/lit/ - Literature

>>20707185
>I genuinely wonder what a story can even be ABOUT to be that fucking long.
>>20707177

>considering it has 9,969,572 words while asoiaf has 1,770,000, I doubt it.

ASOIAF is less ambitious so it takes less words. It's not to say that it couldn't smaller, but it's exactly as long as the author needs. Actually, no, it's way smaller than the author would want to, he routinely has to downscale the content of the chapter because he realizes it'd take too much words to write. Think of any Epic Fantasy series, but then imagine that for every part of the story there were other arcs inside, making what would the introductory book 10x as long, but just as much entertaining. The author simply wants to write a real 'Epic' in every meaning of this word. World=shattering events don't come every other chapter, they are set up and built up over an entire volume or longer.

In a way, The Wandering Inn destroyed normal books for me. Everything feels rushed and unearned in comparison. Fact is, Pirateaba is a prodigy of writing, unironically. Nothing of this length and written this fast should have any right to be as good as it is, and yet it's one of the best webnovels on the internet.

Funny thing, normally books are bloated by never ending descriptions and flowery language. TWI's author is actually describes things rarely, most of the story is in dialogues. I wanted to read Wheel of Time the other day and its beginning was so disgustingly bloated in pointless descriptions I couldn't push through more than 20% of the book.

>>20315823
>What's a good chapter/arc to decide to continue or drop. I vague remember reading the first chapter and being put off by the prose and dialogue.
Volume 3 Esthelm arc. I personally didn't like it a first, but a lot of people claim it's the best of the early TWI. So if you still want to drop it by then, then you probably should. Optionally, if you don't want to read up to Volume 3, then probably just the entire first volume. After the first finale you should more or less know what's all about, although it's still not even one fifth of TWI's potential by that time, as it gets much better. You just need to remember that the author was still finding their voice at first, so writing-wise, the first volume might be the worst, but Pirateaba improved leaps and bounds as they kept writing, so it only keeps getting better as you read.

>>20227169
Many webserials end, but not many great ones have ended as of yet.
Reverend Insanity was going good until Chinese Government took issue and ordered the author to stop, too much authority bashing within the story.

Void Herald has written three finished good and popular webnovels, 'Vainquiar the Dragon,' 'The Perfect Run' and 'Never Die Twice.' I recommend The Perfect Run, NDT and VtD if you can withstand LitRPG, VtD in particular is a very funny story following a Dragon discovering LitRPG system of his world after meeting an isekai loser. VtD is much shorter and condensed, being a story of a Necromancer in pursuit of Eternal Life and fighting with Gods. The Pefect Run is a super-hero story, with a MC being able to go back in time to earlier 'save-file,' being in pursuit of the perfect run (speedrun, basically), good overall, although meanders before the end and loses some steam, still finished on a good and satisfying note though.

Wildbow wrote Worm like, 9 years ago? Ward a few years later, and two other webnovels, Pact and Twig, haven't read them but Pact is supposed to be good. At this moment he's writing Pale.

Mother of Learning is a classic and everybody knows it, same with Practical Guide to Evil, although I personally dropped it midway through.

Everybody Loves Large Chests is a weird shit, but it was popular and also finished, although it had way too many rape in it for my taste.
A webnovel with actual good NSFW content would be either 'Blue Core' or 'Erogame', with the second one deserving to be called one of the best things written within the last decade or two, some even speculate it was written by Yudkovsky, the author of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (which counts as a webnovel as well, I guess). Another great rationalist work is Worth the Candle, which I already mentioned earlier.

TWI, according to Pirateaba's staff member, is around a bit below mid-way through. So considering it's Pirate we're talking about, you can very well expect 20+ million words before it's finished, provided they won't die. It's their one and only Magnum Opus, I wouldn't be suprised if they didn't write anything else once they finish it, they are already doing 70-80k words a week as it is. Literally one of the most prolific writers the mankind has ever seen. And they are still writing side books and comics during their breaks. Literally a content machine.

Webnovels seem to have gained popularity only recently, and even I don't know that many of them, focusing mainly on RR (Royalroad). There are other websites Wattpad etc. who focus on slitgthly different genres like dramas and romances. AO3, fanfiction.net and forums like 'sufficientvelocity' or 'spacebattles' focus on fanfiction from what I've seen, although there are original works there as well. Most of Fanfiction is trash obviosuly, obviously. But the ones like Methods of Rationality, The Metropolitan Man or Purple Days shine among them.