Tell us about the latest episode

A word about this latest episode, no, a word about the overall plot of Volume 3 so far.

Originally in my idea, the third volume of the story is written in the juvenile detained, wandering in the world, write about the characters and events in the world, the idea is very good, but the reality is often bone.

In order to write the third volume, I read a lot of travel novels and anime, movies and television.

It’s frustrating to realize that the travelogue genre, when placed in the online writing world, the only way to end up with a watery grave.

The reason for this is simple: travelogue novels, where the protagonist is constantly on the go, constantly embarking on a journey, lead to two outcomes:

One: Characters can’t be portrayed in depth and are relegated to roadkill.

Two: The reader has no sense of agency or anticipation.

The first point needs no explanation, right? It’s so hard to build characters and familiarize yourself with a place, and then immediately set off to leave.

The deadliest point is the second one, the reader has no sense of immersion and anticipation. You, as readers, may not have summarized this phenomenon, but I, as an author, have quite a deep study on the reader’s sense of expectation and generation.

Fixed maps, fleshed out characters, a greater sense of anticipation and immersion.

Let’s say Xu Qi’an wants to sleep with a girl, which one is more expected, sleeping with a state master or sleeping with a hooker? If Xu Qi’an wanted to play hard to get, which would be more expected, playing hard to get in front of a big shot in the capital or playing hard to get in front of a bunch of jianghu pikers?

In the former case, the sense of anticipation is built up by the number of words, whereas in the travelogue genre, you can’t build up that sense of anticipation because you’re too “flitting” and moving around.

Before I started, I had originally planned to write the jungle chapter in the format of a unit drama.

For example, take the nine dragon qi hosts as the main line and write their story, with the protagonist participating as a bystander. But then, the protagonist’s presence is too low, and there’s not enough cool points.

Not enough cool points means no!

Then I thought that I could make up for it with tons of little events that would heighten the tension of the plot, and those little events don’t have to be useful, they could be passing through a village and realizing that there are ghosts and monsters causing trouble.

Passing through a certain town, there are squire bullies bullying men and women.

These are the usual techniques used in travel works to write about the events and customs that the protagonist encounters along the way, but they aren’t very useful for the main story.

Such a fragmented story, occasional writing is fine, write more, neither generation nor sense of expectation, but will give the reader the feeling that the author in the water.

Until now, I haven’t come up with a better way to solve these problems.

I was tempted to ask the big boys for advice, but on second thought, there aren’t really that many people who could teach me, and besides, I don’t know any of them.

Throughout December, I was in a burnt-out writing state.

I was desperate for excitement and wanted to heighten the tension of the plot, hence the Faustian Pagoda episode, but as I wrote it, I realized a problem: the padding wasn’t enough.

The padding isn’t that the events are too abrupt, but that the characters on all sides haven’t been fleshed out yet, and there’s no rhyme or reason to pretending when the characters aren’t fleshed out.

But that’s the way the travelogue genre is written.

Next, I’ll start the plot with “Conflict”, “Crisis”, “Escalation”, and the Sleeping Master as the centerpiece. Then, based on the results and your feedback, I’ll decide the length of the first half of the third volume.

Teenage Detention is only the first half of the third volume.

That’s all for now, I haven’t coded a word today and have been thinking about all this.

The first reason for writing this single chapter is to rant and spit out the bitterness of the creative journey. The second is to hope that if readers have any good suggestions, they can mention them in this chapter say.

Maybe your comments will inspire me.

I’m eager to have some deep, soulful encounters with you. (DOG HEADS)

All right, let’s eat. We’ll finish up.