I got myself thinking today: why books have way much better history management and plot development than web novels? I may be wrong but the answer appears to be bases into one world: planning. When someone write a book, normally, they set the premisses of the start and end of that history along with the journey, planing, adapting and above all, correcting incoherence, to give out a reasonable history. But novels don’t do this. Author of web novels just write a chapter or more per day/week, and the next time they just continue from where they stopped. Each new chapter has to fit the previous one and as expected this lead to a lot of incoherent behavior. many novels start with “this or that is impossible in cultivation” just for, 100 or 200 chapter later, change the author opinion with “mc because of x, y or z that i made up in the last 3 chapters now can do that impossible thing”. This got me hard atm when i’m reading douluo dalu. The start of the novel stated: if someone lost a ring of cultivation it’s lost forever, if someone lost an infused spirit bone he dies (or lost 10 levels of cultivation if titled douluo) among other bullshit, all to get at the end of the novel and start to give half made excuses to change those points. If web novels on cultivation or level up were released as proper books, would he have better stories?
What about the serialized, periodical or episodic novels? One can argue that most of the earlier classics started out in such monthly instalment format, and that they are the forerunner of webnovels. Being collected into a bounded volume isn't magically going to fix the flaws of WNs, especially of the kind involving the source material and its presentation.
Novels are made to be a light read, something that is made for passing time, somesort of light entertainment, coherent and consistent plot isn't the main objective but providing something appealing to anyone (to some degree and depending on genre of course) is, books on the other hand are more serious and their main objective is to send an idea or draw somesort of object or information or in some types to save some information or event (to those who are looking for some serious stuff or information) that is why its plot needs to be coherent and consistent otherwise it is just wordy garbage and no one would look at it XD ps: this is my own definition of the matter, you don't need to agree with it
I believe much of Dostoyevsky's work was serialized and released in parts over time, or at least some of it. It all comes down to why you write, from pressure to make deadlines, to make a living or just to express yourself. Even 'A song fire and ice' could be seen as episodic in nature and the quality is vastly superior over many of these popcorn LN/WN. Certain fantasy series have run for over 20 years i believe, like 'Wheel of time' , where the author died and someone who grew up reading it was allowed to finish the series. I can imagine that being an honor and a work of passion.
Novels and Books are the same aren’t they? Short Answer: no Long Answer: No, just like BadBoi and Otaku said you can’t fix garbage. And I think that your definition of novel and book is a little wrong, since a novel is fictional and a book isn’t.
IIRC, The Possessed, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov were serialized in The Russian Messenger (which also serialized Tolstoy, Turgenev). Can't speak for the rest. But what I do know is in the Victorian era, serialization was the chief vehicle for novel publishing, beginning with, I believe, Dickens' The Pickwick Papers, and AFAIK it was still a relevant format till Hemingway's era (A Farewell to Arms was published in instalments, I think).
The main difference with the advent of the internet and such, it's easier to 'publish' without going over it to see if it makes sense or even re-write certain parts in previous chapters that work out better if you alter it. Along with instant feedback from readers, and the negativity/toxicity that causes authors to censor or alter their own work to cater to the masses, which ends up in a story taking weird twists and turns and no longer being a creation that contains the author's 'essence'. It's all become a popularity contest , much like social status from facebook, you need likes, reviews etc. But you end up with a hollow shell of a story.
Yup, and you even have authors sometimes going the multiple route endings to keep their reader base pleased.
Honestly, for some novels i just stop before the major climax so i can keep the potential outcomes alive as it's much more interesting to wonder about something than it is to know for sure. Whereas a book like Dostoyevsky would gnaw on my sanity if i don't find out what happened, much like older murder mysteries. Even a 'bad ending' is good, if it riles up a certain reaction and makes you experience something new. (i.e. game-wise Nier Replicant/Automata where you're like wtf did i just do and feel depressed for a week).
That's perfectly fine. The problem is when, rather than leaving it up to the reader, the writer/artist sketches out the possibilities in concrete terms as happens when the author makes alternate/multiple endings available to the reader.
Imagine the future with algorithms at work, 'pick your gender, sexuality and ethnicity' and the novel will customize itself. Feel outraged at a scene? change the genre, ( -tragedy , + romance ). I'm actually wondering how A.I. will change reading, with the interactive text based adventures you can play nowadays, although still very crudely. At such a point, there'd no longer be an author, it'd just be you creating your own setting. Still interesting in it's own way, but i read to expand beyond what i can imagine for myself.
While I'll admit I like the flow of a story going my way, in the end, I read novels to as a way of appreciating or rather diving into the fruit of another's imagination, knowledge and thinking process. Led along the dark recesses of a complex mind, essentially alien even at the moments it's familiar... AI simply won't cut it.
the main difference is a properly trained editing team and having someone looking over your shoulder from start to finish. a proper team would take that 4000 page novel and edit out all the filler and repetitive crap, point out plot holes and insist they're filled, and basically help guide the writer to make a better, more polished work. the end result might be a 250 paged novel instead of 4000, but it would be a much tighter and more interesting story. of course, there's only so much they can do with a story that was trash to begin with and most of these webnovels would be rejected from the start anyways.
planning and the ability to go back and change some details. A book is not permanent when its not published yet. The book author can and will change anything to make it as detailed as possible to suit the overall plot. IMO a book just raises the floor but both has the same ceiling its just a lot of webnovels stay on the floor lol. Webnovel author can write in advance but the purpose of it is not the over encompassing plot as a whole but to plan out each single chapter to fit a number of words and still be interesting enough to attract readers which means cliches. Cliches is there for a reason to evoke an emotion and if its good enough it can be as good as a book.
Needless to say this has been discussed many times now. Not all paperback novelists plan it out, for example a certain Ice and Fire author. Not all paperback novelists have an editor or a good editor. There are authors who dish out paper books without editing, just proofreading and the only difference from web novels is that they don't use fillers. Frankly it's not worth editing web novels of the generic type that use fillers. The majority of readers won't care. Hell there are some people who readl MTL's. The fact that you do care probably means this is just a phase to you and you'll grow out of it, meaning the author and publisher don't care about you as you're not the target audience, just a bonus. I didn't spot any inconsitencies when I was reading web novels, I'll give them that at least.
just to add some more; books have a lot more detailed descriptions as in every background, appearance, location etc are all described in a very formal way. webnovels can't afford a very detailed paragraph explaining just appearances, locations etc since they have a word count limit each chapter. I've read only one webnovel thats as detailed as a book meaning it makes chapters very long and detailed aaand no ones translating it anymore lol. Difference between the two would be a polished detailed book as a whole vs an unpolished create as you go work.
Novels and Books tend to work differently. Try to think in Books as movies and novels as soap operas. They workd diferently. Books are meant to keep you enternained for a set amount of time, while novels are meant to keep along for a long ride for a long time.
probably nope~ the core of the story, the storyline and stuff but it is possible for webnovelist to create webnovel on book author mindset or step like mention above~