Nicholas Abbott Blog #12 Progression
In my last blog post, I mentioned I was reading a story called Library of Heaven’s Path and that I was on chapter ~1150; I am currently on chapter 2150. This calculates to ~30 chapters a day which suffice to say means I have retained my enjoyment of this story. Naturally I have not been immersing myself in too many other stories as I have been too busy with this one, however I did watch a new show recently called Chicago P.D. It was recommended to me by my cousin and I did enjoy it but there was nothing deep there it was just a fun cop show.
Library of Heaven’s Path on the other hand, has been getting better and better. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this story and it does an excellent job at getting me to critically think about story structure and character development from a conceptual perspective. In case you are not too familiar, cultivation stories often have the MC explore new places and exposition is necessary for the them and the reader to understand what is going on. This begs the question of how does the author solve this problem that crops up frequently? It occurs in many different ways, some good, some bad, but this is a way for me to see a lot of examples of it happening in a relatively short period of time. What have I learned you might ask? Thanks for asking! I don’t know, I can’t really tell if I am learning at all or I just made up some bullshit that sounds cool, but I will only be able to tell once I actually start writing my story and see how I do.
I mentioned in my last blog that I didn’t know why I liked the story so much but I believe I have found out the answer to that very problem. Now I’m sure it is a combination of many things, some being the thing I mentioned in my previous blog, but the specific thing I really enjoy about this story is how it makes me laugh. The MC is just an extremely funny character, he has incredibly strong emotional connections with his friends / students / teachers / parents, but has extremely low EQ overall. What does that mean exactly? Thanks for asking! There are a multitude of ways I could express his poor social skills but my absolute favourite is his firmly held belief that he is low profile. He has always preached that he is low profile and that others should be like him in his ability to lay low. Obviously, as the MC of a CULTIVATION story, it goes without saying that he will continue to ascend and always grow and be stronger and improve faster than virtually everyone no matter what. This leads to him being the centre of attention everywhere he goes, and when he is not the centre of attention he often will do or say something that is so outrageous that it immediately puts him in the limelight anyway. This is quite an oxymoron as he is consistent in telling everyone he meets that he is low profile, yet is the brightest star everywhere he has ever gone.
Why do I think it is so funny then? Thanks for asking! You know you are providing exemplary questions today, making it easier for me to explain boring things no one cares about. You know, maybe I have learned a thing or two about exposition, its actually really easy. Anyway the reason it is funny is he is genuinely serious when he says he is/wants to be low profile, and you can see where he’s coming from because he almost always achieves his goals in the least braggadocious way. Unfortunately for him, the things he tries to do are usually impossible to do in any way except clearly standing out so that is a bit unfortunate. I see where he is coming from, and he could absolutely brag so much more than he does but it makes me laugh every time he clearly sets himself up to be the centre of attention but assures everyone he is low profile.
I have to play an inhouse now so I guess this is an abrupt ending but I will probably get farther into the story and have more to talk about. I hope you enjoyed, thank you for reading.
