All-rounder Artist

Chapter 332: Chapter 311 Playing with Narrative Trickery’s Heart_1

Lin Yuan received a reply from Ol’ Zhou very quickly.

The film division of the company places great importance on “Life of Pi”, and the follow-up preparations can start any day now.

Considering the film won’t begin shooting this year, Lin Yuan left everything in the company’s hands.

With the support of the film division, there wouldn’t be a shortage of professionals to take care of the preliminary preparations.

Having temporarily set this burden aside, Lin Yuan indulged in the luxury of attending classes for a few days—

Lin Yuan rarely attends school these days.

Under the guidance of Yang Zhongming’s character card, Lin Yuan’s composition skills improved drastically, and the school could no longer teach him anything.

Obviously, the school was aware of this.

Who could teach Xian Yu to compose music?

Even a professor of music composition would be of no use.

So, they always approved Lin Yuan’s leave of absence fully and without question.

Obviously, both parties had different interpretations of whether “Xian Yu needs to continue classes”. Fortunately, the result was the same.

In his spare time from classes,

Lin Yuan also draws comic strips, treating it as a small diversion in life.

Here’s the thing.

As “Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma” continues to be serialized, the manga has entered its later stages.

Because the original work was poorly received, the system made significant adjustments to the latter part of “Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma”.

The storyline quickly progressed to the protagonist becoming the new member of Totsuki Elite Ten and started to challenge the previous members to cooking duels.

That is, Shokugeki.

It won’t be long before this manga officially ends, by which time Lin Yuan will need to consider what his next manga will be about.

After spending days leisurely, Jin Mu gave Lin Yuan a heads up:

“We made a commitment with the blog to submit a draft, it’d be best if we can submit it this month. If you don’t have any inspiration, we can delay it.”

Only then did Lin Yuan recall that he had indeed agreed to submit a draft to the blog.

“They’ve been hurrying me…”

Jin Mu shrugged, as Lin Yuan’s agent, he had been enduring the hassle of deadline pressures that he shouldn’t be facing.

Lin Yuan said: “I’ll submit the draft by the end of the month.”

He had already exhausted his supply of short stories, and needed to order new ones from the system, he could use this time to consider what he wanted to create for the next short story.

“Sure.”

While Jin Mu responded, internally he was astounded by his boss’s creativity, though this amazement was gradually numbing due to its frequent occurrences.

No matter what the genre or the story was, it seemed that nothing could stump his boss—

Probably the only flaw he noticed in his boss was his handwriting?

“By the way.”

It seemed as if Jin Mu thought of something. He laughed and said, “These days, there has been a lot of discussion online about some mystery authors imitating ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ by using the Narrative Trickery method.”

“I think I saw it.”

Lin Yuan indeed saw it, through the comments section of the Tribe.

These days he was quite relaxed, so he occasionally logged into Chu Kuang’s account, and as a result, saw a lot of complaints in the comments.

They said he started a trend of tricking readers, and now more and more mystery writers were using Narrative Trickery to fool readers, and so on.

Of course, it wasn’t reader’s complaints, just playful teasing.

The only one who was actually complaining was a mystery writer called Leng Guang.

Basically, each time a new work of Narrative Trickery appear in the mystery realm, he would make some sarcastic comments, living up to his reputation for criticism.

“A pathetic imitation of Chu Kuang.”

“You’ve barely scratched the surface of Chu Kuang’s Narrative Trickery.”

“Narrative Trickery for the sake of Narrative Trickery. Soulless trend following.”

“You need to understand the concept of narrational deception before you try to pay tribute to Chu Kuang.”

“…”

Interestingly, while Leng Guang criticized these imitation works, he indirectly admitted the value of “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”.

Internet users mocked him for this: “Didn’t you say ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ was not good?”

Leng Guang didn’t mind, but he was a bit angry, and even posted an article explaining:

“Don’t misinterpret my words. Although I indeed don’t like Narrative Trickery, I didn’t completely deny ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’. The Narrative Trickery in the novel is indeed cunning, but at least the case setup and logical consistency are fine. If it weren’t for the Narrative Trickery format at the end, this would be a pretty good mystery novel as well.”

Yes, if not for the tricky ending, Leng Guang would have appreciated “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”.

In contrast, some of the Narrative Trickery imitation works on the market are simply tricking readers for the sake of it. The plot twists at the end can’t hold a candle to Chu Kuang’s “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”.

So, Leng Guang started to vent his frustration.

This is the problem of Narrative Trickery. The first time readers encounter Narrative Trickery, they tend to be shocked to the utmost degree. But after getting accustomed to it, the reactions are just standard—

Wait a minute.

Lin Yuan’s gaze wavered, suddenly having a new idea for a short story, thanks to someone following the “Narrative Trickery” structure and inspiring him.

Why not continue to write about Narrative Trickery?

In the future, there will inevitably be more Narrative Trickery novels on the market, with ones even surpassing “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” in narrative trickery!

Of course, in terms of originality, “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” is unbeatable.

But with the development of Narrative Trickery, the stories are destined to become more intricate.

So, why couldn’t he, after pioneering the method of Narrative Trickery, further promote this writing technique?

Wouldn’t it give imitators more to reference?

Admittedly, the idea was compelling.

Everyone has a streak of wicked humor.

Occasionally, Lin Yuan did as well.

Since Biyao’s death, many readers had been calling him “Chu Kuang the old rascal”.

If he didn’t do some things that a rascal would do, wouldn’t he be letting down the readers’ “compliments”?

Thinking this, Lin Yuan took a trip to the restroom.

Five minutes later.

Lin Yuan returned to the studio and asked, “Uncle Jin, after finishing ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,’ if you were to read another similar novel, could you guess the answer?”.

“I can see through Narrative Trickery.”

Jin Mu was confident, and then conservatively added, “More often than not.”

He was a seasoned mystery fan, already adept at guessing the murderer.

And with this model of Narrative Trickery, if you’ve never encountered it before, you can certainly be misled. But once you’re prepared, it’s a different story.

“Alright, then take a look at this conversation.”

Lin Yuan wrote down a conversation on a notepad and even drew a comic.

In the simple comic.

An old man asked a young man, “Why did you sleep with her?”

The young man helplessly replied, “She was lying there naked, what was I supposed to do?”

The old man was furious, “You should have been performing an autopsy! An autopsy!”

Jin Mu’s lips twitched slightly when he saw this.

He kept reading.

The young man smashed a chair, “You don’t need to teach me how to do my job!”

The old man angrily stood up, “You’re the worst veterinarian I’ve ever met!”

Jin Mu: “…”

He felt as if his whole worldview was about to shatter.

This short conversation, with its continuous twists and wild displays, made him strain his back, making him somewhat doubtful of his previous assertion that he could “see through Narrative Trickery”.

What the heck is this?

Was everyone’s hearts who played with Narrative Trickery this dirty?

No wonder he was… the innovator of Narrative Trickery!

Lin Yuan said, “That was just a warm-up. Just giving you a small hint, I’ve decided to write a new short story about Narrative Trickery, to challenge all readers who think they can see through it.”

Yep.

A few minutes ago, when Lin Yuan went to the bathroom, he wasn’t just relieving himself.

His kidneys are quite fine.

He was just customizing a short story with the system.

The name of that short story is: “The Fall of Dondon Bridge”.

As for that comic story just now, it was just a warm-up.

Don’t underestimate this worn-out joke.

This joke actually contains one of the very core essences of Narrative Trickery:

Psychological hinting.

Which brings us to a simple explanation of an issue.

What kind of Narrative Trickery is good Narrative Trickery?

The first important criteria for judging the quality of a Narrative Trickery work is to decide whether the trickery was simply trickery for the sake of trickery, or if it was a grand scheme formed through a series of psychological hints and habitual misdirection.

This scheme is not only meant to deceive readers, but also to serve the novel’s script, enrich or reverse the character’s portrayal, deepen the thoughtfulness of the novel. This is real Narrative Trickery:

A spiderweb-like scheme, carefully constructed with each step.

And similar short stories can give readers a more intuitive understanding of what real Narrative Trickery is!

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ps: Same rule as always, only four thousand words today, at least eight thousand tomorrow for an update.