Reincarnated as a dragon.., p.26
Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling, Volume 7, page 26
It may not be my place to say so, but if any of the readers of this afterword are thinking, “I want to be a novelist!” I recommend that you start by writing short novels of about 50,000 or 70,000 words and get into the habit of completing them.
When I first started writing as a hobby, I remember that I would start out with an idea of nearly one million words and then give up on it after about 20,000 words. This happened over and over again for more than ten works. As those of you who have written before will know, writing requires a lot of power and patience.
Among the countless works I’ve written and thrown away, there was one that I stopped writing after 50,000 words for the setting and less than 1,000 words of actual text because I got tired of it. I spent much longer thinking about the setting. You may think, “Oh, come on, there’s no way that’s true, that’s ridiculous!” but I think it’s quite common for those who have experience in writing.
…Oh? It’s just me? That’s not true, is it…?
From my own experience, I’ve found that a novel doesn’t connect to its foundations much until it’s complete. It’s only after you’ve written the entire plot that you can go back and realize that you should’ve made the intro shorter or that you need to add more to the rising action and climax to make the conclusion land.
I believe that the ability to structure a story well is what usually makes a story good, but this structure doesn’t happen unless you complete the story first and then go back to look at the whole thing.
That’s why I don’t recommend going “I’ve worked the plot out to be a million words! All right, let’s do this!” As I mentioned earlier, writing takes patience, power, and time.
Some of you may think that I am doing my best, but I believe that the reason I’ve been able to write Dragon Hatchling up to this point is because of all the readers who have supported me. I definitely could not have come this far on my own. I’ve truly been blessed.
If it weren’t for you, dear readers, I might still only have the outline of a vast plot and 50,000 words written and saved somewhere in the depths of my laptop.
Thank you so much to the readers who have supported Dragon Hatchling since its web days and to the readers who support the book version too. Wait, you’re reading it on the web? Did you leave comments? And did you buy the book too?! Thank you! Thank you so much! Now, your next step is to review it on your blog, a certain jungle-themed mail-order website, and on the blue bird app, you know the one…heh heh heh.
This volume was released in June 2018, and, what a surprise, a volume of the Dragon Hatchling manga was released in the same month! Hooray! A round of applause! It’s the manga version of Dragon Hatchling, and it’s truly wonderful! The comic is full of enjoyable elements in each and every frame, especially the comical antagonistic monsters’ movements and Illusia’s facial expressions. It’s a work that you’ll never get tired of no matter how many times you read it! I’ve already read everything I’ve been sent ten times over.
There are many things I’d love to point out about the manga version, such as the main character’s flippancy, how cute the black lizard is, how ugly the horned rabbit is, and so forth. But because this is only an afterword to the book version, I’ll wrap things up here.
—NECOCO
Thank you for reading!
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Nekoko, Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling, Volume 7
