The magician of the fairy tale world

Let’s talk about the first and most core issue of this subject:

[Most fairy tale characters are extremely thin, lacking real personality, and completely rely on a small specific story for their existence. Once you leave this story, this character ceases to exist]

When I started to think about writing "Zong Fairy Tales", I tried to refer to "Zong Wu", "Zong Man", "Mei Man", and "Zong Ying Mei".

When I actually started writing, I found that I couldn't refer to the above ideas at all.

Let me give you a simple comic example.

Bucky the Clown in "One Piece", King in "One Punch Man", Satan in "Dragon Ball".

These three people all have a common characteristic, that is, in their own world view, many people mistakenly think that they are bosses, but in fact they do not deserve their reputation.

If I write a comprehensive comic, I can put three people in the same chat group, let the system inform them of their respective identities, and then assign tasks to let the three of them form a team to travel to their respective three worlds and experience various experiences. kind of story.

Each of the three people in the team would think——

"It's so scary. Apart from me, the other two in this team are the bosses."

"They are the Yonko who conquered the world's best swordsman/the strongest man on earth who surpassed the S-class hero/the strongest martial artist who defeated Majin Buu. If the two of them know about it, I am the only rookie. That’s it!”

I can also imagine all the interesting things the trio experienced during their trip to the three worlds:

The S-class hero "Atomic Samurai" challenged King's friend "Qianliangdao" Bucky. As a result, the sharp blade could not hurt the opponent at all, and he was shocked to realize that "King's friends are so powerful!".

Satan, the former champion of the world's best martial arts club, took two friends to participate in the current world's best martial arts club. As a martial arts fanatic, Sun Wukong learns of the arrival of King, a master from another world, and challenges him. How should King, who is so frightened that his heart beats loudly, deal with it...

It's very dramatic when you think about it, and can lead to many interesting stories.

This idea just took me 10 minutes to come up with. There are many similar impressive characters out there. Their combination, collision, friction, and interaction can always give birth to various interesting stories.

However, if I let Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty (original version, not Aurora in this article) meet each other and let the three of them team up, what interesting sparks can be created? What equally interesting story was born?

No, do you three really have any clear personalities?

The example I am giving here is already the protagonist of a fairy tale.

If the trio were the Prince Charming who awakened Snow White, the Prince who picked up the glass slipper to look for Cinderella, and the Prince who awakened Sleeping Beauty, their characters would be even thinner. They were just tools and people who promoted the plot. The prize the protagonist gets at the end.

At this point, the problem is obvious.

In works such as martial arts and animation, the characters and world view have very detailed and memorable settings.

For example, when mentioning Batman, readers will immediately think of Bruce Wayne dressed in black, and a large number of words describing him will immediately come to mind.

These words include the character's idiosyncratic abilities - such as "having money" and "using high technology"; including the character's personality and obsessions - such as "not killing people" and "well-planned"; including the character's background, life experience and Hell of a joke – like “Both Parents Are Dead.”

Part of the character design also includes the character's social relationships. For example, Batman lives in a city called Gotham, and there is an enemy named "The Joker."

These characters with detailed personalities can still produce new stories when they are temporarily separated from their own stories and collide with each other.

But most fairy tale characters do not have such advantages.

They only exist in such a specific and simple storyline——

Sleeping Beauty was just cursed as a baby and then awakened by the prince; Cinderella was bound to a ball and a glass slipper, just as Snow White was just a "princess harmed by the jealousy of the queen with a magic mirror."

These characters lack rich social relationships, are not based on a clear worldview, have no distinctive personalities, lack impressive specialties, and have no ideas that must be adhered to. Everything they have outside of that story is completely empty.

[Once separated from that specific storyline that is familiar to the public, these characters will disappear and cease to exist. 】

You can use your imagination to imagine what kind of if line "Luffy did not become a pirate, but followed his grandfather Garp to join the navy and swore to become a navy marshal" and how he would interact with the generals Akainu and Si. Huang Kaiduo dealt with.

But I can't imagine the interesting if line stories of "if the little match seller's family was rich and she didn't need to sell matches" and "Snow White's appearance is slightly worse than that of the queen, so she is not jealous."

Once the little match girl stops selling matches, Cinderella stops attending the party, and Sleeping Beauty is not cursed by the witch, what is the difference between them and girl A and princess B?

This character just doesn't exist at all.

For folklore and fairy tales, simple characters and storylines are more easily transmitted, passed down orally from generation to generation.

But for a modern work, a long online article, too thin characters and interpersonal relationships that almost live in a vacuum will lead to a lack of ductility.

This is also a big difficulty I encountered in the actual writing process.

A common fan work needs to do: [Use other people's settings to tell your own story].

So the author has to do it, through active intervention to influence the original plot, create a butterfly effect that affects the whole body, expand on the existing characters and worldview of the original work, and tell a unique story of his own.

No mistakes in one post, one content, one 6, one 9, one book, one bar!

But in this book, everything is reversed-

[There is often only a specific story in front of me]

Every time the protagonist mixes in the original storyline, I feel obviously restrained.

Because once this plot is changed too much, then this character and even the entire story will no longer exist.

If the protagonist does not intervene vigorously, but simply follows the original work, then the protagonist has no meaning to exist, so what kind of novel is there?

And because of the restrictions on the subject matter, I can't really write it like an original fantasy. If I were to write an original fantasy, the world view would definitely not be the same as it is now at the beginning. I would definitely use the online themes that readers are familiar with, such as pseudo-dnd, wizard flow, quasi-secret sequence flow, lord text, the fourth disaster, amber flow game world, etc.

In fact, in October, when I was sorting out the outline, I felt this difficulty. So I told the editor about the difficulties I encountered.

From the current point of view, this is a systematic difficulty in selecting materials. After the theme, tone and initial setting of the book are determined, it is difficult to get a fundamental solution.

What I can do is to try to find a suitable plot entry point within a reasonable range. Once the protagonist intervenes in the story and the impact is large enough and the development completely deviates from the original work, I will end this story.

Connecting the previous and the next: [Most fairy tale characters are extremely thin, lack real personality, and rely entirely on a small and specific story to exist. Once separated from this story, the character no longer exists] is certainly a problem, but it is not the biggest problem I encountered during the serialization process.

The more serious hidden dangers of this subject matter are far more than this. The second problem I will talk about next is more fatal and has a much greater impact on the results.

It can be said that the second problem I will talk about next directly leads to the fact that this book is not suitable for long-term serialization. At the beginning of the story, this problem will not be shown at all, but as the length of the story slowly increases, it will gradually explode like a snowball.

What is this second problem? I will talk about it slowly in "Completion Remarks (III)".