Calling a creative work ordinary was not much different from handing it a death sentence.
Watchable. Not bad. Fine.
None of those were good evaluations for a creative work to receive.
When something was entertaining, the first thing people said was that it was entertaining.
But if they started discussing something other than its entertainment value?
That meant they could not bring themselves to tell the creator to their face that it was boring, so they were speaking indirectly.
No. In cases like that, they were at least trying to be polite, which made it somewhat better.
The next time the other person asked them to check out a new work, they would make one excuse or another and avoid it.
The absolute worst was when someone said it was watchable even though it was boring, simply because they knew the creator.
The human brain was a fascinating thing. Merely hearing someone talk about food could make your mouth water.
The brain was remarkably vulnerable to external manipulation, which was why so many people claimed that something written by someone they knew was entertaining even when it was atrociously boring.
I still did not know whether they genuinely found it entertaining or whether their brains had simply been anesthetized by the situation.
Because their behavior did not resemble that of someone who was genuinely entertained.
Had they truly enjoyed it, they would have desperately waited for the next installment instead of acting as though they barely cared whether it existed.
That was why, in my former life, I had never shown my writing to other people.
It was obvious I would not receive a proper response, so I had seen no reason to seek someone out and ask for their opinion.
The fact that I had written in the web-fiction market in my former life made that even more true.
I could show my writing directly to readers, so why would I go looking for someone who was not a reader?
Unless I was hungry for praise, there was no reason to do it.
And as the phrase in my former life suggested, things were very different now.
Part of it was that I worked in publishing, where I had no choice but to show my writing to an editor. More importantly, I had grown.
I now had the judgment needed to choose the right person.
Just look at Shiori.
She acted timid, yet the moment I asked for her opinion, she boldly declared, Your work is boring, so give up.
I should give up.
[Mochizuki Shiori]
I didn’t mean it was boring. It’s just…
That was a joke.
Shiori certainly did not say things she did not believe when giving her opinion on a creative work.
However, she was still inexperienced.
I was not talking about her age.
More precisely, she was inexperienced as a writer.
Expressing your thoughts in precise language was remarkably difficult.
It was easy to broadly say that something had a pleasant warmth to it, or that its dark atmosphere felt unpleasant.
But explaining exactly why it felt warm, which elements worked in what way to create that warmth, and why that was good was extremely difficult.
At the very least, it was not something you could do immediately without consistent training.
On top of that, we used different systems of language.
A writer’s profession involved completing a personal system of language and using it to persuade readers.
There was a strong chance that my definition of ordinary and Shiori’s definition of ordinary served different purposes.
So first, we needed to standardize our terminology.
What did that mean?
Nothing complicated.
It simply meant I had to ask her about each point individually.
[Hiiragi Touji]
You did find it entertaining?
[Mochizuki Shiori]
Yes. The scenario was interesting. The detective and the protagonist are fundamentally similar people, right?
If she had understood that much, then she had read it properly.
Let us move on to the next question.
[Hiiragi Touji]
Then which part felt ordinary?
[Mochizuki Shiori]
Something about… the premise feels ordinary? No, that isn’t quite it.
[Hiiragi Touji]
Is the climax ordinary?
[Mochizuki Shiori]
The climax was entertaining too. I predicted who was responsible, but the direction was good. It’s just that something about it feels…
Shiori carefully searched for the right words. She was thinking about how to express her thoughts accurately.
After struggling for a long while, she finally sent a brief message.
[Mochizuki Shiori]
I think it feels… somewhat lacking.
Shiori was still inexperienced after all. Despite thinking hard, she had failed to choose an accurate expression.
She lacked training.
So this was where I needed to help her.
[Hiiragi Touji]
Do you mean it lacks emotional peaks and valleys?
[Mochizuki Shiori]
Yes. Emotional peaks and valleys. That’s it. Wouldn’t it be better if it took a stronger hold of the audience’s emotions and shook them around more?
There were many works in the world.
There were also many tastes.
The fact that one person’s greatest masterpiece could leave another person completely unmoved was such obvious common knowledge that it barely needed to be said.
To briefly summarize <The Case of the Missing Stars, Moon, and Comet>:
Photographs of stars, the moon, and a comet, intended for submission to Japan’s largest astronomy magazine competition, suddenly vanished one day along with the camera.
The astronomy club members concluded that it was an unfortunate case of lost property, but Astronomy Club Member A, who owned the camera, reached a different conclusion.
Someone had clearly stolen the photographs.
To find the culprit, Astronomy Club Member A received an introduction from an older acquaintance to a classmate with exceptional deductive ability, and the protagonist became tangled up in the situation as well.
That was the central premise of the scenario.
To give away the conclusion, the culprit was naturally someone who envied Astronomy Club Member A’s talent.
However, that culprit was not among the characters who appeared.
More precisely, no actor had been assigned to play the culprit.
I had used an extremely classical trick: a person mentioned only through dialogue and implication turned out to be the culprit.
The process leading to that reveal had been designed quite well.
Hadn’t Shiori said that the scenario was interesting?
She had added that she predicted the ending, but detective stories were supposed to provide enough clues for readers to anticipate the solution.
The era when detective fiction was entertaining purely because of tricks and twists had ended a hundred years ago.
A reader who still opened a detective novel expecting nothing but a completely original trick and a shocking twist was probably someone who had only recently discovered the genre.
In modern detective fiction, the deduction itself was less important than the beauty of the logical process leading to it.
Therefore, my scenario was sufficiently entertaining.
Saying the scenario was interesting meant the logical process flowed elegantly, and saying the climax was entertaining meant every piece of the puzzle had fit neatly into place.
Then why?
Shiori had still described it as lacking.
It lacked powerful emotion…
I rubbed my chin for a moment.
An unusual premise was not necessarily synonymous with a good premise.
An unusual development was not necessarily synonymous with a good development.
Aspiring writers who obsessed over unusual premises and unusual developments appeared in this industry with remarkable frequency, and I could say this with confidence:
Those people never completed even one volume.
There was nothing inherently wrong with unusual premises or developments.
But both ranked very low on the list of creative priorities.
What mattered far more was how you directed ordinary premises and ordinary developments.
And I had implemented that aspect quite well in this scenario.
Youth mystery was a genre centered on small deductions arising from everyday life and the psychological changes of its characters.
It required an underlying calmness, with emotions delicately adjusted within it, to create the proper kind of entertainment.
Just as I intended, Shiori had recognized that the detective and protagonist were fundamentally similar people.
That was only possible if she had carefully read all the characters’ dialogue and inferred their ways of thinking.
The narrative devices I designed had functioned properly.
Shiori had enjoyed the scenario exactly as I intended.
In that case, perhaps her assessment that it lacked emotional peaks and valleys simply meant that her tastes were not suited to youth mysteries.
At least, I believed this precise degree of emotional variation was optimal.
You did not need to blindly accept every piece of feedback simply because someone gave it to you.
The same applied to readers’ evaluations.
I remembered all of their opinions, but I had never applied them exactly as written.
As I always said, there was no single correct answer in the world.
Anyone could be wrong.
So if you had to choose, it was best to follow your own standards.
At least then, you would have no regrets.
With a cool head, I reread the scenario.
Emotional peaks and valleys.
Emotional peaks and valleys.
Peaks. Valleys. Peaks. Valleys.
Should I change the trick entirely, bring the culprit onscreen, and add a scene where they exploded with feelings of inferiority?
It instantly turned into a cheap youth movie.
The mystery itself became irrelevant.
After simulating various other possibilities, I reached a conclusion.
For now, this scenario truly was the best version.
Of course, the completed version would differ somewhat because Astronomy Club Member A had become friends with the protagonist, but the overall framework would remain the same.
Therefore.
Therefore…
Hmm.
At that point, I realized something.
Had I truly believed the scenario was perfect, I would have ended my conversation with Shiori long ago.
The fact that I continued examining it in such detail meant something about it bothered me as well.
What was it?
What was bothering me?
I read the scenario.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
And then I realized it.
As a movie scenario, this was worth zero points.
I calmly began typing.
[Hiiragi Touji]
This was supposed to be a short film, right?
[Mochizuki Shiori]
What?
What was the difference between a feature and a short?
The amount of space available differed, which meant features and shorts required different pacing.
Writing a short with the pacing of a feature produced a story without enough impact.
That was true for fiction, so how much worse would it be for a movie?
It would become a bland, watery mess.
It had been far too long since I last wrote anything short, and this was my first time writing a movie scenario, so I had only realized it now.
Wow.
Emergency.
I needed to tear the entire scenario apart and rebuild it from scratch.