Postscript: Remarks on the Creation of the Historical Trilogy
This article is about the creative background, process and reflections of my historical trilogy "Twilight Clouds of the Tang Dynasty", "Qinghuan of the Song Dynasty", and "The Yinghua of the Ming Dynasty". It is not part of the novel text. Readers who are not interested please do not subscribe to this chapter.
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In 2018, I resigned from a stable public position that I had held for many years and became a freelancer. I then incorporated writing into my life. On the one hand, it was to relieve the pressure of starting a business. On the other hand, more importantly, it was also to complete the process of writing historical novels.
wish.
The first part, "Twilight Clouds of the Tang Dynasty", has a historical background in the reign of Emperor Dezong of the Tang Dynasty. It was inspired by "Crisis and Reconstruction: The Tang Empire and Its Local Princes" written by my schoolmate Professor Li Biyan. The entry point of the novel is Chang'an Jingyuan in the fourth year of the founding of the Tang Dynasty.
The mutiny ended with a fictitious mutiny in which the prince and the proud generals of the feudal town conspired.
Due to my previous accumulation of reading historical novels, mainly serious literary works such as "Li Ling", "Jin Ou Que", "Zhang Juzheng", "White Gate Willow", "The Young Emperor", etc., I am not very familiar with the style of the online writing track.
It is still written from a perspective commonly known as "indigenous", and the language style is also based on my favorite historical novelist Xu Xingye, so it may not be in line with the taste of the current historical background online readers, and there is no splash. (This is not a splash.
This analysis comes from experienced industry observers and my readers. Thank you for your analysis, which is very valuable from a business perspective)
But personally, I actually like my first book the most, The Tang Dynasty. The core of comedy is tragedy, and the core of life is not tragedy. It explores the cruel game and complex human nature in the power struggle between the central and local governments, and connects the story from
From the emperor to the emperor's teacher, from the prince to the military governor, from the civil servant to the military general, from the Han Dynasty lady to the Tubo princess, each individual life tragedy, reflecting on what kind of attitude towards life we should have to live this life, is exactly what I want
written.
The second book "Qing Huan of the Song Dynasty" is an attempt to shift from the historical classification of men's videos to the ancient poetry classification of women's videos. Although this book currently has the largest number of readers' subscriptions on various platforms among the three works, the difference in acquisitions is
Comments are also the most common.
As an author, you should not be arrogant and block outside voices, so I will carefully read the feedback from many negative readers. Basically, they focus on the following points:
1. The first half of the text contains too much historical background information, which affects the reading coherence of the novel.
2. The two main male characters created are very failed. One is a spy of the Liao regime that is in confrontation with the mainstream regime (Northern Song Dynasty), and the other is a power-hungry prime minister in the civil servant group. These two characters are not at all like
Prepared for a comfortable reading experience of ancient Chinese online texts.
3. The heroine’s character is contrary to the popular “big heroine” nowadays. The heroine does not have her own force value, she will be afraid to ask for help when in danger, and will save a pet who is arrogant and domineering to the point of being annoying out of the instinct of aiding a living person.
The concubine would be attracted to ancient men due to hormonal instinct. When she learned that the other party had a concubine who was similar to the attacker, she did not immediately send a breakup message, but hesitated, although she finally resisted on her own and helped the male lead.
, to avoid being humiliated twice, but it is really embarrassing for modern women.
4. The description of the relationship between Song and Liao does not take the perspective of the great Song Dynasty and is suspected of being sympathetic to the Liao regime. Moreover, the final ending does not change the history of the Northern Song Dynasty dying at the hands of the Jin regime and launching troops to invade the south, which is not satisfying enough.
The above points, point 1, my reflection is that as a novel text, it is necessary to explain the historical background and characters closely related to the plot, but it should be in a more skillful narrative method, such as in the dialogue between the characters,
Plot conflicts allow readers to understand in a relatively non-boring reading experience.
Regarding the second point, I don’t regret my character creation, because I want to use the two male protagonists as a control group to express the influence of the original family, the temptation of power, and the social soil on the character’s personality and life direction.
The third point is that my idea of creating the heroine is to first suppress and then expand. I do not introduce her as a flat heroine, but explore the shortcomings that coexist with the advantages of an ordinary woman, and then show her to break free little by little.
The progress and courage of barriers.
But it turns out that this way of writing is indeed very, very unfortunate nowadays.
Even when the author tries to communicate peacefully with readers who have negative reviews, mainly to explain some creative ideas and ask readers about the underlying reasons for their dislike of the characters (to help improve the quality of the next work), they will instead receive misunderstandings from the readers who have negative reviews and find fault.
The attack is also quite helpless.
The fourth point is very simple. The Song Dynasty book is not originally about the heroine killing everyone and destroying the money to save the Song Dynasty. The heroine relied on her own efforts to rescue some people in the Song Dynasty (such as Su Shi, for example, due to natural disasters)
As for the desperate refugees in Hebei, such as ordinary people on the Liao-Song border), they happened to be the top figures within the Northern Song Dynasty regime, ruining the heroine's ideals and practical achievements in her own country.
The third part of the historical trilogy, "The Great Ming Dynasty", might not have been able to be written as a book because the second part "The Great Song Dynasty" exported too much negative emotions to the author, and my main business happened to be facing the busiest time.
window.
Here, I would like to thank the producer of the audio drama "Da Song Qing Huan" on the Himalayan platform, the anchor "Unaimed Hand", and the listeners who listened to the show, left messages to discuss, and sent private messages to encourage me. It is a well-produced second creation.
, as well as inspiring words with a certain depth of thought, made me turn on the computer again and start writing a new book "The Great Ming Dynasty" that also relied on the real historical background. When the book was serialized to two-thirds, it was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture
The silver medal of the competition.
At the same time, I must also thank a veteran author: Ke Shanmeng. I am a loyal fan of his work "Late Ming", and I admire him very much for his ability to use the shell of an online novel to write many human and three-dimensional characters.
Therefore, the background historical period set in "The Great Ming Dynasty" is ten years forward from the historical period of "Late Ming". "Late Ming" is a time-travel with two male protagonists, from a male perspective, and what I tried is still a time-travel with a single female protagonist.
, female perspective, and the heroine has no emotional line.
The main plot of "The Great Ming Dynasty" is very clear, that is, the heroine changes the outcome of the confrontation between the Ming regime and the Hou Jin regime in Liaodong. The subplot interweaves the party struggles in the court, the struggle for imperial power, the son's revenge against his father, women running businesses and schools, developing Taiwan, and counterattack.
Colonial invasion, maritime power management in the Age of Discovery, etc., also have many traditional culture and intangible cultural heritage elements.
The heroine of the Ming Dynasty is relatively "cold", but her Vajra methods and Bodhisattva's heart are not inconsistent. She has tenacity and courage, and she also has her own bottom line of human nature.
At the end of this book, I considered adding a dialogue between the heroine and the future decision-makers of the empire (Zhu Youxiao, Zhu Youjian), explaining that the concept of imperial power is bound to be crushed by the wheels of history, and expressing that neither men nor women should have any
The psychology of anti-civilization process in trying to become emperor, but still not written.
Those who share the same channel despise totalitarianism more than I do, while those who do not share the same channel will only say "containing private goods". Why write it? Everything is left unsaid.
After writing the trilogy, I switched to realism themes.