Discussion chinese novels tend to fall apart

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by chucke, Jan 16, 2019.

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  1. SummerMascot

    SummerMascot Well-Known Member

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    Sadly it has been censoredtaken down by CN authorities.

    One of the User-Interfaces looks like this:
    [​IMG]
     
  2. chucke

    chucke Going towards the glorious future

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    Incredible
     
  3. BLKCandy

    BLKCandy Well-Known Member

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    No novels should get that long. Really. HP was exceptionally long with lots of plots, subplots, spanning 7 years. And it was exhausting read at book 5+ (I could read other books in one sitting, but 5+ were too long)

    And HP was ONLY A MILLION words long.

    LOTR was four hundreds thousands. LOTR+The Hobbits were five hundreds thousands.

    A thousand chapters novel would be two millions or more words long. (Average novel chapters are around 2-6k words) That's twice HP and more. Maintaining main plot and quality that long is obviously difficult. It is no surprise why most lose their charm by then.
     
    Last edited: Jan 18, 2019
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  4. Jatron

    Jatron Well-Known Member

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    I guess it depends on which ones you are reading? A 10 book seriesis liable to fall apart, but the most common complaint for English novel is that there's unnecessary triologies.

    Talking about novels started on challenges, I would be shocked if even 1% of published novels are started on a whim/challenge. Maybe if you go to the self-published section of Amazon sure.
     
  5. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    Welcome to reality.
    Also, threads like this make me laugh at the idiots who call traditional publishers evil and do not respect the work of professional editors.
    A professionally edited book, doesn't suffer from such obvious pitfalls. Also, authors take breaks between books/ volumes instead of daily non stop releases.
    A time will come when readers will get fed up of the fast food web novel industry and seek out professionally edited and formatted books that fix plot holes and others.
    I hope to get ahead of the curve.
    Korean online websites like Lezhin used to offer editing but it's very expensive and they seem to have stopped. Government funding helped initially.
    Only a fool believes a good book requires just an author.
    Without editing for consistency, even a good book will fail.
    Over and out!
    Peace!
     
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  6. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    It really depends on the book and what that extra length adds to it. If a book doesn't benefit from it, then it's obviously a bad thing, but if it's necessary to convey certain levels of detail, then that's altogether a different matter. For example, a detailed series of history books on the Battle of Stalingrad weighs in at around 3500 pages. You can certainly tackle this same subject in a short novel, but if you want to capture the scope and detail of the battle then you're going to need a very long one.

    I guess it depends on how you go about defining whims. I imagine that an awful lot of books started because it was something that the author felt like writing. If you're thinking of something more impulsive than that, I don't imagine that all that many web novels started out as whims either.

    I tend to stick to well-researched historical novels so I prefer things at the very opposite end of the scale.
     
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  7. Jatron

    Jatron Well-Known Member

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    If you define whim as wanting to write then it encompasses just about every single story/article/research paper known to man. Even historical novels spring up because the author felt like writing it. It's a useless benchmark or descriptor for stories since it's almost universal.

    I'm pretty sure SummerMascot didn't mean it in that regard as in the same sentence he spoke of challenges which run similar to writing prompts. The process of writing a few paragraphs as a response to a challenge, enjoying the premise enough to maybe add 50 chapters, is not the kind of feeling that would survive the rounds of editing, meetings, and pitching the story to different publishing houses, that would involve making it an published English novel. The effort involved is vastly different.
     
  8. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    Let me spell it very simply for you : holding amateur written work to the same standard as professionally written and edited work will always lead to disappointment.

    Why not compare these web novels to your average Royalroad author who disappears after a year or simply abandons his book after 6 months to start a new one...
     
  9. Jatron

    Jatron Well-Known Member

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    Yes? You sure you didn't mean to respond to TostiRossi as he was the one that tried comparing lots of published English novels to amateur written works, not I.
     
  10. Wujigege

    Wujigege *Christian*SIMP*Comedian

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    I am referring to the thread in general. Threads like this have been springing up a lot lately.
    I feel that the novelty has finally wore off
     
  11. tides

    tides Well-Known Member

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    dunno. but every cn wn seem to become the same novel after a bit.

    not to mention WN contract for original novels...
     
  12. checkm8

    checkm8 Well-Known Member

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    Correct me if I'm wrong, but almost all of the translated novels were professionally written by PAID authors. It's not illogical to expect a certain amount of quality.

    I wonder could these threads keep popping up more often lately be directly related to the increased monetization of web novels? Perhaps, it has something to do with Webnovel's movement towards making premium all translations that creates a greater awareness of the increased cost?

    Perhaps, it has something to do with the huge cost of Webnovel's books where a reader would have to spend $200 to read a single novel like Immortal Mortal? Or an estimated $660 to completely read Alchemy Emperor of the Divine Dao once it is completely translated? In these examples, I'm ignoring the bonus spirit stones since they are only enough to read one novel a day @ 2-3 chapters per day; especially since daily check-ins no longer guarantee bonus spirit stones.

    Given such pricing, it's not a surprise that consumers are becoming more vocal about web novels and their increasing cost vs quality.

    Especially, when compared to traditional publishing.
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2019
  13. BLKCandy

    BLKCandy Well-Known Member

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    Many were translated WN, those are amateur works. Many WN do have some sort of pay/donation which would make them ''professionals" in a sense. But most of them still didn't go through professional editing.

    LN *should* have went through professional editing though.
     
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