In the history of western literature, a large number of household names have emerged, such as Gorky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dickens and Hugo. Their works have influenced readers from generation to generation and are still circulating today.
Tolstoy's obsession with Tao Te Ching is well known. In the process of studying Laozi's philosophical thought, Tuo Weng had a deeper understanding of Tao and inaction, and gradually formed his own unique philosophical system.
Modern writers in China have also benefited greatly from the influence of western literature. Influenced by Kafka, Yu Hua's novels in the early 1980s are obviously absurd, and they are called the model of avant-garde literature in China.
Every writer once dreamed of writing immortal works and trying to conquer readers with words, but he often didn't know how to write, how to set characters, how to arrange plots, how to make stories more attractive and how to make the whole structure more vital.
Write a story like Tolstoy by Richard? Cohen was the distribution director of a famous British publishing house, and his works won Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize and Costa Prize. This book comes from the author's teaching content in colleges and universities, and providing great writers is the way to solve specific problems.
This book will take you into the minds of first-class writers and see how the most creative minds solve writing problems. By reading this book, you will grasp the hidden logic behind writing more clearly and stimulate your creative impulse.
Next, I will reveal the "secret of the treasure gourd" in the story from Tolstoy's introduction, the two elements of writing and how to start the writing journey.
Tolstoy is an outstanding representative of realistic literature in19th century. He created "first-class works in the history of world literature" with superb artistic skills and excellent writing ability, and was recognized as a master of world literature.
Writer Liu Zeng said: Russian realistic literature in the19th century may be the last literary peak in Europe and even the whole world so far, and Tolstoy is the peak of the peak.
Tolstoy wrote more than 90 volumes in his life, among which three novels are the most famous. War and Peace, written in six years, is regarded as "the greatest novel in the world". Anna karenin is a landmark masterpiece with extremely important artistic and ideological value. Resurrection is the artistic crystallization of Tolstoy's changing world outlook, and it is called the most sober realism.
Tolstoy wrote three novels in his life, all of which became immortal classics. Romain rolland, Heinrich Mann, theodore dreiser, Bernard Shaw and other writers in Europe, America and Asia have all been influenced by him.
As early as the end of 19, Tolstoy's works were introduced to China. After the May 4th Movement, his works began to spread widely, and outstanding writers such as Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Ba Jin and Xia Yan all praised Tolstoy.
Modern writer Lu Yao was deeply influenced by Tolstoy. According to his college classmates, "There are often masterpieces such as anna karenine, War and Peace on the bedside of Yao Lu University dormitory."
We all often say: "Everything is difficult at the beginning", and writing is no exception. Every writer seems to have racked his brains for the beginning of an article. It is undoubtedly what writers have been exploring to arrange an attractive beginning for the story with writing skills, so that readers will have the desire to continue reading at first sight.
E·L· doctorow, the author of The City of God and an American postmodern writer, was in great trouble when he wrote a suicide note to his daughter's teacher. After several drafts, crumpled waste paper piled up on the floor.
Every writer has a different distinctive style to build the overall framework of the story. In characters, narrative voice, plot advancement and so on. , completely presented in the author's unique narrative style. Among them, the beginning plays a vital role. This is a commitment to the story-it can build expectations.
When discussing Kafka's Metamorphosis, Marquez mentioned: I spent several months writing the first paragraph, and once I finished, the rest came out naturally. In the first paragraph, you need to solve most of the problems in the book. When the theme is determined, the style and tone are naturally determined. Take the first paragraph as a sample for the rest of the text, at least for me.
Cohen summed up three types of opening remarks and explained them with specific works:
1. attract attention: deliberately use the first sentence or the first paragraph to catch the reader's attention.
Attention is the direction and concentration of psychological activities on an object. It is a common psychological feature accompanied by psychological processes such as perception, memory, thinking and imagination.
It includes four basic characteristics: stability, universality, distribution and transfer. Among them, the stability of attention refers to the psychological quality characteristics of how long the attention of the selected object can be maintained stably. The longer the attention is maintained, the more stable the attention will be.
Psychologists believe that the fluctuation period of people's attention is about 8- 10 second. If the author can't write enough content to attract readers in such a short time, it will be difficult to turn it into motivation to continue reading.
Excellent opening remarks can not only attract readers' interest in reading, but also lead to people, tone and background. In a sense, an excellent opening statement is "striking".
For example, at the beginning of david copperfield, whether I am a hero in my life or at the mercy of others will be presented in this book. This kind of prologue is to announce: "I'm coming!"
On the contrary, Iain Banks's "Crow Highway" begins like this: grandma exploded that day. It seems that the reader is completely at a loss, which belongs to the failure example of the author's complacency and grandstanding.
Paying attention doesn't mean trying to shock the reader with exaggerated words, but through the rendering of the scene, the reader can enter the dialogue with the narrator in the shortest time and constantly look forward to the surprise that the next sentence can bring.
2. The prologue of "being invited": Usually, readers will not be attracted quickly, but we will be invited into the author's world slowly and diligently, and the rhythm of the story will be more relaxed and natural.
Dialogue writing is an effective "invitation-style" opening, which usually occurs in the dialogue between family members, allowing readers to follow the inner activities of the characters and feel the meaning behind the words in the scenes arranged by the author.
The use of dialogue can make it easier for us to get close to people and make them more vivid.
It is also a common way to introduce readers into the fictional world by using the main statement.
"That was the best time, that was the worst time; This is a year of wisdom, this is a year of ignorance; This is a period of faith, this is a period of doubt; This is a bright season, this is a dark season; It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of disappointment ... "
? -Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities
The opening is a continuous compound sentence, which seems to be a powerful annotation for the times, and makes readers have a strong interest in reading instantly, hoping to find the root of this "mystery" from the following articles.
3. Induction: Induce readers into the situation buried by the author by means of intonation or unique form.
When it comes to the first sentence, the trait I associate most is that the narrative voice is instantly determined, which can attract people to continue reading.
"If you really want to hear stories, it is estimated that the first thing you want to know is where I was born, how I spent my dirty childhood, what my parents did, how they lived before I was born, and other shit that can be seen in david copperfield ..."
The catcher in the rye
Through description, an image of a teenager suddenly emerges in our mind: unruly, cynical, often with unusual ideas, but also very interesting.
Narrative sound theory is an important decoration of works. With the unique perception of sound, people can be portrayed more stereoscopically under the narrative of words, and readers' acceptance will be faster. This kind of induction comes from the chain reaction from the senses to the heart, which is convenient for better exerting the charm of words.
An excellent literary work will always bring readers a sense of expectation, not only from the beginning of the article, but also the desire to continue reading. At the end of the story, readers often feel unfinished.
In a sense, the ending is more like refining the essence of the story, and all the connotations displayed in the process will be basically summarized at the end. How to make the whole story more complete and how to convey the spiritual core contained in the story to readers requires the author to have a good control over the ending.
In this paper, the author summarizes several common ending methods, and let's discuss them one by one.
Ascending ending: a happy ending for everyone.
In this ending, no matter how many twists and turns the protagonist has experienced, there will be a happy ending in the end. Suffering only serves successful servants, broken families reunite, bankrupt businesses are reborn, and the unknown future is a beacon.
Henry James sarcastically said that this ending is "distributing awards, allowances, husbands, wives, babies, wealth, additional paragraphs and pleasant evaluations."
This way is a bit conventional, but it is more in line with people's expectations of truth, goodness and beauty. Happy reunion is the ending that most readers want to see, which naturally brings reasons for the creators to use it.
Open ending: the possibility of pause.
Openness represents infinite possibilities, and it is easier to stimulate readers' enthusiasm for reading, and they will involuntarily want to create a possibility of their own for the story. The fun of this kind of participation is not realized by reading alone.
In this ending mode, the author will try to bring the reader into deeper thinking with vague tone, instead of making a thorough summary of the whole story. Every interested reader may interpret his own plot trend, and this sense of participation is the greatest significance of an open ending.
Hemingway said that he revised the ending of A Farewell to Arms "39 times before he was satisfied". In fact, he wrote 47 endings, some of which were candid and others showed optimism.
Frank said in The Meaning of Ending: Of course, we can't have an ending. One of the greatest charms of books is that they must end.
1. Circular Ruins: Creating Characters
Unforgettable characters are the intrinsic attribute of the story and the most important individual element in the novel. We can feel the inner joys and sorrows of the characters in the works, knowing that they are fictional images, and it is difficult to get rid of their influence.
Even those unpleasant people have a place in our hearts. Because we read these characters, we feel the unknown anger, but it makes our memory more profound, because condemning evil deeds seems to bring more psychological satisfaction than praising kindness.
Claude, the assistant bishop in Notre Dame de Paris, the domestic slave in Rashomon, Huang Shiren in White-haired Girl and Dong Fangbubai in the legendary swordsman all benefit from the author's exquisite writing skills, which makes us easily resonate emotionally in the reading process.
This vivid description stems from the author's attention to detail. Only by entering the inner world of the characters can we endow them with distinctive life attributes and give readers a deeper sense of substitution.
Janet Malcolm praised Tolstoy as "one of the greatest manipulation masters in literature". Soren vividly depicts the details of the characters in his works. In their works, there are descriptions of characters' words and deeds called "tricks" by Turgenev, such as "the toe of Alexander's boots", which is an effective means to express the character characteristics and one of the necessary skills for novelists.
However, there are also many arguments about the dominant position of characters. Nabokov insists that the characters in the book obey his wishes, that he should occupy a completely dominant position in the creation, and that his role is only a prisoner in the work.
Kate Atkinson, on the other hand, believes that once the characters are created, the subconscious will begin to operate. This innate vitality makes it impossible for the author to continue writing according to the original ideas. We should carefully ponder the personality characteristics of the characters, and strive to prolong the narrative more reasonably and make the plot look more natural.
For example, we created the role of a postman, and according to the pre-designed ideas, he naturally disappeared after a chapter. However, in the development of the plot, we have to face such a dilemma. Before this, the trend of a plot needs us to use this role as a foil in the later stories, so we have to "yield" to the status quo and choose a suitable ending for the characters.
2. The possibility of multiple perspectives
During school, we often come into contact with the writing of "propositional composition", that is, giving a keyword that can be described from different angles. Just like a flower, you can write its color and shape, or tell its biological characteristics, or the meaning of life behind it.
This multi-angle description is a very important factor in creation: "narrative perspective". How the author arranges readers to enter the artistic conception created by the story depends on whether the characters are closer to the real "me" or the "third person" with stronger insight.
First-person perspective: closer to life, bringing readers a sense of reality, even making the story more tense and enhancing reading interest.
Forms of expression: dramatic monologue and inner monologue.
Drama monologue, that is, in the drama performance, the main characters have a long confession in their hearts, stating their inner views and ideas. The inner monologue of drama is a literary creation interspersed with or mainly using monologues commonly used in drama in other literary categories. It takes the characters as the center, puts aside the identity of the author, tells the story through the characters themselves, and makes the plot deep and layered.
Through dramatic monologues, the story lines can be connected more effectively and the personality characteristics of the characters can be highlighted. Dramatic monologue is an important form in British and American literary works, which has the characteristics of objectification and characterization.
In The Sound and the Fury, written by Nobel Prize in Literature winner william faulkner, four monologues are used to connect a complete story clue, and three monologues, Quentin, Jason and Bangui, are used to restore the narrative, vividly showing the individual perception and the tragedy of the times under the declining social system in the south to the readers.
Anna? Katie in Karenina? Shelbartz attended the grand ball, expecting her beloved W lenski to propose to her, but she was horrified to find signs that W lenski and Anna were in love.
Tolstoy did not describe the scene from the perspective of an objective narrator, but let readers highlight Anna's charm through the eyes of her rival in love. This unique contrast technique makes the characters particularly nervous and more convincing.
First person writing is often used in detective stories, such as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson who plays this role. It can let the narrator and the reader know the progress of the case at the same time, and enhance the coherence and compactness of the story.
Third-person perspective: the narrator is not limited by space, time, physiology and psychology, and shows the people and things in the story to the reader intuitively, which is more flexible. The defect is that it is easy to cause psychological distance between readers, and there is no intimacy like the first person.
His masterpieces are War and Peace and Madame Bovary. The third person is also the most familiar and widely used way in novel creation, which is more convenient than others.
Writing is an unreachable thing for many people, but it is not. Writing is fair to all. The difference lies in whether you approach it, feel it and use it.
In the history of human literature, there has never been an easy glory. Every outstanding creator and brilliant work has gone through a painful and long process. "One minute on stage, ten years off stage", in most cases, we only see the achievements that the work has brought to us, but it is difficult to understand how much hardship the author has paid for it.
Robinson Crusoe is the first novel published by British writer daniel defoe at the age of 59. Once the book was published, it was well received by many readers.
"Don? Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, lived a vagrant life for many years because of poverty. He is a slave to pirates. When I was nearly sixty years old, I wrote Don? The first volume of Don Quixote was not published until a few months before his death at the age of 68.
There are only two ways to write: reading and writing.
1. The meaning of reading
Through a lot of reading, we can broaden our horizons, absorb the nutrition needed for creation from rich literary works, learn the writing skills of excellent writers, and skillfully integrate them into our own creative system.
Don't swallow reading. Every work has its own unique internal logic. Through careful chewing, we can thoroughly understand the characters, perspectives, structure, narrative methods and other factors contained in the story, and analyze the author's intention to tell the story.
2. Writing lies in practice making perfect.
Writing is good at hard work, so leave some time for yourself to write every day. It can be as short as half an hour, but you must devote yourself wholeheartedly, find a writing state that suits you, and start writing without distractions.
"Writing reading notes" is a good proposal. Recording your thoughts through reading is not only a summary of the reading process, but also the beginning of training your writing level. Just like recording your life through a diary, the process of thinking is the process of in-depth analysis of works.
Sarah Waters, author of Thorn City, said: My bottom line is 1000 words per day. Sometimes it's easy to do it, and sometimes it's like constipation to tell the truth, but I will still sit at my desk until I finish it, because I know I am pushing my book step by step.
Get into the habit of recording anytime and anywhere. When you are inspired by "generation", write it down as soon as possible. It may come from trivial things in life, or it may be an interesting thing among friends. Don't hesitate as long as you touch your heart at a certain moment. You know, most of the materials in the works come from life.
It is the dream of all writers to become a master of literature from writing. Writing stories like Tolstoy can provide readers with a writing idea and skills. Detailed suggestions are provided from the beginning, characters, perspective, dialogue art, revision and other aspects 12, which makes us realize that excellent creators have high practical value in how to write.
"I don't expect everyone to become a contemporary Tolstoy after reading this book-but is it possible?"