Strange Era: An exclusive talent every month

Chapter 86 Sanjiang Remarks + Sharing of Creative Ideas

It’s my first time visiting Sanjiang!

As a young author who has just turned eighteen and is writing a book for the first time, I am very excited to be featured in Sanjiang.

It seems that people who go to Sanjiang rarely write testimonials recently, which makes me very hesitant, should I write one?

But after thinking about it, I still have some content I want to share in this book. After all, it is really fun to write.

Therefore, I will share some ideas for the creation of this book below. The content will be relatively dry. Friends who are interested in writing novels can take a look -

1. Background processing

First of all, friends who have read this should have already seen the worldview of this book. There are no normal people, everything is weird.

I have always wanted to write a weird novel, but I always felt that I had seen too many novels with weird themes, and none of them highlighted the "weird" enough.

The essence of most novels is still the same, the contradiction between weirdness and human beings is like the contradiction between monsters and mortals.

The last time I was surprised by the weirdness was probably the rule-based ghost story novels that were all the rage some time ago.

However, this kind of imaginative writing can only involve the protagonist constantly conquering dungeons. The subsequent upgrade line is weak, and the world view is not complete enough. It is difficult to support a long story, and the routine is too simple. Basically, the protagonist can only continuously cycle and recycle the gold. The finger guide copy shocked the world.

But it also gave me some inspiration.

What would happen if... this rule characteristic was applied to everyone in the world?

As a result, the entire world is composed of rules and ghost stories. Each player is a ghost story itself, and through the rules of the game, he constantly acquires new rules and characteristics, merges them into a complete profession, and transforms into a game world where the characteristics and abilities can be transformed from second to third. It came to my mind.

This world where only "uncanny" exists subverts the norm, like colorful oil bottles and jars poured on white paper, forming a strange and bizarre picture.

But it is very difficult to construct such a worldview, and it is completely impossible to write it using normal logical thinking.

Since we want to highlight the "cunning", the relationships between the characters in this world cannot be handled by normal people. We also need to take into account the huge number of characteristic items and career information, which means that this book still has a huge number of characteristics that need to be written.

Therefore, I used a gamified world view for this book, and gave our protagonist Chen Ye the identity of an internal beta player.

Internal beta players have a very important role - the protagonist has a certain understanding of the world. When dealing with huge setting details, you need to lead readers to understand a new setting. You can use the protagonist's thinking perspective to explain the background worldview clearly.

The conventional worldview needs to be developed through dialogue. A typical example is to recruit old people and bring in new ones. The protagonist is introduced through seniors. The whole page is full of set dialogues. Before you know it, it will pass in one or two chapters. Occasionally, once or twice is fine. But too many settings can become too cumbersome.

Because there are too many settings in this book, if you use traditional dialogue to unfold the world view, it will easily make the entire text too wordy and bloated. However, the settings of the closed beta players are directly told from the first perspective, saving time and effort. Pen can launch the settings of [Features] more simply and clearly.

This is set to be the core for closed beta players.

But because this background structure is brand new and has a "cunning" theme, if the protagonist knows too much, it will dilute the feeling of exploring the unknown.

In the later stage, it is easy to write a weak and exciting article and lose the sense of tension.

In the process of processing, I deliberately made a certain degree of distinction between the game and reality, and also set this copy as a brand-new copy with a lot of new game content.

In this way, a balance is achieved between the two aspects of "schedulable information" and "unknown sense". At the same time, the closed beta players are actually a very common template setting in online game-themed novels, which is a golden finger with an innate identity.

Hey, if you do it like this, it seems like you can kill three birds with one stone?

This way of handling it seems to be perfect.

But only "seemingly".

The actual effect is that since readers will have certain expectations for "internal beta players", when the unknown information of the new copy is unfolded, it is easy for new readers who have not fully entered this world in the early stage to feel as if The internal beta players have set the settings in vain!

Actually it's not...

It’s because the world background and various settings have not yet been rolled out, and the strategy has not yet been launched, so the advantages of the closed beta have not been written out yet. Unless the main plot is just the simplest and most straightforward way to kill monsters and upgrade... Then you can start the strategy in the early stage... But the content written in this way is not interesting enough, and there is often nothing to write later, and it will quickly become exhausted.

Taking into account the layout and strategy has become a major problem in writing.

When I wrote this, I discovered many problems in the arrangement, setting and narrative, as well as the discrepancy in information between the presenter and the receiver... and so on.

Regarding this point, I have reviewed many writing methods later, but it is difficult to achieve perfection.

Because the amount of information readers can accept at the same time is limited.

As for the reason why so many settings are conceived in a novel, there is only one main core - to make the story more interesting.

But if too long is used to clarify the settings and solve all the loopholes and blind spots, the story will not be interesting.

In terms of arrangement, it is difficult to achieve perfection in early stage processing due to limited information acceptance, as well as the need to deal with new backgrounds, huge features, and job transfer and upgrade lines. For example, the cooking method of food in "Strange Era" is against the norm. The method of making fried chestnuts with sugar was conceived in my mind in advance, so when it first appeared, the word "fried" was used.

Many readers felt something was wrong, and this caused an arrangement problem.

I am very grateful to readers for their support. Every comment, every ticket, and every collection of yours seems to turn into a warm current injected into my body, constantly giving energy and making me full of greater confidence in subsequent creations. Compared with the earlier vague ideas, because the results of this book exceeded my expectations, I am more attentive...

Whenever I close my eyes, my consciousness seems to be able to travel through countless dimensions and connect with this absurd and weird world.

Now, the worldview of this book gradually comes to mind, and is outlined clearly and completely, as if the eyes can penetrate the dimensional wall and see another real world.

Every inch of land there, every person...well, every detail of the changes seemed to have really happened before our eyes.

I am just a recorder of the world, selecting interesting content, arranging it, and creating content.

Thank you very much for the support of every reader. You allow me to see this world and make it more real and complete.

Writing this book was also a huge breakthrough for me in my own creation and brought me a lot of benefits.

2. Logic and structure

As we all know, novels are stories of characters unfolding under a specific background.

The story needs to be developed around the logical lines derived from the background, so that it can be thoughtful and unified in structure.

But with the theme of "cunning", the perspective unfolded is destined to be different from the thinking logic and emotional model of normal people. Once you fall into conventional writing, the "cunning" artistic conception will be destroyed.

At this point, the "equivalent exchange", "acting method", and "seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages" that I set have become the logic of "interpersonal communication" in building this world.

Among them, acting is the most important and the key to balance——

Let the trick have some human characteristics and become reasonable, but at the same time leave room for "dehumanization" artistic processing.

Due to the mode of acting, the "uncanny" swings between human and non-human. This treatment takes into account the two parts of the normal world view and the breaking of common sense as a bizarre world. With the profit-driven "equivalent exchange" as the character's purpose, there is still room to break the stereotyped formula. It is possible that one moment they seem to be enemies, but the next moment they can cooperate because of the consistency of interests.

This kind of swing makes the novel more varied. Even the author cannot guess what will happen in the next second. Unknown and novelty are often elements that need to be strengthened in novels with the theme of "cunning".

At the same time, acting as a main line of upgrade in the early stage, coupled with the way to compete for the rankings, can play a role of taking into account multiple points.

In this way, readers can have a deep understanding of the main plot through upgrading, and then use different professional identities to describe different "cunning", and then use settings to promote the operation of the entire unconventional world.

And because the role is bound to the main plot, you can use ink freely in this part without worrying about issues such as acceptance and arrangement. After all, the cheats, upgrade lines, and expectations are all here, just write.

In this way, while describing the background setting, it is possible to closely maintain the structure and rhythm of the entire book and maintain the smoothness of the narrative.

Readers who see this should also notice that the structure of this book is very strong. Uh, for example, the word count of some cards is fragmented...

But some readers may ask: Author, if you have finished explaining your creative ideas, wouldn’t it be boring to continue reading...

Hey.

Who said these writing structures will be recycled forever?

Even if it is the same book, I like to constantly challenge new writing methods.

Now that I have written this book "Strange Era", I have been challenging the most difficult topics along the way.

It doesn't hurt to take a few more steps.

In the eyes of most readers, online games and system articles are extremely formulaic and the structure is driven like an industrial assembly line.

But during the writing process of this book, I suddenly realized a writing method of "using structure and breaking structure".

Are you specific? Of course it will be kept secret for the time being!

Chapters after they are released may use this writing method, so please look forward to it.

The release date will be June 1st.

In order to thank all readers for their support along the way, there will be a big update at that time. The number of updates will...should satisfy you, right?

The main website of this book is published on QQ. If you have friends who read through QQ or other channels, you are welcome to come to Qidian to help with your first order.

Support genuine!

After writing a certain amount of space, there may be a staged summary.

Of course, there is no guarantee that there will be one. If one day the writing fails, all is lost, and the experiment explodes, then it will not be a waste of time, haha.

But... I have already laid the foreshadowing in my mind all the way to the ending, so I shouldn’t be scolded as a bad ending, right?