Book of Rant

Oh boy, so it begins.

If you want to do a harem make sure you do it properly. 

One of the most common things on wattpad when it comes to Male Reader inserts is the ever-so-familiar trope of doing a harem. Harems are not that bad if they are the right size and have desired members, but, there are limits to how boring and how interesting a harem can be. Personally, I believe making an overly large harem is a bad thing. Take RWBY, the show features attractive girls behind every corner and horny bois of Wattpad wanna bang all of them, which brings the first group of problems. Overly large harems are boring. If you include every single woman in the show into the harem you will not only have a crap ton of work to do but also really boring character development. I believe that when doing a harem you should properly develop all characters and write out how they grew closer and closer, rather than just making them fall for the other party at first sight. The optimal number of girls in a harem is in my opinion around 5 or 4, any more than that and the book risks becoming problematically dull and simple. You should also know whether doing a harem is even a good idea in the first place. If you are not fully familiar with the story you are writing (in terms of Reader inserts) then you should consider giving the MC only one love interest, and make it one that you can write about as they develop, not just some random girl that falls in love with the MC because you are horny.

Original powers are important.

Reader inserts are becoming more and more original in terms of content because people realised they could experiment with their ideas. If you are writing a heavily combat-oriented book with fantasy elements you should give the MC a proper power that is both original and fits the character. Original in terms that you thought of it, be it an interesting and original use of fire or even better, a completely new idea all together, like being able to manipulate the distance between two objects for example. But, you also have to know how to use the MCs abilities properly and write accordingly. A lot of books feature boring and generic powers that nobody cares about outside of the creator, sometimes not even them. However, a book like this can still redeem itself by making the MC use the ability creatively. Take portals, instead of using them just to travel or move objects and other people, what about using two portals, one at the bottom of the ocean and one aimed at an enemy and blasting them with a tsunami? There is no limit on how crazy and unique you can make a character, I mean, just take a look at JoJo and you'll see. Be creative, not generic.

Why including multiple original characters can be a double-edged sword.

Including your own original characters in fanfiction is never a bad thing, but that can become debatable depending on how you use them. Characters should always fit into the world you are writing about, so creating an OC with magic for example and throwing them into Dragon Ball will be very wonky and kind of weird. Your character should always have a personality and act accordingly, if you say that the character is evil and have them save someone without a proper reason they, and you, contradict what has already been established. This is generally an example of bad writing and can happen especially often in a book that isn't often updated and doesn't have a pre-planned plotline. You also shouldn't include too many original characters, giving a show with an already large cast of characters even more characters will lead to a lot of confusion in later chapters as not everyone will remember a character that appeared for half a chapter fifty chapters ago and appears again in the latest episode. Solutions to this are that you either create a small number of OCs and use them sparingly, such as when fight scenes happen and you want to create an original battle between two characters and not alter the plot too much or just don't use OCs.