Falsely Accused, I Started Plundering Monster Traits

Recently, I started rereading Mysterious Revival again.

It is still probably my favorite supernatural horror web novel, and I would strongly recommend it to anyone who likes this kind of story. Rereading it this time also made me notice several problems in my own novel that I had not understood clearly when I first started writing.

There are three things in particular that I want to record.

1. I never clearly chose what the novel was supposed to focus on

I think web fiction usually has a dominant source of appeal.

Some stories are heavily progression-driven. The protagonist runs into danger very early, starts gaining power almost immediately, and the story keeps giving the reader visible growth and payoff. New enemies create new opportunities to become stronger, and becoming stronger leads to bigger enemies and bigger rewards.

Other stories are much more story-driven. The protagonist can still grow stronger, sometimes significantly, but that growth is happening inside the story rather than being the main reason the story exists. The reader is primarily following the events, mysteries, characters, conflicts, and consequences.

Both can contain progression. Both can have good plots.

But I think one of them usually needs to carry more weight.

My novel ended up sitting awkwardly between the two.

I gave Lin Yan a progression system, traits, monsters to kill, and plenty of opportunities to become stronger. But I did not push the progression hard enough for the book to really function as a progression-focused story. His growth was there, but it was not constantly being emphasized, accelerated, and paid off.

At the same time, I did not fully commit to the story side either. I was not spending enough time developing individual events, characters, locations, and conflicts before moving on to the next thing.

So I took the middle ground.

And the middle ground did not give me the strengths of both. It weakened both.

Readers who wanted progression were not getting enough progression. Readers who cared more about the story were not always getting enough time with the story.

I think I should have understood much earlier what kind of reading experience I actually wanted the book to prioritize.

2. I expanded the scope far too quickly

This is something that became especially obvious to me while rereading Mysterious Revival.

A story does not need to immediately show the reader how large its world is.

I think I used to have this instinct that once I had established the basic premise, I should keep moving outward. New places. New characters. New organizations. New parts of the setting. New threats. Something larger should always be appearing.

Now I think I was too impatient.

I could have kept the opening inside a much smaller environment for far longer.

For example, even if the entire early story had taken place around a single school, there would still have been plenty to write about. I could introduce the people there properly. Establish what normal life looks like. Let one strange event develop instead of immediately replacing it with another. Show how the protagonist reacts. Let relationships change. Introduce pieces of the power system through actual situations.

And while all of that is happening, the larger world can still be revealed.

A rule at the school can imply something about the society outside it.

One character can reveal the existence of an organization.

One supernatural event can show the reader how these things behave.

A conversation can suggest that what is happening here has happened somewhere else before.

The world does not become smaller just because the story stays in one place.

If anything, I think the world can feel larger when the reader only sees pieces of it at first.

Instead, I was too eager to keep opening the story outward. I kept showing the next part of the world before I had fully used the part I had already introduced.

3. I kept giving the reader new information before the old information had time to settle

This is related to the second problem, but I think it is slightly different.

Stories obviously need new information. The plot cannot develop without it.

The problem is how often the reader has to rebuild their understanding of what they are reading.

If I introduce one location, one group of characters, and one set of rules, the reader first has to learn all of that.

Once they understand it, I can start doing interesting things with it.

The reader can recognize when something is unusual. They can anticipate consequences. They can notice when someone breaks a rule. They can form expectations and then see those expectations confirmed or overturned.

That is when information starts becoming useful.

But if I move somewhere else too quickly, introduce another group, add another set of rules, explain another part of the world, and then repeat the process again, the reader spends too much time simply receiving information.

They understand one thing, and before they have really had time to become familiar with it, I ask them to understand something else.

That can become tiring even when none of the individual ideas are particularly complicated.

I think this is one of the things I appreciate much more now while rereading Mysterious Revival. A setting does not always need to keep changing in order for the story to keep developing.

You can stay in the same place and deepen it.

You can return to something the reader already knows and reveal that their understanding of it was incomplete.

You can let an ordinary location slowly become frightening because the reader now understands what is wrong with it.

You can introduce a rule early and only show its real importance much later.

The reader is still learning new things, but they are building on something familiar instead of constantly starting over.

That is a distinction I did not think about enough when I started this novel.

Looking back, I was often too eager to get to the next idea.

The next ability.

The next event.

The next place.

The next part of the world.

I thought continuing to expand the story would make it feel bigger and more interesting.

Now I think I needed to spend more time actually using what was already there.

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