Online novels refer to novels published continuously by using BBS, Web interface and other networks. Compared with ordinary novels, the grammar of online novels will be closer to spoken language and full of online buzzwords. In addition to the text content, it is also characterized by using symbol pattern typesetting to make changes. Network novel is the main form of network novel.

Second, development.

In the years when China's internet developed fastest, few good novels appeared, because at that time, as the largest online novel website, it did not pay attention to the originality of novels. Then with the gradual prosperity of several original novel alliances, online novels really looked up. The formation of online novels is due to the changes in the demand and pursuit of reading and entertainment in the network era, and the promotion of commercial companies makes online novels flourish like a duck to water. At present, the number of online novels in China is gradually replacing other novel categories and becoming the first novel group in China. The specific time memory that can be traced back to West Road in the novel has been blurred. The earliest online novels are actually YY novels in the form of forums. At the beginning, the earliest groups that emerged were Tianying Novel (Closed) Magic Sword Book League and so on. Because of the same birth, the relationship was better at first. Later, because of the appearance of the starting point, the starting point stood out. It is difficult to trace back to the first book. If it is recorded earlier, it should be Tan.

1, ideal era

China's online novels can be traced back to the end of 1990 and the beginning of 199 1. 1990165438+1On October 28th, China officially registered China's top-level domain name CN in SRI-NIC (Network Information Center of Stanford Research Institute), and opened an international e-mail service using China's top-level domain name CN, which took the first step in China's Internet.

199 1 year, Wang Xiaofei founded the Chinese Poetry Network overseas. Shao Yun, an online writer studying in China, published Struggle and Equality on the Internet in April, 199 1, which is the earliest known Chinese online novel. 1997165438+1In the early morning of October 2, Lao Rong published an article entitled "No Tears in Dalian Golden State +00.3 1" in Sitong Li Fang (the predecessor of Sina) forum, which almost spread throughout the whole network in just 48 hours. This is the first time that online novels have entered the stage in traditional media.

From 65438 to 0998, China's first most representative and influential online novel "First Intimate Contact" appeared on BBS, written by Cai Zhiheng. 1998 No.6 Tianya published an anonymous online novel "Live Like a Man". Because this online novel has been repeatedly posted on the bulletin board, it is said that the original author is Xing Yusen. In addition, Huang Yi's Biography of Tang Long and Mo Ren's Biography of Star Wars Heroes are all the rage, and novel portals such as gold bookstores and various personal online bookstores have mushroomed. Since 1999, more novel websites have been established, such as blackboard writing and paid novel website Boku. Since the 20th century, more and more people began to read and write online. Fiction websites have experienced difficulties and twists such as development, integration and merger, and matured on the basis of new website building mode and network technology, and online novels themselves have also become divided, such as A Farewell to Wei 'an by Anne Baby in 2000, The Story of Wukong by 200 1, Chengdu by Murong in 2002, and Lin Changzhi's. In the following years, the maturity and continuous growth of personal blogs set off a national writing movement.

2. Business Times

During the period when the Internet was still the main portal, readers found that most new novel websites entered through portals such as Yahoo, or through friendly links between stations. Friendly links are almost the only way for many websites to develop new members, and new websites are difficult to enter. In this environment, Golden Bookstore firmly occupies the first position of online bookstore by virtue of the advantages of pioneers. As the saying goes, "I don't know the gold bookstore when reading online, and it's useless to call a net worm." 200 1, 1 1, Jianfeng Bao and other writers who like fantasy writing founded the fantasy novel Association at the west foot. In May 2002, a personal website focusing on novels was established, and it was renamed as the original novel association-starting point. On May 15, 2002, on the day when the starting point was established, Jiangnan samurai broke into the starting point to celebrate the establishment of a chat group and criticized the stack room system at that time, leaving a group of people at the starting point speechless. Finally, he won the battle of fate, usurped the power to start the website construction, and hid the sword in Jiangnan, hence the name "hide the sword Jiangnan". The wheel of destiny began to turn ... later historians were deeply touched by this: "an accidental opportunity. . . A meeting of several people. . . Changed the fate of the novel website. " ReadWriteWeb was the first fantasy bookstore to charge for online reading (there was no such thing as VIP at that time), and it was charged as soon as it was built. In February 2002, the read-write network was put into trial operation and officially put into operation in September. At the same time, the website issued a statement saying that "in order to promote the development of original novels, this website intends to pay the author the remuneration published on the Internet, and welcomes original works to join". Because it was a good time to set up a read-write network, it was the hottest time for the short message alliance, and it earned a lot of income by charging for short messages. At that time, the scale of the website had not developed because the builders of the website were too eager for quick success and short-sighted. At the end of 2002, a group of online writers, such as Zhong Yang and Su Mingpu, left Tiexue and set up "Yang Ming Global Chinese Book Network". The concept of VIP was put forward for the first time. Through well-known works such as "China Renaissance", it has attracted a large number of members. By April 2004 1, with the launch of the new VIP reader, the total number of VIP works at the starting point increased by 100, far exceeding other websites in terms of quantity and quality. According to the announcement of the starting point, "After nearly half a year's continuous efforts and development, the highest remuneration has reached the record of 1000 words in 40 yuan (that is, 2,000 people subscribe to a single chapter, which is the same as the domestic publishing fee), and the remuneration income of dozens of works ranges from 1000 words to 20-40 yuan. The accumulated remuneration from the starting point is nearly 10 million yuan, and the monthly income of the VIP author's remuneration champion in March alone has exceeded 4,000 yuan. "

At present, the online Jianghu is basically a confrontation between CCBA (China Novel League) represented by Magic Sword and Book League and the starting point, which has obvious advantages.

Third, the characteristics are summed up by myself. …………………………………………

Fourth, the communication thinking of online novels.

Compared with newspapers, radio, television and other media, the network is the fastest in mass communication, and it has all the characteristics of mass communication. However, the appearance of the Internet has also brought some new changes to the traditional mass communication: the clear boundary between printing technology and broadcasting technology is gradually disappearing; We are changing from lack of media to excess media; It is changing from inculcating communication content to designing narrow broadcast of communication content according to the needs of groups or individuals; It is changing from one-way media to interactive media. Internet has changed some basic modes of communication and redefined the concept of mass communication to some extent. In particular, the mass communication on the Internet is based on interpersonal communication. At the same time, the network also has community-type minority communication, such as "discussion community", which reflects the more primitive state of human communication. In other words, although network communication is still a typical mass communication, it has obviously the characteristics of interpersonal communication. It should be noted that the appearance of this interpersonal communication feature is not a retrogression of mass communication, but only a reflection of the progress of human communication. As an important way to spread human information and thoughts, novels are also influenced by changes in the media, so the emergence of the Internet has also changed novels. People pay more attention to the reading and writing of online novels, because people can meet their needs for emotional communication and communication to the greatest extent through the Internet, without spending too much energy and money, because online novels are a kind of paperless writing and reading.

The audience is the reader, and when used in novels, it refers to the novel readers in the traditional sense. In the era of online novels, the identity and status of this group are undergoing fundamental changes. The powerful media communication advantages of online novels, coupled with some characteristics of interpersonal communication and high-tech communication means, naturally make it have the function of remedy and optimization for the communication function of previous novels, and online novels are playing an increasingly important role in the novel family. Online novels also make the "silent majority" (that is, readers) no longer silent. It has broken the pattern of over-concentration of writing power for a long time, met the needs of people to express their views and emotions, and fundamentally liberated the audience. The emotional novel "Rose in the Wind" published by People's Fiction Publishing House is a typical example of the audience's participation in writing. The novel published by People's Novel Publishing House is formed by collecting the posts of Rose in the Wind and netizens. It is a novel jointly created by the author and netizens, and it is the most typical novel with interactive reading and writing. The extremely common "Solitaire Novel" appearing on the Internet is also a typical example in this respect. For example, Dalmatians Running on the Internet, which was co-produced by Sina.com and China Business Times, is also a famous attempt to read and write in public space. In the Internet age, "everyone can become an artist in a short time" is no longer a myth. Network liberates people, and online novels liberate readers. In the big context, this liberation actually reflects the digestion of elite culture by popular culture and brings an equal situation to elite and popular spirit, which is meaningful. This is a rare personal liberation since the industrial revolution. People can finally get rid of the shackles of commodities and find the space of spiritual freedom from the control of technical rationality. Although the existence form of this space is immaterial and virtual, spiritually, people are free.

The emergence of this new media is not only the progress of communication technology, but also reflects the "humanization" characteristics of online media as a new communication tool. When the novel is combined with the new media Internet to create and read in a new way of text communication, in essence, it does not change the basic characteristics of the novel. The writing of online novels still follows the old-fashioned novel creation methods: from the conception of plot to the source of story material, from basic diction to complex expression, from the ability of thinking and imagination to the inspiration of creation, from the basic image shaping to the description of social life, from the expression of individual feelings to aesthetic ideals and comments on social life, and so on. The only difference between online novels and previous novels is that it shows the difference between network technology and printing technology with the help of the Internet. It can link words, sounds, videos and images in the form of hypertext, thus providing readers with more reading space and imagination space, bringing more entertainment and enjoyment, and extending individual desire satisfaction to an infinite extent. Of course, this does not mean that novels with social ideology have lost their ideological attributes. The ideology of online novels is actually only manifested in the decentralization of ideology. Everyone constitutes the whole social ideological discourse with his own personal ideological discourse, and this is a more realistic social ideological discourse. Therefore, we believe that although online novels have liberated people from the limitations of creation and appreciation to a certain extent and changed the original mode of production and dissemination of novels, in addition to the technical factors of online media, online novels themselves still follow the law of creation and development of novels themselves. Of course, "media is information", and the change of media will inevitably change the original definition or extension of the novel concept; In addition, the existence of online novels has indeed put forward many new topics to maintain the ecological problems of the whole novel, and the impact is also profound. If the four elements of novel criticism put forward by abrams in Mirror and Lamp are a relatively complete exposition of the operating mechanism of novel's internal production from the aspects of author, world, readers and works, thus greatly expanding and stimulating the theoretical horizon of novel research and triggering the revolutionary progress of novel research, then the emergence of online novels requires us to study novels from a broader space, especially from areas other than novels. Borrowing a formulation from Bourdieu, this is a problem of "field study". From an analytical point of view, a field can be defined as a network or a configuration of objective relationships between various locations. In the network age, how to deal with the relationship between the novel field and other fields, and how to deal with the possession relationship and its changes between the various systems of the novel field should attract enough attention from the novel theory circle, which is a theoretical problem that we should not avoid today. To think with the concept of use is to think from various relationships. The marriage of network and novel only provides a new field space for novel and brings a brand-new breakthrough point for novel research. It only changed some expressions of the novel, but did not change the novel itself.

Fifth, the problems of online novels and their handling.

Since ancient times, novels have been respected and worshipped as an elegant aristocratic art form, both in China and the West. For example, Confucius's "nothing to say if you don't learn poetry" and "complaining about enjoying the scenery" fully express the value and function of poetry; Cao Pi's "great cause of running the country, immortal event" further raised the status, value and function of the article to an unprecedented height; In the west, although Plato tried to drive the poet out of the "ideal country" for the sake of "justice" and "virtue", he still admitted that he had fallen in love with poetry since childhood. Aristotle, on the other hand, thinks that poetry describes what may happen according to the law of possibility or inevitability, and thus regards poetry as a more real exposition than history, which has opened a historical precedent for western countries to popularize poetry and novels. The novel's "Ka Tasis" (purification) function cultivates temperament, cultivates people's hearts, cultivates morality, broadens horizons, nourishes countless lonely and miserable souls and lights up the light of hope for countless lives. A large part of the history of human civilization and progress benefits from the direct role of novels in social movements, political changes and ideological enlightenment; Faced with the evil and cruelty of reality, people always seek happiness and comfort in novels and art; The aesthetic dimension of novels, because of its incompatibility with the real society, will always be used by theorists as a weapon to resist a numb and morbid society. No matter how the reality changes, the novel art will always be obsessed with beauty and truth, leading the direction of human happiness and progress and preserving the last hope of mankind. However, with the advent of the Internet age, everything seems to have changed. In traditional novels, creators pay less attention to readers, but more attention to the problems of the work itself, such as the perfusion of the subject's emotion, the excavation of the theme, the choice of the theme, the arrangement of the structure, the modification of the language and so on. Therefore, Ron Girnus's exposition of "lofty body" and Engels' aesthetic view of "trinity" of drama came into being. As a result of the virtuous circle, under the control of this novel concept, the works in the pre-Internet era are profound in thought, paying attention to the deep problems of social life and having the characteristics of grand narrative. Writers are paid special attention by the society, and their economic and political status is generally high. However, up to now, the novel nature of online novels in the traditional sense has almost disappeared, and works that are "emotional", "exciting" and "immoral" are popular. In the internet age, there is only the logic of consumption, but no sincere belief. Writing needs knowledge reserve, basic life experience and writing literacy. However, in the era of novel networking, these are no longer important. Online novels and blog writing have pushed novels into the era of "pan-fiction", and anyone can publish their own words to the public and spread them widely through the network. The lofty, profound, virtuous, just and human values that the novel has always admired have been pushed to the most inconspicuous place, replaced by inferior words telling stories with low tastes. Cai Zhiheng, the first person who became famous by online writing, once admitted: "My novel skills are not very good, so I write with enthusiasm rather than strength." Passion and lack of strength alone created rascal Cai, but ruined the novel. Needless to say, online novels are in the initial stage, and compared with extensive and profound traditional novels, they have their own defects and deficiencies. Its rampant freedom will inevitably lead to the decline of novels. Internet surfers communicate with others anonymously or express their feelings, many of which are temporary performances and an unreliable truth. However, in the realization of personality value, excessive extremes and excesses often make novels a tool for mutual shouting and cursing, which desecrates the sanctity of novels. Based on this, some people think that online writing flattens the meaning concentration of novels and inhibits readers' imagination and creativity when reading from the perspective of hidden dangers brought by multimedia technology of online novels. The aesthetic defects of online novels are as follows: first, the creative subject lacks motivation, and second, the aesthetic mentality of kitsch. Ouyang Youquan believes that the defects and limitations of online novels are mainly manifested in the following aspects: first, the artistry is not high, which makes people see the "network" instead of the "novel", or there are "novels" but no "novels"; The second is the technical dependence of online writing. The internet is just a technology, and novels come from the human spirit. Technology is just a tool of fiction. It should be controlled by the artistic purpose of the novel, giving the creator wings to follow the artistic laws, and the creator should not replace the artistic laws with technological advantages. Third, another important defect of online novels is the lack of the author's sense of responsibility. There are indeed too many problems in online novels, but the prosperity of online novels cannot be denied. Some people have made an image analogy between traditional novels and online novels: if traditional novels are a pot of soup cooked slowly for thousands of years, then online novels are a seasonal side dish, fresh and fashionable. Although it is not as practical as soup, it conforms to the tastes of modern people and has a solid soil for its own existence and development. In fact, there is really no need to make a fuss about the existing shortcomings and limitations of online novels. As the French novel critic Thibaudet said, novels cannot be attributed to the masterpieces of cadres. "If thousands of writers who soon become unknown do not maintain the life of novels, there will be no novels at all. In other words, there will be no great writers at all. " Today, we can also say that if there were no writers of online novels and huge online novel readers, today's novels would be in an embarrassing situation and struggling, and the issue of "the final conclusion of novels", which was heated up for a while, might really become a fait accompli. This paper holds that the online novel, as a novel of the present era, is a true record of the expression and emotion of this era. Lofty and beautiful will eventually win back the respect and love of readers with its profound emotional charm and life logic, and readers as consumers can't just appreciate some superficial and emotional words. "Writing good works" will still be the highest pursuit of most writers throughout their lives. Online novels are bound to have a bright future, and the career of critics is to cheer for this future of novels.