Can't Leave This Room Until I Get First Place on Syosetu

How many days have pa.s.sed since then?

I no longer have a sense of time.
At some point I stopped posting “Other World’s Pincer Master”.

I just gave up, not doing anything in particular.
I read novels on “Let’s Write a Novel,” I spent the day lying down, I pointlessly trained my muscles.
There were days I sat in a stupor at the foot of the bed.
I wasn’t hungry. I just wanted something, anything, to put in my mouth.

There was little to do.
I could browse “Let’s Write a Novel,” write a novel, or draw a picture with the software.
In other words I could view and create artistic works.
I didn’t want to read novels, but there wasn’t anything else to do.
I mostly spent my days reading over novels, meditating, and running in circles.
There are a lot of works available.
I could pa.s.s loads of time.

Nevertheless, even that came to an end.
There were ultimately a finite amount of novels on “Let’s Write a Novel”.
That one year continued to loop, from April 2017 to March 2018.
Only novels written up that point were available to me.

I had read pretty much all of them.
Of course, I might have missed a couple novels here and there, but at the very least I had read all the novels on the rankings.

My drawing skills also advanced.
It’s not at a professional level and by no means does the software have very high performance, so I can’t say that it’s beautiful, but if I’m remembering it correctly this should be close to sufficient.
That is to say, I needed to draw a picture every few days or I’d forget what they looked like.
People’s faces.

However, in time, that too was lost to me.

I went to a corner and sat down, staring at the room that had become all too familiar.
Silence.
Neither the sound of the PC running nor the electric hum of the monitor could be heard.
Alone in the quiet room, I looked across to the opposite corner.
It was the farthest spot from me.

I stood up, and in a straight line dashed forward.
I shifted a half step towards the wall.
I hit the wall before I could take a third step.

Balling up my fist, I pounded on the wall.
With my legs I endlessly kicked against it.
Over and over and over and over.
I opened my mouth and scream squeezed out of it.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”

I wanted to behold the starry skies!
I wanted to sprint through the streets!
I wanted to feel the rain beating down on me!

I opened my mouth wide and stretched out my tongue.
…*Chomp*
Putting all my strength into my jaw, I forced my teeth through my flesh.
Even with pain like an electric shock shooting through my skull, I didn’t loosen my clenched mouth.
The smell of iron filled my nose.
In the next instant, there was a small pop.
Something clogged my throat.
I couldn’t breath. I crouched on the ground and pressed down on my throat.
My nose tried to take in air, but blood spewed out instead.
Even if all the air in my lungs had been exhaled, I couldn’t inhale fresh air.
After such a long time, I’ve received the joyous sensation of pain. Under such an overawing sensation, my consciousness grew faint.
My vision grew darker and darker.
The pain grew steadily greater.
My body began to cramp.
To break down.
I hold down my throat.
Scratching.
Pain.
Pain.
Mmm…….

When I came to, I was standing in the center of the room.

“…….”

I thrust my finger into my mouth and felt my tongue.
It had a grainy feeling and my fingertip got wet.
I sank to the floor.
I lay on my side, burying my face in my knees.
My body involuntarily trembled and burst into tears.

Even death was not allowed to me.

Loop ???

●Day 1●

I didn’t know how many loops it had been.
I only knew it was the first day from looking at the date.
I found myself sitting in the chair, reviewing my work.

“Other World’s Pincer Master” wasn’t my work.
That wasn’t my own novel.
I wrote the second half, but that was just cooking a dish that was already prepared.
I hadn’t chosen any of the ingredients nor the style of cuisine.
At most, I’ve chosen the type of sauce.
What I was looking at was the novel I wrote long ago.
The t.i.tle was “Average Legend of a Hero”.
Since I’ve come to this room, it’s the only novel I’ve written from scratch to take a ranking.

As the t.i.tle suggests, it is indeed an average, mediocre story.

At the time, I couldn’t see how bad it was.
However, now I understood.
There are flaws all throughout this novel.

Firstly, the t.i.tle.
“Average Legend of a Hero”.
This t.i.tle makes it sound like a generic tale.
What kind of hero it? What kind of situation is it? What kind of power do they have? What is the tone? What happens?
I can’t get any of that information from the t.i.tle.
Nonetheless, “legend” and “hero” leaves a strong impression of fantasy, so could somewhat appeal to readers of this site.
That could be why it gained more points than my other works.

The synopsis as well.
I’ve written in detail about the equipment, magic, and races that appear in the novel.
I’ve included too much exposition littered with proper nouns, which makes it hard to follow.
It says nothing about the characters, their idiosyncrasies, or the plot.
I don’t need to explain the whole setting with the synopsis.
Rather, it makes it seem like the equipment and magic are the core of the story.

There’s still a lot of room for improvement.

Overall the writing is clumsy and difficult to read.
There are many places where the basics like “Subject, Predicate, Modifier,”1 the 5W1H,2 and particles3 have been left out.
There are times even I have no idea what the characters are trying to say.
Only the past me knows what I meant.
Now too much time has pa.s.sed; I can’t figure it out.

Also, I didn’t put any line breaks in the text.
Even if the text is displayed vertically,4 it’s still difficult to read on a web browser.
Paired with the horrendous writing, anyone would want to leave after the first few lines.

The main character is not interesting.
He has no virtues, no sense of justice, no hobbies, nothing that would express individuality nor his own credo.
He’s an alright guy, I guess.
However, he’s too ordinary.
There’s no expectation that he’ll do anything interesting.
He’s a whatever person.
There were few occasions to use the ability he obtained with great pains.
An ordinary man got some power.
This was supposed to be a more interesting and exciting development.
However, with the main character’s lack of individuality, scenes using that power were not many.
There were few pleasant scenes.
Even if a major theme of the novel was that there are things that are more important than a power gained by chance, it felt like I tried to push the lesson too hard that it just came off as preachy.

Neither the character nor the development had any surprises.
That sounded good, but there isn’t any change or depth.
For example, an arrogant female knight appears in the story.
However, there was no explanation as to why she was so arrogant.
It was my decision for her to be arrogant. There was no reason there.
She remained arrogant, no matter what happened in the story.
Even if she loses to the main character, even if her house falls, she continued to have absolute confidence.
She never changed her mind.
Therefore, you can predict her behaviour in any situation.
If you can predict the action, of course you can predict the story.
The scene which seems to be tense is not particularly tense, and I can feel the expected harmony.
In spite of that the character does not even reflect if something is done, it is at the level of irritation.

There were still a lot of terrible things.
There was nothing to praise.
A person who read this, bookmarked this, and gave it a high rating probably didn’t exist.
Far from that, who would even read the first chapter.

I know that because of the countless days I’ve spent only looking at the site.
No reader will be hooked on to this novel.
How would I even get points like that.

If one compared the novel to a store, the storefront drove customers away.
A storefront that attracts customers.

Signboards and samples would be set up in front of the store, to show at a glance what’s in stock with, and the storefront would have a big enough entrance to let the people in with it wide open. There would not be a single piece of trash outside, and feature items would be lined up in the show window.
A kind of storefront where customers can’t wait to enter.
My novel is the complete opposite.
On the signboards and samples, words like “amazing” or “cool” are lined up, the entrance is small, underground, and the corpse of a mouse is rolling around. There was no show window.
Moreover, as long as there are no good products that can be shown, customers will not enter inside and turn right away and they will return home.
Return customers? Don’t joke like that.

I didn’t understand the fundamentals.
But now I know.
You can see how the readers are going to enter, and what they like.
That was how it felt.

I moved the mouse and launched the word processor.