R. A. Paterson - How to Write Light Novels and Webnovels: Your Key to Writing Addictive Stories That Get Reads, Reviews and Sales

How to Write Light Novels and Webnovels

Your Key to Writing Addictive Stories
That Get Reads, Reviews and Sales

R. A. Paterson

How to Write Light Novels and Webnovels 2019 by Robyn Paterson. All Rights Reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Cover designed by Pixelstudio

Cover Art: gow27 - stock.adobe.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Robyn Paterson
Visit my website at www.robynpaterson.com
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: Aug 2019
Kung Fu Action Theatre
ISBN-978-1-989357-04-0

This book is dedicated to the writers of tomorrow.

With Special Thanks to

Don Chisholm

Justus R. Stone

Jeremy Barwick

Jonathan Kinney

Richard Curtissmith

And the many translators who toil endlessly to bring us webfiction from across the world.

And with love to my wife for putting up with my late nights reading webfiction.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Winning at Writing

Across Asia, writers just like you have been turning their hobby of writing into careers.

In China and South Korea, writers of online fiction (called webnovels in English) are churning out online serials that are making them rich and famous. Thanks to webfiction portals like Qidian , Joara , Naver , and others, theyre able to build huge fan bases who flock to their every new release, and get media deals to turn their stories into comics, movies, TV series, online games, and more.

Meanwhile, in Japan, online fiction hubs like Shsetsuka ni Nar! have become the greenhouses where publishers find the next hot young writers, turning their work into serialized young adult books called light novels. These light novels have become the hottest media properties going, and every season fans around the world are treated to the newest anime, manga, and films based on light novel properties.

And now, its your turn!

Chinas giant online publisher Qidian has created Webnovel.com , a site that is attracting millions of users and turning webfiction writers into profit-sharing authors. Meanwhile, other webfiction sites like Wattpad , Radish , Tapas have launched their own profit-sharing programs with their authors, letting writers like you convert millions of readers into steady income.

At the same time, major English publishers are watching the webfiction sites looking for the next great young writer and media companies are trying to find the source for their next hit movie or TV series. And, self-publishing is now 40%+ of the English book market, so anyone can publish their books online and get them in front of tens of millions of readers.

Anybody with a story can get it out there and show the world their creativity while making an income doing what they love- including you.

But writing webfiction isnt easy.

You cant just write- you need to know whats popular and how the top writers turn their stories and dreams into big audiences and big opportunities. You need to know the little tricks that will get your audience hooked and keep them reading, reviewing, and buying each new story you put out there. What are the top Chinese, Korean, and Japanese writers doing that are bringing in global audiences? How do they make stories so compelling that millions of people are willing to read bad machine translations just to get a taste of the stories?

This book will show you all of that, and more.

You dont want to just write- you want to win at writing.

So, turn the page, and lets get started in making your writing dreams come true.

How to Use This Book

This book isnt meant to be read straight though.

You are welcome to read it that way, and will learn a lot if you do, but its better to use it as a guidebook where you read about what you need when you need it.

It is divided into four sections:

1) What Popular Webfiction Has in Common

2) Asian Webfiction

3) Webfiction Genres

4) Writing Your Own Webfiction

And while the first section and the last section of the book are probably required reading, the middle two sections which make up most of the book cover a wide variety of topics and can be read as needed .

For example, perhaps you want to write a xianxia cultivator story you intend to serialize on a fiction site?

Then, you would only need to read the first and last sections, the chapter on Chinese Webnovels, the Rising Hero Story chapter, and perhaps the Fantasy chapter for good measure. Unless you also intended it to be a litRPG, in which case that chapter would be good reading too.

Or, lets say you want to write a romance light novel?

Then, besides the basics, the sections on Japanese Light Novels and the Romance genre notes would be all the things youd need to focus on. Unless its also about a girl building a clothing empire in a fantasy world, in which case the Fantasy and Task Story chapters might be worth a look.

As you can see, you can pick and choose your chapters as needed.

Most chapters are complete in themselves, and designed to be read without reading anything else except the first and last sections of the book. So, dont worry about missing something important by not reading everything.

That said, you might want to look at the other chapters sometime as well, since you never know what interesting tidbits are hiding in them that can produce story ideas or new takes on old genres.

Lets do it!

Quick Definitions

If you picked up this book, you probably know what webnovels or light novels are, but just to make sure, lets do some quick definitions.

Light Novel a style of young adult novels from Japan which is heavily influenced by anime and manga and usually includes illustrations. Light novels were usually (but not always) originally published online and then later acquired by publishers. They are often thinner than regular novels and can cover any genre.

Webnovel the generally accepted English term for online fiction produced in China or South Korea. Webnovels are most often serialized stories written by amateurs and semi-professional writers and may run hundreds or thousands of chapters. They too can cover any genre, but fantasy and romance are the most popular genres.

Webfiction a generic term for stories written for sharing on the internet. This book uses the term webfiction to describe both webnovels and light novels since the majority of them share this common beginning. Yes, not all light novels start as webfiction, but for the purposes of this book theyre going to be lumped together as webfiction as a way to avoid saying webfiction and light fiction over and over again. Our apologies.

What Popular Webfiction Stories Have in Common

With millions of writers churning out millions of chapters on Asian webfiction sites like Qidian , Joara , Nar, and others, it should be no surprise that people very quickly began to figure out what worked and what didnt when it came to building an audience. That isnt to say there is only one way to do it, but copying others who are more successful has always been one the fastest paths to the top. And, when you add that the people at the top can make a lot of money, that gave Asian writers a whole lot of incentive to zero in on the best ways to do things.

As a result, there are a number of tricks and approaches that Asian web fiction writers have developed to maximize their chances of success. They even work across cultures, since theyre also what draw a lot of fans in other languages to translate and read web fiction on popular English, French, Spanish and Arabic sites. They dont work so well for romance, but thats because romance has its own rules.