Chapter 81: Thoughts on Release
Generally speaking, the tradition of expressing thoughts upon release often involves lamenting one’s hardships, crying over how difficult life has been, how hard one has worked to stay up all night writing, how important subscriptions are for the book, and how one is very, very, very much struggling. However, I feel like I’m doing quite well, and I’ve been lazy with my writing at times. Most importantly, I’m actually quite satisfied with the performance of this book (hopefully I’m not jinxing it).
Although the popularity of this book is relatively low compared to others. Before its release, the website organized a pre-release event featuring ten books, and fortunately, mine was among them. I was very happy to receive this treatment, but when I checked, I found that my book ranked the lowest among the ten.
But my mindset is positive. After being beaten down many times while writing my last book, I came to understand one principle: “Don’t compare yourself to others, compare yourself to yourself.” Comparing oneself to others is the root of suffering because it only highlights one’s inadequacies and obscures one’s progress.
Compared to my last book, this one’s performance is great. The new book’s views are 1.5 times that of its word count, whereas my old book still hasn’t reached its view count with its word count, which indicates that I’ve made significant progress.
When I was writing this book, its dismal performance motivated me to pinpoint what readers enjoy and write engaging plots. That’s when I started frequenting the Qidian platform to learn how to write effectively. I have to admit that Qidian is five years ahead of the industry; I watched “Rebirth in the Urban Immortal Cultivation” while taking notes and even experimented with my insights in my old book, though the results weren’t great. In short, the learning effects seemed good but also not so great. However, it ultimately gave me the courage to plan out a story focused on the male protagonist experiencing pleasure.
During that time, I also read “Lord of the Mysterious” and found its power system refreshing. Compared to the web novels I had read before, the character professions were clearly defined. Unlike many web novels where warriors randomly throw energy blasts that look no different from mages, everyone just hurls skills and bombards each other— the only difference is that warriors “cast spells” with swords while mages use wands. Additionally, the “role-playing” setting greatly helped push the storyline forward. I intended to take some inspiration from that.
Moreover, I was dissatisfied with some old tropes in demon lord and hero stories. The demon lords all seem like saviors and noble heroes, while the light church characters are all hypocrites and crazy witch burners.
So, I decided to write a story featuring distinct character professions, a demon lord as the villain, a righteous hero, and the notion that one must achieve enlightenment to grow stronger, along with a male protagonist playing the role of a tiger to eat pigs.
Thus, the idea for “The Hero Possessed the Demon Lord” was born. After finishing my old book, I went to the library to write and set some character professions and role-playing methods before starting.
The story of “The Hero Possessed the Demon Lord” is about a righteous hero who possesses the demon lord, loses power, and cautiously plays a role in the brutal demon realm. However, once entangled in the genre shift, it is very difficult to change direction. Writing “The Hero Possessed the Demon Lord” felt particularly challenging; not only was it slow to write, but the results were also not very good.
I would like to thank Sister Jing and the editors for their help. When I showed them “The Hero Possessed the Demon Lord,” I received unfavorable feedback, which helped me avoid the fate of failure in a timely manner. I decisively cut out thirty thousand words from the book and rewrote it. I especially want to thank Sister Jing for her patience in guiding me on how to expand a story while writing “The Light God’s Soul Possessing the Demon Lord,” which was a tremendous help. Although I later decided not to pursue that story, I applied what she taught me in this book.
To return to the main point, I went back to the traditional path of genre shifts, and based on my analysis of popular genre shifts, I planned to craft a good male protagonist in that context.
I began to refine the character designs. My ability to create characters is poor; in my old book, the character development was lacking and resulted in characters being out of character (OOC). The female lead, Alina, was poorly designed. She was supposed to be a good-hearted pervert, but I also gave her an extremely benevolent aspiration, which felt too disjointed and hard to manage. Also, she was too strong, which made the male lead appear too weak. I didn’t even have the confidence to write him doing anything naughty to her.
While reading “Lord of the Mysterious,” the character interactions inspired me greatly; I realized that interactions between characters can be so interesting and can help readers through the tedious buildup.
Thus, I wanted to prove myself in this book. I focused on creating solid character designs. Eventually, I finalized a good-hearted yet perverted demon female lead and set up an upright and kind male lead for interaction. I imagined scenarios where the female lead frequently faced setbacks while doing bad things under the male lead’s influence, which felt good. I also envisioned the love-hate relationship plot between the male and female leads, and it created a buzz in my mind.
From a rational analysis as well, I noticed that the perverted female lead provides ample reasons for the male lead to pursue a harem.
And thus, this book was born. This time, I learned from the lessons of my last book, refined the outline and character designs, focused on character development, and avoided writing clichéd points, hoping to provide you all with a pleasant reading experience.
Lastly, let’s address the issue of updates that everyone is most concerned about.
Apart from the necessary 23,000-word update upon release, there will be an additional update for every twenty monthly tickets, with a maximum of fifteen updates this month.
