This update ends here. The next update will be on May 3rd, and it will be time for the dismissal and self-criticism of each volume.
Ah, Volume Zero, Volume Zero. This story is indeed the beginning of everything. It is not only the first adventure that Ate experienced in the timeline, but also the origin of the entire story.
Before the book Cangdu was started, before the first character was typed, and even before the concept of this book came up, I was thinking about a short story in my spare time while writing posts. This story includes the big boss behind the scenes who takes advantage of everyone, the dragon looming in the fog, the brave robot who steps forward at the end of despair, knights, magic, ancient legends, and detectives who adventure in the city. At that time, I thought wow, this idea is so damn great, so I added many ideas full of chuuni fantasy to it in my imagination again and again, such as the super powerful black sword, so cool Black clothes, and a bad ending full of tragic beauty...
At the time I didn't really understand what I was imagining. I just thought it was cool, it was trendy, it would be a cool story. This story became the beginning of everything, a "prequel" before I actually started writing it. And before I typed the first word, I hesitated for a long time. Should I start writing directly from this prequel story?
A year ago, I chose "no" at that time. I want to put it down and write it after a period of time, maybe after the story in 2 to 3 volumes is completed. I don't think I have enough writing power to write this idea well. I think that at that time, I would definitely make it less than ideal. So in the end, this initial story was moved to the middle and became the actual fifth volume. In the process, I deeply realized how serious the conflict between conception and actual writing was.
When writing this volume, I felt like I was digging a grave in shackles. The dimensions of this grave were all determined by me in previous stories. They were so detailed that I had to make a list to record what I must describe. s things. I never thought that the ideas I jotted down for fashion a year ago would create so many difficulties for myself a year later. For example, there are 4 Creation Worlds in the Kingdom, for example, they are investigating in the Kingdom, and for example, the Dawn Knight is the Creation World. The pinnacle of the world, such as the collapse of the kingdom, which is destined to have a bad ending from the beginning. All of this is doomed that what I am trying to build is a tomb rather than some beautiful underground palace. Its greatest use is to let people After I was exhausted, I could go in and lie down, cover myself with a coffin board, and then let out a plaintive and resentful call from the ground:
"It's done...it's over..."
The Holy King is above.
This is simply a trap. I dug a big hole for myself a year ago and now I have to bite the bullet and jump in. The story has a sad tone that I hate most. The length must be as short as possible to reduce the reader's impatience. The worst part is The nature of the prequel means that this story will not have too many surprises, because everyone already knows the ending! What could be more difficult than writing a story that no one expects to end?
All these factors made this volume very tortured for me in every sense of the word, but thankfully it is finally over, and looking back at this tomb now, I have to say that it is incredible in every way. It's so perfect... but overall it's actually a little more beautiful than the buildings I built before. A little bit.
Of course, it still has many shortcomings. Let's start with reflection.
There are two problems with this volume. The first is that the characters are not fully explored and the city is not depicted in that depth.
There are many organizations and places worth writing about in Superbia, but due to space limitations, I had to focus on the Knights, leaving the royal family and mages as embellishments in the picture. Many of the jokes designed for the Mage Academy were completely useless. I originally set up a living spirit door for the old mage that could only be opened by eating bubble gum... There were many phantoms wandering around in the Mage Academy... these I didn't even have time to write it down and just hurriedly reviewed it, which is actually a pity.
There are many characters appearing in this volume. The Knights, excluding Orianna and Arlandia, still have 5 people. The royal family, including Queen Anne, has 4 people, plus the old mage and apprentice, plus the villains of the Order. The characters make this prequel of a certain length involve too many and wide characters. It is impossible to portray each of these characters perfectly. The space limit is bound to force us to make a choice, so everyone in the Knights has to rely on one or two scenes from the mid-term duel day (Sara didn’t even find it) Suitable highlight moment), Queen Anne was obviously a character worth writing about, but she had no choice but to omit it, and Jane... Jane Diella... was shaped a little less than ideal under this hasty arrangement. .
Okay, let me admit it frankly, the portrayal of Jane Diella is really not very good. She has her own backstory and storyline, and she was designed to be a supporting character to complement Dawn and Ace, but she is so unlikeable in every sense of the word. Her appearance in the Seal Case made a very bad first impression. The design of this case was really not very clever and made Miss Jian herself seem a little unsmart. And when the first impression is bad, telling the background story later will only have an impatient effect, which is understandable, but difficult to agree with. And after turning black, her acting style is "jealousy"... This is a... fundamentally low concept.
It takes a lot of writing power to write about the unpleasant concept of jealousy well and make readers "like" it. I don't think I have reached this level yet. Therefore, after Jane turned black, she could only serve as a boss in the Dao. By now, everyone was tired of watching the battle of the Manifestation Envoy, with no surprises and a lackluster ending. A villain can be unlikable, but he can't just be unlikable. It can be said that her failure in shaping affected the follow-up to a certain extent. This will be left to the abolition of the case.
Another problem, of course, is our ridiculously powerful group of villains (laughs). Wu Xiang is a very strong villain, but as he himself said, his strength is not reflected in frontal battles, but in his manipulation behind the scenes. His theater can achieve very amazing results after careful preparation, but even so, he has to risk his own life to perform a set of thrilling operations such as seizing the body, formatting the memory, and restoring the memory to win. He made an extremely detailed study of every enemy and opponent, using the weaknesses in people's hearts to defeat them one by one and turn them into puppets. He is undoubtedly a difficult enemy, and can even be said to be the strongest villain in the book so far, but because of this, he also has problems.
That is, he has almost no weaknesses. He doesn't fight head-on because he's not good at it. He doesn't care about face so he can act with the "little characters" in person. He doesn't even care about his own memory and he doesn't talk about it. His impermanence is destined to make him stand on the top of the list. The stage is the moment of victory. Wu Xiang's script is rigorous, and his planning is also very rigorous. His victory is a very "reasonable" thing that is calculated mentally and unintentionally, at least in line with the logic in the play.
But being reasonable does not mean agreeing. This form of closing the net bit by bit makes the protagonist group's actions feel "useless", as if the enemy is attacking the protagonist group unilaterally and everyone has nothing to do. Because of this, I added the interaction between the "script" and the story in the later stage. When Wu Xiang made miscalculations, he had to change his plans and make amends. I think if this "miscalculation" was reflected earlier, the interactivity would be good, but in that case the image of no calculation and no strategy would collapse earlier, which is also a helpless choice.
I think a villain can be strong, but being strong without any weaknesses is not good, as it will make you look weak. After Wu Xiang's weakness was exposed in the later stage, I felt that the readers' mood was much better (laughs). This will be improved in the subsequent villain design - after all, there will not be a second "excessive" Chaos Theater in the book. The law of impermanence.
Another additional problem is the cliché cheating in battle that was summarized in Volume 4. There is really nothing we can do about this because the foundation of this story, the cornerstone of everything, is "Orianna's Creation in Battle" and "Ace" "Finally draw the sword" are two plots that have been appearing in the story for a long time. I can't avoid them when writing... That's why I said this is a tomb. If you know there is a pit, you can only jump into it. . The next volume, really, will never happen again. The final battle in the next volume will try to focus on the strategic interaction between the two sides, I promise.
So the reflection session ends here, let’s talk about other aspects.
·
As I said before, there are many characters in this volume, and correspondingly there are many useless cases.
——For example, in the initial design, Jane Diela would be unyielding until she appeared in the final battle and was killed by the Dawn Knight. However, due to the shaping issues mentioned earlier, I made her withdraw midway. After all, she is a It's not good to have annoying characters who are active until the end.
——Miss Crikey is the one who gets more writing in the later period. Everyone can see her prototype, which is Doctor Transformation + Jack the Ripper, and I think that although this guy who jumps repeatedly has done a lot of bad things, he is not too annoying. This may be because she is quite pretty. ……interesting? At least I had fun writing her.
In the original plan, Krikki was withdrawn in the midfield, and she was retained until the later stage to switch positions with Jane Diera. She is also a foil character in terms of positioning, and also foils Ming Xiao and A Ce, but I deliberately did not describe her background story and her past in detail. She always wears a clown mask, and when the mask is taken off, her face is just a blur. As she said herself, what could she do if she recounted those misfortunes in detail? As a "minor character", I think this description is enough.
She quite likes Ah Ce, and I thought about letting them have some more intimate interactions. I visited her home and saw a bad woman just wearing a bath towel after taking a shower (laughing), but in the end I chose not to let Ah Ce. Try to approach this person with a true understanding. Because she has not been mentioned in the past plots, she is more like a "passer-by" to Ace, a familiar stranger.
——Her Majesty the Queen originally planned to have a case to describe in detail her relationship with everyone in the Knights. In the past, she promoted talents regardless of their origins and formulated various policies to support the building in the past. But in the end, there was no time to describe these, and they were mentioned in a few words as background settings. Her Majesty the Queen was sacrificed in every sense of the word... It would have been much easier if she were not the Envoy of Creation.
——McCurro and Gaffrey were originally scheduled to have a scene where they were joking with Atze in the library. Atze wanted to take the opportunity to sit down at a table with the Knight of Dawn and chat and build a relationship. Two old and dishonest people pulled him aside to have fun. Talk about poetry and literature. Since I didn’t have much opportunity to write about my daily life, I gave it up.
——Rakel has a happy house with a variety of cosplay clothes and wax figures, but unfortunately he didn’t write a personal reply.
——The original plan was that Sara would ride a big dog out to play tricks on the bandits when the eldest brother was dating. Then the eldest brother realized that male chauvinism was unflattering, so he hid behind Orianna and said, I will leave it to you, the Seventh Knight. Make Orianna so angry that she explodes. The reason why this was not adopted was that it felt difficult to change the atmosphere of the final confession to success, and it would be really ruined.
There are also some abandoned cases that were well prepared but not actually implemented. For example, when the final incident was about to happen, I originally wanted to arrange for Ming Xiao and A Ce to investigate the case, but the general environment was ignited by Wu Xiang, triggering a city-wide crisis. Riot... This plan was not adopted in the end not only because I felt that my writing skills were insufficient, but also because I felt that it was not very necessary. After all, this book is about a book with super powers. Writing this kind of plot always feels a bit political and can easily cause controversy. I think if the controversial plot cannot significantly deepen the overall story or characters, then there is no need to write it specifically.
In addition, there were a lot of jokes that I had thought about but didn’t have time to use in my exchange with the Knight of Dawn (laughs). It was really fun to write about the exchange between her and Ate, it felt different from others. The story has progressed to almost 2 million words now, and Alandia is the first woman Gongsun Ce really took the initiative to "pursue". Although he chased her very awkwardly and often made fools of himself, I think this kind of young story would be quite interesting to write. After all, they are both laymen when it comes to relationships.
Orianna, the eldest brother of Ace Dawn, becomes a new protagonist group in this volume. It is quite difficult to describe this new group. After all, their status, status and strength are very different, so it takes some effort to integrate them together. Therefore, I tried my best to create both sides of them. The wise and powerful eldest brother has various shortcomings. The weak and introverted Orianna is also innocent and kind. Although Li Ming is smart and upright, he does not understand people's hearts that way. Ace is a hero in every sense. He's not very mature, but you can still see his bright spots... The most laborious thing here is actually this little kid. To show his youthfulness, you have to make him make mistakes, but he can't make that disgusting frown. It was a big mistake. Fortunately, in the end, it seemed that he did a good job overall, even though he didn't think so.
This time the final battle felt that the overall rhythm was more comfortable than that of the Red Mage battle. Although three battles occurred one after another, the perspective was focused most of the time and it was not too confusing. The emotional flow feels...soft? In short, I feel that the rhythm control this time should be okay. At least I personally didn’t find it too difficult. I wonder how you feel.
·
It’s almost time to abolish the case and reflect on it. Let’s talk about the overall story of this volume. In fact, this volume does not have many clear themes. There are encounters, love, and growth, as well as concepts such as greed, fear, bravery, or authenticity. I think if I really want to say it, it might be a "tragedy".
Everyone who worked hard to the end did not get a truly good ending, and the villains could not be called a complete victory. This is really the first time I have written such a story, and it is very tragic for me personally. The leader in creating all these tragedies is undoubtedly the formless god who has no blood or tears, and the various problems in the kingdom are destined to collapse sooner or later. The stage has already been set, and the director just smiled and said it was convenient. . It is precisely because some things are doomed that tragedy is a tragedy.
And in the next volume, we can jump out of this big hole and start writing other stories. The style of the next volume will be completely different from this one, returning to a light-hearted romantic comedy. The protagonists will not be limited to one place, but will move around on a vast map. This time I wanted to write something similar to a road movie unit drama, but the main plot will definitely be closely linked.
At the end of Volume 4, Ace became enlightened, and how to master his current state of mind, develop new ways to use his power, and get along with familiar people in new ways will also be a small highlight of this journey. I am also going to give him some props, weapons, special moves, etc., and try to make some small "upgrades" in the development of the story. This will be seen in subsequent stories.
In addition, you will definitely see a variety of wonderful attractions during the trip, including outrageous landforms like the waterfall on Lingdao. I can't think of too many good ideas on my own. If you have any wonderful ideas, you can mention them here, and I will choose the ones that feel appropriate.
Finally, I am still very grateful to everyone who is willing to subscribe to this book, and I am very grateful to book friends for their rewards, votes and comments. This time I won’t write about volume 5. I will go directly to the story of the next volume after the break. After this time it’s May Day, and I’m going out for a little trip. Therefore, this publication will be suspended for a week. The setting of this volume will be updated in the near future (but I won’t write all the settings like before because there are too many settings in this volume). The main text will be updated on the evening of May 3rd.
