The book was officially released on August 1st, and it feels like a century has passed.
This book has been in the works for a long time and was released early for some reasons. To be honest, I was quite stressed. In the last book, I had the question "What should I write in a historical novel?", and this book is the answer I gave.
Historical novels are about writing history.
So I adopted the method of interweaving main lines and hidden lines, and set the protagonist Fang Chongyong as an "observer" to bring readers the scenery of the prosperous Tang Dynasty.
To put it simply, in the early stage, watch more, think more, and participate less.
The first half is about the prosperous Tang Dynasty, and the second half is about elegy. When I came up with the name, I put a lot of thought into it. Try to restore the true side of the Tang Dynasty. It is powerful and has its own charm, but it also has corresponding problems. It is also a product of history and cannot escape the judgment of history.
What is "the scenery of the prosperous Tang Dynasty"?
Historical memory needs a carrier.
It might be a piece of silk, a slip, a painting, a glass of wine, or even a bowl of rice.
History is real, not empty words in official history, nor right and wrong that are arbitrarily fiddled with.
Food, clothing, housing and transportation, these can express the style of the prosperous Tang Dynasty.
Poems and regulations can also express the style of the prosperous Tang Dynasty.
They complement each other and form a picture of the prosperous age of the Tang Dynasty.
This means that this book is very long and will not write traditional cool plots, nor will it deliberately drive to attract attention and write vulgar plots under the guise of "the prosperous Tang Dynasty and the opening up".
Many people like to read about the lower body, and it’s not like I can’t write about it, but the author can’t have too low expectations for himself.
After all, the author is not the reader.
Writing this way will definitely make some readers who are looking for "coolness" unhappy. The plot will be lacking in pretentiousness, and some readers may even think that the author is writing randomly due to their own lack of cognition. These are inevitable, because no matter what the book is, there will be people who like it and people who don't like it.
The content and writing style of this book will filter out a group of readers. In the current market environment, this type of book may be able to make some achievements, but it is destined to be difficult to become popular.
Governor Uemoto helped me become a level 5 author and also helped me understand the secret of traffic.
I am a grassroots person with no backend, no team, no support, and no PY transactions. The only thing I can rely on is my own works; my path can only be continued by constantly polishing my works, there is no other way.
The bottleneck period for historical novels is no longer something that happens in a day or two. In order to break the situation, many authors began to change to survive. The most common one is to "change their skin and change their core".
Historical events are very complex. If you want to write clearly the ins and outs, you need certain writing skills and writing logic. But after putting on a layer of skin, things become simpler. The history only needs to be summarized, and the rest can be written according to the real core.
For example, historical urban writings write about the city; historical gangster writings write about the underworld; historical officialdom writings write about the specious officialdom. Readers are not familiar with ancient times, but they are very familiar with modern times. It is easy to resonate with modern stories written in a layer of skin.
Then I was thinking about a very speechless question: historical writers, why don’t you write history? There is obviously so much to write about.
If the author of a historical article makes history boring, then it must be the author’s problem. How can we blame the historical story for being difficult to tell?
Bilibili Anzhou Mu’s historical series of videos (such as Southern and Northern Dynasties) can have a large number of fans. Those stories do not have any innovation, they are all historical facts recorded in history books.
Why do some people watch it, and why do so many people watch it? What's the problem?
The problem is that many authors of historical articles do not devote their attention to the study of historical logic or the impact of historical events. Because I didn’t do my homework, I had nothing to write. Since I had nothing to write, and the manuscript must have a plot, I could only fill it with other aspects of the plot.
For example, women, pretending to be a slap in the face, supporting characters all revolving around the protagonist, and so on. It's not that the author likes to write it this way, but it has to be this way because of the reasons mentioned above.
This is a vicious cycle.
There is no history in historical texts, just like there is no osmanthus in osmanthus tea or there is no pork ribs in braised pork ribs.
There are all kinds of pretense in urban novels. If you don’t give me historical plots in historical novels, why don’t I just read urban novels?
Readers are very sensitive to the historical temperature in historical texts. It's possible that with just a little more historical plot in each chapter, the reader's experience will be completely different. However, in historical texts, which generally refer to historical records in a haphazard manner without analyzing them, they may reach completely opposite conclusions.
There are too many such examples to count.
In order to write this book, I directly used master's and doctoral dissertations in the history department, journals and even cultural relics research papers as reference points. I have no way to verify the stone tablets or unearthed cultural relics, so I can only write this book in this lazy way, standing on the shoulders of giants.
I can responsibly say that many of the plots in the first volume were written by me alone. For example, the imitation of Sogdian brocade was taken from real historical events, but it cannot be found on ordinary websites. No one will write it clearly.
When it comes to being knowledgeable, I'm far from it, but I can impress people.
The paid chapter starts from Hexi. When planning this volume, I hesitated for a long time.
According to the ideas of some Shuangwen readers, I should actually arrange for Xiao Fang to lurk in Chang'an to seize power, kill Li Linfu, get rid of Yang Yuhuan, bribe potential generals, replace them during the Anshi Rebellion, set up a puppet, and finally add Jiuxi.
It’s not that you can’t write like this. Although this may turn all the supporting characters into people with low IQs, but... there are also many readers who buy it. It turns out that readers of Shuangwen do not think while reading, even if they feel sick when they read it back a second time. .
However, the development focus of the Tang Dynasty has always been in the Western Regions, which was the "Age of Discovery" in ancient China, full of opportunities and adventures. After the Anshi Rebellion, the Silk Road was cut off, and the era of expansion and self-confidence of the Chinese people gradually faded away.
Half of the glory of the Han and Tang Dynasties was in Hexi. If we don’t write about Hexi and the Western Regions, how can we write about the scenery of the Tang Dynasty?
It is certainly a bit satisfying for readers to see an old coin successfully seize power, from the grassroots to the emperor.
However, are historical texts really just conspiracies?
I don't think so.
During the prosperous Tang Dynasty, the Tang people's pioneering and inclusive spirit in the Western Regions is of great reference for today. It is the voice of the times and even the call of the times!
I use the good ones and learn from the bad ones. The openness and self-confidence of the Tang people do not lie in the bohemianness of women, but in the self-confidence and high-spiritedness of the society.
This is the core idea of the Tang Dynasty: "I am the main one and we are one family from all over the world".
I think these things have more historical flavor than those weird strategies and anachronistic "modern inventions".
As for the performance of this book, I am not too demanding; I write from my heart and have a clear conscience in everything.
History is vast and does not depend on personal will. To express it in one of Mao Zedong’s words:
"Heavy rain falls on the swallows, white waves surge into the sky,
Fishing boat outside Qinhuangdao.
I can't see the vast ocean, I don't know which way I'm heading to.
Thousands of years passed, Wei Wu whipped his whip,
There is a posthumous chapter on Jieshi in the east.
The bleak autumn wind is here again, and the world has changed. "
