Discussion Webnovel readers are spoiled! Jin Yong's serial novel installments were much shorter!

The length of a modern webnovel chapter varies, but it's generally between 2,000 - 3,500 Chinese characters. Some authors write longer chapters, and some genres have shorter chapters, but typically I think most translators would agree that 3,000 characters is more or less the average chapter length.

But in the 1950s-1970s when Jin Yong was active serializing his novels in newspapers (mostly), the typical daily installment was much shorter. For one thing, it was not even close to a full chapter, which were over 10,000 characters, and this was the original version before he revised them. Later versions combined chapters and are therefore even longer.

So let's look at a few examples:



Sword Stained with Royal Blood's final installment on December 31, 1956, was ~914 characters. So about 1/3 of a modern webnovel chapter.



Legend of the Condor Heroes, first installment on January 1, 1957 (so the very next day after Royal Blood finished), was 902 characters.



Return of the Condors' first installment, May 20, 1959, was even shorter, only 719 characters! The equivalent of that, roughly, from the fan translation:



The installments pictured here are the original versions of the novels, long before Jin Yogn revised them. The fan translation above is from the 2nd edition, iirc. Some of the text is different, and there is a different chapter title.

A couple more pics:



Smiling, Proud Wanderer, 602nd installment. 1092 characters.



The Deer and the Cauldron, first installment, 813 characters.

These lengths were pretty typical for wuxia novel serializations during the 1950s-1970s. Since they were in newspapers, space was limited. Wuxia magazine installments were longer, but still not a complete chapter.

Compare these figures to a current webnovel chapter, and consider that many authors release two chapters a day, and well... yeah, we have it pretty good nowadays.

 

Those illustrations are pretty sweet.

I feel like these serial novels served a similar purpose as syndicated comics strips used to, which is to draw people to buy the newspaper daily even on slow news days. Nowadays webnovels seem to be their own draw with the current business model.

 

Of course its gonna be short, its a newspaper story

 

But we didn't ask to be spoilt. All we want is for webnovels not to be spoilt by milking and the addition of every cliche imaginable.

And by "we" I mean leechers.

 

Modern kids are spoiled, riding their school bus every day.

Back in my day we had to walk 10 miles to school. Uphill. Both ways. In 3 feet of snow.

 

This is the reason the MC in Silver Overlord added a serialized story in the newspaper he started at the Imperial Capital city. It was an ancient setting and knowing entertainment was scarce, he allowed the chapters of the stories to be used for free by story tellers (bards) to ply their trade at inns. Thus the story tellers were free advertisement for the newspaper both for those who could and couldn't read.

 

This apparently goes back all the way to Charles Dickens. His "Pickwick Papers" established the serial as a viable model for literature wall the way back in 1836. Alexandre Dumas apparently also published the "3 Musketeers" and "Count of Monte Cristo" as serials as well. But the individual chapters were a heck of a lot longer than the excerpts posted here.

 

You could also say authors or spoiled, back in the 1950's and 1970's authors had to use newspapers to get thier works out and read. Now they can do anything with a cheap phone or laptop and publish stuff online. Think about it back in the 1500's Romance of the Three Kingdoms was first transcribed it had to be scribed in hand.

Jokes aside yea nature of the times man the world always wants to makes things easier on the next generation. So naturally you get ideas that the next generation will be more spoiled than the next. But sometimes its worse (I'm looking at you pollution).

 

Even the authors in the 50s-70s wrote by hand. And some wrote as much or more per day than current webnovels do. I've heard of authors writing 7,000 characters a day, around two webnovel chapters' worth. Though this amount was not always for one novel. Some would write as many as four novels at once for different newspapers. Ni Kuang said he could write about 4,000 characters an hour. All of this by hand. Here's a sample of author Qin Hong's manuscript page:

 

Its a joke, of course, people write by hand. And like i said it goes with the times.

 

This really shows just how bad spoiling is. As much as it can be argued that being able to write anywhere with more or less infinite space can be a good thing, restriction breeds creativity. So much story with beautiful drawingss to accompany it in a small newspaper space.

 

Sometimes these serial novels are even more important than that. In particular I'm thinking of Jin Yong when he started his newspaper. The business struggled for the first few years and the main draw for his paper was his own novel. It got bad enough that a reader backlash had the potential of bankrupting the paper, and Jin Yong even changed his story to forestall that. There is a happy ending though - he sold his stake in the business several decades later for tens of millions of dollars and it's one of the biggest newspapers in Hong Kong today.

I can just imagine what Jin Yong's workload must have been in 1960. Not only did he just start up a newspaper and acted as the editor in chief, he also wrote two serial novels at the same time! It's no wonder that this period held so much sentiment for him.

 

I agree, we have it very good now.

I think the length was mostly indicative of the medium used to get the story out to people. Newspapers even now with their bloat are very sensitive on space used in pages. I'd presume this was even more exaggerated in the 50's when media was just newspaper and radio.

Still nice to see how far we've come.

 

so?
as cat who read newspapers series back then (early 2000 to 2006 perhaps?) this cat not think webnovel spoil reader. Talk less if we compare to short story that published on newspapers, back then short story on weekly term usually sunday~
there also story on magazine that on weekly or monthly~
oh how about radio story? you know the series that sound like dorama cd~ with sound effect of horse, sword fighting and stuff~

different era just different way
webnovel despite longer on count character feel less on hmmm content
the lucky thing is there more option to pick, some good some trash~ compared to past which few story it is better on term of quantity~

entertainment media is like that~
tv and videogame also same~

 

I just want to say Jin Yong also was in an era where you got paid to write, not paid per click. Not to mention the quality of his stories were insanely good. Quality > Quantity what can I say?

 

It's not that different from today. The writers were paid by the word (sort of) back then, and Jin Yong himself was writing primarily in his own newspaper so he really was paid by the click (so to speak). At the end of the day serialized writing is serialized writing. And there is some pretty good material being written today; you just have to look for it!