FAQ Part 1

Frequently Asked Questions, part 1

Author: Yang Chen (314)

1. For a newcomer author, how many words should one update with each day?

Answer: This depends on how much you're capable of writing each day. Normally speaking, the recommendation is to update two to three chapters per day, and also keep a few chapters reserved in your stockpile if possible. If you're a slow writer who writes less than three thousand words per day, that will be more troublesome. My advice is to try your best to increase your speed as well as to keep a few dozen chapters in reserve so that you can begin by speedily updating one chapter per day. After you sign a contract and receive a front page recommendation, you can update two chapters per day. Later, if you're no longer on the front page, I would recommend just updating one chapter per day. And if you're an incredibly quick writer who writes more than five thousand or even seven thousand five hundred words per day, I would recommend that you control your own updating speed. Just updating four to six thousand words per day will be sufficient, while you should save the rest of your chapters in a stockpile that will be useful for bringing out whenever you have a front page recommendation or if there's a popularity ranking contest.

2. Are there any tips for beginning a story? For instance, the first chapter needs to make the readers excited, you must introduce the cheat, or a climax to the story within the first thirty thousand words?

Answer: As for tips, there's only one word: quick. You need to quickly enter your story and quickly have the readers self-substitute for the main character along with quickly showing off all necessary elements to your story. As for what necessary elements should be involved, I feel that it's simply the following: the main character's identity, current situation, and cheat. These three are necessary so that the readers know who the main character is, what their specialty is, and what they're currently dealing with. With that as the foundation, it's best if the main character is currently being bullied, is in danger, leveling, or about to show off some ultimate move. Simply speaking, after introducing the three most necessary elements, find someone to act as your main character's antagonist. Then, the main character can level up and have a small climax in your story with a face slap to the minor antagonist. Not only that, you should also arrange a short-term dangerous event, such as the main character having a death duel three months from now. Or, maybe one month later, the main character is entering a martial arts competition, so you can appropriately emphasize how important this event is to your main character and how much others look down upon him. But, thanks to the main character's cheat, he/she succeeds, causing everyone to be astonished. This way, the readers will look forward to seeing how the process goes. Thus, once you, as the author, write in this state, you can relax a bit more and develop your plot however you like, slowly introducing your other settings and side characters, reaching your main plot.

3. I feel like when I'm writing, it's really chaotic. I can finish a scene in less than one thousand words, and I feel like my climaxes aren't exciting enough. I don't know what to do.

Answer: That's probably because you're lacking on how to write descriptive details. You could try expanding this scene to at least two thousand words in order to develop your writing skills. Try considering it from all sorts of angles and methods. For instance, if you're writing a climax where your main character narrowly wins and claims number one in the end, then do you have enough descriptions? Have you written about how important this number one rank is to your main character? What benefits are involved with getting number one? What consequences will there be if he/she doesn't obtain number one? How much did others look down upon your main character beforehand? Was there a feeling that he/she would definitely fail? Is someone acting condescending towards your main character? After your main character wins, just how shocked is the opponent? What about the spectators' reactions? How delighted is your main character and what benefits were obtained in the end? How can these benefits help your main character become even stronger? If you can write about all of these elements, you shouldn't feel like there's nothing to write about.

4. I keep feeling that imagining a story that has over one million words is incredibly difficult. Could I try writing a short story first, then one with a few hundred thousand words, before starting a story with over one million words? Will that be fine?

Answer: I recommend against doing this. No matter how many short stories you write, it won't give you any help towards writing long novels. I recommend that you can try separating your story into different areas on your story's map that are relatively independent from each other. This way, you can separate your large novel into several smaller parts. For example, in Eastern fantasy novels, it's quite common to have a different setting before and after ascending to immortality. Changing the setting is even more common in a story focused on leveling up.

5. How do I write a good fight scene?

Answer: I have two pieces of advice for this. First, you could try standing up and imitating a fight yourself, imagining yourself fighting with some enemy. Then, write all the specific details of that fight that you imagined. Of course, you could also try watching some movies and record the details of the fight scenes down in a notebook to help you practice how to write a fight scene. Second, you just need to read more books and see how others write their fight scenes. I believe that as long as you try to do these two things, you'll naturally learn how to write about fight scenes.

6. How do I control the cheat? I find that my main character's cheat power is far too overpowered, so that there's not even any suspense to whether he'll win a fight or not.

Answer: If you don't know how to write a story with an overpowered main character, then I recommend that you change the cheat power. For instance, if you're writing a game novel where the main character is a hacker who maxed all his character's stats through hacking, that means that he'll defeat all the monsters in the game in a single hit, which of course means that there's no fun via the leveling process at all. But if you instead change the story so that he hacked the game to improve his character's growth rates rather than maxing his stats, that will solve the problem in one go.

7. I'd like to ask, how can I make my readers also enjoy the scenes that I enjoy?

Answer: First, you must have self-substitution as the foundation for this. Only by making the readers self-substitute for your main character will they feel the same excitement from the scene. After that, you must find an accurate reason for why readers might get excited about a certain scene. You need to understand what it is that readers desire. All of these can be based on your own judgement. Just write whatever scenes you think are the most exciting in your novel. Also, you need to make the preparation for your exciting climaxes. For instance, if your main character completes an incredibly difficult task, you should first emphasize just how difficult this task is, how important it is to your main character, how others look down upon him/her, and so on. If you do all of these, the readers will naturally become excited to read as well.

8. How can I manage conflicts? How do I constantly escalate conflicts so that my readers have something to look forward to and worry about my main character?

Answer: I have written about the topic of conflicts in a previous article, so I won't repeat myself here. As for making your readers worry for your main character, this mainly depends on your own writing ability but there is a relatively simple technique for this: just use all sorts of comparisons to express how powerful the opponent is. This is a technique of using overwhelmingly powerful enemies to make your readers worry for the main character. As for giving your readers expectations, that's even easier. All you need to do is let the readers know or hint that your main character will definitely win in the end, and that there will be an explosive conflict in the future, which will make them look forward to the conflict's arrival.

9. How many words should I write for the overall outline of a novel that's planned to be over one million words?

Answer: The outline depends on your own novel's needs, and there's no set standard. However, I recommend that you write your own outline in separate parts after establishing the framework for your novel. First you should complete your overall main settings and have the main plot in mind, then you can clarify how to begin and end your story, with the most important events happening in the middle, which will help to establish your framework. With that as the foundation, you can then think about the outline for each section. For example, the first part of your story might be two hundred and fifty thousand words, and what will happen in the beginning? You can have a rough outline for this, such as one sentence representing ten thousand words, and then finally what type of climax you'll end the beginning section of your story with. Then, you can try writing a more detailed outline targeted at the first thirty thousand words of your story, such as what to write in each chapter, and what small climaxes you'll write after the first thirty thousand words. Once you're about to finish the first thirty thousand words, you can write in more detail about the next thirty thousand words' outline.