Four elements of story writing

This paper focuses on the main points of the editor-in-chief's writing story class, combines with the actual writing learning style, and refers to the online courses Harvard Story Class and Learning Chinese from Masters.

The editor-in-chief talked about how to write an article in the second story class, and mentioned four basic elements of writing a story: first, an outline and a draft; Second, think about adding something interesting (adding materials); Third, try to be sincere; Fourth, be careful with your words.

Let's expand these four points:

"Writing an article about this matter can be said to be difficult or difficult. It's not that I hesitate to say two things, but the truth is.

Is it difficult to decide how to prepare before writing? "

In "How to Write", Ye Shengtao wrote an article "Before Picking up a Pen", which said that before writing, there must be some preparatory work, that is, conception.

In addition to what the editor-in-chief mentioned in class, it can also be extended to some basic elements of composition learned in primary school, such as time, place, people, cause, process and result. A story uses these elements to form a basic story thinking framework.

Under the condition of emphasizing communication, an article will be more perfect if it conforms to the law of attachment and the six elements of creative stickiness, namely simplicity, contingency, concreteness, credibility, emotion and story.

In fact, there are many ways to set the story frame. For example, in the online course "Harvard Story Class", I repeatedly studied Marshall Ganz's syllogism framework, that is, the story framework of self-we-now and Joseph Campbell's "Road to Heroes".

Self-we-now, your story-our story-the story of the present. This framework can be used to gain the resonance of reading, mobilize the emotions of the audience, and finally influence the action with stories, which is more suitable for advertisements, speeches and so on.

Road to Heroes: 1. Ordinary highway -2. Call of adventure -3. Refuse adventure -4. Accept the call -5. Embark on an unknown journey -6. God helps God -7. Amulet -8. Comrades -9. Try-10. This framework can be used to attract readers and generate lasting attention, mostly for the creation of plays and novels.

Off-topic, personally, Zhang Yimou's "Great Wall" is more in line with this routine, a script under the European and American creative style.

There are many ideas in the article, and there is no difference between good and bad. Choosing a framework that suits you is the first choice.

Stories should be interesting and informative, which is a very important factor to attract readers. Even the protagonist of slogan's logic thinking is interesting and knowledgeable.

The first step is to determine a basic story frame, and the rest is how to establish and improve your own frame. We should have a basic consciousness, that is, when we finish a story, we should combine all the knowledge to create it, that is, the old story frame (old news)+the new story system (new knowledge)+the works to be written (cases: stories, scripts, novels, etc. ) combine with each other to form our own perfect thinking framework.

After the integration in the general direction, we need to carefully consider the small details and slowly polish them.

1. Perfect language: concise, clear, fluent, unified, vivid and rich.

For example: how to make the story language more vivid and rich? When I was studying composition in primary school, I mentioned using five senses (touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell) to describe emotions, environments or changes. Give an example of sensory information effect: imagine a chopping block in your mind, a warm lemon lying on the chopping block under a sunny window, full of juice. You can smell the refreshing smell of lemon peel, close your eyes slightly and smell it gently, and the fragrance will come to your face. At this time, imagine a sharp knife. When the knife fell, the lemon split in half. Watch the two halves of the lemon roll away, with the incision facing upward, and the juicy beads gather and drip, forming a small lemonade on the chopping block. Can you smell the lemon peel and lemon juice now? Pick up half, cut it again, pick up a quarter of the lemon, put it at the end, and take a deep bite; Hold the lemon with your lips, then grin into a big lemon yellow smile and let the juice flow freely to your chin.

How's it going? Do you think your mouth is full of saliva? This language makes the salivary glands work. This is the story that activates the power of imagination, thus activating readers' imagination, immersing them in the story and attracting readers' attention.

2. Emotional perfection: more surprises, more sense of conquest and control, more sense of guilt (urgency), more sense of identity superiority, more sense of hope (self-efficacy) and indignation.

For example: indignation.

There used to be a hot topic in Weibo that CCTV stole photographic materials. In the end, the original author Wang Zongyuan had no choice but to release the recording of communication with CCTV. We also know what it means for CCTV's best intern to steal your material. What happened? This incident caused an uproar on the Internet at that time, and many netizens came out to accuse CCTV of stealing other people's works, which was not only not authentic, but also arrogant. At this point, a wave of articles accusing CCTV aroused readers' indignation.

Emotionally, it is not easy to resonate with readers, but it is a very effective thing. After all, people are easily drawn by emotions.

Ye Lao also mentioned in "On Composition": "Since you want to write your own things, you all want to write something beautiful: if you have a confession, you must conform to the truth of things and the reality of life; If you are interested, it is not easy to pour out, but it must be based on the inner stagnation and emotional nature. This requirement can be called' seeking sincerity' ".

Undoubtedly, sincerity is an unparalleled power, and a sincere story also has great energy. However, as the editor-in-chief said, it is very difficult to express your true feelings, especially in words.

When we are telling stories, if only the skills of telling stories, the framework and materials are more important, the first consideration is to make readers understand and understand. However, many times the purpose of telling stories is to convince and impress others. At this time, it is particularly important to tell stories sincerely.

If you want to tell a story with sincere feelings, besides paying attention to the use of emotions and the expression of language, clear and resonant logical thinking is also a good choice.

We can see an example of using the framework of self-we-present syllogism, and how it gradually moved the audience. The passage is selected from Obama's speech "Fearless Hope" on 20 14.

As can be seen from the above article, the framework of "Self-We-Now" is indeed an emotional progressive transmission, which has won the audience's resonance.

As mentioned above, we need to pay attention to the use of language (concise, clear, fluent, unified, vivid and rich) when perfecting the story, and read more books mentioned by the editor-in-chief to put ourselves in the environment of writing and reading. In my opinion, the wording of the article needs to go through three stages:

1. Basic skills

Basic knowledge of Chinese is the cornerstone of an article. From words, words, sounds and sentences to paragraphs, quotations and writings, nothing can be left.

For example, if you fall down here, read la.

For example, a good poem is quoted in the article.

I once read a joke: What's the use of reading ancient poems? The use of reading ancient poems is that when the afterglow of sunset covers the river in the evening, wild birds fly in the sky, and the sea and the sky are the same, what we blurt out is "Sunset and lonely Qi Fei grow together", instead of "Let me go, it's so beautiful ~ ~ Take a picture! Oh, my God, ducks! Come down and eat! "

Every word, word and ancient poem we have learned will not be wasted. One day, we will use them to write down our inner world. I hope that every brick and tile we build in this world is solid.

Recommend Xinhua dictionary, word discrimination, ancient poetry, etc.

2. Advanced

Advanced words pay more attention to distinction, and similar words are used differently; Different pronunciations of the same word have different meanings; The origin of words is a subject worth exploring.

For example, "discrimination" and "debate" mentioned here. Discrimination and debate are both form, sound and meaning. The original meaning of the word "Xin" is interpreted as the distinction between "great sins", and a "knife" is added between two sinners, which means that we must distinguish them. Debate, add a word "word" between two sinners, indicating that two sinners defend themselves separately.

The difference between difference and argument is that "difference" is identification, such as "difference" and "identification". "Defense" means explanation, such as "defense", "debate", "dialectics", "defense" and "refutation".

Therefore, homophones using this word have different meanings. For example, "distinction" and "distinction", one is distinction and the other is defense. Both "positive discrimination" and "positive discrimination" refer to distinguishing right from wrong and correcting mistakes, but "positive discrimination" focuses on identification and "positive discrimination" focuses on statement.

Recommend books such as Shuo Wen Jie Zi and Kangxi Dictionary.

3 easy come.

Being handy is a good skill. As the editor said, this is the result of accumulation. Reading more books and newspapers can naturally achieve the ability to know what's going on in the world without leaving home, and you can easily write your own articles.

For example, Mr Qian Zhongshu. He has an extraordinary memory, is proficient in many languages, recites countless poems and documents, and can easily pick up a subset of classics and history. Writing Fortress Besieged is naturally a piece of cake and an excellent work.

Therefore, being a conscientious person, accumulating a lot and working hard on words will naturally achieve the purpose of export.

The above are some notes of the editor-in-chief story class, combined with my own other ways of dabbling.

In writing, methodology is not difficult to find, but it is rare to find a suitable method to practice.