This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. Find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
This is Story Over Everything Episode 17 where I am talking about what is a web novel.
So I'm going to take a casual look at web novels.
I have a
little bit of history on them, a little bit of
questions about what they are, what they can be used for, how they can be utilized by the upstart author like me, and
some other stuff. I'm just going to show this because it's so dumb.
For
formatting posts for social media and stuff, you have what I call a share text where as it goes out wherever it goes like on Twitter,
there's text that goes with it along with the title of the episode, hashtags that you put in there if you want, and
a link back to the website so people can find your stuff. For some reason,
I felt compelled to write this and I decided to just roll with it and do it. So here we go.
I have on the post, join MJ for a casual look at web novels.
He put some questions, some, he put some important questions to them such as, who is your daddy and what does he do?
And that's a movie quote, a dumb movie quote, but probably a fair amount of people who are listening to this might know it.
So yeah, I'm sticking with it. Anyway, so
I've got questions that I asked ChatGDP, this list of five or so questions, maybe six questions total, and
I got a result from ChatGDP, and then I went ahead and did some research on my own.
I kind of looked into things individually,
each question basically, you know, through a search engine because how am I going to research it? What do you want me to do? Go to the library?
I'm doing these weekly shows as well as everything else I'm doing. I don't really have time
to go into it, and I think honestly aren't most people now just googling things. Isn't that the form of research?
I would think so. So I don't know, I feel a little funny about it.
I probably won't talk about it in the future, but I think I'm just going to use ChatGDP for questions like this and
just fact check and
do some simple,
yeah, basically simple fact checking so I can make sure that the factual information that I'm looking for and
not collating, what would you call that?
There's another word, like a walled garden cultivating, kind of cultivating, but not cultivating. Anyway, yeah, so I do kind of regret
that I didn't just take the information that I found right away because I formulated the questions. I formulated the questions,
I thought about it, I thought about the topic, but then I just have, you know, quick information and
anyway, I think all is fair in love and war, so that's what I'm going to do.
But first I'm going to share with you my answers to these questions, which are what is the most important thing
for a web novel? What are the definitions? Which are what is the definition of a web novel?
What was the first web novel? Are web novels genre specific? What are the criteria for a web novel and are web novels
the new magazine? Serials. And could they be for me? So,
I have a couple answers. So there's a web fiction wiki and basically condensing its, I don't know, a couple sentence statement down.
Web fiction is, web novels are basically web fiction and the
definition of it is its writing of a novel serialized over a website. That's it.
That's all it is. One chapter at a time, one paragraph at a time, whatever, like that kind of stuff I don't think really matters,
but that's a definition of it. But like I said, I, you know, I did a search for this and another Wikipedia
article popped up. It was one of the top results, like within the top 10 for sure, probably top five, was light novels.
So for some reason, light novel was the first, actually, no, no, no, according to this note I made yesterday,
light novel was the first result I found. The web fiction wiki cited above mentions near the end that web fiction is big and profitable in China,
which is something I'm going to come back to. I know of light novels as anime book series because there's,
you know, one world or one set of characters that they focus on, but there's multiple books that they're in. It's not just the single book
that gets turned into an anime sometimes, such as Log Horizon and Full Metal Panic. Anyway,
and they feature anime illustrations in them. I don't know if it's one per chapter or one every
couple chapters or what, and the covers are, you know, bright and colorful and have like full anime type
aesthetic to them. Anyway, as near as I can tell, light novels are all published physically first,
so I reject this claim from this wiki that light novels are actually web fiction or web novels,
because they're literally not. They're literally printed first and collected, and I think there's
weekly magazines of anthologies of, I don't know, Shueisha or, you know, whatever company has it.
They'll do chunks of the light novels, then they collect them once they're popular, and I guess,
you know, if you're lucky you get to keep writing them, and if not, then I don't know, you go do
something else, move on to something else. Anyway, according to an article I found on Literary Hub,
or LitHub, the first web novel was a book called The Power Book by Jeanette Winterson,
Winterson, and it was published October 9, 2001, and I think it started distribution,
I'll see it, it started serialization in 2000, and I feel a little weird about this. I didn't
read the whole thing, but like the author is really proud that it was like one of the first LGBT
things or whatever, and let's find Andy for the, you know, author of it and whatever, but you know,
I'm a pro free speech radicalist, so if you want to write that, that's fine with me, but yeah,
it's not my cup of tea, and I really wish I'd been able to find something else that wasn't this as
the first light novel published, but I didn't really. There were, though, as I looked into it
more and more, I realized, hey, I read fan fiction in the 90s, and some of them were book length,
surely that counts. I don't remember when the first Harry Potter book came out, but I remember
the house I was living in, and my sister and her friend went to like a midnight release,
which I don't know why there was a big midnight release of The Sorcerer's Stone, that was the
first one's called, because maybe it had been released in the UK first, and it was critically
acclaimed and popular, so then they brought them over here, because I know like the name, isn't
it like the Philosopher's Stone in England, but it's The Sorcerer's Stone here in America? I think
that's how it goes. Anyway, so like, is it possible that, well, and what I was trying to get to is,
I'd been reading some fan fiction from, I'm just going to tell you, I'm not going to tell you,
from whatever shows I was interested in at the time, and some of them were really long, so I mean,
why aren't those the first web novels? Because I think people were writing those before they were
writing most of the other thing, and I think, you know, whether it's trashy or not doesn't matter,
especially because, I mean, getting back to the LGBT thing, I don't know how heavy the like
romance fiction content was in these books, but as I've listened to different writing podcasts,
I hear that Harlequin, well, not Harlequin, just Harlequin, but like romance in general,
and when I say romance, I mean romance with a wink and a nod and a lipstick smeared kiss.
Yeah, and I won't go any further than that. Like, the people who write romance novels, they
write hard and they write fast, and they are early adopters. They look into new formats and genres,
and like they're into pushing envelopes because they have people who are dedicated die-hard fans
who love their stuff and just eat it up, so I wouldn't be shocked if you looked into it and
there was romance or even erotica that was very early published online first, and yeah, but I
didn't look that deep into it because I didn't want to fall into a hole. So moving on, oh, I did
find also, and I'll link it, it's linked in the show notes, a big list, sorry, a big list of web
fiction that has all sorts of stuff in it. It's got webtoons and tapas and all sorts of other things
I didn't really look into because there's just not enough time, but you can look at it because
if you've got the time and inclination, I've provided the link there for you. The next question
I want to answer is, are web novels genre specific? The answer is a big bad no. Next is, what are the
criteria for a web novel? From my understanding, everything I've looked at, it's just a novel
serialized on a website. That's it. That's the only criteria. Doesn't matter if it's good, doesn't
matter if it's bad, doesn't matter if it's trashy, you know, in a lot, doesn't matter if it's genre
fiction or if it's serious literary fiction or anything like that. I say this as a superhero
comic book, anime pulp fan. Yeah, I like that stuff, which other people call trashy or stupid or
trite or even droll, and I'm not into, you know, the fancy pants stuff. So anyway, so yeah, serialized
novel and in my notes I have this. The more I look around, the more it seems like web novel has taken
on the character of a technical term seemingly connected to the Chinese market and after market,
meaning non-Chinese who enjoy the material as well. It gets translated to English and other
languages, I'm sure. It almost seems like the light novel is Japanese and the web novel is Chinese.
This makes sense as web novel is what the Japanese company Toei is calling the Digimon Seekers Project,
which is being released in Japanese, English, and Chinese simultaneously. All right, moving on to my
fifth question. Are web novels and new magazine serials? I'm going to say yes in that they are a
way to serialize a novel, but no in that the scale of distribution is vastly different. Maybe I can
cross-publish on Tapas or on one of the current text or book focused web fiction sites. I won't be
drawing a comic, so I would not think Webtoons is a good place for my stories to go, but I can explore
that further. And question six, could they be for me? Yes, at minimum I can publish my stories here
on MJMinus.com chapter by chapter. I need to, I need to spell incorrect these things. I was writing
it on my phone. I have dabbled in this before and called it WIP, that is writing in public. I haven't
thought of that recently as I've been so focused on writing the Grobik series with the goal of
crowdfunding the money for artwork for the five picture books. Why can't I do it all though? I can
publish my web fiction here, distribute it more widely other places, and then seek an audience who
is interested in seeing the world of Grobugs come to life with images. And I can do that with my
superhero stories that I want to do as well later down the line. So now I'm going to share with you.
So that took me like an hour or two probably of looking around and taking a lot of time and
care and skimming through things to get that data together, to get it all collected together. And
some of the stuff was just obvious. Yeah, I'm going to use this to serials for myself and I'll just
do it here. That's simple. But some of the other stuff, you know, actual questions, looking for
more factual information, I had a little bit of a difficult time finding and putting it all together.
And then, or rather, then there's this series of answers which I will give you very succinctly.
From chat gpt3, I asked pretty much the same questions that I asked and answered myself.
I put through into chat gpt and I got answers. So before I share the answers with you from there,
which I'm just going to present in one go, I want to make a note that I fact-checked the response
and it incorrectly responded on the first web novel. I didn't see anything in Cory Doctor's
bibliography called The Golden Age of Science Fiction. The rest of the response is fairly solid.
I could have just put my question... Oh yeah, sorry to tell you that. So yeah, it told me that
the first web novel was by Cory Doctorow, who's a big technologist guy. I remember, I'm pretty sure
it's the same guy. I remember encountering him on Twitter because I knew of Leo Laporte, I learned
of Leo Laporte back in my big AM radio days. And he's got the Twitter network, right, this week in
technology, this week in tech. And Cory Doctorow was on several shows with him. He's been a
technologist dude doing stuff with technology computers. He's the boing-boing co-creator,
co-founder, whatever. And he's into all this stuff. So I thought, oh, Cory Doctorow wrote a web novel
and I think they said 93, that's what chat gpt said, which is wrong. That doesn't surprise me,
and it wouldn't surprise me. But that's not what his bibliography says, at least the one I have
linked here. So anyway, but I could have... I did fact-check that. I was going to anyway.
And it turns out that I just had to do a little bit more work to pivot and say, okay, no, I'm
going to reject that and not include that misinformation and just not include that
misinformation in this information and just clarify that, okay, as far as I can tell, the first
web novel was this, you know, power book thing. Anyway, so moving on. This is from the vaunted,
the villainous, the heroic, the demonic, the angelic, whatever it is, it is what you want it to be.
It is whatever you take into that cave with you, AI. So here we go.
A web novel is a novel or long-form written work that is primarily published on the internet,
usually on a dedicated website or platform. Unlike traditional novels, which are published
in any physical form or through established publishing houses, web novels are often self-published
or published through online platforms. The first web novel is difficult to pinpoint,
as the concept of publishing written works on the internet has been around for decades. However,
one of the earliest, most well-known web novels is The Age of Science Fiction, which was published
online by author Cory Doctorow in 1993. Again, I factored this. I find no cooperating evidence
to support this claim. Continuing on with what it said. Web novels can cover a wide range of
genres from fantasy and science fiction to romance, mystery, and more. There are no genre
specific requirements for web novels, and writers are free to explore any type of story they wish.
The criteria for a web novel are generally the same as those for traditional novels.
A complete and cohesive story that engages readers and delivers a satisfying narrative arc. However,
because web novels are often published serially, they may have different pacing and structure than
traditional novels. Web novels have become a popular alternative to magazine serials in recent
years, and more and more readers, or as more and more readers, turn to the internet for their
reading material. If you enjoy reading serialized stories, web novels may be a great option for you.
Many web novels are available for free, making them a low-risk way to try out new authors
and genres. So, I mean that's all basically true, except the Cory Doctorow thing which I checked,
and I don't know how much I benefited from actually, from actually doing the research on
everything else. Honestly, I was, I felt upset afterwards because I thought that was a waste of
time. It was really a waste of time, and it honestly made me mad, and I thought I could have
been doing actual writing here. I wanted to look into, I wanted to look into web novels, what they
are, and use it as a topic for this episode of Story Over Everything, because I'm trying to
have the variety of the shows where I have, you know, the big book at the end of the month,
which I'm chipping away at the Merry Adventures of Robin Hood to talk about on whatever, the last
Fridays in May 2023. I'm doing that, so that's like an ongoing month-long project basically,
even though it's a casual book chat. I actually have to listen to the whole book, pay attention,
make notes on each chapter, which anyway, that's a whole different experience, but I'll talk about
that later, maybe in that episode itself, but we'll see. But then I have to think about it,
well okay, I've got my workshop thing, I've got my story machine thing, that's three, and then I've
got my topic. Well really, how is a topic different from workshop? And I'm not exactly sure, so I don't
know if that just means because I am a self-taught author, I should just do two workshops a month,
and maybe do, you know, workshop, story machine, workshop, book chat at the end of the month,
and maybe that is the better way to do it, and I can just kind of spend more time, you know,
hammering out my craft and figuring out what certain things are as I'm waiting to write my,
you know, as I'm working towards getting to my bigger projects, freeing myself up for those,
because I'm starting with small stuff first and moving up from there, so maybe that's what I
should do, and you know, that's not a problem, especially because I almost feel like, well,
in making this topic about web novels, I almost did kind of a workshop thing where I'm talking
about, you know, what is a web novel, we're not talking about how to make one, but I'm giving you
the information that you would need. It's basically just a serialized novel online, genre doesn't
matter, and I don't know what else, like there's not a lot of requirements, so had I instead talked
about, you know, goal, motivation, and conflict, and tried to give myself, familiarize myself with
those better, and have like a real strong working relationship with them, or working definition so
I can work with them in the future, then, you know, how would that be different? So anyway,
and interestingly enough, this almost turned into an episode about the use of chat, GPT-3, and AI
tools in general, but I don't know, it's interesting. I'm involved, well, I'm not involved, I'm,
I have a very particular mindset about personal responsibility, and freedom, and things like that,
like I talk about free speech, and you know, you want to live your life however you want to,
you want to write books about that, I'm fine with that, I don't think you should be censored,
and yeah, that's how I feel. Even if some people I know would disagree with me in some cases,
because I'm a bit of an extremist, well I'm an extremist in that respect, and again, people I
know and hold dear would think, would look askance at me for me to say that to them, and especially
if they brought up certain topics, or specific instances, or subject matter, and I would have
to say, yeah, I'm okay with that, you can say that, I'm okay with somebody saying that. They
would disagree heartily, but anyway, I don't know what the point was that I was winding up towards,
but it's okay, because I don't want to waste your time, I don't want to waste my time, I'm going to
let you go, let me go, we're going to move on with our lives, we're going to come back next week,
and we'll be talking about some topic that I already have written down in my notes for
Story Over Everything for next week, so I encourage you to
check out all my work over at mjmunoz.com, I have a lot going on, I will probably be sharing some of
what I'm working on now, which is the Grow Books, I'll probably be sharing some content from that
in the future, maybe not this month, maybe next month, we'll see, I've got to figure out exactly
what I'm doing, but it should be good for me to do, I'm going to be doing a lot of work on that,
but it should be good for me and good for you, so anyway, until next time, I hope that you're well,
and I bid you adieu, this is MJ signing out. I hope you enjoyed that, go to mjmunoz.com to leave
any questions, comments, or other feedback you might have, there you can find all of my analysis,
art, and fiction, I cover books, tokusatsu, comic books, anime, and more, look around,
you're sure to find something else that you'll enjoy as well, this has been a story over everything
production.