After finishing the sixth volume, as usual, I used WORD to count the number of words.
1540747 words.
1.54 million words, which is more than the entire book of some novels...
This is the volume with the largest number of words, because it contains indeed a lot of content.
At the same time, because Hu Lai has changed the map, everything is new and needs to be presented in words in front of readers, so it takes a lot of pen and ink.
After all, this is not the kind of novel about the real football world. Many things need no introduction, everyone will naturally understand it.
Whether it is the Kings of Madrid, Catalonia United, or the Pirates of Madrid, even though they have played sporadically before, I actually did not shape them carefully.
Because it wasn't necessary at the time.
When writing a novel, you still need to distinguish priorities. It is impossible to cover everything, otherwise it will become a running account.
You can understand it like watching a stage play. What is shrouded in the spotlight is what you want the audience to pay attention to, and all the stories happen in this place.
The other characters disappear into the darkness outside the lights.
The audience doesn't know what they are doing, and they won't care.
When they need to take the stage, the lights will naturally light up above their heads, illuminating the stage where they are.
In the past, Hu Lai was only in England, and most of the characters he came into contact with were in England. Later, he participated in the Champions League and Europa League, which attracted some other European teams.
Because Catalonia has had a direct confrontation with Leeds City, it has more drama.
This can be seen from the fact that I listed the names and brief introductions of the main players of Catalonia in the character list in the fifth volume.
Both the King of Madrid and the Pirates of Madrid are only used as pure background panels, appearing in occasional descriptions in the form of "names".
The King appeared very early, and Hulay appeared when he was still playing in China, but I only focused a little on Xavi Sanchez and did not write about more characters.
Because there is no need to waste time on characters that will not advance the plot in any way for the time being.
Meili was also portrayed with great emphasis because of the Olympics.
All this changed when Hulay transferred to Madrid Pirates.
Whether it's the Pirates of Madrid, a giant team that has barely played before, or the Kings of Madrid, who have always appeared in the story as a "sidekick", I began to use more pen and ink to shape them.
Build their roster, coaching staff, club history, traditions, honors, fan culture...and more.
As Hulay encounters various opponents in the Champions League, and there are more and more new characters and teams, it is natural to use more words to describe them.
So the length was stretched like this.
It’s not like I haven’t thought about whether to streamline or make subtractions.
After all, subtraction is a very advanced practice.
But I thought about it and felt that I still couldn't do the subtraction, because some things only exist in my mind. If I don't write it clearly, readers may find it confusing.
This was particularly evident when Hulay moved to Madrid Pirates.
In my plan, outline, and mind, Julay would definitely go to Madrid Pirates, and it was a transfer result that no one expected. So I tried my best to describe the King's pursuit of Julay, but hardly mentioned the Pirates.
.
It's because in my mind, I want to keep the Madrid Pirates out of the spotlight.
When the official announcement was made at the end, everyone in the book was unexpected, and then they realized that the King of Madrid had become a running companion...
But just because of the subtraction, the transfer plot feels a bit abrupt to readers, with insufficient foreshadowing.
From the perspective of the world in the book, there is nothing wrong with Hulay's transfer to Madrid Pirates. However, because I did not completely write out everything in my mind, some readers questioned the reasonableness and necessity of this transfer.
The same problem occurred during the Champions League semi-finals this season.
Originally, in my plan, after writing about the Champions League quarter-finals between Hu Lai and Luo Kai, the story jumped directly to the Champions League semi-finals.
The league part is passed over in one go, and the content of the Champions League semi-finals is entered directly. The game is already in the game from the beginning.
I often do this in this book, just to avoid writing the novel as a running account, and always want to use the language of movie lenses to write the novel.
Sometimes this is successful and reasonable.
But sometimes you shouldn't do this.
For example, this Champions League semi-final.
I followed this method to write about the semi-finals, starting directly from the game. The main text is that Pirates of Madrid and Munich have already faced each other in the game, and then write about the game. Pirates of Madrid scored a goal, and Munich Blue-and-White scored again. Finally,
Madrid Pirates defeated Blue and White Munich 3:2 at home.
Then, it skipped directly to the weekend league, starting with the second leg of the semi-finals, and it was already the last ten minutes of the game, and Becker had already scored.
This was my original plan.
The difference between the second half and what you see now is not very big, but the difference in the front is obvious.
I wrote the first round with this idea in mind, and it was very painful.
It’s so painful that I don’t know how to write about the game. No matter how I write it, it feels like nothing, and it’s like a running account.
Such a game is meaningless.
But it shouldn't be like this, because this is the Champions League semi-finals, and this is a story about an important Champions League record.
As a result, I wrote without any passion at all.
At first I wanted to be lazy and just force myself to write it down. Maybe I could get through it just by writing it down?
Or, in fact, readers are not that demanding. As long as I write about the protagonist scoring a goal, they will still be happy...
I comforted myself in this way, or rather deceived myself, and then continued to write forcefully.
It wasn't until one day that I finished writing two chapters in great pain. It was already one o'clock in the middle of the night, and I was going to take a shower and go to bed.
As a result, while taking a shower, I repeatedly thought about this problem that had been bothering me for several days. I have a habit of reviewing the content I have recently written while taking a shower. I feel that this is wrong.
If even I think there is something wrong with this kind of forced writing, then it will 100% fail the readers.
Then I made up my mind to overturn and rewrite all the six chapters I wrote in the previous three days.
After making this determination, I felt that the burden that had been weighing on my heart in those days suddenly relaxed a little, my whole person became relaxed, and my goals became clear.
Then I sent out a single chapter at two o'clock in the middle of the night to tell everyone that I was going to take a leave of absence, because almost all the saved manuscripts were useless.
After asking for leave, I will think about how to write it specifically.
I started flipping through the previous parts of this book, and gradually found the thoughts and ideas I had when I first wanted to write this book.
I found that I had unknowingly fallen into the misunderstanding of wanting to "speed up the pace and squeeze out water".
In terms of my writing style, not only can I not squeeze out the water, I have to pour water into the novel.
Because I am the kind of writer who first creates images in my mind and then converts these images into words.
This means a lot of detail is needed.
It's too dry, and all the images are just initial sketches, with neither outlining nor coloring, just like the later stages of Yoshihiro Togashi's Hunter.
Maybe some readers can figure out what I wrote by relying on their powerful imagination, but I always worry that readers think differently than I do, so I have to take the trouble to describe the picture in my mind clearly.
And this way of writing requires me to calm down and not be impatient in order to find the state of mind.
I write 6,000 words every day, which takes more than ten hours, and most of that time is probably spent on how to build pictures.
If a picture is generated in my mind, I can actually write very quickly. But if there is no picture, I may be stuck for a day.
The previous semi-finals lacked game images, but I had to forcefully write about the game, which made writing very painful.
After finding the crux of the problem, I realized that I could not pursue speed and hard work, but should be slow and slow.
Putting aside the readers' feelings, at least I can find my creative state in this way, otherwise what I write will be just a "detailed outline" that is slightly more detailed than the outline...
So I started to redesign the plot before and after the Champions League semi-finals, and added the role of Becker, the character who competes with Hu Lai for the record. For example, I didn't explain much about why he competed with Hu Lai for this record. It seemed that he should compete with Hu Lai. Hu Lai competition is the same.
But in fact, as a person with his own thoughts, he should have a motive for everything he does.
So I added the motivation that he wants to compete for the Ballon d'Or.
Then I also introduced Albertazzi and Caesar through the Champions League record to further improve the images of these two characters.
There is also Hu Lai's record of 60 goals. I didn't plan to spend so much time writing about this record at first. I just wanted to mention that he set a new record.
I didn't expect how the world would react after setting the record.
This is not right.
So when I was rewriting it, I thought very carefully about what kind of follow-up reaction his record should bring. It should not just be simple praise from everyone, but should also have something with a long-term impact.
So I led to the Hulay Museum, and then continued to strengthen this clue through the influence of the semi-finals.
The Hu Lai Museum is my personal fantasy of what kind of changes Chinese football should have in this fictional world.
So there will be plots about museums in the future...
In the end, when I took all aspects into consideration and wrote them out, the result is what everyone sees.
During that time, whether it was chapters, paragraphs, high-order subscriptions, or monthly passes, rewards were very active.
What does this mean?
It shows that I was right to slow down and "inject water" into the plot.
It shows that everyone really likes to see this "water".
In fact, the reason why this book still has such vitality at 6.8 million words is precisely related to my tireless watering.
Without so many details and so many characters who seem to really live in this world, how can Hu Lai alone support such a large world?
There are many things that I could not think of when I started the book. I actually thought about them while writing. Many of the plots and characters came out after I slowly integrated into the world and gradually established the world.
, became clear.
It's just that serialization is a long and very torturous job. No one can guarantee that he will be full of energy and in excellent condition every day during the serialization period. There will always be times when he becomes slack and stuck.
So sometimes I just want to be lazy...
Fortunately, when I want to be lazy, I will look through what I have written before, and then when I see such a vivid world, I wonder if this world will finally fall into my hands. Everyone here
People are all alive and living, and they should continue to live in that world, even after this book is finished.
I also want to thank you all for your tolerance and support for me, allowing me not only to not explode, but also to make solo updates sometimes.
But for the quality of the novel, I believe it is all worth it.
When this book is finished, what everyone will see will not be an online YY novel, but a real, believable, and desirable world.
In the process of writing "", as long as a character has a name, even if it doesn't have a line of dialogue, I will add it to my list of characters.
Published at the end of each volume.
As of now, there are as many as 925 named characters in this book.
These nine hundred and twenty-five people have names, ages, their pasts and futures.
There are also countless nameless characters who appear in the book and become part of this world.
The same goes for the beginning of the new volume.
I tried to focus on people other than the protagonist at the beginning of the new volume, not to advance the plot so quickly, but to create more characters and describe the lives of ordinary people. Then through the shaping of these characters one by one, I created a real and believable story.
The world of faith.
For this reason, sometimes the protagonist may not appear for several chapters. Maybe not everyone likes to watch such a rhythmic narrative.
But I will still stick to this way of writing, because from the perspective of the entire book, this is the right thing to do.
Besides, my ambition for this book cannot be carried by the protagonist alone.
Some of my own thoughts about Chinese football and life need to be reflected in more different characters.
At this time, the more than a thousand characters I had created before began to play an important role.
Without these characters, the subsequent plot of "" would be very boring, and I would have no passion or motivation to write it.
Why is "Greenery" so short? Because after I wrote most of them except the love story between Gao Zheng and Sister Feng, I didn't want to write the beginning. I forced myself to write it. That is real water, pure water.
So the book is completed with more than two million words.
Generally speaking, when a novel is just started, it is written smoothly because of passion. But in the later stages of writing, it becomes more and more tired, both the author and the readers are tired of aesthetics, and eventually the book gradually dies.
But "" was the other way around. Although I was very passionate when I started the book, writing it was actually very painful. I really had to carefully consider every word and every sentence. I had to think about every plot, every new character, and then think about it again.
It feels quite like stepping into an abyss and walking on thin ice.
I'm afraid that if I don't write it well, the whole world will collapse from here.
That's because I'm creating a world from scratch. I have an idea of what this world should be like in my mind, but I'm actually not sure yet. I only have a skeleton and no flesh and blood.
If we only look at skeletons, who knows how different people are from each other?
But now that I have finished writing the nearly 6 million words of the previous article, I am getting better and better at writing, and I have fewer and fewer scratches in the early stages of the book.
This is also because the world is getting richer and richer, and they can run automatically according to the rules.
There are fewer and fewer places where I, the author, need to forcefully intervene.
In the past, when I wrote a book, until the end, the more I wrote, the fewer stories there were, and the less I had to write.
Now I am writing "" to the end. The more I write, the more stories I write, and the more I write.
It's strange to say that the last time I had this creative impulse to shape the world and have more stories to write the further I write, it was... sixteen years ago.
When I wrote "We Are the Champions".
At the end of "We Are the Champions", I felt as if I was not writing a novel, but the characters in the novel were interacting with each other, and I was just recording their interactions.
In the end, when the familiar characters in the book exited one after another, they just walked out of the spotlight of the stage and walked into the darkness of the stage.
They just finished their play, but their lives and lives are still going on.
There are still two volumes of "", so the characters in the book haven't even been completed yet.
Half of 2022 has passed. I estimate...or, I hope, that this book can be written until March next year, because by then, it will be the twentieth anniversary of my entry into the industry. No matter which industry I am in, twenty years have passed.
It is a very memorable thing. So I hope to use such a book to mark my twenty years of online writing career.
Of course, it doesn't matter if it doesn't work, I won't force you to get stuck.
If the story reaches the end I planned, earlier than March next year, then it will be good to end there, and my twenty-year career will not be bad because of it.
So again, I will take it seriously and finish Hu Lai's story at my own pace. I will end it when it's time to end, and let everything take its course.
I will try to keep the whole book on the same level without falling off a cliff at the end.
So far, the performance of this book has surpassed all my previous books during the serialization period.
I hope that when it is finished, the reputation of this book will surpass all previous books.
Thank you again for your support and understanding, thank you!