Text: Xinghui
Edited by Chen Meixi
When I first read the introduction to "The End of Ten Days", Shao Yanjun was taken aback.
As a professor of the Department of Chinese at Peking University, she has been engaged in online literature research for more than ten years, but she has almost never seen such an "arrogant" description of her works - "No harem, no routine, not invincible, not systematic, not brainless, not cool, mind those who are cautious." ”
A long list of unconventional warnings seems to be incompatible with the public's impression of online literature chasing coolness. But this suspense novel called "The End of Ten Days" is so red that it turns purple, attracting countless readers to urge it to change.
Shao Yanjun is keenly aware that the seemingly "arrogant" introduction is actually a microcosm, and there may be an internal transformation of the tone of China's online literature behind it.
In fact, the development trend of online literature has gradually become a consensus in the industry. According to the "2023-2024 Research Report on the Value of China's Online Literature Reading Platforms" released by the National Reading Research and Promotion Center of the China Academy of Press and Publication, since 2023, major online literature reading platforms have continuously strengthened their ecological construction, improved the quality of content, further accelerated the development of mainstream and high-quality online literature, and continued to emerge new online literary works.
And this sword is on the edge but the popular "Ten Days of the End" is one of the masterpieces of genre online literature in the new era.
What is the charm of "The End of the Ten Days"? and what kind of inspiration will it bring to Chinese online literature?
The new and old of "The End of the Decade".
The popularity of "The End of the Decade" is difficult to summarize by data.
On December 4, 2022, members of the online writer Pest Killing Team uploaded the opening chapter of this twisty story in Tomato Novels, which began to depict a survival game full of puzzles. Today, "The End of Ten Days" has been serialized in nearly 1,000 chapters, with a total word count of more than 2.1 million.
In more than a year, 417,000 people gave "The End of the Ten Days" a high score of 9.8. Today, millions of readers read this novel online every day. At the end of 2023, after Tomato Novel launched the peak list, "The End of Ten Days" dominated the list one after another with its proud popularity, with a peak value of 99.88 million on the site.
In the comment section of Tomato Novel, "The End of the Decade" received more than 1,700 long reviews. Among them, discussions about "characters", "brain holes" and "foreshadowing" appear frequently, the word "good-looking" can be seen everywhere, and the meticulous and compact plot makes many readers can't help but ridicule: "I feel like I'm going to 'grow' my brain!"
In the view of Shao Yanjun, a professor of the Department of Chinese at Peking University, it is quite appropriate for everyone to use the word "good-looking" to describe "Ten Days of End". "It's perfectly set up and looks great in every way. She commented.
While it looks good enough, although "The End of the Decame" is a high-concept, tightly set work, the creators have deliberately made it more difficult for readers to get in. In the process of arriving at fresh content, the relatively clichéd parts become a ladder to guide readers outside the circle.
"There are some fresh two-dimensional elements in it, and it looks like there is a reading threshold, but it will give you a 'ladder', so I can introduce it to a friend, such as someone who has little two-dimensional experience, and tell him that this book can 'pick you up'. Shao Yanjun explained.
Ji Yunfei, assistant professor of the Department of Chinese at Sun Yat-sen University, also feels the same way. As a young generation of readers who are familiar with the two-dimensional culture, the "new" and "old" he perceives have another face.
According to Ji Yunfei's recollection, from the perspective of a senior online book fan, he felt that this novel was a bit "old" at first, and there was not much new stuff. However, in the process of in-depth reading, this feeling was revised again and again.
For example, when reading the detailed biographies of the characters, Ji Yunfei was suddenly a little moved - "You suddenly realize that it has been a long time since you have seen someone write a novel so honestly and seriously. He gradually perceived the freshness of the story, and this freshness stemmed from a slightly old-fashioned, down-to-earth creative attitude.
In this regard, Xie Sipeng, editor-in-chief of Tomato Novels, also admitted, "When I read it for the first time, I felt that this kind of book that keeps playing games will definitely not poke into my heart." But after seeing it, I found that it has something different from other online articles, and it is more about the choices of the writer when facing difficulties, so that you can see different human choices. ”
Drawing on the modernity of game architecture, the innovation that distinguishes it from conventional writing paradigms, and the classicism that reflects the real world...... The different perceptions of "new" and "old" in the eyes of different readers are integrated under the meticulous brushstrokes of "The End of the Ten Days", which enables this work to reach a wider audience and create a phenomenal craze for follow-up.
In the end, people are moved by the same good story told with heart, and perceive the original charm of the art of fiction: "Going up one level at a time, the plot turns up step by step, and the complexity and depth of the characters' personalities also rise layer by layer." ”
From this point of view, "The End of the Ten Days" may be regarded as the greatest common divisor of today's online literature, which is very rare for men, women and children, new and old readers. Ji Yunfei concluded.
The Constant and Changing of Online Literature
Phenomenal hit works often contain cultural phenomena and industry trends worth pondering, and "The End of Ten Days" is no exception.
When talking about the popularity of this work, people often mention the word "accident". Even the author's own pesticide team members were initially hard to have imagined that so many readers would recognize their creations.
Speaking of the long list of introductory warnings, the members of the pesticide team said that their original intention was just to actively screen readers, so as not to fail to meet their expectations, such as lovers of "cool text" and "system".
At that time, he naturally did not expect that this seemingly contrarian story would gather so many enthusiastic readers in the future. In this regard, Shao Yanjun sincerely sighed: "So we all underestimate the readers, right?"
Xie Sipeng admits that everyone may have underestimated the diversity of online literature readers, as well as most people's reading demands for good stories.
According to his recollection, in fact, the positioning of "The End of Ten Days" by the platform at the beginning was very niche, because "whether it is the subject matter or the way of writing the story, it is neither clever nor flattering, there is no such big gimmick, and it does not pull your emotions and coolness very much at the beginning." ”
But it turns out that stereotypes aren't enough to define what readers really want.
Xie Sipeng revealed that at present, more than 30 million people have read "The End of Ten Days", and many fans are actively discussing it on platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu. "By writing the story honestly, after time precipitation and word-of-mouth fermentation, everyone can finally see its goodness. ”
On the one hand, no matter when and where, readers' standards for good stories are always the same, and the pursuit of good stories is always eternal.
"Whether it's us old bookworms, professional researchers, or ordinary readers, what everyone recognizes and touches when they read a book is the same. Xie Sipeng explained.
On the other hand, with the continuous development and growth of the online literature market, the space for genre content is becoming more and more broad.
According to the observation of the members of the insecticide team in the creative process, in fact, all kinds of online literature topics now have their own corresponding readers. "The span of readers is getting bigger and bigger, including tomatoes, such as countryside, criminal investigation and other seemingly niche themes, in fact, they will have their own fixed and huge user base. ”
In other words, the needs of online readers are becoming more and more diverse, which also requires creators to produce more high-quality and rich works.
When it comes to this topic, Shao Yanjun used diet as an analogy. She said, "It turns out that there are no works in our literature that are specifically written for the happiness of readers, so readers have been hungry for too long, and after the birth of online articles, everyone began to desperately eat meat to fill their hunger." ”
Correspondingly, as time goes by, when readers grow up and are no longer so hungry, their food preferences may change, such as wanting to try more other flavors, wanting to eat food, wanting to eat candy, and someone will naturally pay for the corresponding food.
Therefore, when we look back at the 30 years of Chinese online articles, we will find that the diversified innovation of content has always been the theme of the industry.
Xie Sipeng concluded: "From "Zhu Xian" to "Breaking the Sky", "Douluo Continent", to "The Master of Mystery", "I Learn to Kill God in a Mental Hospital", etc., many works and genres will go through a process of diffusion from a niche, and readers start from the simplest story reading needs, and constantly give birth to new needs. ”
In the never-ending dynamic evolution, Chinese online literature has flourished so far, with great gods and masterpieces emerging from generation to generation, and the readership continues to grow. At the same time, the online text platform, which shoulders the mission of bridge, has also walked and grown with readers and authors all the way.
The Ploughing and Harvesting of Tomato Novels
Among the many honors that "The End of the Decade" wears, there is one that is quite distinctive, and that is the title of the top of the tomato novel summit list.
The so-called "pinnacle list" is the new list section launched by Tomato Novel not long ago, and it is also a milestone in the iterative improvement of its platform ecology.
In November 2023, the Tomato Novel Peak List will be officially launched. This is the first time that Tomato Novels has launched a unified list of good books to show the top tomatoes, aiming to recommend more word-of-mouth masterpieces for the majority of Tomato readers, and provide a "Tomato Good Books Reading Guide" to let good stories reach more people.
According to the official announcement, the selection results of the summit list are screened based on six dimensions, including popularity, content quality, word-of-mouth score, reader interaction, communication value, and IP potential, and are updated on time on the 1st of each month.
The key question is, why did Tomato Novels set up such a list?
According to Xie Sipeng, the concept of the pinnacle originated from the platform's long-term observation of user needs. He said, "After the development of Tomato in the past few years, we have found that readers have very diverse preferences and have certain requirements for the quality of content, and in the final analysis, we still need good stories, so we decided to launch the summit list." ”
On the high-profile pinnacle list, there are not only brain-burning suspense stories like "Ten Days", but also passionate urban masterpieces like "I Learned to Kill God in a Mental Hospital", and their commonality is to satisfy readers' infinite thirst for good stories.
In other words, what the summit list encourages is a content ecology that blooms. Through the form of honors and commendations, Tomato Novel transmits this guiding signal to all parts of the platform from top to bottom, indirectly promoting the process of high-quality content ecology of the entire content ecology.
From this point of view, the communal color of Tomato fiction is becoming more and more distinct.
In the preface to the Biennial List of Chinese Online Literature (2022-2023), Ji Yunfei once pointed out that Tomato Novel is not only an online literature channel, but also an online literature community.
For the specific field of online texts, the difference between the two mainly lies in whether they have the production capacity of high-quality content. Compared with the once lively online literature channels such as mobile reading bases, today's Tomato Novels has an absolute advantage in terms of channels, but in recent years, it has always been committed to building itself into a literary community that creates good stories.
Looking back on the past few years, Tomato Novels has taken the exploration of community as the main axis, vigorously improved the list function and built a book shortage square, and guided readers to read high-quality works with advanced aesthetic value in various forms.
It is also in this development process that Tomato Novel has gradually condensed the compound value of online literature channels and online literature communities. While distributing a large number of online works, Tomato Novel has washed out the top works of gratifying quality, which truly proves the content vitality of the free online text model.
Marked by the official launch of the pinnacle list, a considerable number of representative works such as "I Learned to Kill God in a Psychiatric Hospital" and "The End of Ten Days" have been recognized by the whole industry, which has both traffic income and word-of-mouth effect, and has effectively boosted Tomato Novel to move forward on the road of IP.
Ji Yunfei said: "The emergence and popularity of works such as "The End of Ten Days" proves that Tomato Novel is not only a channel with the largest traffic, but also begins to have the production capacity of good content, and is a creative community that the post-95 and even post-05 readers are willing to take root...... Once again, it is gratifying to see the vigorous vitality of good stories and the instinctive pursuit of good works by ordinary readers. ”
After a long and deep summer, Tomato Novel finally welcomes the harvest.