WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ The Genius Writer Who Will Never Fall Again ◈
Chapter 4: Contest (1)
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The beginning of Sword Pact, One Lord was simple.
A documentary channel was airing a program about Joseon history, and the segment I happened to watch covered commoner society during King Sukjong’s reign.
I had plenty of time then.
My previous work had imploded over the lead actor’s affair scandal, and I’d shut myself away in despair. So there was nothing strange about turning on that channel as a drinking companion.
Then, as I watched with a beer in hand, a thought struck me.
‘This could work.’
I was drawn to that society.
It was less inspiration than a highly rational judgment.
The moment I connected the keywords sword brotherhoods and gangsters, I had material that satisfied both instant comprehension and the imagination.
Sword brotherhoods that wore blades and extorted commoners became modern-day gangs.
The tavern mistress who ruled the market streets, acted as a bank for nearby peddlers, and had enough influence to make local officials watch their step became a madam.
Merchant guilds became corporations.
Officials became politicians.
The way people lived was not all that different then and now.
The familiarity of those shared elements, combined with the uniqueness of that era, became the premise of Joseon gangsters led by twenty-first-century corporate-style mobs.
What mattered was the material’s potential for expansion, and Sword Pact, One Lord already had that covered.
‘There are plenty of references. I just need to blend the sensibility modern noir pursued into a historical drama. Polish the narrative. Make it a little more brutal.’
That would become primal entertainment.
No matter how much people preached morality, there was one truth that had never changed in any era.
‘Numbers don’t lie. History doesn’t lie either.’
Violence was the sport humanity had enjoyed for the longest time.
The overwhelming majority of people loved violence.
Whether it took physical, mental, or material form.
Violence had always promised power and fame to those who possessed it.
People simply did not show it.
The popularity of genre fiction was proof of that darkness lurking beneath the human psyche.
Would the violence of the material be a problem?
Of course not. Human moral standards were deeply subjective.
There was a common saying in the industry.
The only sin a commercial writer could commit was writing something boring.
If it was entertaining, viewers would insist on the narrative’s legitimacy themselves.
‘Mass appeal is completed when producers and consumers tell the same obvious lie.’
A three-year-old child and a seventy-year-old elder both had to tell the same lie after watching this drama, all to justify its social legitimacy.
In short, I needed a central force that made them deceive themselves.
It was not difficult.
I only had to follow the conventions of the genre.
‘The protagonist’s nature.’
Loyalty.
That was the core trait.
Ridiculously enough, humans were the sort of creatures who felt superior when they believed themselves righteous, so noir protagonists always had a greater cause.
In the West, it was called romance. In the East, chivalry.
The protagonist would follow that archetype.
He would be a man willing to stake his life not on the material value of money, but on loyalty to the brothers with whom he had shared drinks.
A man whose actions could lend legitimacy to violence and provide catharsis.
Everyone would understand and imagine it easily.
Among sword brotherhoods that existed for evil alone, a protagonist driven by loyalty would appear endlessly close to a man of virtue.
He would become someone valuable enough for viewers to immerse themselves in and justify his actions.
That was how the formula for success was completed.
The work that had become the greatest regret of my life was something I’d spent two years writing, all to perfectly accomplish two tasks: making that concept concrete and creating catharsis through its situations.
It had not seen the light then.
But now that time had rewound.
‘I can show them what this is.’
That thrilled me more than anything.
That longing drove my motivation every moment.
Still, a drama did not simply spring into existence because the script was good.
First, an environment where this script could be produced had to be created.
In other words, by this era’s standards...
‘Either a production company has to take it, or the drama department at a broadcaster has to approve it. Someone has to pick it up first.’
It would be a lie to say there was no problem with that.
‘That poisonous toad is obviously going to badmouth me everywhere. Who would take me on?’
The words I’d blurted out immediately after regressing, when I thought it was all a dream, were now coming back to haunt me.
Of course, I couldn’t confidently say my attitude would have changed much even if I’d known it was real. But that was no excuse.
There was nowhere as obsessed with factional games as the entertainment industry.
Everyone knew everyone else within one or two degrees of separation, and Director Jo was still walking around perfectly fine at this point.
‘With that bastard’s mouth, he must’ve been talking trash about me everywhere...’
So was there really no way?
If anyone asked, I could answer firmly.
‘Why wouldn’t there be?’
There was.
I had fifteen years of rises and falls in the broadcasting industry stored in my head.
I had an industry directory of people who were both land mines and treasures.
I had the cheat code known as the history of the incidents and accidents they would cause.
In an industry where success or failure was determined solely by the variable called people, that was an asset no amount of hundreds of billions of won could buy.
That was related to why, at this particular time, I’d deliberately chosen Sword Pact, One Lord as my debut work even though it could command a higher price in the future.
‘There was that thing around this time.’
An incident that would remain a dark legend in broadcasting.
An accident that was practically proof of the mocking phrase, “writer average.”
‘Isn’t it about to happen?’
I checked the calendar just in case.
It really was soon.
In only a few days, an opportunity would arrive where industry rumors and anyone’s opinions could not interfere.
An opportunity to compete with nothing but writing.
* * *
The atmosphere in the WBS drama department office was no different from a funeral home.
At its center, a man whose forearms were as thick as an average woman’s waist slammed his fist onto a desk.
Bang!
“Does that make any sense?! Huh?! How can a project fall through at this point?!”
“Well, that is...”
“Where is that bastard?! Where the hell is Writer Seo?!”
“...She’s been taken to the detention center.”
The most senior Chief Producer, Go Young-chan, squeezed his eyes shut.
“That crazy bitch...!”
No insult was too vulgar for someone like her.
After all, she was supposed to write the drama already locked in for next year’s third quarter.
This was not an ordinary incident that could be cleaned up.
Apparently, she had smashed a host over the head with a liquor bottle at a host club.
If it became a public issue, it was over.
And even if they buried it quietly, what if it was dug up later?
Then the broadcaster would burn alongside her for the unforgivable offense of covering it up. That was how this industry worked.
Young-chan’s fist trembled.
Veins stood out on his forehead.
Why were writers always like this?
When they were nobodies, they threw tantrums because they had no name. Once they gained even a little recognition, their heads swelled to the heavens and they caused every bizarre, incomprehensible scandal imaginable.
‘This is why we should’ve gotten her under control early!’
This writer had not been like this from the beginning.
Until her first two works succeeded, she had worked with them without causing any major trouble.
But you never knew a person’s true nature until you peeled them open.
After two consecutive hits and huge writing fees arriving in her bank account without fail, her true personality was finally beginning to show.
What made their luck especially bad was that this happened after the budget had been set and pre-production had begun.
Considering the usual drama production environment, this was a disaster among disasters.
There was far too little time.
“What about the scripts in storage?”
“Well...”
“Haah. Forget it. Those were no good, which is why we approved Writer Seo’s work in the first place. Why did I even ask? Have you contacted the production companies?”
“They were thoroughly picked over last quarter, so the ones left are... not up to standard.”
“Fuck.”
Young-chan let out a deep sigh.
He was roughly scratching his head in irritation when junior CP Yang Mi-ryeo spoke cautiously.
Yang Mi-ryeo looked extremely timid.
“Senior, shouldn’t we report to the bureau chief first...?”
“We should. I’ll go.”
Young-chan had a strong sense of responsibility when it came to matters like this.
As harsh as he normally was, he also had the courage to step into difficult situations first.
The bureau chief would not blink at most things.
But this was an issue even he could not simply overlook, so someone was bound to get chewed out.
Young-chan could not knowingly send a junior instead.
Only after taking several deep breaths did he move.
He walked down the hall and stopped before the bureau chief’s office.
The firmly shut door looked like the gates of hell, and that could not have been an illusion.
Young-chan knocked and spoke.
“Bureau Chief, may I come in?”
“Yeah, come in, Chief Go.”
When he opened the door, a cold-looking middle-aged man was working inside.
A man who had written a career success story that would endure at WBS.
A legendary lucky man who had once married one of the era’s greatest actresses and been called the nation’s thief.
It was Bureau Chief Park Tae-jin.
His calm expression was confusing.
Had he not heard yet?
That was what Young-chan thought, but it was not the case.
“This is about the project falling through, right?”
“...Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I have no excuse.”
“There won’t be anything good among the scripts we have.”
“...No, sir.”
“Then a closed blind contest?”
“We can’t afford to make the submission period long, but I think that’s what we’ll have to do.”
Cold sweat was already soaking his back.
They might end up filming from incomplete scripts, but if they wanted to find and schedule a script that met their conditions, they had no choice but to do this now.
Young-chan squeezed his eyes shut, prepared for a reprimand.
But the bureau chief’s reaction was strange.
“...Hmm. No. Let’s make it public this time.”
There was no reprimand, only that one statement.
Young-chan’s head snapped up.
“Pardon?”
“Open the contest publicly. Keep the blind review. We don’t need to extend the submission period.”
Young-chan could not understand the intention behind those words.
If the absolute number of submissions increased, reviewing them would take that much more work.
Even substandard works would flood in, wasting more time.
Yet he wanted to make it public.
“May I ask why?”
The answer he received was quite odd.
“...I think someone will come.”
“When you say someone will come...”
Tap. Tap.
Tae-jin’s index finger tapped the table.
He still looked calm.
But there was interest somewhere in his expression.
“Someone interesting.”
Young-chan tilted his head.
He had no way of knowing what script Tae-jin had read only a few days earlier.
* * *
There was a fairly famous saying in the industry.
Writers came in two kinds: writers with good writing skills and no social skills, and writers with bad writing skills and no social skills.
I agreed with it a hundred times over.
Even as a writer myself, there was no way I could deny that writers’ average social skills sat at the very bottom of society.
And what made it even more unfortunate?
This drama industry generally revolved around those writers.
Had you ever heard the saying that dramas were a writer’s game?
Writers who could write well were the top dogs.
Not just ordinary top dogs, either. They were super top dogs that even bureau chiefs personally came out to greet.
Imagine it.
People with rock-bottom social skills, whose daily work consisted of sitting alone in a room writing dopamine-soaked stories about beating people up, killing people, and taking people down, were handed power as well.
People who had not even learned how to deal with equals or superiors were placed above others before they had learned how to live in society.
Was it not obvious what would happen?
“Writer average.”
Whenever Seong-hun heard of the atrocities committed by writers in this field, he always gave that assessment.
Though he always added something afterward.
“I’m proud of you, Jae-kyung. Even among writers like that, you’ve proudly reached the very peak.”
...I think there were extenuating circumstances behind my hysterics.
Anyway.
The incident that put the final mark on “writer average” happened around this time.
After enduring a long career as an assistant writer and a long period of obscurity, Ms. Seo, whose shoulders had risen a little, no, a lot after two consecutive hits, saw the astronomical amount of money deposited into her account after her fee contract ended.
Then she went to a bar where male escorts were always on standby.
After having a thoroughly wild and violent night there, she got upset when a host refused to go for a second round with her.
Normally, people did not start a riot at that point.
There were limits, even when drunk.
But Ms. Seo was in the middle of the highest point of her life.
Among people who called her “Writer Seo” outside and rubbed their hands together before her, even the meager social skills she had possessed during her unknown days had vanished without a trace.
Unable to control her anger...
Crack!
She smashed the escort in the back of the head with a liquor bottle.
It was a truly writer-like lesson in justice that transcended legal reasoning.
‘Did the victim suffer a cerebral hemorrhage?’
The poor young man had simply received the wrong customer once.
He ended up with seventeen stitches in the back of his head and a semi-permanent disability.
WBS had no choice but to drop Ms. Seo.
But the commissioned script had already reached the pre-production stage.
They had to fill the slot somehow.
Yet heaven was cruel, and there was not a single script suited to the budget scale of the drama scheduled for that time.
That was why they opened the “closed blind contest.”
It was an emergency measure where they received scripts from industry contacts and selected one to produce.
Blind.
Was that not a sweet word?
It was exactly the condition I needed right now.
Could I lack confidence?
Impossible.
‘At this point, there’s no script more strategically sound than Sword Pact, One Lord.’
Script contests were not held to give everyone an equal opportunity.
Broadcasters were not charities. What they wanted was material that could make the most efficient use of limited resources.
Unfair?
Who did they think would listen if they said that to a broadcaster at this time?
Anyway, that was why the key was getting into the closed contest.
No matter how much of a rookie with no career I was, this was what connections were for.
I immediately contacted Seong-hun.
He was a premium connection with sky-high maintenance costs, the man who had sucked up all my luck with people.
As the son of a broadcasting bureau chief, he should at least be able to get an anonymous script into a contest.
[Yeah, what is it?]
“Hyung, I heard something. WBS has a closed contest going on, right?”
But his answer was strange.
[Huh? Ah, so you heard about that somehow? But it’s public, so you can just submit it.]
“What?”
[Public. I don’t really understand it either, but my father decided that. Ah, um... This might just be me worrying for nothing...]
“...All right. Thanks.”
[Huh? Wait...]
Click!
I hung up.
My head tilted.
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