"Story"
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="189" > the root cause of the blandness of the story:</h1>
The lack of story progression, the falseness of motives, the cumbersome characters, the hollowness of the subtext, the loopholes of the plot and other similar story problems are the root causes of the bland and tedious writing
More than seventy-five percent of a writer's labor is spent on story design
Who are these characters? What do they want? Why? What methods will they use to get what they want? What will stop them? What are the consequences? Finding answers to these big questions and building them into stories is our overriding creative task.
You must inject a visual impression driven by a vivid insight into society and humanity into your work, supplemented by an in-depth understanding of the people and the world in your work
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="196" > you have to have a lot of love</h1>
Love for stories – believe that your visual impressions can only be expressed through stories, believe that your characters will be more "real" than real people, and believe that your fictional world is deeper than the concrete world. Love for drama – obsessed with the sudden surprises and revelations that bring about overwhelming changes in life. Love of truth – Believing in lies will deter the artist, believing that every truth in life must be marked with a question mark, even the most secret motives of the individual
Love for human nature – willingness to empathize with suffering people, willingness to go deep into their hearts and see the world through their eyes. The love of perception – not only to indulge in the sensory perceptions of the flesh, but also to indulge in the inner experiences of the depths of the soul. Love for dreams – being able to let your imagination run wild and have fun. Love of humor – laughter versus tribulations to restore balance to life. Love of language - the exploration of phonological rhythms, grammar and syntactic meaning is endless, and it is not tired
Love for duality—a keen sense of hidden contradictions in life, a healthy suspicion of the superficial phenomena of things. Love for perfection - with a kind of word-and-word, repetitive passion, the pursuit of perfection moments. Love for the one and the same – bold in innovation, calm in the face of cynicism. Love of beauty - has an innate perception of the beauty and ugliness of the work, and knows how to roughly extract the essence. Love for yourself – never doubt your ability to write without constant reminders. You have to love writing and endure loneliness
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="201" > What is a writer's work rhythm of the day? </h1>
First, enter the world you imagine. As you write, your characters speak and act naturally. What do you do next? Step out of your fantasies and read what you have written. So, what should you do during the reading process? analyse. "Is this good?" Will the audience like it? Why not? Should it be deleted? supplement? Rearranging? "You write and read; you create, you criticize; you are impulsive, logical; right brain, left brain; reimagining, rewriting. The quality of your rewriting, the likelihood of perfection you attain, depends on your mastery of the craft of writing, because this craft can guide you to correct your deficiencies. The artist is never dominated by impulsive whimsy, but always tirelessly practices his craft to achieve harmony between intuition and thought.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="204" > why the story looks fake</h1>
The "personal story" lacks structure, but only a dull portrayal of life fragments9, mistakenly treating appearances as real life. The author believes that the more refined his observation of everyday facts and the more precise his description of actual life, the more true the story he tells.
No matter how nuanced the observation, this "fact" can only be lowercase truth. The capitalized reality lies behind, outside, within, or below the apparent phenomena of the event, or maintains reality, or disassembles reality, and cannot be directly observed. The author only sees the visible facts, but ignores the reality of life.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="192" > movie viewing recommendation:</h1>
Tender Mercy and Raiders of the Lost Ark; Sister Hannah and Python and the Holy Grail; The Crying Game and Warm Family, Terminator and Reversal of Fate, Unforgivable and Eating Men and Women, or A Fish Called Wanda and Man Bites Dog, Roger the Rabbit and The Falling Dog, or go back decades and compare Ecstasy and Eight and a Half, Masquerade and Rashomon, Casablanca and Greed, Modern Times and Battleship Potemkin.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="208" > story is a metaphor for life</h1>
The story must be like life, but it cannot be copied in the same way, so that there is no depth or meaning other than the life that the townspeople can see at a glance.
Truth is what we think after we think about the actual events that happen
Both keen perceptual and vivid imagination are admirable talents, but, like a happy marriage, the two must complement each other. If there is only one, it will only wither in loneliness.
One end of reality is pure fact, while the other end is pure imagination. You have to be on the spectrum of this creation: to have a keen sense of sight, hearing and sensation, and to strike a balance with a strong imagination. Use your insight and intuition to move us and express your understanding of life's things: how and why people do what they do.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="210" > four prerequisites for authoring:</h1>
In addition to the fact that perception and imagination are prerequisites for creation, there are two extraordinary basic geniuses that a writer must possess. However, these two geniuses are not necessarily related. Having one is not the same as owning it
The first is literary genius
The second is story genius
If the material of literary genius is discourse, then the material of story genius is life itself.
You may have the vision of a Buddha, but if you don't tell stories, your thoughts will be as dull as chalk
Story genius is primary, literary genius is secondary, but also required
There is only genius and no craftsmanship, just like there is only fuel and no engine. It can burn violently like a wildfire, but in vain.
The writer must study the elements of the story and treat them as various instruments of an orchestra—one by one, and then the whole ensemble.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="211" > large-plot and sub-plot movies</h1>
The big plot is the main dish and staple food of world movies (meat, potatoes, noodles, rice and millet). Over the past hundred years, it has nourished the vast majority of films that have been popular with audiences around the world. If we look at the movies of the past few decades – The Great Train Robbery, The End of Pompeii, Dr. Carrigari's Cabin, Greed, Battleship Potemkin, M is the Murderer, Top Hat, The Great Phantom, Baby-Rearing Wonder, Citizen Kane, Meet and Hate The Night, The Seven Samurai, Gentleman's Good, The Seventh Seal, The Prodigal Son, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Godfather 2, Soul Destroyer Trio, A Fish Called Wanda, Flying Over the Future", "Ju Dou", "The End of the Road", "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "Shining Style" – we can glimpse the jaw-dropping story themes and diverse genres covered by the category of big plots.
The small-plot films, though less varied than the big ones, are equally international: Nanuk of the North, Joan of Arc of the Dead, Zero Introspection, Fire of War, Wild Strawberries, Music Room, Red Desert, Five Songs, Knees of The Carat, World of the Senses, Tender Mercy, Paris of Texas, Sacrifice, Per conqueror, Thief of The Child's Heart, Love of the Great River, Alive, and Talk About Dancing. The mini-plot also includes narrative documentaries such as Welfare.
Examples of anti-plots are less common, mainly in European films and films after World War II: "An Andalus Dog", "Poet's Blood", "Afternoon Confusion", "Running, Jumping and Stopping Movie", "Last Year in Marionbad", "Eight and a Half Parts", "Masquerade", "Weekend", "Hanging", "Joker", "Python and the Holy Grail", "Hazy Desire", "Sexual Coma", "Stranger in Paradise", "After Work", "The Story of One Plus Two", "Anti-Fighting Wisdom Multi-Star", "Chongqing Forest", "Demon Night Panic". The counter-plot also includes "documentary and abstract collage" films such as Alan René's Night and Fog and Unbalanced Life.
The larger plot emphasizes external conflict. Although characters often have strong inner conflicts, the focus falls on their struggles with interpersonal relationships, social institutions, or forces in nature. In the small plot, on the contrary, the protagonist may have a strong external conflict with the family, society, and the environment, but the focus is concentrated in his intentional or unintentional wrestling with his own thoughts and emotions.
Many of the plots can be traced back to "The Party Fights Against the Different", "The Grand Hotel", "Still in the Mirror" and "Fool's Ship", and continues to this day as a common technique - such as "Do What You Should Do", "The Intersection of Life", "Pulp Fiction" and "Eating Men and Women".
The art film's focus on internal conflict can attract the interest of highly educated people, because those who are highly educated like to spend a large chunk of their time in their inner world
Writers need to hone their skills until knowledge slides from the left brain to the right brain, until intellectual perception becomes a craft for a living
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="212" > the background of the story is four-dimensional: the era, the duration, the place, and the level of conflict</h1>
Stories are not created out of thin air, but are born out of material that has existed in history and human experience
The larger the world, the more the author's knowledge is diluted, the fewer creative options he has, and the more clichés the story becomes. The smaller the world, the more perfect the author's knowledge and the more creative options he has.
The key to winning this battle is research, and it takes time and effort to acquire knowledge
Memory research, imagination research, fact research.
Your talent cannot be killed, but your ignorance can starve it. No matter how talented you are, ignorant people can't write anything
But if you go to the library and read a few authoritative books on the dynamics of family life, two very important things will happen: everything that life teaches you will be strongly confirmed. Between the lines of the book, you will see yourself. But when you take notes in the library, your solid factual research will expand that circle globally. You will be shocked by your sudden and intense perception, reaching a depth of understanding that you cannot reach by any other means.
While research can provide material, it is by no means a substitute for creation.
Research is the feeding of the flesh of these two beasts, imaginative and inventive, and is not an end in itself. Research also does not exist in a necessary procedure. We don't start thinking about stories until our notebooks are filled with notes on social, biographical, and historical research. Rarely has creation been so rational. Innovation and exploration alternate.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="214" > a writer's homework is first to determine his type and then to study its instructive practices. </h1>
Under genre conventions, comedy writers tend to walk on tightropes, one end of which is meant to subject their characters to hellish torture, while the other end is safe to convince the viewer that the flickering flames aren't actually hot.
In general, great writers are not eclectic. Each of them focuses his work rigorously on an idea, a single theme that ignites his passion, a wonderful theme that he can constantly renew through his lifelong pursuit.
Character Truth 1 is revealed when people are under pressure to make choices – the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the more truly the choice reflects the nature of the character.
Superficial and dimensionless people do exist... But they're boring.
The function of structure is to provide increasing pressure, to force characters into increasingly difficult dilemmas, to force them to make increasingly difficult risky choices and actions, and to gradually reveal their true nature, even to their unconscious selves.
There is an innate belligerent, murderous side of human nature, and war is only a logical extension of this dimension, making us shudder to realize that what human beings like to do will be done—for thousands of years, now, and for all foreseeable futures.
Mother-Daughter Love: She rejected two famous sources of suffering: career and love. She was afraid of the pain of aging, so she always dressed twenty years younger than herself. She began to realize that the joy a person could enjoy was directly proportional to the pain he was willing to endure.
From the worst experiences, we always get some positive inspiration, and the richest experiences always come at a huge cost.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="215" > the principle of story design</h1>
Anything that can be given a free will and has the ability to desire, act, and endure consequences can be the protagonist.
Whether the protagonist of the story is single, multiple, or composite, regardless of its character development characteristics, all the protagonists have some kind of iconic trait, and the first of them is willpower. Its willpower must be strong enough to sustain its desires in conflict and finally act to create meaningful and at the same time irreversible change
The protagonist must have a conscious desire. The most memorable and obsessive characters often have not only a conscious desire, but also an unconscious desire. The protagonist must have at least one chance to fulfill his desires.
In the words of Henry David Thoreau: "All sentient beings live a life of silence and despair. "Most people are wasting their precious time and dying with a regret that they have not fulfilled their wishes. This painful insight may be justified, but we cannot allow ourselves to believe it. Instead, we always keep hope to the last minute.
The protagonist has the will and ability to pursue his conscious and/or unconscious desires, all the way to the end of the clue, all the way to the human limits established by the background and genre.
The story must construct a final action that makes it impossible for the audience to imagine a better possibility.
If the audience walks out of the theater and imagines what they thought they should have seen before or after the ending we gave them, they are certainly not satisfied. Our writing level should be above them.
It is the protagonist who takes us to this limit. He must pursue his desires from the heart, all the way to the boundary of human experience satisfying both in depth, breadth, or both, in order to reach the ultimate absolute and irreversible change.
The protagonist must have empathy; sympathy is optional.
Empathy means "like me": in that moment of identification, the viewer suddenly instinctively wants the protagonist to get everything he wants.
Virtually all characters, in the pursuit of any desire, at any point in the story, will always take the smallest conservative action from his own subjective point of view We all want to preserve and eat our own cake at the same time1. But on the other hand, in a state of crisis, in order to get what we want or keep what we already have, we have to sacrifice what we want or have — a dilemma that we try to avoid
Life teaches us that the measure of value of any human desire is directly proportional to the risks taken in pursuing it. The higher the value, the greater the risk. We give the greatest ultimate value to those who require the greatest ultimate risk—our freedom, our lives, our souls
To live meaningfully is to be exposed to eternal risks.
True action is a physical, verbal, or mental movement that digs a gap in expectation and creates meaningful change.
The only reliable source of emotional truth is yourself
A heroic man may be temporarily frustrated by a momentary fear, but he will eventually act. And cowards don't.
![The little-known sports story: Meritorious coach Zhang Jing[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)