This was hysterically fun to read :)
Webnovel has a trope of it's own. Incomprehensibly bad English given a natural score of 4.9 or more, because, well, who cares if the text needs to be decoded rather than read?
StenDuring
- Jan 11, 2024
- Joined Jan 4, 2019
- Edited
Well, a movie usually is TP objective, so no wonder ;)
While I prefer TP (limited) there are things you can only do in FP.
For example:
I'm Daisuke Todo, cause my parents were asshats and saddled me with a name from way back Showa. Caused me problems more than once. Last time was outside Nagoya when my dad dragged me into an onsen for the first time in my life. Now he got away with embarrasing himself since he's half Japanese and looking like the foreigner he is, but mom's from Tokyo, so I sat there looking like the Japanese I definitely was not.
Who brought the trash in? one of the guests thought.
That was rather obvious from the glares we got, and I had to take the brunt of it. Next I knew I was showered by words in Japanese I didn't even need to understand to get the gist of it. I know a verbal bashing when I hear one.
The above is impossible to recreate in TP.
It's a past tense narrative retold and commented in present tense. I call this a camp-fire tale. As a reader your suspension of disbelief is contracted by assuming you're sitting by the camp-fire listening to someome reminiscing, or maybe just telling a tall tale. Bouncing between past and present tense like this is only allowed in FP.
Another bonus: With the narrator also being the main character you can easily insert a false TP like above. We learn that it's the FP character who assumes what someone else is thinking. This gets a lot clunkier if you're already in TP from the start.
All that said, I still prefer TP, just like you do.
I personally really dislike when a story jumps from third to first.
Why?
Because the first person POV colours the story by being limited to what the character knows or believes. The entire world is shown to the reader through the eyes of one individual. That said, the character still doesn't have to be reliable at all.
A strictly limited third person narrative can achieve this as well if we only follow one person. The distance to the character grows a little, but there are stories where this kind of detatchment is perfect.
The usual style for making the reader know more than each character is a limited third person multiple point of view. It's considered good form only to switch POV with a clear and distinct break. It's perfect for quickly ramping up conflict based on misunderstandings.
Lastly you can go ninteenth century on your readers and run with god-mode. I feel that this is sloppy writing, but admittedly there are a large number of classics doing exactly this. It's also the most usual version of third person POV found here. I suspect an influence from cartoons (manga, manhwa, etc) where you can have multiple thought bubbles inside one frame. Poorly done this kind of POV will degenerate into an orgy of tell and very little show.
Anyway, in short. Pick FP or TP and stick to one of them. Sure, feel free to run your frame story with an FP narrator finding a room full of old letters and then offer your story of what happened fifty years earlier in TP based on the contents of those letters.
Show when the scene merits that investment (which should be most scenes), but just get going and start telling when you're fast forwarding.
So, James had a really awful shouting match with his girlfriend (I hope this scene was shown), and now he's in a taxi headed for the airport where he knows it's time for round two with his ex-wife.
Don't bloody show junk from that taxi ride. Sure, it's a scene, but it's just a transition between two scenes where he gets his arse handed to him from two different women.
For half an hour in the back seat of a car that might have been luxurious ten years earlier James slowly fumed with anger until he finally calmed down. Still, if was with a feeling of dread that he paid the driver knowing what waited just inside the glass door.
So, get over it, telling kept it short, and now we're ready for round two of verbal abuse. And yes, that one should be shown ;)
- Edited
Oh dear, that was an epic necro :D
1) English is a foreign language to me; hence I am, by definition, unable to be an American English speaker.
2) While machine translation might be enough to decode a foreign language into a semblance of meaning, it's still far from enough to communicate the literary values of a fictional text. Admittedly I'm assuming that the original text did indeed have any literary value to begin with.
3) The example I used didn't just translate the example sentence incorrectly. That type of error would usually only change the semantic colour of the original text. The example, however, showcases when semantic value is changed as well.
The original sentence states: Machine translations are bad when applied on good text.
The double translation states: Machines translating good text will find nothing good.
Ie, from 'machine translations are bad' to 'good text is bad for machines'. That is hardly merely an incorrect translation. In fact the original message conveyed is impossible to discern from the second sentence.
Last, to return to my first statement in this response. Why did I learn English? The answer is to be able to read, write, speak and listen to English myself. The 'English' authors I read as a child, translated into Swedish by paid professionals, lacked a certain something. They just weren't good enough. After I had mastered English I understood why.
Barring being exclusively contracted anywhere, sure, no problem.
Read Casanova. Now that's what I call harem with a nasty fallout ;)
I can't see what would be overkill with that?
It takes, what, one hour, two hours to get to level 2? This is a forum for members. In what alternate universe would it be a bad thing if you had to spend a couple of hours on the website before being considered a member?
Going through posts is inane. Disable any account lower than level two from posting anything instead.
I can't understand why anyone would implement a membership level system and then allow entry level members to post anything anywhere. I mean, it's not like it takes much time to reach level 2...
I'll bite.
https://www.webnovel.com/book/transition-and-restart_12652502605368205
Title: Transition and Restart
Genre: High School Romance (New Adult rather than Young Adult despite the setting)
Blurb:
If you were transported from this world to another almost identical.
If you were transported from your life to your teenage self.
If you had to restart your life again.
Would you, or would you cling to your memories?Heh, I manage to check all the boxes apart from Fantasy and Games.
So: In the order of half a million words, not contracted, proofread twice (some errors are bound to remain though) and I'm an English minor as well as an MA Comp Lit, Sci Fi isekai (since when are people only allowed to pop worlds by means of magic?), Teen Romance (kind of -- makes more sense if you read it), set in a version of contemporary Tokyo, so not exactly my own world building, most definitely a lot of slice of life.
Basically an aggregate of (almost) seven LN high school romance series. My own original though, so not as heavy on dialogue as your average LN. It's very slow, slice of life and all that, and I'm running with an ensemble cast, which is an immediate dealbreaker for some readers who need one main character.
https://www.webnovel.com/book/transition-and-restart_12652502605368205
Put it last in your queue. I've already received my fair share of reviews, swaps included. Also, real life occured. I've left it hanging for a year or so. Need to clean up RL before I have time to write the finishing five volumes.
- In GL/lesbian
While I'm 100% agreeing with you about the one on one love being preferred (my tastes, someone else wants a long-term consentual five-some then feel free) we're talking stories here.
Girl meets girl. They fall in love and live happily ever after. End.
That makes perfect sense for a feel good short story, but you'll have to be an absolutely amazing author to land a romance with zero love conflicts.
Lastly, your definition of a 'depraved act' might be someone elses every day reality. When people agree all over society about something being depraved it usually becomes illegal. Well, at least where the society in itself is not depraved (according to the laws from where I come).
A bit of clarification here.
Reincarnation is an old concept. Reborn -- simple as that. Into this (the same) world or another doesn't matter. You die, you're born again. The new you (in most cases) would have absolutely no clue about your past life. The reborn you might even totally disbelieve the very concept of reincarnation. See buddism and hinduism for a more thorough explanation of the concept.
Arguably reincarnation is one form of transmigration. The 'you' in you leaves one state and enters another.
Transmigration basically means you were there, and now you're here. For the purpose of fiction it wouldn't be used for you taking a drive in your car from point A to point B. This would, also arguably, disqualify you opening a portal into another world since it kind of resembles you taking that drive in your car.
In the most primitive sense logging into World of Warcraft would qualify in as much as you accept that your gaming avatar is a representation of 'you'. Hence most 'sleep on your bed while playing a game in your digital avatar' stories would qualify.
Having your soul/essence/whatever moved into another entity would definitely qualify, which means all the body-swapping shenanigans common in Japanese romance definitely qualifies, but again this isn't usually what is meant in fiction.
For all practical use, in fiction, it means 'you', temporarily or premanently, leave your body and enter another. This second body is also physically present in a different world than the world your primary one was in.
See what I did there. Something so simple suddenly became so difficult :D
Title: Transition and Restart
Link:https://www.webnovel.com/book/12652502605368205/Transition-and-Restart
Genres:Teen (Japanese manga style high school romance)
Synopsis: If you were transported from this world to another almost identical.
If you were transported from your life to your teenage self.
If you had to restart your life again.
Would you, or would you cling to your memories?
Other Info: I'm updating again. Sorry for the unplanned hiatus.
Thanks a bunch ;)
It's been a busy spring teaching remotely due to the pandemic. Well, busy in the sense of adapting to a novel situation at least.
All's well over here. Able to bring the kids to my mom for the first time in several months and we're lazing away in the summer's heat. Logged in here for the first time in like forever and saw this nice surprise, så I just felt the need to comment :D
Ooh, thanks a bunch ;) Didn't see that one coming.
I'm heading into our long vacation. New updates should follow.
I believe https://www.webnovel.com/book/12652502605368205/Transition-and-Restart fits your reqs.
Japanese manga style high school teen romance. Might not be your cup of tea. 460 chapters and slowly ongoing.
Ahh, schools on spring break here (Easter Break), and I've finally caught up with grading papers.
No more skype calls for a week. Admist taking my kids for a daily walk I might even find some time to write again.