Hah! I actually have a scene where they repair a wagon wheel.

The adventuring team is jumping along in "speed pouch mode" (see note below) and they come across a wagon with a broken wheel. The payload is too heavy to repair it while the wagon is stuck, so the owners are unloading it.

MC: "Wow, could you pick a bigger trope?"

Also, the adventuring ranks are:

• Named Corpse (for children!)
• Footnote (most adventures start here)
• Background Character
• Supporting Cast
• Antagonist
• Protagonist

(Who needs A-F, S, SS ranks when we have something so much better‽ Ahahah)

The [Warrior] on the team wears armor crafted by the famous blacksmith, Mr Plott. Distantly related to the King of the Kingdom of Plott.

Speed Pouch Mode: Where the MC turns herself into something like a kangaroo with a human head and a huge, oversize pouch that the other two ride in—after they're transformed into Chibi mode, haha. They can move at about 45MPH in this configuration which is waaaay TF faster than horses, so they inadvertently end up being like first responders, surprising TF of medieval-age people ("how has help arrived already‽").

Yes. Women have the biological means to perform just about any activity a man can do (two arms, two legs, a sapient brain, etc) , but there's something only women can do.

Following this to its logical conclusion: If a woman can do it, it's not masculine.

Hence my statement: Feminine things do exist (not because they're a particular color, LOL). There's a whole aisle of literal feminine products in every grocery store but there's no "masculine products" section.

To be fair, what's the point of the bill? Child porn is already illegal. It's like the bills banning non-citizens from voting.

While they're at it, why not ban murder, theft, and drunk driving?

Historically, bills like this that appear to be so obviously "good" are often traps that contain unrelated, nefarious shit. Like hiding a ban on abortion inside a bill that's supposed to be about banning something everyone hates.

I'm highly skeptical of the bill but at the same time I wouldn't put it past Elon to be against it for all the wrong reasons 🤷

Ooh, I actually know a little bit about this!

A property owner can put whatever TF restrictions they want in the lease—and they often do! But just because it's in a contract doesn't mean it's legal (e.g. contract to kill).

Let's say a property owner finds out their tenant is working from home. They claim a violation of the lease and start eviction proceedings. That's dumb AF.

• This would only ever be used as an excuse for a tenant they don't like.
• If it came before a judge, even they would be like, "WTF?" And would probably not demand an explanation, but instead would point to mountains of case law that say a property owner can't dictate what people can and can't do within a rental property as long as those activities don't impact the property (e.g. the value).
• That's when the property owner would have to explain how Joe Schmoe working from home is somehow worse than retiree Judy Anywoman who stays at home all day every day.

Oh this isn't a normal blacksmith forge. It's a huge thing with loads of workers. Like a mini industrial foundry.

The concentrated solar energy is used to melt steel inside silicon carbide crucibles. You put your steel in and send er up! Once melted, they bring it down and pour it out into molds or they can direct the concentrated sunlight down into a pseudo crucible (an oven, really) that heats the object to workable temperatures.

They've got it down to a science, literally.

Then my protagonist comes along and tells them about the Bessemer process and the blacksmith (his dad) is like, "well FUCK! We just revamped the whole forge two years ago!"

There's a forger's guild and they're super excited about the information the MC gave them and all the blacksmiths in the guild are rushing to be the first to get that process working.

My MC was a biologist in their past life, but they're all into this forge stuff! From their perspective, they are like a forger's guild superstar, haha. Even nearby royalty are trying to get his attention (steal him away to their countries). Even though he wasn't really an expert on metallurgy in his past life. He just knows a bit more than the current world's level of technology.

Then he accidentally gets himself stuck as a girl at age ~13.5 by being hexed by a witch into a Common Reed Frog for a month (that species can change its sex under certain conditions). Hahaha.

Suddenly the forger's guild isn't interested in her anymore. She's tiny! She can't wield a hammer or move heavy steel works!

She ends up getting stuck working as a seamstress apprentice for ~2.5 years, waiting for the [Shapeshifter] [Sex Change] skill to unlock (it's an "adults-only skill" so The System won't let her use it until then).

This entire time he/she has been trying to min/max their build. Unlock all the skills! Level them up to max level! Which is the attitude that got him stuck as her in the first place.

I've got all sorts of cool "tech uplift" stuff in the story:

• MC upgrades the biogas system to bubble the gas through slaked lime to remove the CO2 to make it burn hotter (she ends up needing all those crushed sea shells and limestone later for [Bone Shaping] which lets her make stuff out of bone).
• The process of refining aluminum starts: Bayer process, then struggling to make magnets and electricity for the Hall–Héroult process.
• Explaining the process to make flat glass (pouring on molten tin) and trying to come up with a way to do that with solar energy.
• Loads and loads of ceramic pipes in and out of the volcano, haha.
• Sulfur harvesting to make, well, everything haha.
• Trying to remember how to make silver nitrate to make good mirrors.

Etc etc.

All while this is going on, she's an unhinged maniac, bleeding herself as much as possible every day to level up her [Blood Production] skill (which she unlocked after getting her first period! Haha).

She also laid hundreds of frog eggs when she was stuck as a frog and now those "kids" are growing up as sapient half human frogs. They need bedtime stories! Hehe.

It's a comedy and I have so much silliness to cover, I don't think I could cram it all into a traditional publishing format without sacrificing a lot of the world building that I want to do.

I know that's a classic mistake! Too much detail! However, if I squeeze a little bit in every chapter and focus on character development, maybe I can keep the reader interested throughout it all 🤷

Well, it's alright. It's fine for outlining a normal book I think... My only problem with it is that it's primarily designed to make old fashioned books like they're Hollywood movies or TV shows.

That made a whole lot of sense when people were still going to the movies and watching TV. That way, your book's layout (not the story... That's a different matter) would match what people are used to.

It's made for short-term consumption: ~6 hours.

When a reader picks up a printed book, that is what they expect: To be entertained for about six hours, then put the book down maybe forever.

When it comes to web novels, that style of outlining makes no sense. The longest-running web novels that are still popular focus on character development for the most part.

How much of Save The Cat! is focused on character development? Like, zero. It's about tightening your story into a concise, easy to read format that readers have historically enjoyed. It makes a lot of sense for traditional publishing!

You can wave your hands in the air and say that character development is something you're supposed to fit into the story e.g. just write well when writing say, Dude with a Problem.

You can also say that even if you're trying to write something big, you should still divide it up into volumes and each volume should follow a traditional publishing plot flow (e.g. 5 act, 3 act, Save The Cat!, Hero's Journey, etc).

All fine advice, LOL. I believed! It made so much sense! Not only that, but what other advice are we all told to follow?

• 1500-2500 word chapters.
• Keep the entire story within 80,000-120,000 words.
• Don't use any fancy formatting, emoji, or special characters, and certainly no color!

I believed all of it until I read The Wandering Inn. It's all bullshit!

80,000 word chapters, colorized text, emoji. It's fantastic. Reading that was so refreshing and completely made me do a 180 on all that other advice.

I've read other extra long web novels and enjoyed them too. Not only that but I really appreciate bullet points and tables! Also, colorized text here and there looks fantastic and can be super immersive.

Even the occasional emoji can be super fun and make the reader smile.

Neat! My shapeshifter story (that I described earlier in this thread) is actually kinda solarpunk too!

The MC's father runs The Hammer which is a blacksmith's forge built into the valley between a volcano and a mountain range. The forge runs mostly via a heliostat array—hundreds of mirrors aimed at a concentrator right over the middle of the forge. It also sits on top of a huge underground biogas generator, which is used as additional heating on cloudy days (and the winter).

I actually did loads of research and calculations to figure out if this setup was even possible or realistic. Turns out, it's a very real possibility.

I even checked to make sure that the geography made sense and how much feed stock would be necessary to keep everything firing in the winter.

I may have gone a bit overboard.

It's about a shapeshifter. Not your usual, "they can turn into animal(s)" or "can become whoever they want" shapeshifter. No.

This shapeshifter uses their knowledge of biology (from their past life) to manufacture stuff using their body.

I've seen and read so many stories with shapeshifters in my years and I always wondered, "if they can change their body however they want, why can't they just make shit with it?" Hehe.

I mean, imagine how cool it would be if you could pop an entire set of bone keycaps off your arm? Complete with enamel or nacre (mother of pearl) coatings.

My story is fantasy isekai, so keycaps aren't going to be a thing, but I thought it was a good way to demonstrate what I'm talking about.

This character unlocks a whole lot of skills that let them produce just about anything that an animal can produce and shape these objects (if they're solid; no need to shape oil or poison, hehe). Ultimately, they also end up unlocking a skill that lets them shapeshift other people—which probably sounds overpowered—but shapeshifting isn't exactly the fastest skill, hehe. Not early in the story anyway.

It's a comedy, though!

The MC joins up with some other folks and one of them—a [Warrior]—ends up with the [Hot Rod] subclass because the MC is constantly tinkering with her biology.

My previous method was to just fill in a plot outline template for a 3-act story. Then I tried a Save The Cat! Template and both seemed like they don't map very well to a web novel style of writing.

They (those outline styles) are obviously tied to the traditional publishing model, where every little thing is meant to conclude by the end of say, 80,000-120,000 words. With zero consideration of things like world maps, systems (so you can keep track of say, leveling), etc.

For litRPG, I want more. In fact, I need more. Otherwise I'll write a chapter and realize that character X hasn't even earned the skill necessary to complete the plot yet!

I plan to use a new publishing platform that I invented/coded to publish this story too, which accepts Obsidian export. So when the story is complete, I can export the parts I choose and it'll sort of have a built-in wiki along with notation for a world map (so the reader can check the progression while reading the story; it's in the sidebar and reveals more of itself as the story goes different places).

I already wrote the publishing platform, so now I'm working on "the example story" that shows off the features. The biggest one is being able to pull up the sidebar to view the characters current profile info (which includes their stats, levels, etc).

Example: When you read that a character just leveled up [Screaming Internally], that will be reflected automatically in the sidebar. In the text, it just uses Obsidian call-outs for that so it's pretty native/natural.

I started working on a book two weeks ago using a new method:

• Do the whole thing in Obsidian.
• Instead of a normal plot outline, I just wrote pages for characters and how they interact with each other.
• Then I wrote "Arcs". Basically, just summaries of what the challenges are for the characters to overcome over the longer arc of the story.

Then I wrote some bullet point outlines for the first few chapters indicating what I wanted to happen and tied them back to the arc progression.

Finally, I started writing some of the text of the story.

So far, I really like how it is working out. Probably spent way too much time worldbuilding, but I'd do that anyway, hehe.

It's litRPG, BTW.

Sounds like a watch you can count on!