Afterword

Afterword: Your Own Originality

Hi, it’s Yumizuru again. This time, I want to talk about originality. Originality really isn’t that tough. You just need to be yourself. And how do you be yourself? By being different from other people. That’s your own personality.

Here’s an example of what I mean by ‘different from other people.’ Let’s assume there’s a really popular book. And you want to write something like it. Like, for IS for example, you’d include aspects like ‘high-tech weaponry only women can use,’ ‘only one guy,’ ‘school setting,’ and ‘international cast.’ If you just write based on those concepts, you’d think you’d end up with basically IS again, but somehow it doesn’t turn out that way. Even if the concepts are the same, the result will be different. That’s your own personality shining through.

So if you’re looking to win one of the talent searches but you don’t know what to write or what other people want to read, the first thing you should do is take a look at what else is on the market. Do what everyone else is doing, do it well, and put your own personality into it. That’s enough to catch people’s eyes while still standing out from the crowd.

Now, you still need the determination to write a second story if the first doesn’t work, a tenth story if the second doesn’t work, a hundredth story if the tenth doesn’t work.

Personality and determination. Why not put them to use, and enter one of the competitions? I’m waiting for new rivals. Let’s do our best.

— Izuru Yumizuru

Table of Contents

Sign up for our mailing list at J-Novel Club to hear about new releases!

And you can read the latest chapters (like Vol. 8 of this series!) by becoming a J-Novel Club Member:

Infinite Stratos: Volume 7

by Izuru Yumizuru

Translated by Mike Langwiser

Edited by Meiru

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 Izuru Yumizuru

Illustrations by CHOCO

Cover illustration by CHOCO

All rights reserved.

Original Japanese edition published in 2013 by OVERLAP, Inc.

This English edition is published by arrangement with OVERLAP, Inc., Tokyo

English translation © 2019 J-Novel Club LLC

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.

J-Novel Club LLC

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

Ebook edition 1.0: April 2019