Chapter 4: Preparing the Outline and Researching Online

That night, before going to sleep, Cao Sheng spent his time working on the outline for his new book.

Even after getting into bed and before falling asleep, his mind was still occupied with the outline of his new book.

He had written many books before, but never had he been so diligent in preparing an outline before starting a book, because this new book was different.

For one, this was his first book since his rebirth; he wanted to write it well and aimed to become famous with a single work.

Secondly, he felt that there shouldn't be any web novels yet, and his book was very likely to be the first web novel in this space-time. If it truly were the first, it might be studied repeatedly for many years to come, so he hoped to do his best to make the quality of this book better, and even better.

Thirdly, this was his first time writing a pure romance work. He didn't intend to write a long piece of two or three million words; he only planned to finish it in a few hundred thousand words. With such a short length, the plot couldn't be too watered down, otherwise the whole book would appear hollow. Furthermore, because it wasn't long, the structure of the entire text had to be compact. As a romance novel targeting the literary youth market, the overall plot had to pay attention to the progression of introduction, development, transition, and conclusion, rather than being written as a "cool" novel that is satisfying from start to finish.

This kind of plot progression requires advance design. If he only improvised while writing the main text, it would likely lead to an imbalance in the structure—for example, if the "satisfying" parts were too long, it would filter out the literary readers; then, when writing the heart-wrenching plot, readers who had grown accustomed to the previous satisfying parts wouldn't be able to accept it. This kind of structural imbalance would please neither side.

It would both drive away the literary readers and disgust the readers who liked "cool" novels.

In order to make the plot of this book better, Cao Sheng decided that night as he fell asleep that he would only work on the outline until the Lunar New Year.

The main text would have to wait until after the New Year to begin.

Preparing the outline for a few more days would certainly do more good than harm.

Moreover, there were only seven or eight days left until the New Year, and after the New Year, he would certainly have to visit relatives and pay New Year calls to his elders, just like in previous years.

During the New Year visits, it would be inevitable to talk and interact with many people, and eating and drinking would also be unavoidable, which would certainly distract him.

Therefore, if he wrote a few chapters of the main text before the New Year, and then continued writing after experiencing several days of New Year visits, it would be inevitable that there would be an inconsistency in his state of mind and condition, and the quality and style of the main text might end up being inconsistent.

He had experience with this from before.

Every year, the New Year would affect his writing state.

There would always be differences in quality and style between what was written before and after the New Year.

Because he was in no hurry to write the main text, the next morning, after eating breakfast and saying goodbye to his parents, he set off for the county town.

He decided to find an internet cafe in the county town and go online to check whether that book, *The First Intimate Contact*, had been published yet.

This matter was very important to him.

It would determine whether he had the chance to be the progenitor of web novels.

It wasn't that he cared much for empty fame, but he was very clear about how big the difference in treatment between the first and the second was in this world.

Many people remember the name of the first web novel, but how many people remember the names of the second or third?

However, in this era, transportation here was inconvenient; there were no asphalt roads or concrete roads, only gravel roads. There were no buses to the county town, only diesel-powered three-wheeled vehicles, which only made a few trips a day and didn't run on a fixed schedule. These three-wheelers would only depart when the seats were mostly full, or when they really couldn't wait for any more passengers.

Cao Sheng didn't want to take this kind of vehicle because sometimes he would have to wait for one or two hours, or even longer, to catch one.

He rode his bicycle to the county town.

The gravel road was very uneven.

The bicycle's shock absorption was very poor.

By the time he rode to the county town, he was covered in sweat and his buttocks were sore from the vibrations; this also had something to do with the aging seat of his bicycle at home.

The already aged seat would have its internal springs poke into his buttock bones every time it vibrated.

Arriving in the county town, he rode around for a few streets before finding an internet cafe.

Mainly because internet cafes were still rare in their county town in this day and age.

Back when he was in high school, he hadn't even heard of such a thing as an internet cafe in the county town.

After locking his bicycle, Cao Sheng walked into the internet cafe and opened a terminal.

The scale of this internet cafe was small, with only twenty or thirty computers, all of the old-fashioned kind with square monitors. The configurations were not high, and the internet speed was also frustrating.

Cao Sheng had been mentally prepared for this and was not picky.

After turning on the computer, he searched online for *The First Intimate Contact*, and to his delight—he didn't find it.

To be safe, he searched for the author "Pizi Cai" once more.

This time there were search results, and he found more than one Pizi Cai.

But none of the Pizi Cais had any connection to the book *The First Intimate Contact*.

Such a result naturally made Cao Sheng overjoyed.

He seemed to have already seen the crown of "Progenitor of Web Novels" placed upon his head, from then on reaching the peak of his life, with publications and film adaptations galore, and after becoming a well-known new-generation writer across the entire internet, beautiful and wealthy women would start throwing flirtatious glances and writing love letters to him.

Well, writing love letters was still very popular in this era.

However, he didn't dare to daydream for too long, because the current cost of internet access was quite expensive; the small internet cafe he found charged five yuan per hour.

The cost of one hour was equivalent to his food expenses for a whole day.

And what he lacked most right now was money.

He had very little pocket money, only a few dozen yuan in living expenses saved up from university last semester.

Therefore, he didn't stay in the internet cafe for more than an hour before getting up and leaving.

In that less than an hour, he searched for several novel websites from his memory.

He didn't search for Qidian, because he knew Qidian was founded after 2000.

He vaguely remembered it being founded in 2002.

It's just that...

What surprised him was that none of the several novel websites he searched for appeared.

It seemed they hadn't been founded yet.

Finally, he searched for the website "Rongshu Xia".

This time he did find it.

This gathering place for literary youth in his memory was something he hadn't originally wanted to consider; he always felt that he wasn't "literary" enough and was out of place with this website.

But there was no help for it; the websites he wanted to find were nowhere to be seen yet.

Even this Rongshu Xia, according to the information Cao Sheng found, was founded on December 25, 1997.

That was just at the end of last month.

Because today was January 20, 1998, and in the lunar calendar, it still belonged to 1997.

By time, this Rongshu Xia was not even a month old.

If it weren't for the fact that he was truly broke and didn't have the technical skills to build a website himself, given the current situation, he would have wanted to set up a novel website of his own.

Fortunately, his reason remained.

He knew that a novel website was not something he was qualified to play with.

Even if he could rely on his advantage of foresight to build his own novel website early, in a few years, his website would be crushed by other novel websites.

Because whether it was capital or technology, he had no advantage whatsoever.

—Better to just honestly write my novel!

As he walked out of the internet cafe, he said this to himself in his heart.

For the next few days, right up until New Year's Eve, he was preparing the outline for his new book.

This was the most serious and detailed outline he had written since he started his career.

As the outline became more and more detailed and the plot adjustments became more frequent, his confidence in this new book grew stronger and stronger.