The web drama "Beginning" is undoubtedly the hottest drama at the beginning of 2022.
On the evening of January 25, the 15-episode "Beginning" ushered in the grand finale. According to the data of Lighthouse Professional Edition, the episode was broadcast online for 15 days, occupying the top spot in the daily market share of the main film broadcast of the whole network for 11 times, and the total number of broadcasts has exceeded 1.3 billion. When the drama version of "Beginning" was broadcast more than halfway through, the paper book "Beginning" was sold out of stock, and the online serial works also sat firmly on the gold list of Jinjiang Literature City.
"The Beginning" book cover
"I am personally very satisfied with this adaptation, 'Beginning' may not be perfect for one reason or another, but it presents the humanistic core I want to express 'completely'." On January 26, the day after the finale aired, the original author of "The Beginning" and the writer of Jinjiang Literature City, Pray Jun, was interviewed by the surging news reporter.
She said that as the first screenwriter of the web drama "Beginning", she should try her best to ensure that the "core" of her original work can be excavated, and the goal that the whole crew wants to achieve is the same, that is, " We just want to tell you a story well, and what this story really wants to express, please think for yourself." ”
The Paper: Did the popularity of "Beginning" surprise you?
Pray King: Unexpected. The theme of this story is very niche, and there are not many attempts of the same type in China, my original book is written by a story of ordinary people, in this era of being bombarded by European, American, Japanese and Korean blockbusters, "superheroes" are popular, and we have no bottom in our hearts about whether readers and audiences will like a story of "ordinary people clumsily saving the world". But judging from the feedback from the audience and readers, the bottomless part of our hearts happens to be the part that moves them the most. So I think that good works resonate with good audiences and readers, and what can move people is not the ability of the "heroes", but the choices they make.
The Paper: When did the original novel begin to be written?
Prayer Jun: Written from August 2019, written for half a year.
The Paper: What do you think is the difficulty in writing this novel?
Pray: The biggest difficulty is how to balance both dramatic and logical contradictions, and set the entire progression from the first cycle to the end of the cycle. For example, this bus explosion, at the beginning no one knows that it is an explosion case, it is the protagonist group who gets more "information" through the cycle of stripping away the cocoon, only from a "traffic accident" to a "criminal case", from "checking the real murderer" to "locking the real murderer", and then to "finding the hidden plot", these are all in advance to leave a good foreshadowing and logical turn at the beginning of the writing, for these suspense parts in the hierarchy of progression, as well as the structural shaping, and I have written before the ordinary workplace drama or urban drama is completely different, After writing this book, I feel that I have lost half of my hair.
The Paper: Why did you want to write such a completely different work than before? Was it touched by someone or something?
Pray Jun: Over the years, I have seen a lot of videos about "bus accidents" on the Internet, and these have had a lot of impact on me. When I first saw this, I wondered why no one could stand up to these tragedies like the heroes in the film and television works; later, I began to imagine what I could do if I was on these buses. In these associations, I began to think again, are these ideas of mine reasonable? Who will take the bus together?
After these questions, through the observation of life, I found that in fact, the passengers who are still sitting on the bus in the city are either the elderly, or the students who have just entered the society or have not yet entered the society, and there are very few "elites" or "people with special abilities" in film and television dramas who will squeeze the bus. For these "ordinary people" who take the bus, they may not have the physical quality of "coming forward", and they cannot afford the heavy consequences that may be attached after such "coming forward". Many times a mistake in choice will require an entire family to bear the bitter consequences. In this series of thinking, verification, and rethinking, my inspiration burst out and I prepared the outline of "The Beginning".
The Paper: Did you want to write "Beginnings" as an "infinite stream" story from the beginning?
Prayer Jun: At the beginning of the serial, I wanted to write a "Beginning" universe, intercepted in the web drama "Beginning", just a unit story in my original book, and the second half of the clip also had the same encounter as "Xiao Heyun Li Shiqing", circulating in the same world, and entering different "time copies" every day to improve their courier brothers. If you only look at it from the perspective of the play, it is a "time loop drama", the "infinite stream" label of the original novel is not very accurate in this play, the infinite stream includes the "time loop", but the infinite stream is not only the time loop, it includes Vientiane, as well as a variety of elements of the battle royale class, the puzzle class, and even the parallel universe class.
The Paper: Do you have any "infinite stream" works that you admire?
Pray Jun: The novel likes Z's "Infinite Horror", which is my earliest contact with infinite stream works. In the movie, I like "Groundhog Day" the most. In terms of subject matter, I prefer the genre of telling "ordinary people" stories.
The Paper: "The Beginning" also tells the story of "ordinary people". Who was the first fictional character that came to your mind?
Pray for the King: The passengers of "The Beginning", I am shaped according to the two possibilities of "quantitative" and "non-quantitative". Among them, the first thing I created was the character of "Lao Jiao", so I asked which one came to mind first, it must be Lao Jiao. In the original "Beginning", I first set up a background of an old, sick and disabled passenger, and if I wanted to subdue the two criminals in the car at the same time, and one of them was still a driver, I had to have Kong Wu's powerful adults to assist (there was no muscle man in the original book. As a control group of middle-aged and young people, I designed the two adult male characters of middle-aged "Lao Jiao" and young man "Lu Di" in the passengers as "helpers who will definitely help", which is quantitative.
The role of Lao Jiao is also a control group of the driver "Wang Xingde", and his name "Xiang Rong" and the driver "Xingde" are actually a kind of echo and contrast relationship. In the car, the source power that drives Wang Xingde to "commit crimes" is the daughter; the source power that drives Lao Jiao to "see righteousness and courage" is also for the daughter. As ordinary people who will not be heard by society even if they speak, these two fathers, too, have made different choices for their daughters, and these two different choices represent different human natures. That's what I wanted to express when I first created the character of "Lao Jiao".
Surging News: I didn't expect that "Lao Jiao" was the first character to appear, and his obsession with "whether it is righteous or not" in the play has touched many people. What about the driver and the pot aunt? How were the images of the two perpetrators created?
Pray Jun: The image shaping of the driver and the pot aunt is actually a natural process. In the original work, Wang Xingde's setting is a chemical transport driver, a good driver who has never had any accidents in his life, so he can't accept the "operational violations" of bus drivers and the "oblivion" of bus companies. But through four years of "bus driver" experience, Wang Xingde will inevitably gradually understand that driving a bus and driving a truck are different. When you are carrying a living person, the meaning of the two kinds of "safety" is no longer the same, he will understand that the shackles of the driver and the passengers and the shackles of your safe delivery of goods are different, so Wang Xingde is set as a criminal who can be "shaken".
And Tao Yinghong, this mother was once an excellent teacher, and the group of high school teachers is mostly a group of highly educated people who have higher moral requirements. She was once decent, dignified, and respected, but after she lost her daughter, in the increasingly fierce public opinion environment, she not only lost her relatives, but also gradually lost everything she cared about most in her life, so her hatred is a process of accumulation layer by layer, and it is also a process of losing the soft part of humanity little by little. Tao Yinghong is a mountain that "cannot be shaken".
The Paper: Indeed, there is some kind of contrast between this couple who committed the crime. Let's talk about another pair of CP Li Shiqing and Xiao Heyun, whose names also allude to Liu Yuxi's "Autumn Words": "A crane in the clear sky is lined with clouds, and the poetry is introduced to Bixiao." "What do these two character settings imply to you?"
Pray Jun: Yes, the names of Li Shiqing and Xiao Heyun are taken from "Autumn Words". This is a poem that I like very much, because it is open and lofty, so it is very in line with the hearts of two young people. "Poetic love" is romantic, Li Shiqing has not touched too much society, but still maintains a pure heart, and her romance can make her tolerant, kind and empathetic. "Crane Cloud" is high-spirited, eager to soar, he has the potential of "blockbuster". In addition, "a crane in the clear sky is lined up on the clouds, and the poetry is introduced to The Blue Sky" is also a beginning-and-end cycle, with a "Xiao (Xiao)" crane cloud embedded in it. And when I first named it, I was also a bit of a bad taste, after all, in the original work, they were "blown up" again and again.
The Paper: Haha. The drama version of "Beginning" ushered in the finale on the evening of January 25, and you are also the first screenwriter of the show. What do you think of this adaptation?
Pray Jun: The creation of the novel and the adaptation of the screenplay are two very different experiences. The creation of the novel is independent, personal, and carries the author's own thoughts and thoughts, and in a sense it is an extension of the author's cognitive level and thinking mode. But the script adaptation is different, it is the product of group consciousness and group power, it represents the different ideas and different understandings of each of the creators involved. I am personally very satisfied with this adaptation, "The Beginning" may not be perfect for one reason or another, but it presents the humanistic core I want to express "completely". As the "first screenwriter", what you must try to ensure is that the "core" of your original work can be excavated. At the same time, as one of the main creators of the entire crew, the goal that the crew wants to achieve is the same, that is, " We just want to tell you a story well, and what this story really wants to express, please think for yourself." ”
The Paper: Do you think the adaptation of the drama version also brought some nourishment to your later novel creation?
Pray King: There are too many gains. I'm an online writer, and I write novels in the form of serials, because in the form of "serialization", many times there are bugs or unconsidered parts of the novel. And I rarely have the opportunity to "review" my past works, let alone further improve them. The adaptation process of "The Beginning" is, in a sense, a process of review and improvement, which is refined and sublimated. This experience made me start to think about how to improve my novel again, and even began to think about whether it was necessary to serialize it later after the completion of the book, because it was indeed repeatedly deliberated and modified to make the work more perfect and perfect.
The Paper: I heard that there will be a movie version of "The Beginning"?
Prayer King: The adaptation rights of "Beginning" transferred to The Noonday Sun include a film adaptation. However, the specific project progress is still being planned.