In the era when the sales volume of this book is not as good as one year, and the people in the industry sighed “Young people are far away from reading”, there are a number of best-selling works on the novel submission website “Becoming a novelist”: “No job change” Generating Slime’s “The Ordinary Career Achievements in the World’s Strongest” “The Heterogenous Engineer’s Different World Rhapsody”… These novels mostly tell the ordinary protagonist to reincarnate into a different world, using modern knowledge and talents (“plug”) to show their talents. The story of the harem is opened, the writing is also straightforward, and there are few fancies rhetoric. In all respects, attention is not given to any pressure on the reader
These online novels that have formed a fixed pattern have also attracted many people’s analysis and comments. Some people have accused that this generation of young people has lost their initiative and just wants to wait for the pie in the sky. Some people criticized because Japan’s social economy is stagnant, young people can’t see the upside, and they can only hope to reincarnate
Unlike these critics who point the finger at society and the times, modern business websites have come to the novelist Tsuda, asking him to be a “fictionwriter” user, explaining the network from a data perspective. The origin of the text mode
Tsudakoma is a doctor in reality. His work “Become a Network Novelist Chronicle” tells the story of the protagonist of the rebirth using statistical data to get a high ranking on the website
Why does the “Become a Novelist” website appear on the website with similar settings and stories? Tsuda pursued the roots and pointed out that the root of the current work group of “becoming a novelist” is the second creation of “The Magic of Zero”
Although due to copyright relations, the “Become a Novelist” website now has strict restrictions on secondary creation; however, the second creative culture of the year is still deeply rooted in the website. Once a popular work appears, there will soon be a series of works with similar settings and stories
Tsuda uses “RPG production master writing” to call this creative technique. Even if you don’t understand the programming language and don’t compose your own composition, you can use the “RPG Master” software to piece together the various materials. The same is true for the writing of the text on “Becoming a novelist”. The various elements that the authors have jointly referenced have become the common material
Today, there are a total of 640,000 works on “Becoming a Novelist”. Although there are many works that are not routines, the total number of routines is still very impressive. Then, in order for a web novel to stand out from tens of thousands of similar works, efforts must be made to attract readers
Tsuda gave an example of the time to provide the story. He believes that online novels and social networking sites are similar in nature to readers. Therefore, writers have to update serials almost every day, so that their works are like brushing teeth and eating, and become part of the reader’s daily life
The reason for this is that because online novels are not involved in editing, writers can directly output stories to readers according to their own timing. It is this kind of environmental advantage that makes online novels “let the story into everyday life.”
However, this system of course has problems: the editors of the publishing house are professionals in writing, and they can guide the author’s creation to a better path. And online novels are not edited. Who will guide the work?
The answer is: the reader
Because there is no editorial involvement, the sense of distance between the authors and readers of online novels has shrunk dramatically. In the comment area of the website, readers and authors can directly engage in conversations about the work. From the typos to the story, the dialogue between the author and the reader in the comment area can be directly reflected in the work
In this sense, the readers of online novels are the coaches who cultivate their favorite works and authors, as well as the authors and works that are sent to the top of the list and producers of commercial publishing. They can think, “This author is what I cultivated.”
This honeymoon relationship between readers and authors is very good at first glance, but in turn, it also imposes some restrictions on story creation
I don’t think many people will like the unfortunate encounters and stress in daily life. Similarly, the readers of online novels are also extremely disgusted with the misfortunes and pressures in the novel
This also goes back to the secondary creation of the “Become a Novelist” group. Many of the works on the Internet are authors who have self-entered themselves into the protagonists of existing works, and feel that “if it is how I am”, they begin to create. And readers tend to like the protagonist who can make it happen
Therefore, both the author and the reader will coincide themselves with the characters in the real world, and do not want the protagonist to have an unpleasant experience
And the “Become a Novelist” website has a click-through analysis function, which is displayed in the form of clear data. When the protagonist encounters misfortune, the reader will abandon the work
致 郁 展开 导致 → → → → → → 访问 访问This constitutes a cycle in which the works on the site are excluded from the expansion
And this tendency becomes more apparent as the number of visits is transferred from the computer to the smartphone. Around 2015, this change began to show significant. Tsuda believes that this is the result of the habit of readers reading online novels on their mobile phones during the daily fragmentation time
In 2013, to improve rankings, the best word count for a single round is more than 5,000 words; however, by now, the best word count for a single round has become 2000 to 3000 words. This also reflects the shortened time for readers to invest in a work every day
And this change in the number of words is also the result of changes in online novels in order to make themselves part of every day, and is the result of the authors’ pursuit of “the best component of reading novels on mobile phones during fragmented time.”
Reviewing the process of getting popular online novels and the environment in which they live, Tsuda has come to the conclusion that every day and novels are bordered by the space of the novel submission website. Online novels may be a kind of salvation to the stressful modern society and have been welcomed by people
(https://gendai.ismedia.jp/articles/-/64174).
Regardless of the reason, the online novel is on fire, this is an indisputable fact. Faced with the popularity of online novels, many companies have set up their own novel submission platforms to try to get a piece of it. Just last week, there were Line Novel and Novema! Two new platforms were born
For this phenomenon, the light novel writer Shuicheng Masahiro published a blog post. He pointed out that although the operators of these new platforms want to “resurrect the dying publishing world” “not only the reincarnation of different worlds, recapture the diversity of novels”, but the market has proved that not many people fully agree with their slogans. Even if you change to a “respect for the user” attitude, it is estimated that it will not pick up any splashes
Shuicheng believes that anyone can expect, as long as the ultimate goal you pursue is to expand the market, no matter how much effort you make, it will only promote homogenization. In the end, there will be a lot of websites with no personality, even Diversity is impossible to achieve. Each novel submission website is based on the principle of “binding” readers to their own websites. Although there is nothing wrong with this, it will lead to a smaller version of the problem that video sites are now facing, that is, we will lose “fiction as a common language.”
What is wrong with losing the novel as a common language? If it’s not good, it’s not good. This will lead to “people can’t know how people who are rare but do exist think.” People can only understand the way in life that cannot be used in the form of stories, and what should be hidden. Because of the low cost of novels, modern people can tell private stories through it (this is also due to the fact that movies and television have taken away the function of “national novels”). And if people are “tied” on a website and don’t look at novels on other websites, it will be a big loss
In the view of Shuicheng, many publishers now want to restore “national novels”, and the submission website is also a tool for them to achieve this goal. They want to change the best-selling novels into all kinds of media, and use the money they earn to publish (they think) the “conscience” works. This model has clearly declined, and the publisher is still holding it, which makes Shuicheng feel crazy. Moreover, this style is an insult to the “selling works.” The conflict between light novels and literature in the past has exposed this
So how should we resist? Shuicheng believes that it is the solution to create a community of writers and readers by presenting their intimate inner works as a work and providing a model of the entire lifestyle on the website. The writer personally shows the reader how to express his inner being, which will become the key to the survival of the novel. He still has a lot to complain about the status quo of “noble literature”, but it is still not good to write
(https://s-mizuki.hatenablog.com/entry/2019/04/19/142009)