I can’t calm down and want to write a novel. I have a lot of inspiration, but I just can’t write it out in my own language. How can I become a qualified writer?

From a certain perspective, readers are the best group of readers in the world and the most tolerant group of readers. They will not blame you because there are typos in your work, they will not blame you, insult you, or give up the book because you have wrong character descriptions or inconsistent plot settings, or even because you spelled the wrong character names.

What they want is a smooth story and some characters that can satisfy their little fantasies, even facial-facial characters. Basically, straightforward words without embellishments are enough for them. Search all over the world and you will never find readers who are so easily satisfied and whose demands are so simple.

When faced with readers whose needs are so simple, authors who hope to gain income and rely on writing to make money are wrong to be unable to satisfy them. It is definitely not the fault of the readers.

So when you sit in front of the computer and want to write a long novel that can have commercial value, you have determined the subject matter you want to write, and you have thought about the main characters, what should you do next? ? This is also when some authors are most likely to make mistakes.

The essence of a novel is plot and characters, and the two complement each other.

If a book can have both, with a novel and attractive plot, and very successful characters, then as long as the author is not as lazy as a turtle, this book will become a big hit It's already doomed.

But we are talking about newcomers, especially those who have only read a lot of books and have only written compositions or papers, even business copywriting, or various reports, and have never written long or short stories. The author of novels that are neither long nor short.

At this time, don’t rush to write down the opening of your novel, but write down the outline.

New authors and even many old authors feel that outlines are useless. We often encounter such authors who tell the editor very clearly that they are going to write two million words. How do I know what the future plot will be like? For such a long book, you will naturally know the subsequent development after writing it. I think about it on the same day, write it on the same day, or even think about it while writing.

Believe me, no matter what a writer thinks, he will never understand that writing is actually a very painful thing that consumes a lot of energy and time. Before you start writing, or after writing a few thousand words, you will not feel bored with what you are writing or the pain of not being able to continue writing.

But after tens of thousands of words, you will find that the future development of what you have written is blurry. There is no way to tell the plot and story, and the feeling of failure of not knowing what to write will drive you crazy. In addition, new authors were not popular at that time, and no one read their works, which seriously affected their mood to continue writing; if they were popular, they were scolded, which also hurt their mood to write. Coupled with this is the feeling of physical and mental exhaustion that I cannot write. . . . . . This is the most common and first front line in writing, which is the demonic obstacle.

Based on our experience, 30% of the works fall here. This hurdle is the first dragon gate.

With an outline, it is easier to get over the hurdles here. You know what your subsequent plot will be. When you don’t know what to write, the outline will become a pillar of support for you. You can read it to recall what your original passion was for writing this book, what kind of story and what kind of plot you wanted to write. You can even recall why you thought your book could become popular, so that you could become a profitable person after completing it.

Even for an old author, after writing hundreds of thousands of words, the creativity and passion for creating this story will disappear with the passage of time. Having an outline can also allow the author to end it better. , rather than simply ending, and being criticized by readers as anticlimactic.

Another point is that new authors often write away from their own themes.

For example: good sports, but will jump out of cultivation, magic, super powers and the like. Or it's obviously an adventure, but suddenly a lot of campuses appear, and the highlight of the original work is lost at such a turn.

And having an outline is very helpful for the author to grasp the overall situation of the work.

Having said so many benefits of outlines, how can you write an outline that suits you?

Or some authors say that I have written tens of thousands of words about my setting, ranging from the composition of the world to the production of a pistol. Isn’t this a good outline?

Here I give a clear answer, setting is not equal to outline.

The outline is essentially to construct the skeleton of the plot you imagine and the relationship between the main characters. The subsequent writing is to use words to flesh out the skeleton.

As for details, that is not what the outline needs to pay attention to. You can write about the protagonist using gold to pay the bill in a restaurant, or you can write about an army of millions fighting in a melee. But these things are not what the outline needs to consider.

For some of the works I have personally published, the outline uses time as a structure to frame the time when the protagonist experiences things, and then determines the ending. This is the general outline. Then for each large paragraph, a more detailed outline of about X million words will be drawn up. Determine the main characters you are currently writing about.

So, before you start writing, it will be of great help to the author to write down an outline of several thousand words for the story you want to write.

There is no good or bad outline, as long as you can determine the main line of your work. As long as you are willing to write, there will be a suitable outline. Remember, your outline is the main line of your story.

In addition to the outline, many authors like to write a lot of settings before the plot of the work begins. What is the composition of the country, the continent environment, racial distribution, battleship configuration, etc. Please allow me to say something extremely rude. The authors who wrote this, are you mentally ill?

In the Internet age, how can readers have the patience and obligation to read a lot of boring explanatory texts without plots. Maybe the author is still aggrieved. I wrote it as a setting. Can they start reading from the main text? I didn’t force them to see this?

Why did you send it out? Readers often read books from the beginning, especially new books, and they often click on them accidentally. But when I clicked on the reading page, there was a lot of boring information. At this time, at least five of the ten readers have left the page. Even if you write the settings, brainstorm, and work hard, you should not publish them in your own works. I have never read any book that started with a large setting, and the book could become popular.

It is best to set the setting in the plot and reveal it to the readers bit by bit. On the one hand, it is easier for readers to accept information mixed with the plot, and on the other hand, it can also fill in the number of words.

There is another serious problem with too many settings:

Editors will always pay attention to the plot development of the book when reviewing the manuscript to see if it is worth signing. If a book has 30,000 to 40,000 words, and then the editor reads a lot of setting information, and the content is pitiful, it is basically classified as worthless. Reject the manuscript. So it would be suicidal to at least develop and write a lot of settings in the front of the book.

2. How to establish your intention

As a new author, pull your spirit back from the fantasy world. Remember, wipe the saliva from the corner of your mouth because you saw the beautiful woman in your fantasy. Put away your fantasy of marrying Bill Gate's daughter and getting rich and living a luxurious life. Don't go out and think you are a national hero just because you think of leading the army to defeat Japan. If you are hungry, just make a bowl of instant noodles. In order to replace instant noodles with hamburgers, you have to sit in front of the computer and post the things in your mind that make you happy on the Internet, so that others can also feel happy and buy you hamburgers in the future because of this happy feeling. money.

Once you have chosen your own topic, the next step is not to rush to write a few thousand words immediately and then post it online. Then I dreamed at night that my book had over a million clicks and was collected all over the world. The editors of Qidian followed behind and said, "Hey, please sign the contract." Strong recommendation, closed recommendation, middle recommendation, simplified and traditional Chinese and messy versions, all the same as promised.

Basically, I understand the author’s confidence and feeling at this time, just like when you buy a lottery ticket for two yuan, you will think that you have won the prize.

No one will think that they are unlucky before something happens, and 90% of writers will think that what they write is interesting, valuable, and will bring benefits to themselves.

Of course, those scum who have copied from the beginning just to make money are not among them.

Having a subject matter is not a novel, especially a novel that can be sold for money. Everyone has learned the three elements of writing in elementary school, and I believe many newcomers have read many writing guides. For example, there was a writing guide written by American authors that became quite popular not long ago. What I keep next to my bed is Mr. Lao She’s writing experience.

But here, I want to tell the authors whose first step is to publish serialized novels on the Internet. You can read it, but you can completely ignore what is said in the writing manual. Our goal is to write novels that we like and that can be used to exchange readers' money on the website to buy hamburgers, rather than to write with painstaking efforts and die in poverty like the great Mr. Cao and Mr. Lu.

Once again, this article is aimed at authors who like fantasy and writing, and who also hope to use writing in exchange for income, rather than those who hope to write amazing articles and hope that celebrities will regard money as dirt throughout the ages. Author, I am just a low-level business writer, I am not qualified to tell you how to write.

Fundamentally speaking, there are only three types of online novels, especially long-form online novels that often exceed one million words. First, it focuses on character creation, and the plot segments are all designed to highlight the character's personality. In this regard, the masterpiece that introduced me to online writing, "Story of Grace", is very representative. The charming plot has more than four million words, and no one can remember it. But the charming characters make you forget the plot and still remember it deeply. Another classic work "Purple River" is also a classic example of characters guiding the plot. This kind of writing style and loyal readers mostly have a lot of anime reading habits. I call it animation creation. I will mention the advantages and disadvantages of anime-based writing in a later section.

Second, the work is driven by the plot, the characters’ personalities are vague, and the theme of the book and the structure of the plot are the core. The character's personality is only an extended part of the plot. Generally speaking, authors who are deeply influenced by traditional writing methods like to adopt this writing method. This kind of writing is also more difficult than writing with character creation as the core.

Third, give consideration to both, having both a popular plot and characters with distinctive personalities. Well, for someone who can write a work of this caliber in the first one, let me call him a genius. Anyway, among the more than 40,000 authors from Qidian, there are probably less than two digits with such ability. So, new authors, be realistic and give up on the third one.

For new authors, I encourage you to use the first method to start by creating a character. Frankly speaking, the plot of the novel, how difficult it is to innovate, and how fast it is to imitate will leave people stunned. But is it a cliched plot that no one will watch? That's wrong wrong wrong. For example, women’s Cinderella complex, men’s lust-hunting complex, and war plots are eternal.

But since it is a cliché, why can readers pay for similar stories that they have seen countless times?

That is, when readers like the character, they will be attracted to the character. The same plot with different characters will have different reading feelings.

Of course, this is not for you to copy and paste. I will talk about some reasonable, legal and reasonable methods of borrowing from works in the future. If you do something stupid like copying and pasting, then congratulations, your goal of getting readers to pay is more difficult to achieve than eating Northeastern food and drinking beer every day without being active without gaining weight.

Looking back, let’s talk about how to create a popular or personalized character. But if someone's personality is too extreme, for example, the character of a book by an author who claims to be a primary school student has such a personality that the editors of Qidian dare not sign a contract for his book, then it's not worth it.

Character creation is essentially the creation of the character’s personality, or in other words, the creation of the character’s face. How do readers know a character’s personality? The tone and lines used in conversations, the way one handles situations, and some behaviors that are different from others.

In this regard, Japanese animation is the best teacher. What, you only read H comics, then just pretend I didn’t say anything.

New authors always want to write a world with a complex background from the beginning. Well, it’s a continent, a lot of things like races and imperial legions, a lot of messy characters, not tens of thousands of words written, even the characters’ names and races are all in a mess.

In fact, when a book is first conceived, the protagonist is usually male. If it's a female protagonist, I admire your courage. But on today's Internet, the possibility of becoming famous with a female protagonist is really pitiful. Well, the chances of winning all 13 games in the football lottery are about the same.

We have determined that it is the male protagonist. At this time, we need to determine the character’s personality. Character personality, surrounding environment, abilities. With these three points, you basically have the outline of a character. At this time, it is necessary to highlight the special features of the character's personality. I would like to remind everyone that appearance is also a type of personality setting. If the protagonist you set is a beautiful boy, you have to think about how to express it.

Most authors use character attraction. For example, the younger sister's heart is moved as soon as she sees him, and the subordinates think he is the real dragon emperor as soon as they see him. This commonly known stallion and kingly aura actually hope to express the characteristics of the protagonist. Don’t think that because stallions and kings are constantly being criticized on forums or in book reviews, you should think that they are outdated and cannot be written. Good use is still very attractive to readers.

But the premise is to give the protagonist an acceptable explanation. For example, the classic sweet potato is a role model. (This book is from I Am the Archmage. Although the quality of this book is average, it has a great impact on online business writing.)

But it is because most authors use stallion and kingly aura. Performance, so those who can make further progress on this basis will be more popular. For example, in the popular novel "Legend of the Evil God" by Qidian, he became a double doctor at the age of ten, which is a successful example. Such a talented person must be popular. Readers have subconsciously accepted countless possibilities for the protagonist because of this setting that is actually very unreasonable.

But the mistake newcomers often make is to write that the protagonist is an ordinary person, or that he is not ordinary, but hopes to be an ordinary person. As soon as this kind of setting came out, the main character was described as having infinite charm, which attracted countless younger sisters and heroes to bow their waists. Readers will subconsciously think, doesn’t he want to be ordinary? Why is this? This unreasonable feeling will cause many readers to simply stop reading this book.

Many serious newcomers will initially think that they need to be very strict and very reasonable in order to write a good book. Well, let me tell you, this is pure bullshit.

There is nothing more absurd and unbelievable in this world than magic, rebirth, cultivation, and changing history. Since readers accept this kind of thing without hesitation, they can also accept no matter how abnormal the setting is. But remember, myths are also principles. If there are no myths, then it is really hopeless.

Just like the opening chapter of a book, the protagonist is worth trillions of dollars, and his pocket money is hundreds of millions every month. Then someone else came to him and knocked on the door, so the protagonist went to open the door. Here, it is absolutely ridiculous to have a net worth of several trillion dollars and pocket money of hundreds of millions, but it is acceptable to most readers. Because, for readers who have not been exposed to real-life numbers that are really large, it doesn't matter if the number is larger than a certain size and has one or two zeros. Anyway, at this time, they will not think about Comrade Bill Gates, as the world's richest man, with a net worth of only tens of billions of dollars.

But when such a rich man lives in a unit and opens the door in person, it will make readers feel unreasonable. How could this happen if you have money? Although it is basically difficult for newcomers to write about the nobility of the rich, even if two old farmers talk about the emperor, they will say that he must eat meat buns every day instead of saying that the emperor eats steamed buns every day.

So when setting, especially when setting the protagonist of a fantasy novel, the principle is to give yourself a reason why the character is in this environment.

Then give a character a range of personality in this environment.

Of course, I am not against saying that newcomers do not need to be reasonable when setting up characters in books. But remember, this is never the focus of character setting. Instead of thinking about what makes sense, it’s better to think about how to make the character believable.

Strengthening Character Characteristics When it comes to expressing a character's personality, a commonly used and always useful method is to tell the character's greatness and strength through the enemy's mouth. Well, that’s what I do when I write books. Because when readers are immersed in reading a book, they feel that what the enemy says is more shocking than what the characters themselves think. Furthermore, a large number of dialogues between enemies are used to highlight the character's identity and environment. This way of writing is easier for people to remember than describing it from the character's side.

In terms of character design, one thing you must remember is that today’s readers hate cowardly and hesitant protagonists. Unless your writing is as good as Azurite, don't try to write this kind of character setting that requires very high creative requirements.

When setting the character's personality, it is best to give him a prominent point, and then often mention it from different people in the future, or the protagonist often uses one behavior to express it. In the past, the more popular ones included evil smile, tiger body shaking, etc. Of course, it is better to use some fresh words now. In fact, I could use a little more ink on this. For example, the hero's road-crazy character in Miss Fei Ling's "Tianlu Fengyun". The hero's rude orangutan in "Story of Beauty", the popular character Hunter's greed for money, Nell's great strength, Ailing's explosive manufacturing items, etc. These characteristics of theirs are mentioned almost every time they appear in the book. The repeated repetitions also give readers a very deep understanding of their characters and identities.

As for what point to give, it doesn’t matter. When writing, you can think about what kind of characteristics you like in a male protagonist, and then just make your male protagonist look like this.

However, a popular writing method in animation writing is that the protagonist is used to develop the plot, the supporting characters are used to show character, and the enemy is used to shine. The character's personality must be simple. In this way of writing, the character is smart, wise, deep and complex, which is asking for death. Not to mention readers not liking it, the chances of the author finishing it are extremely low.

After setting the character's personality, it is best to think of a few sentences that can represent the character's personality and say them frequently. This can further deepen the distinctiveness of the character's personality.

In the early stages of writing, don’t set up too many characters at once. It is best to limit the number of characters to a relatively small range at the beginning, and write a large scene and many characters at the beginning. The readers will be tired from reading, and the author will also be tired from writing.

Reading online works is high-paced, especially in the early stages. The protagonist's appearance should be within three chapters as much as possible, and within one to two chapters of the protagonist's appearance, there should be a small climax that can express the protagonist's character. This is no longer the era of "The Swordsman", where a supporting character can be tolerated for a long time in the early stages of the book. Even if you, the author, want to postpone the manuscript to increase the number of words and rush for clicks, it is best not to do such a dangerous thing until after 300,000 words, when your readers have already gained a certain degree of inertia. There are too many books to read at Qidian now. Who is interested in seeing you slowly let some idle people come out and hang out from the beginning?

After Double Dragon of the Tang Dynasty, many newcomers like to write multiple protagonists. Under normal circumstances, if you are not a deviant author, having multiple protagonists means you are doomed.

3. How does the online novel writing guide create characters?

Being a new author brings your spirit back from the fantasy world.

After you have chosen your own topic, the next step is not to rush to write a few thousand words immediately and then send it out. Then I dreamed at night that my book had printed over a million copies and was in collections all over the place. The review editors followed behind me one by one and said: Come on, sign the contract. Forcibly capped, simplified, traditional, messed up versions, all the same as promised.

Basically, the author's confidence and feeling at this time is like when you buy a lottery ticket for two yuan, you will think that you have won a five million grand prize. No one will think that they are unlucky before something happens, and 90% of writers will think that what they write is interesting, valuable, and will bring benefits to themselves.

There is no author who does not think that his or her work is the best and the most popular; regardless of whether he is famous or not; he always adopts a "resistance" attitude towards the returned manuscripts and even curses: "What kind of editor is this? I..." (I remember back then, a certain writer came to my door and made a fuss. It's really dumbfounding.) Every publishing house has a limited scope, so you need to understand it before submitting your manuscript. It’s better to be clear.

Of course, those scum who have copied from the beginning just to make money are not among them.

Having a subject matter is not a novel, especially a novel that can be sold for money. Everyone learned the three elements of writing (time, place, character) when they were in elementary school. I believe many new authors have read many writing guides. What I keep on my desk is Mr. Lao She’s writing experience.

But here, I want to tell the authors of novels that you can read it, but you can completely ignore what the writing manual says. Our goal is to write novels that we like and that can be used in exchange for readers' money to buy meat, rather than writing with painstaking efforts and dying in poverty like the great Mr. Cao.

There are fundamentally only three types of novels, especially novels that often exceed a million words.