- Edited
Alrightio people. So lately I have been noticing that a lot of original works that are of mediocre quality have somehow ascended the rankings of "popular" in the original section (eastern fantasy especially). Therefore, I have decided to write this both as a reader of many original works and as someone who is writing a book themselves. Now, I suspect quite a few people will be complaining and commenting on this post with stuff like "You don't know shit" or "Stop mindlessly dissing our shit". I understand the complaints people are gonna have, especially after some shit goes down in the Fugly section, but I know what I am talking about. In terms of English, it is my native language (Which means I beat out at least 50% of the people who are gonna complain) and I am also of college level with said English (which beats out the rest that are going to complain. The ones who don't complain would be generally equal or higher with english xD). Either way, this post is gonna be a simple rundown of what the common denominator of original authors are doing that is good, bad and fugly. I will also offer some suggestions but do keep in mind that I am a fantasy based writer of either type (by that I mean western or eastern), so I am going to judge purely upon the standpoint of a fantasy reader and writer. I will use some examples of good original works, but I won't say names in regards to works that I diss since no one deserves to be dissed on a forum as excessively as I may do so. So, let's get to it. Btw: I am focusing more on Eastern Fantasy than in general too.
THE GOOD:
So, the common denominator of original authors have several things they do well.
1. Their ideas tend to retain a fair amount of originality and unless it is a fanfiction (never read them cos they shit :P), will usually not be a complete carbon copy of a famous translation's world and/or cultivation system. A good example of this would be an author like ShiranuiShurumei or KevinAscending, both of these authors maintain an incredible amount of originality to their ideas and it gives them mad respect.
2. Upload rates, this will vary quite widely, however; the authors that do this well, do it incredibly. Going off most of the original works I add to my library, they tend to get atleast 3 chapters a week if not more. Now don't say this is a bad release rate because CocoonedCow, the author of Martial World and True Martial World only writes TMW at a 6chap/week rate and he is a professionally paid author who does that story for a living. Usually, original authors have an actual job while they are writing since it takes quite a bit to make a legit living off of writing on sites like Qidian and relying on PayPal or patreon.
THE BAD:
Ok, this is stuff which is kind of bad but can be put up within certain cases.
1. Story and Worldbuilding. This is a major annoyance as most books that are original fall short in this aspect quite often. Only a few exceptions have been seen to break this trend and it does get annoying when several stories have an amazing idea, but fail to create an immersive world to suitably bring that idea to life. It is more of a thing that I feel can't really be improved with anything but practice and reading good books to truly understand how it is done. Unfortunately, most original authors are people that haven't really read proper books as I have. I mean, I only came to read up on the internet due to searching for a free version of a particular book and ended up finding a book called "Don't Fear the Reaper" (hiatus'd for 2 years now, author probs died or something) on RRL. Either way, most original authors and even quite a few professional authors lack in this aspect and it does make me feel regret for their great ideas.
THE FUGLY:
I hope people are ready for some serious dissing now, cos it is gonna be really common in this section. This section is for stuff that just all-around pisses me off and makes books unreadable.
- GRAMMAR AND WRITING! Oh Great Lord this pisses me off. Half of the original books on Qidian that are in the popular or ratings section are composed of books that look like some random guy typed them in African or something and fucking machine translated it. Ok, sure a couple are quite well written (just about the half dozen I have in my library), but holy mother of all shitheaps, some original works have worst writing than a fucking 10-year-old. I mean. Some idiot probably used a fucking thesaurus to make his 10-year-old level descriptions sound more age appropriate after using google translate on their fucking random language. This pisses me off to no end on how bad the writing level/language level of original authors are on average on ANY website, let alone Qidian which is probably the worst. Not even RRL can have the amount of shit spelling, incorrect grammar and absolute kid sentences that Qidian has on like 50%+ of their original works. I remember a friend asking me one time if this was a new machine translation site it is that shit. Ok, I will admit that this is one of my pet peeves, but I like to think that I have some tolerance for the English aspect of original works. I am perfectly fine with any grammatical mistakes as long as the author can use a few things correctly. Those few things are proper sentences, commas, full stops and capital letters. Also, don't care if the author does some shit like uses 2 "and"s in a sentence, that's fine. BUT HAVING A LITERAL HALF A DOZEN "and"s IN A SENTENCE THEN A COMMA OR SOME SHIT (Yes this has actually been sighted by me on my bored browsings of qidian)!!! HOLY SHIT, how mentally retarded can you be to do that. Yes, English is the most complicated language on the planet but that is only once you get to the college level and higher. 7-year-old English is just as easy as any other language. Just keep the same language conventions and make the adjectives fucking before the noun or pronoun and you are fucking set for life. I feel bad for the actually retarded people by associating some of the original authors with them. That is underestimating those mentally challenged people seriously. And if people are so shit with the English language, then get Grammarly for editing and maybe Microsoft word so you get the simple stuff correct before the Grammarly corrects the small stuff.
Alright, I better calm down a bit... Nevermind, the next section is just as bad......
- Cringey scenes and characters. Ok, this is SLIGHTLY less triggering than the #1 of this section, but it STILL PISSES ME THE FUCK OFF! Why the hell do people think that creating the reincarnation of shitty, cringy characters like Chu Feng to be a good idea? The characters are made so dumb, that they probably need a breathing manual just to breath without dying (and that's usually the first thing they get in Eastern Fantasy novels if I am being honest hahaha). That is how dumb some characters in original works can be. Sure, these are less common than the bad writers and you do see some great characters I admit, but WHO THE FUCK would make a character spend a fucking chapter and a half tryna get a sword or treasure to work then by fluke have the character inject qi or spill blood on it and HOLY SHIT IT WORKS NOW! WHO WOULDA THUNK IT?!?!?!!! I wish authors would make characters have AT LEAST the same level of intelligence they do, WHICH IS USUALLY JUST A HALF DOZEN IQ POINTS HIGHER ANYWAY!!!! I mean come on, the characters were born and raised in a place with these objects, maybe if it was a reincarnation story then make them slightly ignorant but don't make someone BORN AND RAISED IN THE CULTIVATION WORLD SO STUPID THAT HE DOESN'T EVEN SEND QI INTO A TREASURE OR SPILL SOME BLOOD ON IT TO CLAIM OWNERSHIP OF IT!!!! It is common sense, try to use it sometimes authors, please. I don't really have much more to help with in this regard apart from more ranting, to be honest, so I am going to leave it off here.
Oh, wait I almost forgot. If you are going to add sex scenes into your novel, then at least make it realistic and don't add weird ways of saying penis or vagina please. That means no calling a dick a Dragon or a vagina/pussy a sacred fountain or some shit. It just makes the whole thing cringy beyond redemption and usually results in an instant close tab from me. Alright, now to finish up post.
If you have similar complaints, or have another thing to add, then let me know. If you are one of those who does anything in the fugly or even the bad section and wants some advice, then just reply to this and ask. As pissed off as I made this post I am perfectly happy to help anyone that needs help and I can tell you how I personally write my story to give it the near flawless grammatical skill it has. Anyway, I am done here cos it is midnight and I need to sleep. I am out.
Never use the same word twice in a paragraph! (Outside of articles)
