Paw's LitRPG Corner: A Writer's Microblog

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Neil Gaiman. 1,040,425 likes · 159,895 talking about this. Will eventually grow up and get a real job. Until then, will keep making things up and writing them down.

I was looking through some examples of Facebook pages by other online authors.   Neil Gaiman’s site came to mind and I want to comment how critical it is to have a powerful presence online, and to structure you content well.   Gaiman is one of my favorite fiction writers, but he is also an active blogger and literature commentator.  LitRPG is driven by an entire generation built around social media.  We depend on our exposure to survive and thrive, but this is not just isolated to our genre, every other modern writer has to contend with social media.  

Consider your online footprint as is pretty much your resume to your readers these days, what your ranking is on your publishing sites, the follows on your YouTube, and how many people attend your twitter or Facebook posts.  For anyone getting established the first thing you need to do is to build your online portfolio and get out there to link your work with a way to reach your fans via social media. 

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The Power of an A Plot, B Plot, etc in LitRPG

While this writing technique is pretty much a staple of movies everywhere in LitRPG this structure has new meaning and massive significance, especially for writers who use VR worlds.  When I started writing my Infernal Engineers series based around both a real future world and a supposed virtual world of Endaria, I broke my first two books up with the futuristic earth, which could be seen as the A plot and the game world, occupying the B plot role. 

In LitRPG this is often the case, where your main character has many things going on in the real world, and has a completely different world to adapt to and thrive in when he “logs in” to his virtual world.   What I think most authors don’t realize is that they have massive potential in and flexibility in this act of running two different compelling plots, each with their own dangers, trials and tribulations.  Often, the personality is actually completely different between way a character acts in a virtual environment where there are less restrictions or limitations to the real world, giving you essentially two versions of your character or characters to work with.  

You can also shift perspectives when the action is in a lull in your virtual world, to some situation heating up in the real world and vice versa.  This helps you keep the flow and momentum of your narrative moving smoothly.  

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How to Use Social Media to Market Your Book?

Gary Vaynerchuk is outlines how authors use social media to reach people, and covered a few platforms I don’t use, but I do think are very valuable for each of you to understand a prospective LitRPG authors, or online writers in general need to know the depths of the ocean so to speak.  The current saturation of online publishing media is in every sense of the word an ocean, and Gary outlines the importantce of Twitter and other types of viral marketing for exposure to aspiring authors. 

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LitRPG’s Origin Story: How Readers began to write about games.

Long before the hapless Aleron Kong decided to become the self-proclaimed “founder” of LitRPG writers had already been writing for decades in the genre.  Early examples were based around Dungeon and Dragons table top games.  Today, the genre considers worlds based very heavily on D&D “GameLit” and tend to classify the worlds based around MMOs, Virtual World, and the like as “LitRPG”  The current genre-defining tropes have their roots in the early 90s, with bench-marking authors such as Tad Williams reaching their audience by using game worlds.   I remember reading Tom Clancy’s Net Force  books when I was growing up in the 90s, and that was some of my first introductions to writing about VR worlds.  As games continued to evolve, so did LitRPG, and the approaches as to what is possible with Virtual Reality.  Recent trends drift often into a mix of portal fantasy, and VR such as what I do with my Endaria series where the players in Endaria are actually unwittingly controlling avatars in another world.  This mix of reality and fantasy, is a powerful focus to writers trying to define themselves with current trends.  

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Here is a very good introduction to the LitRPG genre designed to educate aspiring authors who wish to understand more about their target audience.  Jayden Hunter, a published authors lays it all out and describes what you need to know as writers to be able to reach your audience.  Jayden Does a very good job at covering all the ways that current social media, gaming and society affects LitRPG. 

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Incentive to Read: How do LitRPG authors reach their audiences in each niche?

I talked earlier about the lockdown, and how LitRPG authors fund their work, but how do sites promote their material?  To understand this, you have to understand each niche audience within our genre.  There are several niches, the first is the GameLit and LitRPG niche, that is heavily focused on games, and many of the promotions happen on gaming sites by the fan, and you will see authors giving away game keys as prizes in their online promotion.   Other niches within our genre cover various types of “Portal Fantasy” tropes, and can extend heavily into Korean and Japanese reader bases.  In Korea grinding MMOs are very popular, but the fan sites are often pay to read.  Authors conduct free chapter rewards on the pay-per-view publishing sites and their gaming drives are often online giveaways in popular Korean MMOs.  Japan has a heavy Anime following within our genre, and references to LitRPG anime such as Sword Art Online, and others move to the forefront, so much of the promotional material covers manga, and anime. 

So when you go to publish, try to find aspect of your work that covers the specific niche you work within.  For myself, it’s the gaming niche, and I mostly advertise on gaming forums, and on large gaming clan sites.   Each niche however has a different approach. 

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When writing LitRPG the main sticking point is how to write your system.  There is a vast variety of approaches this video by one of my favorite writing and fantasy blogging youtubers, Hello Future Me. His ideas and extensive examination of world building techniques are some of the things I’ve drawn from on how to write a compelling world. 

One of the things I decided to make unique about my Endaria series was how I did away with the typical and often genre defining trope of hard stat leveling systems in favor of a world that was based on demonstrated ratings in various areas, I drew much of my inspiration for my magic system from Avatar, because of how immersive the system is.  For me the constant rehash of stats, and levels tended to distance the main characters from the world around them, and I wanted to try to make a world that was based around survival and overcoming almost impossible odds via ingenuity and wit, versus hard stats.  

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Easter Eggs and You: The use of pop culture references and game “Easter Eggs” in LitRPG

When I first started reading the genre, and understanding my future audience, I noticed a very popular trend, the use of “Easter Eggs.”  For those that may not understand the term, it is used to identify a refrence in a game to some outside source, usually a nod to the game creators, or a very specific pop culture reference, or meme.  The discovery and search for Easter Eggs has almost gained a cult following within the game community, and has had a masive impact on the LitRPG genre, as our stories are mostly about game world or being tossed into a game world, etc.   Ready Player One for example, was a recent GameLIt, or LitRPG movie directed by Steven Spielberg and was built entirely around the search for Easter Eggs.  The practice of writing common gaming tropes, pop culture references is a way to connect to the readers, and one recent example I’ve used in my own work is the “Rat Stomp” trope.  https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RatStomp

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How the Lockdown has led to a boom in LitRPG Online Publishing

On twitter I follow the #litprg with a bit of fervor, and I also work within the social media online publishing outlet for LitRPG authors, Royal Road.  I’ve seen the lockdown stuff affect social media immensely. Recently it’s almost impossible for me to keep up with my favorite authors, both on the writing forums, and Royal Road as well as their progress on Twitter, because it is so rapid.   Normally sporadic authors, have become powerhouses on Royal Road as they work with not only more time to themselves, but also a reader base that is mostly trapped at home and very bored.  Royal Road itself ran a publishing contest and managed to get thousands of new submissions, and I’ve seen a bunch of them become immensely popular. 

https://twitter.com/hashtag/litrpg?lang=en

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How Aleron Kong shot himself in the foot by going after other authors.

One of the most successful LitRPG authors recently proclaimed he was the “founder of American LitRPG”.  While I think many of the other authors took that statement as a marketing ploy, apparently Aleron Kong wasn’t in the same mindset.  He went and tried to not only trademark the term “LitRPG” but he decided to try and go after authors using it. 

I’ve discussed here how important social media is to the success of authors, and apparently when his claims went viral last year, for being what is termed as a “coypright troll” his following, and social media presence as a whole turned sour. 

Kong’s legal battle went viral on platforms such as Reddit, twitter, and I ran into it myself when I was looking through the LitRPG forum site I post on with other authors.  Aleron’s popularity has taken a nosedive, and even the teasers of his supposed new work after not publishing for nearly two years hasn’t gotten much traction.   This is often because of the practice of “review bombing” where disgruntled fans will in mass express their displeasure on reviews of books on publishing outlets such as Amazon and the like.  

Aleron has since become a very good case study in why it’s a bad idea to piss in the water you bathe in so to speak, or in this case attack the other authors in your genre.  He has since tried to distance himself from his “Father of American LitRPG” statements, even removing them from the cover of his promotional material, but the damage has already been done. 

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Critical Response, effects of a Social Media presence on authors

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/books/amelie-wen-zhao-blood-heir-keira-drake-continent-jonah-winter-secret-project.html

Keria Drake points out one of the most valuable effects of social media on authors, the ability to get critical response.  While I’ve seen this destroy some authors, others like myself and Keria have mostly grown a thick skin to the PC crowd and we take what they say with a grain of salt.  Understand still, that this same generation is what we have to work with as a target audience, and their feedback can be immensely valuable.  Keria used the response from social media on her work to critically rethink and rewrite her content and I’ve done the same with my own work on RoyalRoad, as I began to learn more about what my readers expected of me.  

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How do Amateur LitRPG authors fund their work?

In my previous post I indicated that RoyalRoad and other fiction sites were very popular with LitRPG writers.  If you are looking to work within those communities, knowing how they get donations, and fund their work is important.   Crowd Funding plays a massive role in helping struggling LitRPG writers get off the ground.  In RoyalRoad the social media driven crowdsource site Patreon is used heavily.   Writers fund their work there by setting up the publishing of their chapters so that their supporters get chapters in advance of when they are published on RoyalRoad, and some even give away swag such as t-shirts, handicrafts, 3D printed items from the authors and other stuff.  Patreon is completely social media based, and designed to work with other platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

https://www.patreon.com/

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Why social media plays such a large role with LitRPG and GameLit Readers

I’ve been writing LitRPG for about two years now, and I can say with complete certainty, that understanding the relationship between twitter, online forums and other forms of social media is essential.  The vast majority of amateur writers like myself depend on social media and online publishing websites for our exposure.  I started publishing on the online fiction site Royal Road, and noticed that all of the most successful authors, who have massive reader bases got their start there, just posting their drafts for everyone to read.   They networked with Facebook, twitter, and while they started as unknown writers, the process of gathering followers through going viral played a massive role in their success.  

https://www.royalroad.com/

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Understanding LitRPG readers

When I first started writing in the genre, it was because I was listening to audio books from authors such as Alexey Osadchuk and Vasily Mahanenko, judging from some of the leading authors new writers may become mistaken that the current trend of GameLit or LitRPG is a foreign tend, as Russian writers are some of the most popular, but there are many American Authors too, such as Aleron Kong, and Travis Bagwell.  These authors work within the trends popular here in the US, and it is the fact that Russian gamers tend to like the survival MMO that often times can make them well suited as LitRPG authors, as many of the stories revolve around survival or portal fantasy.  

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Welcome to My LitRPG micro blog!

For people unfamiliar with the genre, LitRPG, GameLit and other associated works tend to fall into a very specific demographic based upon a rich history of online gaming, and older table top games. Recently though social media has begun to have a massive impact, and I’m here to help writers navigate it!

This tweet blog is an attempt by myself to try and help other writers understand the topic if they are new to the genre, and to discover how to reach people.   I’ve been writing in the genre for the past three years or so now, and long have been a fan of the books that have come out of it.  I have mostly been navigating the genre on my own as I discover how to reach my readers, here is the place where I get to pass on some of the stuff I’ve learned over the years and pick out examples for you.  

This feed was established as part of a class assignment I’m working on for my English degree but I don’t mind continuing to find articles for aspiring LitRPG authors if it catches on.