- Edited
So as you might know, there are various "styles" in Chinese WebNovels. I call them "styles" for the lack of a better word.
Styles are not equivalent to genres. A style is more like a stylized element or structure that is used in fictions to move the plot forward. A style can be adopted in fictions of virtually any genre.
(For genre, you can read Robyn's article "Chinese Web Novel Genres" : http://robynpaterson.com/?p=3847)
For example, "untalented" is considered as a style. This is the element that made the protagonist to struggle hard in the hope to achieve what was originally considered impossible to him as he just don't have the talent. The Xianxia Novel "Immortal Mortal" is considered as a fiction of the "untalented / mortal" style, the protagonist didn't have "spiritual roots" (the talent of cultivating) yet strive to cultivate.
Do you guys know if there is an introduction to Chinese Web Novel Styles? I've talked with my friend earlier today about this, and he told me as far as he know there wasn't any introductory article on the topic.
I'm asking this really because I'm trying to make my own contribution to this community. Since those "styles" are used and discussed very frequently by the readers and writers of Web Novel in China, many writers just intentionally design their stories to fit in certain styles. As the result, some of them can be used to effectively tag and categorize books in addition to their genre, and I thought that it could be helpful to write an article specifying them. So I'm actually planning to write one. But if the job has already been done by others, I just wanna avoid wasting time and energy on it.
