, I wondered?

After I’ve had some time to think about it, I think the answer was that I was excited when I wrote those scenes. I was personally invested. My heart pounded while writing the climax. I was laughing, I was wincing from the pain of betrayal.

I’m not a technician with deep knowledge and analytical abilities. I try to be. I take notes on the stories I read, I analyze them, I pick them apart to see how they work. But at the end of the day, I just don’t think my brain operates that way–or, at least, it doesn’t need to.

I think that almost all the problems that I had with my story could’ve been eliminated had I asked one simple question before and after writing it.

Is this giving me an emotional experience?

I don’t regret writing Fateweaver the way I did, and I still think there’s value in a write-to-market approach. But I just don’t think I can write very effectively using only such a method. Right now, I think my best shot is going to be utilizing that my own emotional reactions to what I’m writing or thinking about.

My next story is going to be a System Apocalypse story. It’ll be a comedy/satire poking a bit of fun at some of the tropes of the genre. I will, of course, be paying attention to promises and pay-offs and all that stuff. But my chief guiding star, the thing I’ll rely on most of all, will be one simple question: Am I laughing? If the scene fails to get a chuckle out of me, then I know it isn’t working. If it is… then I’ve accomplished my goal.

Let’s see how things play out.