Chapter 1 - Episode 1: The Regressed 10th-Circle Swordmaster of a Chaebol Family (1)
◈ How to Become a Star Writer ◈
Episode 1: The Regressed 10th-Circle Swordmaster of a Chaebol Family (1)
──────
What Is Literature?
That was the name of the first major course I took after entering the Creative Writing Department.
I had chosen the department because my grades got me in, and I didn't give a damn about literature or whatever. Still, there was one thing I learned in that class. The professor said:
“No one knows what literature is. Yet we still do literature. Just as we can love someone without knowing them, and live our lives without knowing tomorrow.”
Wow, fuck!
If I could go back to then, I'd smack myself hard on the back of the head.
How could I hear something like that and decide to keep writing?
But back then, I was young and more passionate.
Even if we don't know what literature is, we still do literature!
Taken in by nonsense that sounded like it belonged in some Buddhist scripture, I wrote.
“Yes! Literature!”
People told me I had no talent. They said my prose sucked. Still, I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote.
Then I got a little lucky.
Winner, New Writer Award, Short Story Category
Lee Hak-hyeon (23)
I won a new writer contest held by some literary magazine and became the first among my classmates to debut as an author.
While still a student, too.
It was the best time of my life.
I can still clearly picture my classmates envying me.
Young-hwan and that girl Yuna were especially bad about it. Seong-guk was the only one who sincerely congratulated me.
My classmates envied me so much that I thought I'd really become somebody. I couldn't help puffing out my chest.
Yeah, now I could finally go around saying I knew how to write.
...Or so I thought.
It didn't take long to learn that there were about twenty thousand writers like me in Korea, that about half of them never received their first commission, and that even the other half drifted from one convenience-store job to another.
I was a little luckier than most and received commissions up through my third story, but that was all.
Once that happened, I started wondering what literature even was.
It's been eight years since I began writing, but I still don't know what literature is. If I still don't know after eight years, maybe I never will.
Is that why?
I don't do literature anymore.
“...Where am I?
He thought.
‘Don't tell me I regressed again?’
A completely unfamiliar setting. Unfamiliar land.
In his first life, he lived as a Swordmaster.
In his second life, he lived as a 10th-Circle Archmage.
And at last, his third regression.
‘This time, a chaebol family?!’”
Instead, I write web novels.
I haven't told anyone yet, though.
* * *
When I had just entered the Creative Writing Department, there was something I heard more than anything else.
Seniors with the stale smell of soju clinging to their tongues said it every time they read my work.
“You can't write like this.”
Not “good writing” or “bad writing,” but “writing you can't write like this.”
What kind of writing was that supposed to be?
Was it even writing?
“Writer, you can't write like this.”
And now, I was hearing the exact same words I had heard eight years ago, this time from an editor.
Still, hearing it from a pretty editor was better than hearing it from some senior who smelled like alcohol.
An intelligent beauty with her hair tied back neatly. She was Ji Eun-yu, an editor at Dragon Management.
“What is the problem?”
“Your prose is too old-fashioned.”
“...I included lots of sound effects and mimetic words, just as you requested last time. Look. Things like ‘Shupapapap!’ and ‘Kwakwakwa-boom!’”
“That isn't the problem. Look at the characters’ dialogue. Are you Shakespeare or something?”
Out of nowhere, I'd become Britain's great literary master.
It sounded sarcastic, but being compared to Shakespeare still felt good.
“For instance, look here. The protagonist is heading onto the battlefield with his subordinates. In an ordinary web novel, he'd say, ‘Let's go.’”
That was right. Usually, that was how it went.
“But you wrote this: ‘Lions, put wings upon your heels and bring your enemies unto me.’”
Yeah. That was me.
“Think about it. Who wants to read dialogue like this on the subway ride home from work?”
“But the setting is medieval, isn't it?”
“Writer.”
That word, “writer,” was starting to scare me.
“Readers are Korean. What did I tell you at the beginning? Who did I say you should think of first when you write?”
“The reader.”
“You know that, yet you turn in writing like this?”
I had nothing to say.
“And this. The opening is the same. In the first episode, the protagonist has to regress, pick up an item, gain an ability. Anything. I clearly told you to make something happen.”
“But the plausibility...”
“What plausibility?”
“The reader needs to fully empathize with the protagonist’s misfortune...”
“Writer, what emotion do you think Korean people find easiest to empathize with?”
When I couldn't find an answer and only hesitated, Ji Eun-yu gave me a hint.
“Your life must be easy. I'm dying from all this overtime every day.”
Suddenly, I thought I knew the answer.
“...Misfortune?”
“Exactly. So you don't need to waste three episodes on the protagonist’s backstory. Just write, ‘I graduated from a third-rate university, and I work part-time at a convenience store,’ and Korean people will be weeping their eyes out.”
I didn't think that was true.
But even if I didn't think so, I couldn't argue otherwise.
At least when it came to web novels, Ji Eun-yu was absolutely more right than I was.
“Web Novel Information Session for Literary Authors”
Ten months ago, I attended that event and was introduced to Dragon Management through someone in the literary establishment.
The literary insider introduced me in the tone of a broker trying to pawn off a badly behaved beagle.
“Haha, but our Writer Lee is a highly promising newcomer in literary circles. He's very young too.”
“We're always happy to welcome literary authors with strong prose.”
“Then I'll leave them in your care.”
The editor-in-chief of Dragon Management treated me with elaborate courtesy, as if to protect my pride.
A “literary author,” no less.
Normally, I would have practically bowed at that welcome. But for some reason, my competitive spirit flared up then.
I must have been crazy.
“So I just have to write like J. K. Rowling, Stephen King, or Lee Yeong-do? Something like that?”
...I forgot to mention it again, but this was one of the darkest moments of my life.
Anyone listening would have thought I was the grand old master of Korean literature.
“Um, Writer, there will be an information session shortly, so if you listen to that first...”
“I’m Lee Hak-hyeon. Just trust me and leave it to me.”
“Pardon?”
“I should say in advance that I don't consider Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings allegorically excellent.”
“...Allegorically?”
“But I can compromise that much. Fantasy is all basically the same anyway.”
“No, Writer. Um, first, the information session...”
“Dragon Raja should be enough, right? I'll see you again in three weeks.”
Looking back, all I can think is that I lost my mind for a while.
I remember the literary insider patting my shoulder and saying, “Just as expected of our writer,” while the editor-in-chief stared blankly at me and shook their head.
Those people must have enjoyed it inside. Damn it.
Anyway, after disappearing for three weeks, I completed the first volume of my first work.
Even now, I sometimes have nightmares about the novel I wrote back then.
+
“Orc Philosopher” by Lee Hak-hyeon
[No Regression] [No System] [No Catharsis]
+
I don't even want to ramble about its plot.
You could probably guess from the title alone, but its view count was lower than the average IQ of an orc.
The view count... wasn't even in the double digits?
Why the hell?!
Writers who didn't even know basic spelling got over twenty thousand views. Why not me?!
I began denying reality after the second and third works I hurriedly wrote also disappeared without receiving even the slightest attention.
“You ignorant readers!”
What kind of writing was popular that people wouldn't read mine?
I stopped writing and spent some time reading other authors’ work.
“A Somehow Extraordinary Regression,” for one.
“Reincarnated Sword Saint.”
“The Supporting Character Hides Their IQ.”
“The World After the Fall.”
I couldn't accept it.
In prose, theme, black humor, every aspect, they were trash inferior to my work.
How could novels like this succeed?
How could I...?
Then the first comment appeared on the prologue of the novel I had written.
Excitedly, I clicked it.
The comment read:
“Are you one of those Creative Writing bugs?”
I only learned later that it was a blend of “Creative Writing Department” and “bug.”
How the fuck did they know?
I began fighting online and promptly became a member of a web novel community.
There were many people there who, like me, had tried writing web novels and failed.
Thanks to them, it became easier for me to deny reality.
“LOL, did you read the ending of The World After the Fall? Fuck, I regret spending money on it!!!”
“Web novels these days are all trash, right?”
“Right, right, right.”
“How is garbage like that even ranked?”
About a week passed like that, without eating or drinking.
Then someone came to my house.
Footnotes:
“Creative Writing bugs” recreates a Korean insult combining “Creative Writing Department” with a derogatory internet suffix meaning “bug” or “insect.”
Enjoying the experience? ⭐ Star the repository on GitHub.
Chapter discussion