About the ‘Light Novel’: Cocoon

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This is a self-publishing project I started in 2014. It is a bit like a genre called light novel, which is a label frequently used in Japan and then is used in Taiwan. ‘Light novel’ is quite popular among teenagers (at least when I was a teenager), although it is not literally mentioned that it is targeted at teenaged readers as young adult novel is. Compared to the master pieces that deal with ‘serious’ and ‘heavy’ themes in the literature canon, light novel includes playfulness, imagination and some qualities of manga. It is an experimental and commercialized genre that writers can play with the elements from various genre, such as romance, fantasy, science-fiction and school stories.

 

This self-publishing project can be traced back to the creative project called ‘The ring, the fallen and desire’, which was started by the anime society in my high school in 2010. I wrote a short novel for the project, and decided to expand it to a new novel, Cocoon. In contrast to the theme of power and desire, I wanted to have fun, adding fantastic elements and lively dialogues with a bit of humor. Just a bit, I think.

 

Apart from being a light novel, Cocoon is a teenager novel that deals with the confusion of identity when coming of age. To be precise, the teenaged protagonist seeks for his identity and comes to realize that he is a prince when he goes to sell the crafts in the market near the palace. The plot sounds old and absurd in retrospective, but I think that was what I desired to write at that moment before turning twenty. Also, the image that I really like is the long, silver hair of the protagonist that resembles the moon and the color of cocoon, which I think is a suitable symbol of teenagers. I even had a document called ‘the main concept’, in it I typed, ‘I always think that cocoon is a suitable word to describe teenagers. They are thought to have great potentials, and they want to come out of cocoons. There is no way to go back. The only choice is to come out and grow up in order to survive. Perhaps they want to become butterflies instead of moths, but they can hardly change.’ It is this valuable idea of the struggle of born identity and who people want to be that kept me writing.

 

I started from the outline of the story and the personalities of characters, and spent most of my free time writing on the computer. I created a timeline for the historical events and a simple map for the four countries in the novel. I wrote my notes all over the place, on several notebooks, on my phone or on a word document. Because I chose the European medieval setting, I read books about castles and imagined how it was like to be a lord living inside. I tried to tell the story from first-person perspective with different characters to develop the possibilities of the plots, and finally found that third-person perspective was more suitable for this novel.

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Here is the translation of the prologue.

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Prologue: Mist

 

Here was where the country called Central Stream. Here was the central of the world.

           

People of this place had an ancient legend. It was said that there was a boundless river on the moon, and every drop of the river splashed silver lustre. And there was the Great Waterfall, which is said to be the origin of the moonlight. The Moon River also had dry seasons, making moon sometimes full as a silver plate, sometimes slender like a hook, and sometimes disappeared.

           

Here lived many hunters who struggled for their living. One day, a bunch of hunters searching water in the mountain, and they found a young girl lying on the grass. Her long silver hair was as beautiful as the Great Waterfall on the moon in the legend, and under her lead, the hunters then found the water they needed. Therefore, they thought this young girl had mysterious power and brought her to the village. Not long after, she was crowned as their king.

           

The girl named Yu Ya Luo (宇亞羅). There were many versions of stories to explain where she came from. Some said she led her clansman here, but the whole clan died of plague except her. The other said she is the goddess of the moon, in charge of all the water of the world.

           

Whichever version was right, the origin of the royals of Central Stream was still in a mist. Yet, people of Central Stream still believe that the heirs of Yu Ya Luo (宇亞羅) will lead them to a luminous future.