Completion Afterword
I know ending things like this might feel a little abrupt, and the total word count of the book is indeed somewhat low—but the things I wanted to tell really have all been told.
Still, I failed to avoid that abrupt feeling in terms of the reading experience. That is my fault for not being skilled enough as a writer. There were quite a few problems with both the narrative pacing and the progression of the plot. It was only a few days ago, as I was writing, that I suddenly realized, "Eh? How did everything suddenly get explained already...?"
At the time, I wanted to struggle a little more and try to expand the content, at least holding out until the end of the month so I could get full attendance pay, haha. But the problem was, there really did not seem to be anything left to write...
The protagonist's goal had already been achieved. The secret of the Deathly Hallows had been revealed. The university had begun operating. The pure-blood families had quieted down... If I continued writing, it would amount to nothing more than continuing to expand the worldbuilding, going from Britain to Europe, and then from Europe to the entire magical world, striking at Dark wizards and pure-blood families from every angle. On one hand, that would make the plot repetitive. On the other hand, the degree of originality involved would become a little too high, and I do not think I can handle that at my current level.
So ending it at this stage was already the safest choice I could make, even if the reading experience was not very good. Sigh.
Let me talk a bit more about the book itself.
As the first work I have written from beginning to end, achieving the results it has now is indeed beyond what I initially expected. But the more I wrote toward the later parts, the more I discovered that I still had far too many flaws and problems. By the end, I even felt somewhat frightened...
First of all, the birth of this book itself was rather hasty. At the time, due to certain reasons, I started this book in quite a rush. Less than a month passed from creating the folder to uploading it. And when I uploaded it, even the outline for the Chamber of Secrets arc had not been finished yet. As for anything afterward, aside from confirming the setting of "Leach University," everything was still blank...
And yet, I actually thought at the time that this amount of content was already enough. Looking back now, that really was ignorance making me fearless.
So when the Chamber of Secrets arc was about to finish, I not only had no stockpiled chapters, I did not even have an outline... You can imagine how torturous that was.
Thus, the decision I made at the time was to directly sacrifice the Prisoner of Azkaban arc, design a simple main storyline to push forward—that is, the werewolf attack case—and then bring out the university setting to expand the amount of content, freeing up enough time to continue designing the later outline. So everyone could see that during that stage, there was almost no depiction of daily life at Hogwarts. Everything was focused on pushing the main storyline forward, and naturally, the quality of the writing was not as good as before... It was also from that time onward that the average subscriptions showed a downward trend for the first time.
Fortunately, over the course of about that month, I finally produced a relatively complete outline for the Goblet of Fire arc. But the price was that the connection with the earlier text became somewhat—just a little—stiff. Having Avada directly stay inside the timeline for more than four months and skip over all the existing side plots in one go—if that is not stiff, then what is?
But that was already the least terrible method I could think of. If I had truly expanded and written out those side plots, they would only have been even more boring than what we have now... In the end, it still comes down to my own lack of ability.
Thankfully, the final Goblet of Fire arc was completed to a fairly high degree. The foreshadowing and hidden threads from earlier were basically all resolved as well. The only problem was that the story took place somewhere other than Hogwarts, so quite a bit of character development for the original cast was missing.
In short, the biggest problem with this book is that my control over narrative pacing was a complete mess. In the early stage, the groundwork for the characters, worldbuilding, and storylines was seriously lacking. Aside from the main plot, almost everything was daily life—and the key issue is that I am not very good at writing daily life. In the later stage, I pushed the main plot forward violently instead. The larger worldbuilding opened up through Leach University was hardly used at all; everything went into writing the schemes and struggles taking place at Durmstrang. Aside from Fleur and Krum, there was also almost no character development...
Thinking about it really makes me feel ashamed. When the book went premium, I even said that this book had been carefully planned and that I would be responsible to the readers. But in the end, looking back, I discovered that this book had actually buried a major hidden problem from the very moment it was created. I was ignorant and arrogant back then.
Thank you, dear readers, for being willing to accompany a half-baked newcomer like me through this entire book from beginning to end. At the same time, I am also very sorry. My ability may have failed to live up to your expectations.
Give me a few months. Let me properly settle down, summarize everything I experienced over this half year or so of writing, and fix the flaws in myself one by one. The next book absolutely cannot be like this again.
—I originally wanted to say, "See you in the next book," but I really do not have the face to say that anymore... Sigh.
(End of Chapter)