23 Apr 2021
I started this piece as perhaps many authors do. They've seen something they like, then they get bored and decide to do it themselves.
So it was with what I'll call the serial reincarnator genre—e.g., , , , , —where the protagonist reincarnates many times within the scope of the story.
(Before I proceed any further, I want to distinguish books about serial reincarnation from books about a serial reincarnator. In the latter, the protagonist is a serial reincarnator, however the plot of the book you are reading only concerns itself with one particular life. This includes e.g., each of the works in Andur's corpus, Power Overwhelming, The Deathseeker, and Divine Bladesmith.
And while it should be obvious, I will point out that this genre is not about a time loop like Mother of Learning, The Menocht Loop, Endless Cage, or Re: Monarch. Nor is it isekai, whether of the baby-born or child/teen/adult body-possession types. The former are reincarnation stories, but "serial" has no meaning there. And while the later potentially involves a reincarnation, the story emphasis is on the otherworldliness, not the reincarnation.)
I found myself enraptured by the concept, though it's hard for me to articulate why. Suffice it to say though, while there was only a small sample size, it seemed like it must be a very difficult genre to write in. Three Lifetimes completed, but it limited itself to three. The Ascendant was abandoned in the first life. Many Lives is on indefinite hiatus at Chapter 44 (which I feel was about a half dozen lives in, but the protagonist was really only coming to grips with how to live her lives). Reboot Reality appears to be heading towards indefinite hiatus.
And then we have In Loki's Honor. So much has been written about that story—it's very controversial in the reviews, with proponents and detractors going to great lengths—I won't add much here. I like it. I liked it enough that I read it a second time, which I had never done on Royal Road before. But otherwise, I can't say it much better than one reviewer did: "This web novel is such a good litRPG, I kind of want a new genre based on it! The idea of having the character cursed to 100 reincarnations on the same planet spread out by a few centuries is genius!" I hope that reader finds this fiction.
Then In Loki's Honor hit a speedbump and went on hiatus for a few months, which was when I found myself re-reading it, and appreciating the difficulties that this genre could pose. At the time, it was at about 1900 pages, and we had gotten through 27 lives, but because 15+ of them were stillbirths, we ended up with several lives that were book length. While I've enjoyed every minute reading it, I realize that such lengthy lives are a potentially problematic habit for the larger story (which nominally will go on for one hundred lives), though I will concede that perhaps it is something inherent in the genre, rather than a particular issue with In Loki’s Honor.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
So, bored, and with metaphorical pen to metaphorical paper, I pushed to the other (very stupid) extreme: One chapter per life. However long you have one. And, having come off a long few months of careful and delicate brainstorming other ideas, I was more than happy to fly by the seat of my pants for a little experiment. And so I just started writing, like, with almost no other planning.
You saw how it turned out. And with very few exceptions, I agree with a lot of what you had to say.
So, what have we learned? Well, first of all, this story is not great, or even good, literature. I fully acknowledge that. At best, this should be understood as an experimental writing piece at one extreme of a particular genre. That said, having gotten around to actually reading it front to back (I never did that before pushing it to Royal Road), it’s a fun read if you’re into the genre.
And, I loved writing it too. Winging it was so refreshing compared to my last fiction. And playing with the System was far more amusing than I had imagined.
Of course, I learned something about the bounds of the difficulties of writing in this genre. Namely, each life really does beg for its own story. And if you’re going to have dozens of lives, you need to keep certain ground rules the same throughout all of them and develop conventions for shorthanding the less interesting parts. Early on you can rely on the protagonist being challenged just living his/her/its lives. And, indeed, the challenge of such early lives allow you to establish certain conventions about how the protagonist deals with the mundane, thus allowing you to take future lives almost immediately from the mundane to the extraordinary (i.e., spend a few lifetimes on childhood, and then you can timeskip it later with almost no complaint).
Further, the one chapter per life thing is a bit extreme. Most importantly, it really hamstrings your ability to engage in multi-life arcs. Heck, sometimes there wasn’t room within a life for a full arc. As to how far you need to loosen it to make it work… I think it’s clear there’s no hard rules here and, if you want to keep it tight, you just have to keep disciplined on the matter.
Finally, while playing with the litRPG System was oodles of fun, the hardest part of litRPG by far is tracking stuff (and possibly writing full descriptions for Skills and Traits). And even if you’re going to wing a lot of it, at least try and have a robust system up front for tracking the System (because trying to fix that after the fact is a PITA).
So, what’s next? Well, for starters, I have marked Candlelit Lives as “Complete.” There is a complete volume here which resembles a complete story. And if the fiction ended here, it would be a bit of a lukewarm, but it would have an ending.
That said, will I continue? Yes. As mentioned, I just read through the whole thing for the first time and I loved it. And, with just a touch of thought, it becomes very obvious to me where the story should go. And so with volume 1 definitely, definitely done this time, I am off to work on the next volume(s).
In any event, I hope you enjoyed this wild ride as much as I did.
See you around,
luda305
The Many Lives of Cadence Lee has resurrected. Actually got a chapter released in early December.
28 Mar 2021
I started this piece as perhaps many authors do. They've seen something they like, then they get bored and decide to do it themselves.
So it was with what I'll call the serial reincarnator genre—e.g., In Loki's Honor, Reboot Reality, The Many Lives of Cadence Lee, Three Lifetimes, The Ascendant: Endless Reincarnation—where the protagonist reincarnates many times.
(Before I proceed any further, I want to distinguish books about serial reincarnation from books about a serial reincarnator. In the latter, the protagonist is a serial reincarnator, however the plot of the book you are reading only concerns itself with one particular life. This includes e.g., the entirety of Andur's body of work, Power Overwhelming, The Deathseeker, Divine Bladesmith.
And while it should be obvious, I should point out that this genre is not about a time loop like Mother of Learning, The Menocht Loop, Endless Cage, or Re: Monarch. Nor is it isekai, whether of the baby born or child/teen/adult possessing types. Neither type are reincarnation stories.)
I found myself enraptured by the concept, though it's hard for me to articulate why. Suffice it to say though, while there was only a small sample size, it seemed like it must be a very difficult genre to write in. Three Lifetimes completed, but it limited itself to three. The Ascendant was abandoned in the first life. Many Lives in on indefinite hiatus at Chapter 44... which I feel was about a half dozen lives in, but the protagonist was really only coming to grips with how to live her lives. Reboot Reality is still ongoing, but has only just barely crept into life 2, and appears to be heading towards indefinite hiatus.
And then we have In Loki's Honor. So much has been written about that story—it's very controversial in the reviews, with proponents and detractors going to great lengths—I won't add much here. I like it. I liked it enough that it read it a second time, which I have never done on Royal Road before. But otherwise, I can't say it much better than one reviewer did: "This web novel is such a good litRPG, I kind of want a new genre based on it! The idea of having the character cursed to 100 reincarnations on the same planet spread out by a few centuries is genius!"
Then In Loki's Honor hit a speedbump. Author went on hiatus for a few months to resolve personal issues, though after 1900 pages, it wouldn't be the worst abandoned novel on Royal Road. And in any event, he's back for round 2.
But that raises a point doesn't it. 1900+ pages, and we're through 27 lives. Wait, no 15+ or those were like still births. We had: amoeba, earthworm, rabbit, human, human, silkie fae, undead banshee, star (?) elf, halfling, lamia, mermaid. And that first one only lasted 5 minutes. We had lives at 37, 32, and 32 chapters each. Those are book length! While I've enjoyed every minute reading it, I realize that it is a potentially problematic habit for the larger story (which nominally will go on for one hundred lives), though perhaps it is something inherent in the genre, rather than an issue with In Loki's Honor.
So, with metaphorical pen to metaphorical paper, I pushed to the other (very stupid) extreme: One chapter per life. However long you have one. And, having come off a long few months of brainstorming other ideas, I was more than happy to abandon both (a) the idea of consistent fantasy fiction and (b) careful worldbuilding beforehand, esp. with litRPGs. So, cribbing one of my old ideas (red-headed female human mage has accident in prologue which kicks off the story), I just... started writing. Like, with almost no other planning.
This is how it turned out.
The prologue was fine. Life 2 was a bit... disconnected? Rushed? Really, I had no idea what I was doing there, in so much as the magic, world and system were all made up as I went along, though in retrospect, I'd like to ascribe the seeming disconnect of the protagonist from that lifetime is because she was still coping with life 1. And so in life 3, the protagonist got a little break. Life 4, it was time to make her a man. Because of course that would happen. And I got to the end, and I was like, crap. That chapter was 17 pages, single spaced in Microsoft Word, which was the longest chapter by far. And I wondered if I was falling into the same trap that other authors had, which is to say sucked into the story of what was really an anthology.
And so ch. 5 was a good excuse to use a cheap idea for a short life, and give the protagonist a huge cheat: 16x XP multiplier on an quadratic XP table. And then ch. 6: not the first tree LitRPG by a fair margin, and adding a companion! Because a stranger in a strange land needs a familiar foil in addition to the unfamiliar ones or they go crazy. Actually picking a companion and what type they would be was the hardest. I went through various idea: fairy, sprite, soulbound item, split personality, etc. Eventually I settled on two criteria: the companion's soul had to follow along with reincarnation and I wanted flexibility on what that form would take. So bond. So tree. So dryad. And of course they lost a few centuries because they were inattentive. And then Yes! it worked. We reincarnated! On hey what do we call each other now? And what do we have? The bond gets flipped on its head, but otherwise, they live a fairly normal slow life. They have children, which is a first for them (sort of). And we check off the battle maid box.
And then we needed another break. First off, tracking their Statuses had become really unwieldy, so there was some clean up there and more to come. Second, there were two key parts of the System I wanted to redefine: the rarity table and the XP table, both as part of a broader power of 2 theme. The original rarity table had six tiers, which with little explanation, apparently covered classes, races, skills and traits, and gave an exemplar order of magnitude. There were a few problems. First, some of the rewards had a 3 multiplier in there and so we ended up with some weird things. Second, rarity on skills/traits was almost never used in story, when it was used, it was confusing, and we didn't have a good sense what the difference was between skills and traits. So now the rarity table was broken into four tables: race, skill, tiered traits/skills, and leveled traits/skills. And, with some thought, I was able to better define what each rarity meant with respect to their measure. So a common race has at least 167 million members, but a common class is one where there is at least 1 holder every 16 classholders. Oddly this means that there are very few common classes. Then, on the other hand, a common trait or skill was based on what percentage of the population had that trait skill. And we got to v. 1 of the system.
So what happens when they come out the other side? Well a few dice rolls later, and they are gnomes on the Mediterranean coast side. Companion is male for the first time. And they decide to marry each other have kids and live a quiet life. And, at the end, the crotchety old grandma gives them a bit of the finger on the way out.
And then the goblin chapter. I will admit that around chapter 4, I started to run into a familiar problem. I wanted—needed—to stay focused on a single chapter in order to keep the experiment going. But my mind would wander and I would start constructing scenes in my head. And before I knew it, I was making stuff up 2-3 lives ahead. I tried really hard to clamp down on that.
I failed often. One of those failures was the goblin chapter. I wanted something horrifying. That this is not all my little pony. And so, parasitic goblins. Oh crap I am one. What to do. The protagonist is disgusted and horrified, and in her situation, does he do a forced reset? Or does he try and make something out of it? In the end, I think it worked.
Then the elf princess adventurer chapter. Really that was meant to be relaxing before we got into the climax of volume 1.
Life 12 takes us to the sea ice. Their tribe is oppressed in some sense by the local ruler, but when they grow up and investigate, they ultimately decide that leaving him in place is the best thing they could do. It’s not like he’s fraternizing with cultists hellbent on summoning [Eldritch] entities to the world.
Oh wait, yes, yes he is. And so begins the long life of two great [Divine Champions Against the Eldritch]. And a really broken Skill.
Then life 13. A chill life with some doggoes. And then, surprise! How do you invoke tragedy against a figure who’s definable feature is witnessing the impermanence of life? Take away the only permanent thing outside their mind and soul their can cling to.
And what happens? They go on a (self-) destructive bender.
Until we get an intervention by both a goddess and the System itself. Ignore those potential existential crises, we’ve got levels to grind in an exploitable system. And then, retribution, rescue, and reunion. It actually ends on a bit of a quiet note to highlight that the loss earlier really was a stroke of bad luck. And so ends both the first multi-life arc as well as volume 1. (And I start a big reworking of my spreadsheet that tracks this stuff).
And that was how it turned out.
So, what have we learned? Well, first of all, this story is real crap. I fully acknowledge that. At best, this should be understood as an experimental writing piece at one extreme of a particular genre. I have no intention of editing what’s been written except for clear errors (e.g., typos). (But if I do, there have been several substantive comments asking for elaboration on certain points; I will take those heart if I ever do substantive editing).
On the other hand, I loved writing it. Just winging it was so refreshing. And playing with the System was far more amusing than I had imagined.
And, I learned something about the bounds of the difficulties of writing in this genre. Namely, each life really does beg for its own story. And if you’re going to have dozens of lives, you need to keep certain ground rules the same throughout all of them (possibly this could be narrowed even further) and develop conventions for shorthanding the less interesting parts. And while early on you can rely on the protagonist being challenged just living lives (and is vital in so much as by establishing certain conventions, you can timeskip other childhoods and leave the reader to fill in the blank), at some point you really do need some greater overarching challenge to the protagonist.
Further, the one chapter per life thing is a bit extreme. Most importantly, it really hamstrings your ability to engage in multi-life arcs. Heck, sometimes there wasn’t room within a life for a full arc. As to how far you need to loosen it to make it work… I think it’s clear there’s no hard rules here and, if you want to keep it tight, you just have to keep disciplined on the matter.
Finally, while playing with the litRPG System was oodles of fun, the hardest part of litRPG by far is tracking stuff (and possibly writing full descriptions for Skills and Traits). And even if you’re going to wing a lot of it, at least try and have a robust system up front for tracking the System (because trying to fix that after the fact is a PITA).
So, what’s next? Well, for starters, I’m going to mark this fiction as “Complete.” There is something resembling a complete volume here and if the fiction ended here, it would be a bit of a lukewarm, but it would have an ending.
That said, will I continue? I have some general ideas of what I would like to do, but I’m taking a break of undefined time from writing this fiction. Frankly, MDW is the master of the genre and while he’s writing In Loki’s Honor, my impetus to write myself is much lower (because it’s so damn fun). And that’s just on top of the whole ebb-and-flow that my creative juices tend to take and we’re ebbing right now.
In short, maybe, but not now.
That said, I would appreciate to hear from you about the specific way in which I implemented the one-chapter-per-life shtick. There's a poll for quick responses, but feel free to leave a comment below discussing the poll prompt.
In any event, I hope you enjoyed this wild ride as much as I did.
See you around.
Subjectively, and based on reading all the chapters, how do you feel about the chapter length?
