So because of a scene I was writing I have thought of making the world huge. Basically the character is reset every time he dies.(Similar to re:zero) I had him fall for a long time, this gives him a break as every time he was killed. I just thought of how to make it with magic actually. I can make it loop or have some kind of net at the bottom and after a while something cleans it up every once and a while well actually why not a giant spider. I think that is my answer but I am curious what you think a huge world would effect. Since travel times would be greater towns might form in more locations or it could just be more kingdom's would form as it would be harder for a few countries to have control over the world.
I can't follow... The idea of buying time in your draft is not bad, though I feel the whole beginning could be more concise and catchy.
Not sure I really get it either, but just thinking about a huge world - realistically there would be huge gravity and atmosphere accumulation, so life would either be in the clouds or stuck on nearby moons. Or the life forms would have to have some way of adapting to that gravity. The other thing I thought of is that huge worlds (ie more massive) will generally be further out from their sun, so the sun is likely to be a little dot in the distance providing some light but very little heat, so you would probably need the world to be quite volcanic / geothermic to keep the characters warm Ignoring that, then the time it takes to get around would be much longer. Stephen King's dark tower series for instance has the characters in a world that has magically swollen hugely, so that the main guy has been chasing his way around it for hundreds of years and not got too far. Communication would be sketchy if its not a high-tech world, so any small relatively isolated place would think they were pretty much the whole world themselves. Plenty of scope for confrontation where 2 different worlds discover each other. There would probably also be scope for more evolutionary branches, as mutations would have room to develop without being quickly competed out of existence, so you would probably have more human types than just homo sapiens. Maybe more than just the troglodytes etc that we had - maybe you could imagine something more -well erotic that could develop since its CHYOA
I thought of gravity but I didn’t want to mess with that so I just thought of effects that the larger world would have. One of the things I thought of was that since the world is big it would be harder to travel to places so there might be a town on less valuable resources but that is not the case. That would indicate a lack of resources overall rather than it being big. It would be just as hard to travel the same distance but it would be plenty hard to travel across large portions of the planet. I also think it could be a hassle unless you really love world building. So finding a way to cut out the large world idea is probably best. The main point of the beginning is to get the character to a point that he doesn’t care about losing his life or about feeling pain which I did give him a magical ability to reduce pain so I could just relay on that and logic. I could have him fight on his own without going through as brutal of a process, he levels on his own a few times and then meets the group. I guess I just don’t want to rewrite everything. I will but I don’t want to.
So you want a world magically huge not physically? Well, the world as it is in reality IS quite huge, expecially if you don't consider combustion, steampower and electricity. A bigger world wold proably feel more middleage-ish, lack of comon tongue, great differences in cultures, technical and scientifical knowledge, different governments and religions too. Still I don't understand how having a huge world would impact your never-dying character. I don't see any notable interaction between the two things.
I don't think so. The orbit of a planet depends on: - the speed of the planet (The problem here is that the time of a year would be different, so when a character is 18, they would be older in comparison to contemporary people.)- the mass of the planet (With a different mass, the gravitation would be higher.)- the mass of the "sun" Additionally, the intensity of the sun can be different. The intensity has changed and will change. We're just in a situation where the sun has the right temperature. The density of the planet could also be different, though then there might be less hard materials available. Or more liquids, though that might be negative. The amount of water could also be different. So you could have a smaller planet with a fitting mass (to have the same gravity) and with more land instead of water surface. (about two-thirds of the earth's surface is water, so you can simply reduce that.) A higher mass and radius would result in higher gravity. I assume that humans living there would be a little smaller and have more muscles. This might be a positive effect, though if your character is from another dimension, it might be a problem So I think there are several ways of solving the problem, so if you want more world surface, I think you can just go for it. There will surely be explanations for it. You can build the world on the fly. There is no need to explain the whole world before the reader actually needs the information. The main point of the beginning should be to enthrall the reader. For me, your start didn't feel catchy enough, though others might see this differently.
The series Breaking Bad, for example, starts with the main character wearing a gas mask and speeding in an RV with three lifeless bodies through the desert while you hear sirens in the background. It is not the beginning of the story in terms of the actual timeline but it is the beginning of the narrative. Why it came to the (interesting) situation can be explained later. E.g. (I used 2nd person; no idea about the details of the slope) You hear it behind you. The scraping. The rustling. The low wheezing. Another step forward. You feel the edge of the cliff. A small stone comes loose and rattles down into the darkness. More sounds. Different. More to the left. And... Light! A glimpse of light! Attempt number thirty-something and this is the first time you see a glimpse of light. A low growl behind you reminds you of the sharp teeth and the piercing pain. The small light grows a little before the flickering source comes into view. A torch, held by a figure. They murmur something. My rescue! you think, looking down the dimly lit steep slope. Fuck! You turn your head and look straight into a pair of glooming red eyes in the darkness. A cold shiver runs down your head and you remember the ragged hair brushing your arms before it... No, not this time! You look down once again. About fifty feet at sixty degrees. It might kill me. But it's worth a try, isn't it? "See you later!" you finally whisper and step over the edge, dropping on your ass, and sliding down towards the light. Left. Twenty steps forward. Left. Five steps forward. Mind your head. Twelve steps forward..., you memorize the way, just in case a rock hits your backbone on the way down. The sound of clattering stones mixes with yelling, footsteps, and clinking metal. When you finally come to a stop, you're looking at a weird guy who points a sword at you. "Um... What's up?"
Oh are you talking about my first paragraph. I thought you meant a lot larger portion of the story. The part you are mentioning is pretty weak and there isn’t really anything important other than maybe his age. I can definitely add stuff like his backstory later.
Yes, the first few paragraphs should enthrall the reader enough to make them read the whole introduction. But I also feel that the repetitions that follow your initial part are somewhat boring. I think the information that he is an 18-year-old high school graduate isn't necessary at that very beginning. Though you could use that for the scene where he meets the group, especially to show the contrast of the contemporary guy's mindset and the medieval fantasy appearance of the group. You could also use the name there and they could make fun of it because it sounds so funny for them. The information that he died because of being drunk (?) could also be revealed later. I could also imagine that he died in a car crash with him as the drunken driver. That way, you could later introduce the other characters who died with him in that car, some as friends, some as fiends. Though that might not fit your concept of him and every (?) other character being in a game and being aware of that.
If everyone who dies respawns, in this world then your character will meet up with everyone who has ever been in history - Riverworld (Philip Jose Farmer) was based on this idea, with people from different ages linking up. Later the protagonist deliberately repeatedly commits suicide so he could eventually re-spawn in exactly the place he wanted to be.
