Author: Gu Han
Editor|Li Chunhui
Short dramas are undoubtedly the hottest entertainment topics in the past two years. In 2023, the three subdivisions of short dramas will basically take shape: vertical screen short dramas on the Doukuai short video platform, horizontal screen video dramas on Aiyou Tengmang, and short dramas on the popular streaming mini program. In 2024, there will be works out of the circle in all three tracks, which will completely push the short drama to the mainstream vision and accept all kinds of analysis and scrutiny.
In fact, the "short movement" in the field of online literature basically blossomed and bore fruit at the same time. Zhihu, which has opened up and continues to lead the short story track, established a new brand "Yanyan Story" in 2023 and launched an independent APP for it, and its strategic ambition is self-evident.
The representative of the combination of the two is "Writing", which will be broadcast in March 2024, setting a record for the highest popularity of Tencent's micro-short drama on the first day and scoring 7.5 on Douban. Now that more than half of 2024 has passed, this short drama adapted from Zhihu's novel of the same name has not only not been washed away by various later dramas and true and false "evil girls", but has increasingly shown its rarity.
So, can we have more "Writing"? On June 29th, at the 10th Salt Club New Knowledge Youth Conference, traditional online writer and vice chairman of Jiangsu Writers Association danced, Fan Junmei, vice president of Zhihu and head of paid reading business, Zong Nan, producer and chief producer of "Writing", and Xiaoqi cub, the author of Zhihu Yanxuan, had an in-depth exchange on the industrial integration of short stories and short dramas.
Regarding the relationship between short dramas and short stories, the characteristics of Zhihu short stories, and the planning of IP development, this forum gave some answers.
One era, two resonances
It is no accident that short dramas and short stories have risen in tandem. They meet some similar market and industry demands, and respond to the consumption characteristics of the era such as fragmentation, fast pace, and strong emotional resonance in different forms.
First of all, from the consumer side, the development of mobile Internet and the popularization of smart devices will, on the one hand, divide the work and life fragments of existing entertainment users. On the other hand, new media has also opened up a considerable number of incremental users who are not qualified to consume long-term content, or even have no long-term content consumption habits. In this way, the duration of entertainment consumption is no longer just a night or a few hours, but can also be measured in minutes and tens of seconds – which requires a new supply of content.
Under such a new demand, the drama circle has stepped up to cut the seats from the previous cycle of water injection operations. Traditional film and television companies and practitioners began to seek cooperation with short video platforms to try to create vertical screen short dramas. Long video has also successively opened up short drama divisions in the station and invested in the self-made development of short dramas. The horizontal screen Chinese drama form to which "Holding the Pen" belongs is the product of long video exploration of short dramas.
Although there is no direct conflict such as long and short videos, as we all know, online texts are highly market-oriented, pay attention to timeliness, and iteration has always been spontaneous. Dancing said that the long-form writer began to explore how to adapt to the era of fragmentation early on. Zhihu's short online articles are more thorough, and the length structure has been adjusted, opening up a new online article track in one fell swoop.
Secondly, from the creative side, when short dramas and short stories were born, the fields of film and television and online literature were in a special period of oversupply of practitioners, and the two opened their doors as a new track, bringing new choices to these people in a timely manner. As a result, there is a steady stream of new blood and a rapid rise.
Specifically, the drama industry is a cold winter of film and television, followed by cost reduction and efficiency increase, and the start-up of traditional projects has been greatly reduced, which affects not only the performance of large companies, but also the livelihood of low-level practitioners. In the end, it was the short drama with a short cycle and a low threshold that made Hengdian lively again.
On the online article side, with the Ministry of Education certifying online writers as a profession in 2020, there is also an influx of newcomers who want to get started quickly and get rewarded. Not only is the Zhihu short story relatively friendly and the membership model ready-made, but the alternative creation mechanism developed on the basis of the Q&A community has also removed many obstacles for novices.
Xiaoqi cub is the author who tried online writing for the first time in Zhihu and grew up with the platform. She specifically mentioned on the forum that there are many questions about "creating a story starting with XXX" on Zhihu Station, which will give the author a strong sense of scene and story, and it is easy to arouse the desire to create. This is how one of her masterpieces, Moon Warning, was born.
Finally, from the content side, the film and television industry has existed for decades or hundreds of years, and online articles have also gone through more than 20 years, and it is inevitable that there will be pitfalls. As a new species standing on the rich accumulation, short dramas and short stories are more energetic, less constrained, and more deconstructed, which can indeed bring many new stimuli, which is in line with the law of breakthrough and innovation in the content industry and media transformation of content.
The brain hole of the vicious female supporting actress in "Writing" awakening and changing her life made the audience's eyes shine, and it was its core idea that this IP initially impressed the producer. "It uses a way to borrow the past as a metaphor for the present, and reflects the characteristics of independence, sobriety in the world, and no internal friction in costume dramas, which can be expressed at the same frequency with modern women." Producer Zong Nan said it excites her and her team.
天生契合,各取所需
Fan Junmei, vice president of Zhihu and head of paid reading business, summarized the characteristics of Zhihu Yanyan's story as "fast-paced, strong emotional impact and sense of substitution, strong reality and psychological mapping". It is not difficult to see that this has a lot in common with short dramas in terms of content volume, creative characteristics, and consumption habits. Not only that, the combination of the two is expected to solve some of the current practical problems for each other, creating a new creative model and greater industrial opportunities.
As far as Zhihu is concerned, the top priority is to publicize the progress and planning of the copyright business, so that the outside world can understand the differentiation and competitiveness of Zhihu's IP as soon as possible. Then, short dramas that can achieve IP batch and rapid conversion are very ideal choices.
More importantly, compared with traditional long dramas, short dramas can better restore the characteristics of Zhihu IP. This can also be seen from the comparison between Zhihu IP's long drama masterpiece "For the Dark Fragrance" and "Writing". The former adapts to the audience and censorship of traditional long dramas, and makes great changes. The latter benefits from the positioning of the short drama, and can flexibly use special effects to restore the sense of game in the online text, and the heroine's Black Lotus attribute has also been retained to the greatest extent, boldly shouting "love yourself more" and putting it into action.
Fan Junmei also bluntly said to Hard Candy Jun that she had encountered difficulties in promoting short IP to the film and television industry earlier, because many of Zhihu's stories were "too new". After the launch of "Writing", the situation was immediately reversed, and there were "a lot of door-to-door inquiries".
In turn, short dramas also need Zhihu's high-quality short IP. On the one hand, in the process of cultivating the audience of short dramas, the aesthetics will also be raised, and higher expectations will be generated for the content. On the other hand, according to past experience, when new content forms enter the mainstream vision, regulatory improvement, market reshuffle and content upgrading will follow.
At the moment, the short drama is at such a critical stage. The low-quality content of the assembly line fast food and the abandonment of the three views for the sake of curiosity and excitement will be iterated out, and the industry needs more valuable things. Zhihu short stories were born in the era of short videos, the specifications and distribution are popular, but the content is still interesting and cutting-edge. As the short drama market transitions from savage growth to the stage of seeking high-quality products, this "twisting" of Zhihu IP will be more and more transformed into an advantage.
First of all, Zhihu, as a Q&A community that focused on knowledge sharing, has precipitated a large number of valuable users on the platform. According to the "2022 Zhihu Salt Story Reading Report", Zhihu short story readers are mainly concentrated in first-tier and new first-tier cities geographically, and young women account for a prominent proportion. Most readers have experience in reading high-level content such as publishing, magazines, mainstream public accounts, columns, etc., and have high aesthetic requirements for stories.
Such a user base, coupled with the content screening mechanism of Q&A voting, and the business model of paid reading, have added layers of guarantees to the content level of Zhihu's short stories. Moreover, as mentioned above, Zhihu uses a question-and-answer mode to activate writing inspiration, which actually encourages writers to integrate thinking and expression into their creation. "Writing" and "For the Dark Fragrance", these anti-routine stories all originate from the author's rethinking of the female frequency routine in the case of the awakening of women's consciousness, and contain the young man's own declaration of the heroine.
Producer Zong Nan also said that short stories are not only fast-paced, but also mean that the update is completed quickly and the feedback is absorbed quickly, coupled with the popular creative attributes of online articles, it can help short dramas better understand the direction of content iteration and consolidate the timeliness advantages of short stories and short dramas. This is also a very practical and practical point.
To short and short, virtuous circle
Can the virtuous cycle of short stories and short dramas continue, bringing more "Writing" to the audience? Hard Candy thinks the answer is yes.
First of all, effective explorations such as "Holding the Pen" have left many valuable experiences. Including specific adaptation experience, such as Zong Nan's generous sharing on the spot, it is necessary to make a lot of trade-offs, innovations, and refinements on the basis of unwavering core intentions, and tell a good story seriously.
also includes the experience of working with the original author, Lin Yannian, the original author of "Writing", was deeply involved in the creation of the adapted script. According to Fan Junmei, many Zhihu authors are screenwriters themselves, and it is not difficult to continue to implement such an empowerment method. Xiaoqi cub also said that his future creations will draw nourishment from short dramas and make some adjustments to adapt to film and television adaptations.
Secondly, while the film and television industry and even the official are paying more attention to Zhihu's IP, Zhihu itself is also gearing up to make various preparations for the acceleration of the copyright business.
At the Zhihu Discovery Conference in March this year, Zhihu Yanyan Story officially announced the "Short Story 3A Plan" aimed at promoting the ecological evolution of short stories in the fields of AI applications, IP development and multi-channel content distribution, as well as reaching a cooperation with Kuaishou to jointly explore new cooperation models in the field of short dramas in the future, including the development of short dramas and the opening of the copyright library of story IP.
On the day of the forum, Fan Junmei said that Zhihu can not only deliver IP, but also empower producers in many other aspects of film and television adaptation. Not only is the producer team and screenwriter team growing, and they can participate in the script and filming process, but Zhihu also has many channels and traffic, including its own users can participate in the publicity.
From the perspective of dancing, paying for "short" may be the general trend of the future, in this case, short stories and short plays will form a mutually reinforcing model. In fact, with the rise of short dramas, Zhihu's copyright and self-made business has accelerated significantly.
It is reported that nearly 100 IPs of Yanyan Story have completed film and television licensing, and there are no less than 3 short dramas in cooperation with Tencent Video this year, in addition to "Writing", there are also film and television dramas adapted from "Guifei Living Note" and "Three Marrying the Underworld" to be broadcast. Among them, "Guifei Living Note" is starring Jiaxing's 05 Xiaohua Huang Yangtian Tiantian. In the field of self-production, Zhihu's first self-made vertical screen short drama is also in full swing and is expected to meet the audience in July.
From the perspective of external changes, Yu Zheng, who is recognized as having an outstanding sense of smell in the market, first adapted Zhihu IP and launched the long drama "For the Dark Fragrance", and then used short drama thinking to create this summer's hit long drama "Ink Rain and Clouds", which shows that it is not only the short drama track that needs to know the short story, but also the long drama and movie also need to be pushed to keep up with the pace of the times.
Zhihu is also giving birth to new masterpieces in this regard: "Heqing Haiyan", one of the "Three Uniques of New Zhihu", and "The Triggerer", a suspense-themed work born from Zhihu's long-form creation marathon, have all cooperated with the first long-form drama platform and entered the film and television development stage.
At this forum, Zhihu also intimately launched a "Salt Fan ER Strict Selection - Zhihu Salt Stories Film and Television Adaptation Wish List". Based on multiple dimensions such as user recommendation data, ratings, awards, and interactions, the list screens out 40 high-quality IPs, and classifies them according to short dramas, long dramas, and movies.
The next "Writing" - or even more powerful hits, may be in these forty articles. Based on the current trend of the film and television market and the style of Zhihu's short stories, hard candy Jun is suspenseful about buying stocks, what about everyone?