SRB
:Simple Russian Boi:
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2022
- Messages
- 943
- Points
- 133
We all know that every writer has their own style. This is clear and obvious; there are no two writers who are absolutely the same. Of course, authors may have something in common; many authors share similarities.
I want to talk precisely about that, about what unites modern web authors from different countries and how a Russian writer may differ from an English or American one. This thingamajing won't have any special structure or anything like that; I am writing it at three o'clock in the morning in a mix of Russian, English, and Polish languages. (The only Polish here is the swearing in my Notes. (I won't include them))
I want to start by immediately saying that the information here is not objective at all. I have read many books, but mostly in the genres that I like. Authors from different countries can differ or be more similar to each other than I think. Also, I am biased towards my own country and have read more Russian books. Additionally, I am too lazy to provide examples (I started writing this only because I remembered that @SailusGebel and a few other people wanted to read it), so...
My source: trust me, bro.
Take my words with a kilogram of salt. Or a pound of it, if you are on the unfortunate side of the world.
The main character. A person or another being whom we follow throughout the book, often the one for whom we start reading the books. What can I say about Russian main characters?
Well, I can say that they don't spend as much time in introspection as they did in Dostoevsky's time. Or perhaps we just don't see it. A Russian main character can witness his parter or wife/husband being killed right before their eyes, their life can fall apart in a single day, and you won't hear a long, sad monologue anymore, no. When something bad happens to Russians in life, they immediately have two questions: "Who to blame?" and "What to do?"
Something along the lines of how John Wick acted in the first movie after they killed his dog. I could see the gears turning in his head when I watched the movie, I could see Wick asking himself these two questions. Of course, not all Russian MC's are like that, but a lot of them.
As an example, I could mention the books by Sergey Lukyanenko, "Chernovik" and "Chistovik." But he's not exactly a web novel writer, so I will just leave my thoughts in a spoiler. (I already wrote them, fuk of.)
Web authors. Yes. These guys. We are talking about them, right.
Fortunately, my words ring true for the authors of modern web novels and fanfics. Many Russian and even English or American protagonists, whether they are women or men, behave this way. They know perfectly well that tears won't help the situation. If they have a problem - they solve it, rather than just going with the flow. Or maybe I was "lucky" to find and read a lot of books with such a archetype of a main character.
American authors have more diversity, if you think about it. If in Russia the main character is a hero (in Russian, the words hero and (main) character share the same word герой with different meanings depending on the context), a decisive person, then in American novels and fanfics we get to see more. Again, perhaps my experience differs from yours, but it seems to me that there is more diversity in English-language content. Or maybe I just chose my books poorly.
Do you want to read about a loser who remains a loser throughout the entire novel? Here you go! Americans—oh, wait, I'm thinking about the Japanese side of the things. I don't even want to write about the Japanese, they have too much imagination.
So, American or English writers have more diversity in their main characters. Here, I thought it would be nice to use Bilbo Baggins, but then I remembered what I'm actually writing about. I don't think I need to write about the diverse heroes that Americans and English have; it's clear enough. They are diverse in every sense of the word. In Russia, I haven't seen a single book where the MC is openly trans or gay. I think I don't need to explain why. ???
Chinese main characters. I won't joke about Arrogant Young Masters; that's boring. @Tsutu can tell you much more about how Chinese authors are different from the rest of the world than I ever can.
But! But I can say a THING!
Quite a few Chinese web writers do not understand how people who were born and raised outside of China communicate with each other. The same problem can be seen with some odd Japanese web writers. It was strange for me the first time I read a translated Chinese work set in America and saw two Americans using Chinese honorifics.
And so we smoothly and imperceptibly transition to writing styles of web novels. This transition was sponsored by my deep-fried brain.
How many lyrical digressions have you seen in English works? And in American ones? You've definitely seen authors spend a page or two introducing a character who is practically unimportant to the plot, or maybe they're describing a tree, or a house just to describe it. They are just there, a small cog in the machine, without which the journey would be a tiny bit worse, but we would still reach our destination just fine.
In Russian web novels, there's less empty descriptions. If a character is introduced in a novel and a random fact is mentioned, it will probably play its role in the future. If you're reading a good book that is. Russian authors love their Chekhov's Guns, even if they are small and not very significant.
Also, works written in the first person. Either I am that "attentive," or there are many more of these among Russians than there are on the English side of things. Most often, we see the world through the eyes of the main character. We are not invisible observers peeking into someone else's life from behind their shoulder; the MC tells us, shows is in "real time" what is happening to them.
What else? There are many more popular novels among Russians that contain elements of empire/kingdom/country building. And time travel, especially to the USSR and World War II. Often both. I haven't seen such a huge number of time travel stories from Americans or English. If you read a time travel Russian web novel, there is a 80% chance that the main character will get involved in politics and a 50% chance that they will start ruling over something.
Attitudes towards harems also vary greatly. The romantic aspect in Russian, English, and American authors is quite a boiling pot of crap that I don't want to get into, but I'll try anyway.
If we take an average Russian protagonist from a harem novel, he won't be shy about his desires. At least if the main character is a man; I haven't read any reverse harem books yet. He won't spend half the work deceiving himself and claiming that he's loves only one girl, that having a harem is wrong and unfair to girls that enter this kind of relationship. I've seen how often this happens in English-language works. Bro, we see the tags, we know you're going to have several girls by the middle of the book.
On the other hand, if we take an average Russian protagonist without a harem... Then there are many options, too many for me to bother writing. The same goes for English-speaking web authors.
??
No, go away, I won't talk about you.
?
Right. Naturally, all novels have their own prejudices and stereotypes, depending on where the author is from. Right now, I have a DxD fanfic bookmarked, where the main character helps humanity build magical communism to give them a chance to defend themselves from everything supernatural. The joke is that the idea didn't even come from the main character (who was Russian in a past life). It came from Cao-Cao. Who is Chinese.
DO YOU GET THE JOKE, I REPEAT, DO YOU GET THE JOKE?!
I can't count or care to remember how many novels and fanfics I've seen where the main character successfully builds communism in the end. Or American novels where the main character successfully creates their own Megacorporation. In this, all authors are similar, their worldview affects how they write their novels and how their characters see the world themselves.
And somehow I quickly ran out of topics to talk about, that's all I could come up with in a couple of hours of writing this thing. But that's why I posted this terrible creation of my brain here. I want to read your thoughts and what you think distinguishes web writers from your country from all the others.
Maybe they have a favorite genre, books written in which become popular regardless of anything? Maybe in every book written in your country, the main character has their parents killed before their eyes? I invite you to share your knowledge!
I want to talk precisely about that, about what unites modern web authors from different countries and how a Russian writer may differ from an English or American one. This thingamajing won't have any special structure or anything like that; I am writing it at three o'clock in the morning in a mix of Russian, English, and Polish languages. (The only Polish here is the swearing in my Notes. (I won't include them))
I want to start by immediately saying that the information here is not objective at all. I have read many books, but mostly in the genres that I like. Authors from different countries can differ or be more similar to each other than I think. Also, I am biased towards my own country and have read more Russian books. Additionally, I am too lazy to provide examples (I started writing this only because I remembered that @SailusGebel and a few other people wanted to read it), so...
My source: trust me, bro.
Take my words with a kilogram of salt. Or a pound of it, if you are on the unfortunate side of the world.
The main character. A person or another being whom we follow throughout the book, often the one for whom we start reading the books. What can I say about Russian main characters?
Well, I can say that they don't spend as much time in introspection as they did in Dostoevsky's time. Or perhaps we just don't see it. A Russian main character can witness his parter or wife/husband being killed right before their eyes, their life can fall apart in a single day, and you won't hear a long, sad monologue anymore, no. When something bad happens to Russians in life, they immediately have two questions: "Who to blame?" and "What to do?"
Something along the lines of how John Wick acted in the first movie after they killed his dog. I could see the gears turning in his head when I watched the movie, I could see Wick asking himself these two questions. Of course, not all Russian MC's are like that, but a lot of them.
As an example, I could mention the books by Sergey Lukyanenko, "Chernovik" and "Chistovik." But he's not exactly a web novel writer, so I will just leave my thoughts in a spoiler. (I already wrote them, fuk of.)
In both books, the main character, Kirill, goes through an infernal fucking mess of a time. (I don't think I can translate the words I wrote in Russian to English correctly.) But I can only recall a couple of times when he just thought about how his life had turned into a cesspool. He is a self-sufficient person who only occasionally needs a push in the right direction from other characters to start moving. And not because he fell into depression or is too tired to keep going, no. Kirill just has no idea what to do in those moments. He simply doesn’t know what he can do to oppose a whole network of worlds that are hunting for his head. And when he gets an idea and a chance for salvation, he immediately grabs onto it.
... Damn, I forgot that I was supposed to write about web authors. Сука.
... Damn, I forgot that I was supposed to write about web authors. Сука.
Web authors. Yes. These guys. We are talking about them, right.
Fortunately, my words ring true for the authors of modern web novels and fanfics. Many Russian and even English or American protagonists, whether they are women or men, behave this way. They know perfectly well that tears won't help the situation. If they have a problem - they solve it, rather than just going with the flow. Or maybe I was "lucky" to find and read a lot of books with such a archetype of a main character.
American authors have more diversity, if you think about it. If in Russia the main character is a hero (in Russian, the words hero and (main) character share the same word герой with different meanings depending on the context), a decisive person, then in American novels and fanfics we get to see more. Again, perhaps my experience differs from yours, but it seems to me that there is more diversity in English-language content. Or maybe I just chose my books poorly.
Do you want to read about a loser who remains a loser throughout the entire novel? Here you go! Americans—oh, wait, I'm thinking about the Japanese side of the things. I don't even want to write about the Japanese, they have too much imagination.
So, American or English writers have more diversity in their main characters. Here, I thought it would be nice to use Bilbo Baggins, but then I remembered what I'm actually writing about. I don't think I need to write about the diverse heroes that Americans and English have; it's clear enough. They are diverse in every sense of the word. In Russia, I haven't seen a single book where the MC is openly trans or gay. I think I don't need to explain why. ???
Chinese main characters. I won't joke about Arrogant Young Masters; that's boring. @Tsutu can tell you much more about how Chinese authors are different from the rest of the world than I ever can.
But! But I can say a THING!
Quite a few Chinese web writers do not understand how people who were born and raised outside of China communicate with each other. The same problem can be seen with some odd Japanese web writers. It was strange for me the first time I read a translated Chinese work set in America and saw two Americans using Chinese honorifics.
And so we smoothly and imperceptibly transition to writing styles of web novels. This transition was sponsored by my deep-fried brain.
How many lyrical digressions have you seen in English works? And in American ones? You've definitely seen authors spend a page or two introducing a character who is practically unimportant to the plot, or maybe they're describing a tree, or a house just to describe it. They are just there, a small cog in the machine, without which the journey would be a tiny bit worse, but we would still reach our destination just fine.
In Russian web novels, there's less empty descriptions. If a character is introduced in a novel and a random fact is mentioned, it will probably play its role in the future. If you're reading a good book that is. Russian authors love their Chekhov's Guns, even if they are small and not very significant.
Also, works written in the first person. Either I am that "attentive," or there are many more of these among Russians than there are on the English side of things. Most often, we see the world through the eyes of the main character. We are not invisible observers peeking into someone else's life from behind their shoulder; the MC tells us, shows is in "real time" what is happening to them.
What else? There are many more popular novels among Russians that contain elements of empire/kingdom/country building. And time travel, especially to the USSR and World War II. Often both. I haven't seen such a huge number of time travel stories from Americans or English. If you read a time travel Russian web novel, there is a 80% chance that the main character will get involved in politics and a 50% chance that they will start ruling over something.
Attitudes towards harems also vary greatly. The romantic aspect in Russian, English, and American authors is quite a boiling pot of crap that I don't want to get into, but I'll try anyway.
If we take an average Russian protagonist from a harem novel, he won't be shy about his desires. At least if the main character is a man; I haven't read any reverse harem books yet. He won't spend half the work deceiving himself and claiming that he's loves only one girl, that having a harem is wrong and unfair to girls that enter this kind of relationship. I've seen how often this happens in English-language works. Bro, we see the tags, we know you're going to have several girls by the middle of the book.
On the other hand, if we take an average Russian protagonist without a harem... Then there are many options, too many for me to bother writing. The same goes for English-speaking web authors.
??
No, go away, I won't talk about you.
?
Right. Naturally, all novels have their own prejudices and stereotypes, depending on where the author is from. Right now, I have a DxD fanfic bookmarked, where the main character helps humanity build magical communism to give them a chance to defend themselves from everything supernatural. The joke is that the idea didn't even come from the main character (who was Russian in a past life). It came from Cao-Cao. Who is Chinese.
DO YOU GET THE JOKE, I REPEAT, DO YOU GET THE JOKE?!
I can't count or care to remember how many novels and fanfics I've seen where the main character successfully builds communism in the end. Or American novels where the main character successfully creates their own Megacorporation. In this, all authors are similar, their worldview affects how they write their novels and how their characters see the world themselves.
And somehow I quickly ran out of topics to talk about, that's all I could come up with in a couple of hours of writing this thing. But that's why I posted this terrible creation of my brain here. I want to read your thoughts and what you think distinguishes web writers from your country from all the others.
Maybe they have a favorite genre, books written in which become popular regardless of anything? Maybe in every book written in your country, the main character has their parents killed before their eyes? I invite you to share your knowledge!
