Even the most common reading experience can tell us that some novels once attracted us very strongly, making us fascinated by it, and others made us drowsy and difficult to read. The reason for such a huge difference is that from the perspective of novel technology, we usually call it "interesting difference". So what is fun? In fact, fun is something that can keep the pronunciation focused for a long time. The fun of studying novels is to study how to tie the readers firmly to our writing. These are principles that can be taught.

It is not a talent that cannot be imparted. As a novelist, if he cannot master these principles as soon as possible, he can only explore in hard personal practice. The valuable experience he has gained over several years has actually been fully summarized and summarized a hundred years ago. Similarly, if we can consciously learn novel techniques and apply them to our creation, we do not have to waste our precious lives in the long exploration, but can mature ourselves as soon as possible. Even if our talents are not enough to become great novelists, we can educate ourselves to become a good ordinary novelist.

One thing to be noted here is that a good novel usually consists of three parts: content, which people now call the subject matter; talent, sometimes called "talent", actually refers to the descriptive talent of each novelist; technology, which is the only thing that can be mastered through learning among the three components of the novel. No matter how great a person is, he cannot become a good novelist without mastering this special technology. What is to be discussed in this article is mainly the technical issues of short and medium stories, which is only part of the novel technology.

Section 1, the first step in novel design

Before creating a work, most novelists have to draft an outline, which is detailed and brief, but in fact it is mostly a story outline. However, even if the exact same outline is written by two different novelists, the end result is often two completely different results. Some read it interesting, while others may be vague and chewy. So, why are there such huge differences in the same story? The reason is actually very simple, which is caused by the different levels of technical level.

From this we can draw a conclusion: a wonderful story outline does not mean a wonderful novel.

Some people may ask: Is the story outline not a novel design? I can answer yes, agree, but there is a huge difference between novel design and traditional story outline after all. The most important difference is that the story outline is told to people and listen to the plot; while the purpose of novel design is to complete the work for people to read on this basis, and read the text. Therefore, novel design has its own unique design needs - the need to maintain the readers' attention after the work is completed. It is precisely because of this that the following tasks must be completed for the preliminary design of a novel.

1. Design of story situation

The first thing we need to figure out is what the structure of a novel consists of. Simply put, it is composed of a series of crises, and the crisis institutions form one climax after another of the novel. There is no lack of interesting aggregation and communication that plays a role in connecting the climax. When the last and biggest climax ends, we must also give a meaningful ending. Is that all? No, the above novel structure still lacks a crucial part - the beginning.

The beginning usually determines the style of the novel, the rationality and direction of the character setting and crisis, as well as whether its content is epic or spiritually historical, or just a slice of life.

The structure of a short and medium-sized novel is usually roughly divided into three parts: the beginning, the subject and the end, and the beginning is the first part of the content that is exposed to by the readers. However, the beginning does not mean that it is just the first paragraph or the first section of the novel. The beginning is a part of the entire novel that has complete functions. In some short stories, it even accounts for more than two-thirds of the entire article.

In the beginning, the author has a lot of work to complete. First, the role appears, and the stimulating factors (that is, the opposing characters who create difficulties for the main characters) will also appear. In the most common case, these are two groups of characters. Characters are important factors that create the interest of the novel, and we will discuss them in detail later.

Secondly, the main purpose of narrative, that is, the construction of the story situation. So far, no successful novel has no main purpose of narrative. Works of old age, such as Mobersan's "Necklace", Dude's "French Lesson", and some of the more recent ones, such as Hemingway's "Murderer" and Maugham's "Rain". Even Woolf's "Spots on the Wall" and "The Chronicles of Kew" also have strong main purpose of narrative, but the role in these two works is the narrator himself, and the purpose of narrative is the subjective purpose of the narrator. This is the improvement of narrative means by modernist novels, and has become a tradition today.

The third is to introduce explanatory materials. This is a technology that is easily overlooked by beginners but is crucial. For any novel, where does the readers understand the identity, personality traits, personal history and other related contents of your character? It is explanatory material; how do you let readers discover the social life background of this novel? It is explanatory material; why do the main characters achieve the main narrative purpose? It is explanatory material; the main characters have countless possibilities for choice in life, so why do they choose this main narrative purpose? It is explanatory

Sexual materials; how great harm will the main character bring if he does not complete the main narrative purpose, and how severe the test will he face when he completes this main narrative purpose? Or explanatory materials. Handling explanatory materials appropriately is one of the signs of a novelist's level, because it is often impossible to describe and has to resort to the most unliterary narrative. Letting explanatory materials have a greater problem. This also shows why my country's short and medium-sized novels have given up descriptions in recent years and have chosen narrative style in a rush.

After telling so much, what is the storyline? Simply put, it is a person who has to do something. The reason why I use the concepts of main narrative purpose and storyline to illustrate the same thing is because these two concepts express two aspects to the same content. The main narrative purpose tends to plot and action, while the storyline means more aesthetic and ethical meanings, which are two indivisible responsibilities borne by the same fact. Although this matter is simple, many works can only settle in the wastebasket of the editing because they have not designed a good storyline at the beginning, or they can be published silently and disappear silently.

Just now, the storyline is that a person has to do something. This may be to court, save someone or even all mankind, or make a major decision about the fate of a person, or to take revenge, or of course it may be to realize a certain ambition. No matter how great or small the person or the matter is, this purpose must be crucial to the character, and it is part of all the important content we can think of, such as life, future, ideals, morality, etc.

Let’s give an example to illustrate the method of generating a story situation:

For example, if you "take office", you have to take office by yourself as an official, this is obviously a very ordinary life content and is not enough to become a novel. So, what if we let a "ex-bandit" become an official and take office? We just slightly change the identity of the protagonist, so the literary meaning appears. Therefore, no matter at any time, as long as we are writing, the only criterion for our choice is "literary". At this time, readers will inevitably become curious about this official with a special identity. Note that readers' curiosity is the beginning of the interest of the novel and cannot arouse the curiosity of the readers, and the interest of the novel cannot be discussed.

However, this alone is not enough to support the beginning of the novel, so we might as well add a few assistants to the official - also "ex-bandits", accomplices who were on par in the past. Therefore, based on their own reading experience, readers will smell the smell of "complices" or "fighting", and will develop expectations, so that the readers' attention will be temporarily maintained.

The expectation of readers cannot be ignored, otherwise they will inevitably be abandoned. Therefore, we might as well use the third move - the task of imposing on this group of former bandits is to capture the current bandits (also including the dangerous revolutionary party). Therefore, the main narrative purpose is drawn out, the story situation is established, and the space for crisis development is expanded. The following is the main characters face choices. Only choices can reveal the truth of the characters.

The above is the beginning of Lao She's short story "Taking Office". Due to the content, this work is rarely mentioned, but its demonstration role in novel technology is extremely outstanding.

From this I concluded that excellent storylines are the first source of the novel's fun.

At the same time, this example also clearly shows that there are several essential factors that need to be needed to build a story situation:

First, a promising and strong narrative purpose is required. The requirement for it to be strong is to require that the narrative purpose itself has a very strong internal interest, and even without explanation, it is enough to interest readers. This internal interest is often easily found in some novel and stimulating subjects, such as justice, a young man participates in a boxing match to solve the funding problem of the just cause (Jack London's "Mexican"); or for the future, a concubine coldly shuts another concubine out in order to preserve his status in the family (Lin Xi's "Little Son"); and then fear, a man flees in various wild places in East Asia to escape his engagement with his fiancée, or uses the excuse of finding a new house to explore hundreds of apartments to wipe out his fiancee's patience (Maugham's "Mabel" and "Escape").

All main narrative purposes with intrinsic interest have the characteristics of conciseness and clarity. Its backbone is enough to support the entire work, and its content is often clear and profound. But this does not mean that the novel has lost its complexity. On the contrary, because the main narrative purpose is strong enough to be independent and does not require too much attention from the novelist, the novelist has enough space to introduce more, more complex life content, and even philosophical content without worrying that they will threaten the central position of the main narrative purpose.

There is another common situation, that is, the main narrative purpose of the novel is not strong, and it does not have the power to arouse the readers' curiosity. Most short and medium-stories in literary history have this characteristic. In this case, it is necessary to use another aspect of the storyline, and the main narrative purpose must be made to have great significance to the character himself. Whether it is realized or not determines his life, future, soul or the life, future and soul of the people he loves. In this way, the fun in this novel is no longer innately generated. It has the interest of synthetic and needs to be cultivated and grown in nature, and the source of growth is the explanatory material we talked about earlier.

Yasunari Kawabata has a famous novella "Chirun". The beginning part tells the story of a young man going to a tea party to go on a blind date. The matchmaker is the old lover of his dead father, but he met another old lover of his father at the tea party and had a relationship with him. After that, the lady's daughter came to ask the young man to break off relations with her mother. Soon he learned that his father had a father-kind and filial relationship with this "daughter" during his lifetime. The novel was written until the mother who had a relationship with the young man committed suicide and the beginning part ended. This was a wonderful beginning, but it did not have the main "strong" narrative purpose we mentioned earlier. Its narrative purpose was even a bit scattered and inconspicuous at first reading. So, let's take a look at how Yasunari Kawabata dealt with this.

Scene of the story: First, all the characters in the story have an extraordinary relationship with the protagonist's dead father, and the protagonist becomes the "weaker" who falls into the shadow of his father; secondly, his sexual relationship with the "mother" has a certain rebellious meaning, and there is also a hint of incest, so he falls deeper in the shadow of his father. The suicide of the mother, as well as the heavy content in the previous one, has become a huge shadow of his vague love relationship with the "daughter" behind him. In this way, an irrelevant blind date and the normal life content of a young man were attached with heavy and complex content - making the dull story situation important due to the role of explanatory materials, which is the second source of the novel's fun.
Chapter completed!