Always wanted to write a novel, but don't understand what the meaning of the novel is?
The novel seems to be a long story, and everyone can write it with a pen, but not everyone can write it well.
I searched for the meaning of the novel and found that this is explained:
"Centered on the portrayal of characters, it widely reflects social life through the description of a complete storyline and specific environment."
The previous explanation is easy to understand, but it seems a little difficult to reflect social life.
Most people think of fiction as a pastime, as long as it satisfies their momentary emotional needs. But the truly classic novel, no matter what era it is, has a very realistic guiding significance.
Margot Levsi's The Secret of the Workings of the Novel is a guided writing book that explores the author's creative intentions and analyzes his structure.
It analyzes classic works through interpretation, digs deep into the essence of the novel, and dismantles the text creation skills like a cocoon, giving us a unique secret of creation.
Want to know why some novels can last a long time, why some novels are widely praised, why some novels can give people power?
Read the real intention of the creator, understand the meaning of the novel, and you can write a good novel.
01
Clarify the purpose of your writing
Virginia Woolf, one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century, was also a feminist.
She has a classic book, A Room of Your Own, which has a sentence that goes like this:
Almost all modern and contemporary feminist writers and women's themes can not avoid a famous saying: "If a woman wants to write a novel, she must have money and a room of her own." ”
Woolf is a stream-of-consciousness writer, and her unhappy childhood made her learn to examine herself very early, and her sensitive nerves pulled her out of this society.
The struggle and helplessness of women are in her eyes, the chaos of real life triggers her to think, and the next writing is the embodiment of her spiritual will.
Woolf believes it's important to be clear about the purpose of your writing, to figure out what your beliefs are, so that you can show it in fiction.
In my opinion, good novels basically have their own set of values, and what they promote is thinking about the nature of society. Compared with the story, language, and expression methods, the connotation and ideology of the novel are particularly important.
Woolf's novel "To the Lighthouse" seems to depict the vacation life of Professor Ramsey and several friends, but in fact, he wants to explore and expose the meaning of life and the essence of self through their conversations and actions.
What impressed me was a passage in the book when the painter asked Mr. Ramsey when his work was about, but his son said "about the subject, the object, and the nature of reality."
The characters, manipulated by Woolf, begin to dig in another direction, not boring and lax conversations, but wonderful conversations about life.
Good works are showing us the world while questioning life reasonably and objectively.
Nothing is set in stone, and only by exploring more can we discover the truth.
02
The charm of language
In what language do you use to write a novel?
Hemingway's minimalist style of language has been widely praised.
He once proposed a creative proposition of the "iceberg principle": the majesty of the iceberg movement is because it is only one-eighth of the water.
Hemingway's language, with its simplicity and subtlety, makes people feel its vitality and thus captures what he wants to express.
The minimalist language style is good, but this does not prove that the gorgeous language is not unattractive.
Shakespeare's language is novel and imaginative, and his plays contain many flowery rhetoric for large sections of character monologues.
When you read Shakespeare's books, you can always feel the conflict and tension, not only because of the clever design of the plot, but also because of the outstanding language.
Gorgeous language is like a brocade robe, which can cover you and feel the flow of words emerging.
Of course, such language also has drawbacks, that is, it is easy to fake and empty, and it is general but cannot grasp the essence of the essence, and there is a sense of vanity.
In her early years of writing novels, Rifsi was rejected because the language was too beautiful, but she believed that people should not change their strategy and pursue simple words.
"For fiction writers, there is no need to write too many functional sentences and abandon wonderful and magnificent language."
Sometimes your language skills may be a gift, but you need to improve it a little, you can try to amplify and enrich the language, and integrate new vocabulary and metaphors into the characters through language.
Minimalism and beauty are just a way of expression, and you can only make progress if you find the one that suits you best.
There is no complete standard for writing, and accurate expression is the most important.
03
Unique narrative approach
Flaubert's Madame Bovary, which I have seen in several writing instruction books, is interpreted as a model guide.
What is the unique charm of "Madame Bovary" that can make so many people praise?
After observation, I found that people were very interested in Flaubert's narrative technique.
In describing Emma's despair, Flaubert wrote: "The dining room under the wall is so small, the stove is smoking, the doors are creaking, the walls are oozing water, and the stone slabs on the ground are wet." ”
In fact, Flaubert did not make it clear that this was Emma's idea, but when the reader reads this text, he can always feel Emma's depression and despair.
This metaphorical approach not only complicates the character of Emma, but also makes people particularly interested in her next actions.
Emma tries to jump out of her current life, but she is always wandering in failure, constantly struggling repeatedly, giving this character a different vitality.
Flaubert adopts an absolutely objective attitude in his narrative, resolutely not evaluating the characters, but constantly exposing their motives and changes in thinking.
"In his works, the writer should be like God everywhere in the world, but he is always invisible."
This kind of side-baked writing makes us clearly understand the character of the character, but also has a new thinking about social form.
The most frightening thing about writing is to make up your mind at the beginning, to determine whether the characters are good or bad, and an overly simple and straightforward narrative will only overshadow the text.
Only by constantly excavating and revealing, and looking at everything from a calm perspective, can we bring people different cognition and enlightenment.
04
epilogue
Yu Hua once said: "Writing is so wonderful, starting from narrowness often writes broad, starting from broad but writing narrow." ”
Regardless of your writing direction, if you want to write a good novel, you must be close to objective reality.
Find inspiration in real life, inject your ideology into the text, and constantly create and modify to present the final masterpiece.
Writing is not difficult, it is rare to think, and the depth and shallowness of thinking determine the quality of your work.
Margot Levsi's The Secret of the Workings of the Novel tells us that by daring to explore the meaning of life, by being diligent in thinking and writing, you can also write a good work.
END
Author: Seven Continents Day, idealistic is not easy to create. The picture originates from the network, invasion and deletion; originality is not easy, please contact us for reprinting.