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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
Still on Coornhert's Synod on the Freedom of Conscience. So far "Gamaliel" has been winning the fictional debate with genuinely inspired words. Though it turns out that he's just Coornhert's stand-in. These words have reminded me of the value of reasonable expectations:
Reverend Insanity, a very popular and widely recommended Xianxia novel with a villain protagonist.
I was very vexed at how slow the first 30 chapters were, but even as a noob to Cultivation novels, I know that's considered a lightning fast start. But what annoyed me was the fact that everyone had hyped up the protagonist as being fucking evil, and the worst thing he did for those 30 chapters was beat up his classmates for their lunch money.
Of course, I stuck with it, and the part where he boiled a kid alive as a handy magical ingredient certainly dispelled my doubts!
Alright, so RI is pretty much Grimdark Pokémon. You've got "Gu Masters", going around with the equivalent of a pokeball inside their body that they keep trying to make bigger and stronger. They try and catch Pokémon and use them to kill their opponents, with the low level stuff being akin to the shitty grass and poison types you find in the early level tall grass, and then progressing till you've got God (Arceus) in a tiny chinesium ball.
I mean, they mind rape the Pokémon into compliance instead of training them the old fashioned way, but let's split the difference. Everything else revolves around leveling and evolving them, and fighting other trainers for resources, with an added side of just outright killing them when convenient.
The protagonist is a reincarnator, who had lived for 500 years and struggled to a relatively high position in society until his newfound OP pokémon prompted jealous rivals to gang up and whoop his ass (he may or may not have murdered millions of people).
However, the Pokémon they were after was Time Travel-mon, so he went !YOLO and traveled back to his childhood, and did everything over again with the benefit of foreknowledge. Further atrocities ensue.
Anyway, the book is well written and the translation isn't even all that janky, but the main draw is the tight and intelligent writing, you can really tell that the author thought through the ramifications of his worldbuilding, and knew how to write intelligent and relatable characters yet intentionally made his MC a flaming asshole.
He's a likeable asshole though, highly competent, and monomaniacally driven to achieve true immortality no matter the cost. Cooking children isn't the least of the shit he gets up to, but he doesn't have an easy time.
I'd recommend it, the Cultivation system is certainly a nonstandard one, but nobody reads these things for that do they?
Grit through the first 50 chapters, or ask me for a TLDR, and then it gets really good. If you're worried, his ability to time travel isn't used as a crutch, it's an unreliable ability, and the protagonist is competent enough to get by.
How do people find time and motivation to read novels hundreds of chapters long? A Dance with Dragons had 73 chapters and was already a doorstopper that felt more like a chore by the end.
My biggest gripe with most good novels is that they end far too soon. The one big draw of web serials, including the one I'm writing, is that you are far less constrained by word count and can wring the whole affair dry for all it's got. Million plus words? Fuck yeah
In fact, I'd turn it around on its head and ask why anyone would want a really good work of fiction to end at all, unless it had to. If you're becoming bored or it's a slog, that's a sign of a poor book more than anything else.
Hey that's really cool! Out of curiosity, as someone who'd like to write one myself--
Do you enjoy writing? Do you like your own writing? I'm hopeful that my current distaste for writing is because I recognize my own lack of skill in it, which will hopefully improve with practice.
If not, how do you motivate yourself to write?
Agreed that the longer the book the better, so long as it's good.
I enjoy writing, but it's much more difficult for me to write cohesively, following the standard conventions of plot and narrative.
The way I get inspired is usually some cool idea or vignette, that I then want to incorporate into the story at large, instead of sitting and storyboarding or outlining and then following along.
Taken to it's natural conclusion, that would be a world building document, and very few people want to read those, so I've had to force myself to package them into a more reader friendly form and end up with a novel haha.
As for my own writing, I'm mostly proud of it, especially in the sheer breadth of the worldbuilding. Most authors, even in sci-fi, tend to only think of one or two novel concepts or themes, or perhaps extrapolate 2 or 3 speculative technologies while leaving the rest untouched.
Have advanced cybernetics? For some reason gene therapy isn't explored.
How much of that is intentional and how much is a failure of imagination, I can't say, but my favorite authors go for breadth as well as depth.
However, even if I enjoy that aspect, and am glad that multiple readers have noticed and appreciated the effort and plausibility of the setting, I've discovered several flaws in my own writing that are difficult or unpleasant for me to deal with. I don't like writing dialogue, or environmental description much. Sometimes I struggle to make characters other than the protagonist and make them feel fleshed out.
I haven't had anyone complain about the above yet, so I don't know how much is me being overly critical and what I do need to improve.
But what I'm proudest of is actually getting the damn thing ready for public consumption, for maybe a decade I've had interesting concepts, vignettes or abortive excerpts languishing in my head or a random Google docs file. It took courage to finally say fuck it, we're going live with this one.
And I'm at 78k words, so nobody can say I didn't stick with it either, though the initial enthusiasm has worn off.
You know the primary motivation for me choosing now of all times to publish? It's because of GPT-4. While still not as good a writer as me, I can see the cards on the table, if I don't prove to the world that I actually am a good writer, it'll be entirely moot sooner than later.
I've tried using it in my own work occasionally out of laziness or curiosity, and am usually disappointed. I still can do way better in fiction, and context windows makes it difficult for it to follow along well in such a large work. Ideally I'd get it to polish up some of the aspects I don't like doing, like descriptions etc.
But I was also care about feedback and recognition, and so far my writing has met all the modest goals I've set for it:
Well reviewed? Check.
Had people outright offer to pay for a Patreon to support me? Check.
Get independently recommended to people on /r/rational? Check.
It would take a great deal of effort from me to improve further and become as good as my favorite authors, but I think that I can compete at least when it comes to sheer inventiveness and richness if nothing else.
And since I've spent so long talking about it, here's a link to the actual story:.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/65211/ex-nihilo-nihil-supernum-original-hard-scifi-with
Now I'm not you, so I can't say how much practise or effort you need to be feel happy about it, but I'd suggest getting one or two chapters out even if you're not 100% on them, just for the feedback. If it's surprisingly positive, that's good motivation to continue and if it's not, you've got concrete issues to work with. It's not hard to do, and if it flops just quietly drop it and pretend it never happened haha
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Well, that's not the only draw. Another is that they're free and fairly portable, as they're anywhere you have an internet connection. But yes, I'd imagine people wouldn't like them if they didn't like long books.
I'm currently reading A Practical Guide to Evil.
I like the length in that it's a lot of fun things to read, but also sometimes regret the "where did my life go" from bingeing.
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A good 3 minute song wouldn't necessarily be better stretched to 10 minutes, and the same goes for stories.
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