For the difference between long and short story writers, the writer and professor of Chinese at Peking University, Cao Wenxuan, liked a quote from the Czech writer Svillak that the long writer is like a farmer, while the short story writer is like a gardener.
Cao Wenxuan observed that the world and our lives are actually composed of plates or points and fragments. A short story is about confronting one of these points or fragments, then gazing at it, carefully analyzing it, and then describing it satisfactorily. Long novels are made up of dots and fragments, and to write a long story well, you must write these points and fragments well. "The writing of short stories is to exercise the basic skills of narrating and describing the world and our lives. Only when the basic skills are practiced well can we write good long stories. Recently, at the "Artistic Characteristics of Short Novellas - Relay Cup Cao Wenxuan Children's Fiction Award Winning Works New Book Release and Seminar", the industry discussed the charm and difficulties of short writing.
Zhu Ziqiang, a professor at the Ocean University of China and director of the International Children's Literature Research Center, quoted three artists' "golden sentences" - "The most joyful can see the big in the small, and also seek to have an aftersound outside the string." This is Toyokokai's summary of the art of manga; "Flipping Through Life with Silver Tweezers" is the japanese novelist and dramatist Kikuchi Hiroshi's evaluation of the short story master Ryunosuke Wasagawa; "Life is not as good as Baudelaire's line of poetry" is from Ryunosuke Wasagawa. In his opinion, these few sentences sum up to reveal the artistic and ideological characteristics of the short novella—to have superb artistic skills and a very thorough vision.
Xue Tao, vice chairman of the Liaoning Provincial Writers Association, made an analogy: a novella is a complete tree, a novella is a piece of wood cut from a tree, and a short story is a section of this piece of wood. The short story is an art of "intention", the author is like a "wizard", who can say something different from everyday people, which surprises you; or the art of "cutting", like the tailor cutting out everything that should be cut off; and the "art of the ending", such as "the basket weaving basket of the smith, all in the mouth".
The winning works of the second Relay Cup Cao Wenxuan Children's Fiction Award, which were just listed not long ago, "Pretend to be blown away by the wind", "Grandpa Liuli and The Liuli Boys", "Qingjing", and "Lilies Bloom Quietly", are the new explorations and new harvests of short novella writing by local young writers. These works are mainly based on realistic themes, involving the campus and family life of urban and rural children, the inheritance of traditional Chinese crafts, etc., reflecting the life reality and psychological reality of the current teenagers.
"Short stories are a training ground for writers." Wang Luqi, one of the award-winning representatives and a post-90s writer, said that short novellas have higher requirements for writers to "omit" and "purify" due to the limitation of space. Short novellas are partial art, the writer needs to be meticulously carved at a point, and does not need to write out the whole story, just dig a well, take a cross-section, but the reader can imagine the overall situation of the whole story through local clues. She believes that if the long novel is a wanton river in the ocean, the short story is like an undercurrent of deep diving underground, it is "winding and quiet", "profoundly involved", and "still water". A good short story writer can show his talents and ambitions in a small text in a measured way, and the tunnel must be able to extend deep into the earth. Whether it is a "big river" or a "tunnel", it can reach the source of the literary basin.
The industry reminds that the so-called "short" does not lower the literary artistic standard due to the limited space. Cui Xinping, a critic and director of the China Children's Literature Research Association, pointed out that a good short story should not be a short story that can pull a long story, the previous plot and consequences, everything is big and small, but should be like a wonderful life cross-section, showing the "scene" in life, the novella showing the "story" in life, and the long story showing the "destiny" in life. "The short story is a wonderful cross-section of life, with a deep well under the small incision and a ripple in the small length. The narrative takes subtle subtraction and buries clever suspense. Such a short story is really a short story. ”
How does a short novella capture a wonderful splash from the vast torrent of life? Starting from their own "literary base area" and basing themselves on the grounded land is the expectation of many critics for creators. Writer and vice dean of Lu Xun Literature Institute Li Donghua observed that Cao Wenxuan once compared writing to "building a house for children", such as the masterpiece "Grass House" published in 1997, that grass house was not eroded by the wind and rain of the years, but more and more solid like gold, not only protected the growth of rural children such as Sangsang in that year, and the current children also have no barriers caused by the rotation of time and space, and continue to give generations of readers warm shelter, elegantly standing on the world children's literature map.
Whether it is Cao Wenxuan's "Yau Ma Tei" or Mo Yan's "Gaomi Northeast Township", both of which were once obscure and very narrow as geographical terms in reality, but the two writers started from their respective hometowns and from the place of the cone, "Such a coincidence is not accidental, indicating that every writer should cherish the land on which they stand, which is their most precious literary base." This also reminds the creators that they do not need to rush to write about the countryside, but that everyone is deeply exploring in the most familiar territory, and when these works are presented in a bundled manner, people can see the rich growth experience and survival situation of Chinese children. Different themes and artistic styles all point to the care for growth, the compassion for life, and the exquisiteness of artistic style.
"We can deeply understand the blood relationship between children's literature and life, the blood relationship between personal destiny and the destiny of the nation in the 'Grass House Paradise'." Bai Bing, editor-in-chief of Relay Publishing House, said that the childhood memory of a writer is not only the memory of the writer's life individual, but also the collective memory of a family, country, nation and era, and this requires more excellent short novellas to be written from a more vivid perspective.
Image source: Publisher
Source: Wenhui