Where does one's talent for writing come from? Is it talent? We have noticed that children often see the differences from the time they are students: children who are good at writing are sprinkled with flowers, and their clever hands are written, while children who are not good at writing search for dry intestines, meditate, and still do not understand the point. How did children who could write good articles get the skills to write?
Many writers emphasize that the talent of writing is not taught in the classroom, and that writing relies on understanding, often as Mencius said, "I don't know what to do, I don't know what I do", not learning can be obtained. So, there is no way to teach writing.
But the famous writer Mr. Wang Dingjun has different ideas.
Mr. Wang Dingjun (1997)
He once recalled that when he was young, in order to learn to write, he asked a great writer for advice, and the great writer asked him: "Who said that there is a way to write literary works?" Could it be that the carpenter made the table? He was quite discouraged. However, after decades of practice, he found that although writing is not like a table, it still has rules to follow, and there are ways to summarize and learn from. So he began to look for it himself, starting from a scale and a half claw, accumulating bit by bit, and gradually forming his own set of writing experience.
He said: "I firmly believe that there is a way to write, and I hope that the advanced will learn the method and teach the method later. I made a wish that if I found a way one day, it would be made public and shared with everyone. ”
As an old writer who was confused about the path of writing in his youth, he thought that there must be young people in society who want to seek a way to write, including students who read in school, who will need such experience tips. He said he "put something for them to find, they're happy, and I'm happy."
This is Wang Dingjun's posture and realm as a literary master. He is a warm-hearted, dedicated, and willing to share his achievements with others. He said:
"I am a person who walks barefoot, there is no red carpet on the road, only thorns. After middle age, I sorted out my life experience, and a question occurred, when I was walking on the road, there were obviously thorns in front of me, why didn't the people who walked in front of me tell me? There are traps ahead, why hasn't anyone marked them? There is a sweet spring in front of me, why don't the people who go to drink water want me to go with me? After some research, I know that the average person is very stingy in this regard. So I came up with an idea: I walked barefoot, and on the other hand, I wrote down where there were thorns and where there were sweet springs, and put them on the side of the road for the people who came behind to pick them up and see. ”
Wang Dingjun really fulfilled his promise. Since the 1980s, he has successively published four works that teach writing methods, such as "Composition Qiqiao", "Composition Nineteen Questions", "Literary Seeds", and "Reasoning", collectively known as the "Four Books of Composition". Now, his "Six Essentials of Composition" has also been introduced and published by the Commercial Press.
Of course, as far as I know, today's era is very different from when Wang Dingjun was young, and various books related to article practices have been published as textbooks and teaching aids, and some institutions have founded writing magazines, the purpose of which is to "teach people to fish" and teach writing methods. However, I still attach great importance to this "Six Essentials of Composition", because Wang Dingjun said that composition is different from others, mainly manifested in three points:
First of all, Wang Dingjun is known as a master of literature, "the eyes of a generation of Chinese", "the evergreen tree of the literary world", and "the holy hand of articles". His achievements in prose creation are a "rising mountain beam" that cannot be ignored in the entire history of Chinese literature in the twentieth century. Such a large writer of this identity patiently and meticulously explains to young people how to compose books, that is, the "master's small works" and "everyone's small books" in writing, except for Wang Dingjun's works, we really can't see similar works.
Secondly, Wang Dingjun talked about composition, talking about exclusive experience and experience. The so-called "articles have been written through the ages, and gains and losses are known", and the bitterness and perception in the middle of this are not something that people who scratch the itch between their boots can understand. It is far better for a writer to present it than a "writing guide" edited by a school teacher.
Third, Wang Dingjun's teaching of writing experience is selfless and full of praise, and he gives out his own experience, heartfelt words and ideas, and shows his exclusive secret skills and unique skills without reservation, which is particularly rare.
Mr. Wang Dingjun tells readers about "Me and Essays" (2013)
As for the difference between the newly published "Six Essentials of Composition" and the previously published "Four Books of Composition"? In my opinion, it is also to guide young people to write, and the "Six Points of Composition" is more systematic, more practical, and closer to the reality of writing. Especially for lyrical, narrative, and object-like article writing, this can be said to be a textbook-style reading book. In this book, Wang Dingjun put down the figure of a great writer and transformed into a middle school teacher, showing the interaction between teachers and students in the classroom with the posture of personally lecturing to students. The book is divided into six parts, that is, six lessons, according to the six steps of creative activity, which are observation, imagination, experience, selection, combination and performance. The author believes that these six steps can be called "six points", just like the "six laws" of the painter, mastering them is to walk into the "one big road" of writing. And these "six points" are also intrinsically related to each other, because writing articles, like singing with sound, dancing with limbs, and painters with lines and colors, is expressed in language and words. "Performance is the ultimate goal and the initial motivation." So, he repeatedly stated:
"To perform, you must first combine; to combine, you must first choose; to choose, you must first observe, imagine, and experience." Observe, imagine, experience and then choose, choose and then combine, combine and then perform. ”
So these "six points" have become an organic whole, as long as young readers gradually master them, along the way, the training of writing will come naturally. For the author, to summarize and summarize the ideation process of article writing so accurately and to teach it from it is both ingenious and painstaking.
So, in the "Six Essentials of Composition", how does Wang Dingjun give a lecture? He made a careful layout and planning for each of these "six lessons".
Take, for example, the lesson "Observation." The first is "commentary" and "supplementary commentary" to illustrate the basic meaning of "observation". The teacher in the book asks students to "look more and look more" in the "explanation", telling everyone through many examples that the reason why many people do not write well is because they do not observe it with their own eyes. So he taught his students how to observe, how to discover the distinctive characteristics of a thing through their own observations. The most important thing about observation is, of course, the use of the eye, but the author believes that this is far from enough, so he "added" that you have five senses, all of which can be used for observation. The vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch brought by the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body are used to contact the environment, which can absorb information and are also observations. Then he gives a large number of examples of sensory observation, teaching you how to use hearing, smell, taste, touch, and so on. In addition, the teacher also "added" the importance of "experiencing the situation" to capture and collect information and inspire writing.
After the "supplementary explanation", the author set up a "response" link. Because the default scenario of this book is for the teacher to explain the composition knowledge in class, students need to practice the teacher's "explanation" composition method (in this lesson, it is the "observation" method) according to their own understanding. This is a process of linking theory with practice, from which you can see the method taught by the teacher, which helps students broaden their thinking, stimulate associations, and form an intuitive impression of things, this method, if applied to writing, can even achieve immediate results.
Then the author arranged two parts: "Examples of Works" and "My Practice". The former is a sample essay related to the "observation" method described in this chapter, and the example he "exemplifies" here is the "white rice dumplings" created by himself, describing the scene of the Dragon Boat Festival family wrapping rice dumplings. Tell everyone, "Chinese cuisine pays attention to color and fragrance, the people who do it have to design their vision, smell, and taste, and the people who eat it must be satisfied with their vision, taste, and smell, and the people who write about it should not be omitted." This includes several aspects of "observation." As for "My Practice", the author focuses on illustrating how he himself uses his own methods of literary writing. He cites his work "Different Rain Sounds" as an example, showing articles written from the perspective of hearing.
"Six Essentials of Composition" has a total of six lessons, each of which is narrated one by one according to the above listed methods, which is delicate and delicate and does not bother to speak, and is eloquent and in-depth. The teacher's language is kind, the explanation is vivid and inspiring, while the students are attentive, active in thinking and have strong perception. In this interactive teaching scene, we as readers can unconsciously grasp the essence of writing.
Readers familiar with Wang Dingjun know that the reason why he became a master of literature is first of all that he is a language master. Wang Dingjun's creative achievements, in addition to his unique ideological value and aesthetic value, are very important in his skillful application of modern Chinese. His writings, whether they are lyrical in the form of narratives, are full of emotion and vivid. It is no exaggeration to say that his sensitive grasp of language in the construction of words and sentences, his sophistication and sophistication in controlling and presenting the connotation of language and writing, few people in China can compare with it.
For example, in the second lesson, "Imagination", the author explains the imagination in writing in the "My Practice" section in the form of "variations of ancient poems". He said that the ancient Chinese Gelug poetry condensed many imaginations, and his so-called "variations" were to use the imagination of today's people to release these compressed imaginations. He gave three examples: Wang Wei's "Weicheng Qu", Shi Yiwu's "Listening to the Sound of Walking in the Mountains", and Zhao Shixiu's "Yocker", all three poems are seven, each with only 28 words, and the author rewrote them into extremely beautiful prose, each with one or two thousand words. I think that for our readers, whether you have read the original texts and annotated texts of these ancient poems, whether you have seen their modern vernacular translations, I believe that you will be surprised and shocked if you read the "variations" prose that Wang Dingjun wrote for them. Without reading Wang Dingjun's "variations", you may not realize how evocative the emotions contained in the sentence "Xi Chu Yang Guan No Reason People" are, how lonely and mysterious the artistic conception set off by "Crane Nine Days Frost and Moon Cold" is, and how lonely and lonely the mentality reflected in "idle knocking on chess pieces and falling lanterns" is! After reading it, you may even feel that in the past, you did not deeply understand and comprehend these ancient poems that you are already familiar with. Because under Wang Dingjun's pen, the meaning contained in these ancient poems is too rich, too colorful, too fascinating. He told you that if you can spread the wings of imagination, if you are good at using words to express, your reality can become more exciting.
Li Xin