Chapter 70 creative notes

As I wrote last time, I was writing at the same time.After becoming a popular author, it is common to write several novels at the same time, and it is not worth mentioning at all.But when people are busy, there will inevitably be confusion in their heads, so sometimes characters in the novels serialized in A magazine will suddenly appear in the novels of B magazine, which makes the editor rush and make big jokes; but if you are writing a mystery novel, And if it's a mystery novel, the reader's eyes are very strict, so there's no way to just laugh about this kind of thing.Moreover, for long-form mystery novels, even in Europe and the United States, the origin of mystery novels, one work a year is already the limit.If too many are produced, the density of the novel will become thinner and the quality will drop.But maybe it was because I was still young at the time, I wrote these two novels very smoothly, without any pain.What I usually write is that I wait until ten days before the deadline for the monthly magazine to write, and then hand it over to the editorial department after writing a hundred manuscripts each time.

The recent boom in mystery novels has been accepted by the public, and as a mystery writer, I think this is the best.However, this craze also leads to the oversqueezing of mystery writers, so I can't really be happy about it. In the era when I wrote, there were not many reasoning writers who could publish their works in general magazines. Therefore, although other people were not financially well off, they had enough time to devote to a work .At that time, the editor of Mystery Fiction Magazine thought that mystery novels could only be written slowly after fermenting an inspiration bit by bit. The writers also agreed with this idea, whether they were writing long stories or short stories.

"The rookie nowadays is really pitiful. As soon as he wins an award, magazines will come from all directions to place an order for him. If he refuses, other people will scold him: 'It's a great thing for a bastard to win an award', so there is no Time allows inspiration to ferment." Some critic will say this, emphasizing the superiority of writers of our time.Sincerely this book. Now this incident sounds like an ancient legend, but there used to be a saying among editors and senior writers: "Anyone can write one or two long mystery novels, but the third is a big problem." .” Therefore, when the newcomers at that time wrote the third novel, they should have a somewhat trembling feeling.Young writers of recent times would laugh out loud if they heard this superstition, but it can be seen from this that writers in the past were like this—sincere, I should say.

It is a good thing that writers of mystery novels become stronger. If they are not stronger, they may go downhill after the third work, just like the legends in the past.But no matter how the times change and how strong the writing power of reasoning writers becomes, it should be the limit to write a complete full-length novel a year.Because it is impossible for good ideas to come to mind quickly and frequently, Carter Dixon in his heyday once set a record of writing four novels a year, but only he can do this kind of pioneering work. There is a very strange phenomenon that when I publish a novel, 95% of the readers who point out my mistakes are people who live in Kansai or near Kansai.Although I feel that this seems to be a bit different from the Kansai people's personality that is generally considered, I still have to thank them for reading my works so carefully.In contrast, people in Tokyo may only read the surface, and rarely respond to my works, while people in Hokkaido and Southern Kyushu who respond are almost equal to zero.It seems that there is a reason why the well-known mystery fan group "SR Association" was established in Kyoto.

This "SR Meeting" launched a plan to conduct absentee referees on a novel at hand, and two or three masterpieces have already been sanctioned by them.The next one will be Zushang meat. The prosecution listed many crimes, and I remember that the most important of them is "related to the dumping of corpses from the two master bridges".The prosecution's argument at the time was simply: that route had been electrified at that time, so the corpses thrown from the bridge should have touched the wires, and it was impossible for them to fall onto the train.Is the prosecution accusing the author of deceiving ignorant and kind readers?Or do you think the author is too careless and should be convicted?I don't remember the detailed content of the argument. Fortunately, the defense lawyers' arguments were reasonable, so I was acquitted.

It was Mr. Kawata Rikumura who later became one of the narrators of this complete work, who acted as the hated prosecutor and asked for the death penalty.I believe it goes without saying that this pseudonym comes from Carter Dixon.It is worth remembering that his career is an economic reporter for the Osaka Yomiuri Shimbun. Before writing this novel, I visited the editorial office of Iwatani Bookstore in Shiba-no-Nishikuboba-cho, Minato-ku. Together with editor-in-chief Naoyuki Ohtsubo, I went to a nearby coffee shop and told him the opening part.At this time, Junji Tanaka grinned and pointed out the mistake mentioned by the above-mentioned prosecutor Kawada.I smiled and didn't retort.My thinking is: in order to complete a novel, there is no way to distort a part of reality.I am also very aware of the fact that there are wires passing under that land bridge. Whenever I go to and from the editorial office of "Detective Truth", I will lean on the thick concrete railings and look down at the steam locomotives and electric locomotives passing by. The scene under the bridge, and thinking about my future as a speculative writer.

After the serialization started, I didn't get any complaints from readers.Perhaps when readers sent postcards full of complaints to the editorial department, editor-in-chief Daping worried that the author would be depressed after seeing it, so he crumpled up those postcards and threw them away.In any case, I was finally able to end the half-year-long serialization with a relaxed mood. This article is serialized together with Matsumoto Kiyoshi Zhang's.When the two-thirds of the novels of both parties were in progress, I saw the murder motive in Matsumoto's works.Although the editor and readers couldn't see it yet, as a writer, I, of course, completely saw through what medicine he was selling in his gourd.In short, what I found is that "my novel is heading towards a similar ending".I yelled in my heart that it was not good. Although it was completely accidental, if the motives were the same, the readers would feel very disappointed.

Seeing this situation, not only the editor-in-chief will panic, but the writers who finish later will also be at a loss as to what to do.The best way is: one of us modifies the plot of the story, but only the original mystery novels cannot be deleted and modified at will.Before writing, the writer will carefully draw the blueprint, and the story will be carried out according to this blueprint, so as to write a long novel that is consistent from beginning to end and proud of the beauty of structure. So, the next best thing to do in this situation is to let the serials end at the same time, and there is no other better way.

It happened to be close to the finale. If this continues, it seems that as I expected, both parties will write the final answer at the same time.I silently breathed a sigh of relief.But things didn't go so smoothly in the end. The busy Matsumoto took a break for a month before the last serialization. I remember that the editor in charge at that time was Masasumi Tani, and he recalled to me a few years later: "At that time, I was scolded by Mr. Qing Zhang, and he said why I didn't tell him first: the ending of the movie will be like that. I can't help him say that, I don't know myself." Because I didn't reveal the plot of the novel, poor Mrs. Tani was scolded, but Mr. Matsumoto Seicho arranged for it. A very clever ending draws a perfect ending for the novel.

Here I want to talk a little bit, I think the fun of Benge mystery novels lies in surprises.Whether it is the unexpectedness of the prisoner's identity or the inconceivability of the secret room works, the author racked his brains to let readers enjoy the taste of surprise.The fake alibi trick is no exception.So even if the other party is the responsible editor, I will never disclose the ending part.When I was writing a novel, I would scribble passages across several notebooks and have girls (and sometimes bearded men) copy them for me.Even if this is the case, I will still keep the last volume and copy it on the manuscript paper myself.This is because I cannot take away the joy of wonder from her.

Recently, there has been a trend of re-examining the "originality and morality of tricks" among some writers of the Benge School.It may be difficult for readers to understand what is going on.To put it simply, it is to appeal to everyone to respect the tricks that the writer came up with alone.Since that writer is respected, the tricks created by that writer must not be copied, which is their purpose. The word "plagiarism" is too sharp, and it doesn't matter if it is replaced by stealing, but in any case, other writers use tricks that the creators worked hard to come up with (Edogawa Ranpo called it "invention") tricks, I think It is bad manners on the part of the inventor, and--forgive me to repeat it--it is also bad manners to take the joy of surprise from the reader. Suppose that after several days of hard thinking, Mrs. A finally came up with a trick to use the clock. Mrs. A used this trick in a novel and published it, and just a few years later, Mrs. B used it in a short story. that ruse.If the reader reads in this order, it is fine to curse secretly, "B is a bastard, he is just trying to copy others for convenience"; You will be very disappointed by the end of the story.I spent nearly 1,000 yen on the book and took the time to finish reading the book, but the only word was "disappointed".Resentful, he must have put the label "A is a plagiarist" in his mind, and this label will remain there until he knows the order in which these two novels are published by a certain coincidence. Because of this, I strongly disapprove of Juvenile Fiction Publishing House publishing simplified versions of masterpieces of mystery novels.Some people may object that, anyway, when the child grows up, he will completely forget the content, and you are worrying unnecessarily.But is that really the case?As far as I am concerned, among the "Primary School Works" that I read as a child, there are Conan Doyle's, Maurice Lublanc's "Strange Rock City", and Johnston McCauley's "Thub-Way Tham" .When I re-read these works when I grew up, the emotion I received was very thin. I think it's better to let children read mystery novels written for children.Ellery Quinn wrote juvenile novels, and in Japan, besides "Twenty Faces", Kosai Fuki, Oshita Uto, Koga Saburo and others have published excellent juvenile novels.Publishing houses that publish juvenile novels should try to discover these excellent works. It seems to be a bit off topic, but what I want to say is that all the tricks I use in the novels and shorts I write are all invented by myself. This is my creative attitude all the time.At the same time, I am not willing at all. The trick I have thought up with all my heart is easily misappropriated. However, on the issue of plagiarism, some situations cannot be generalized.For example, it is not plagiarism or borrowing, but the case of accidentally thinking of the same trick as the predecessor and writing a novel.There are precedents for such a situation: a certain British writer published a work decades ago, and two Japanese writers who did not know that there was such a work, by chance, at almost the same time, wrote A novel that uses the same trick.Moreover, the two Japanese novels are equally excellent, even surpassing the foreign writer.Of course, the motives mentioned in the three works are different, the articles are different, the murderers are also different, and the process of solving the case is also very different.Even reading them together is fun.After encountering such an excellent work, I have to change my opinion. Masasumi Furui used to be the editor-in-chief of "Gem".I have heard him talk about his childhood experience, knowing that he will lose his parents one after another, so I am deeply impressed by him. The matter of giving the draft to someone else to copy is also a fiction. No matter how busy I am, I will copy the manuscript by myself, but once or twice through the publishing house, I commissioned a work-student to complete the manuscript, and that work-student happened to be a woman.

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