Narration and description
The role of narrative can be roughly divided into two points:
1. Explain the background
For example:
In the east of China, there is a small town called Xining. There are streams outside the town, mountains beside the streams, and temples in the mountains. There are no monks in the temple, only a middle-aged Taoist with two disciples practices enlightenment here.
Mountains are nameless green hills, and temples are abandoned Buddhist temples. There are more than two famous disciples, the young one is Chen Changsheng.
Xining Town is in the territory of Zhou State. 800 years ago, the Zhou Dynasty established Taoism as the state religion. Until now, during the Orthodox period, the state religion has unified the whole country, and it is even more admired. According to the truth, mentoring should live a luxurious life, but Xining town is too remote, the ruined temple is even more remote, and there are few people on weekdays, so we can only live a simple life.
? Choose the sky
The narrative here mainly explains the social background of the story. In addition, the narrative can also explain the time when the story happened, who the characters are, the cause and effect of the event and so on. (Describe six elements: time, place, people, cause, process and result of events)
When we write an outline, we can generally describe the whole story directly with narration, and only when we really write the text will we use description.
2. Quickly advance the plot
Mother told Huo that the only way to get ahead is to be a soul teacher. Even the most ordinary soul teacher, his position in the mainland is much higher than that of ordinary people.
Just yesterday, Huo successfully cultivated his soul strength to the tenth level through five years' hard work and poor talent. This day is also the day when he left the Duke's house. ? Douluo Mainland II peerless Tangmen
Another great advantage of narration is that it can quickly advance the plot. For example, Huo Yu Hao, the protagonist here, studied hard for five years before reaching Grade 10. If you need a lot of space to describe it, you can take the narrative with you in one sentence, which can quickly promote the development of the plot.
Narrative order: chronological narration, flashback, insertion and supplementary narration.
In novels, the most commonly used methods are sequential narration and interpolation.
Sequential narration is a method of narration according to the time sequence of events. Most novels are in chronological order, so I won't say much here.
Insertion is a narrative method in which narrative clues are temporarily interrupted and memories or stories related to the main plot are inserted in order to help the development of the plot or the characterization of the characters in the process of narrative central events.
Interpolation usually plays an auxiliary role in setting off and explaining the main plot.
For example:
Mr. Sheng watched him go by. Professor Zhou saw him with a happy face, said a few words and patted him on the shoulder approvingly.
The old professor's hair is getting less and less.
Speaking of which, she will know the famous professor of this law school because of Chen.
At that time, Chen was busy with his studies and tutoring, and his girlfriend could hardly find him. In order to spend more time with him, she goes to his department for classes when she has no classes. This week, she listened to Professor Zhou's criminal law for a whole semester. But up to now, she still doesn't understand the most basic "presumption of innocence" in criminal law. Unlike Chen, she dragged her to several advanced math classes and helped her review and grasp the questions at the end of the term.
I don't know what Chen said, but Professor Zhou took a look at her side and nodded to her with a smile before walking away.
? Excerpt from How to Go to Shengxiao Mo.
The underlined part here is a typical interpolation, which is very common in novels. When describing a plot, it is sometimes necessary to explain or supplement a plot point, which is the advantage of interpolation. After interpolation, you can continue to describe the original plot, making the whole plot complete and compact.
Narration is the description and statement of the theory of the development and change of things by the experience of characters. It is a general statement of a fact, giving people a feeling of being dull as water. A higher requirement is to use various narrative techniques, such as flashback, insertion and supplementary narration. Break the straightforward narrative and cause ups and downs and waves in the writing. )
Description is a detailed description of the state of characters or scenery in the language of images, which gives people an immersive feeling and a strong sense of image.
Give a chestnut
Narrator:/kloc-0 died in the streets of Chongqing in the winter of 945.
Caption: In the winter of 1945, a cold corpse was lying on the street in Chongqing. I saw him with his eyes open, covered with scars and only wearing thin clothes. Pedestrians on the road hurried by without looking at him again.
By comparing the two expressions, I believe everyone can see the difference between them.
Compared with narrative, the description is more detailed, and it is difficult for an article to cover everything. We can understand the description from the general direction first.
From the angle, it can be divided into positive description and side description, and from the content, it can be divided into character description and environmental description. Character description is divided into language, action, expression, psychology and appearance description, while environmental description is divided into natural environment and social environment description.
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Next, let's talk about how to better apply the description to novel writing with a description of a fight in the Romance of the Dragon and the Snake.
Wang Chao's blood rushed to his face first, and then anger rose from his heart, and evil fell from the sky, secretly calculating.
"If you hold a grudge, you are not a gentleman. I want revenge today and make a fortune by the way. " Wang Chao brain turn quickly, "so many people, how to play? Let me talk about how to beat a few first. Grab a handful of money and leave? Or what? "
Comments: Before the fight, we used expression description and psychological description.
Expression description is a series of movement changes of human facial features in a specific situation, and it is actually a dynamic portrait description.
Describing a character with expressions can not only express the inner world of the character, but also depict the character.
There is not much expression in this paragraph. What we can see is a sentence "blood on the face" to show the anger of the protagonist. In fact, if you want to add more expressions, you can also describe the feeling of glaring.
When using expression description, we must pay attention to the situation of the characters, and we must not leave the need of depicting characters and expressing the theme, and write expressions for the sake of writing expressions.
Psychological description is to describe and analyze the characters' inner world, reveal the characters' inner feelings and portray their personalities.
This paper describes the complex psychological changes of the hero from wanting revenge to worrying about the strength of the other party, which well reflects the bold and cautious personality characteristics of the hero.
Psychological description should pay attention to the following three principles:
1. To write about the psychological activities of a character, it is necessary to write about the psychological activities that a specific character will inevitably produce in a specific environment, rather than describing it for psychological description.
2. When writing about psychological activities, we should prevent one psychological activity from being left and the other from being right.
When key plots, actions and expressions appear, they are accompanied by psychological descriptions.
3. When writing about psychological activities, try to write about the subtle emotional fluctuations and complex psychological changes of the characters.
These three points, compared with the above example, the protagonist's psychological activity is well written in the process of psychological change from wanting revenge to worrying before he prepares for battle (in specific situations and key plots).
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Wang Chao figured out all the changes in his heart, took a deep breath and walked quickly up.
A group of people's minds were all on the cards, and hundred-dollar bills were passed around without noticing Wang Chao.
"Brother Guang, it's your turn to be bored. I'm 50 bored!" Another red-haired punk knocked on the table for Brother Guang.
This brother Guang is the gangster who beat Wang Chao before.
"Mao shouted. Mother's b "brother guang seems to have lost money and is very unhappy." He slapped the table hard with his hand.
"Little light, don't worry that you will lose money. If you win, please go to karaoke and help you find a punctual girl to play! "
Brother Liang rubbed his cards and then spit out a smoke turn.
This time, Wang Chao has arrived behind Brother Guang. Suddenly, he grabbed Brother Guang's hair and pulled it back! Ah! Brother Guang was unprepared, but suddenly he met such an enemy and gave an earth-shattering howl.
Click, Wang Chaomeng tugged at his hair, picked up Brother Guang's body and dragged it to the ground, even breaking the chair.
Pay attention to my bold type, I use a lot of actions to describe it here.
Action description plays an important role in character description, and revealing characters through personalized action and action description is the most commonly used description method.
The function of action description is to show the mental outlook of the character and directly reflect the character.
Let's analyze the first two movements of the protagonist in this paragraph. "Take a deep breath" and "walk" are two actions, and they are two coherent actions. Taking a deep breath before doing something shows that this person is actually a little nervous about it.
"Deep Breath" and "Walk" well show Wang Chao's mood in that situation. Although he is a little nervous, he is firm. It can be seen that this is a person who dares to face and does not escape.
Look at some of his movements, such as "grabbing" and "pulling" each other's hair, and then "dragging" each other to the ground, which is also very coherent. From the use of these action words, we can fully feel Wang Chao's extreme hatred for Brother Guang, and his revenge character is also vivid on the paper.
So how should we use action description in our daily writing?
1. Write coherent actions and use verbs accurately.
2. Actions should conform to the identity, personality and situation of the role.
3. It should be skillfully connected with the expression, psychology and language of the characters. The action of the character is not valid. When they are associated with people's emotions, attitudes, postures or expressions, they are meaningful and personalized actions.
4. Proper use of metaphor and rhetoric can not only make the characters more vivid, but also increase the interest.
I won't go into details here. Everyone should understand the comparative examples.
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There are several kinds of characters described above. Let's talk about environmental description.
Just lift a chestnut.
A quiet autumn rain has been falling for ten days, with little rain and a hint of late autumn chill, which has been beating on the endless Yuan Ye.
Piles of dark gray clouds are low on the earth. It's already late autumn, and all the trees are bare. Autumn rains washed away the old trees, but autumn mercilessly stripped them of their beautiful clothes, leaving them depressed. Brown moss covered the deep wrinkles on the bark.
The autumn rain, which lasted for more than ten days, made the ground very muddy, and even the official road was full of muddy puddles and mud, making it difficult for pedestrians to walk. Only by relying on animal power can they walk slowly on the muddy road.
? Cold owl
This is a typical description of the natural environment. The description of the natural environment is nothing more than starting from our six senses and grasping the main characteristics of the environment to describe it.
The six senses here are (taking thunderstorm as an example)
Out of the window, all white, the earth suddenly turned into a boiling Wang Yang. The trees in the garden trembled with fear as the storm raged. A purple lightning in the distance tore the void?
(Ears) The whimpering wind, roaring thunder and rushing rain are symphonic;
(Nose) Heavy rain conveys the smell of earth;
(Mouth) The cold weather makes Lou Xin's tea a little bitter;
He felt a deep chill;
His heart was also disturbed by the thunderstorm, and his woman was like a frightened rabbit, exhausted in his arms.
Take "Little Owl" as an example to describe autumn rain. Let's analyze the author's use of several angles.
"With a hint of late autumn chill, carefully and intensively on the endless vilen.
"chill" is a human feeling, that is, it is described from the inner point of view; The latter sentence is obviously from a visual point of view.
The rest of the sentences do not need to be analyzed, and they are all from a visual point of view. In most environmental descriptions, eyes and heart are almost the focus.
Knowing the angle, we may face another problem, that is, the order of description. Similarly, through the analysis of the above examples, we can find that the writing of scenery must have a sequential order, and it is not feasible to grasp eyebrows and beards.
First sentence
A quiet autumn rain has been falling for ten days, with little rain and a hint of late autumn chill, which has been beating on the endless Yuan Ye.
Feel it, this description should give us the feeling that this scene is very big and must be a vision.
Piles of dark gray clouds are low on the earth. It's already late autumn, and all the trees are bare. Autumn rains washed away the old trees, but autumn mercilessly stripped them of their beautiful clothes, leaving them depressed. Brown moss covered the deep wrinkles on the bark.
Look at this passage again and see the specific scenery described here, such as clouds, Woods and old trees. Obviously, the order here is from big to small, from far to near.
The autumn rain, which lasted for more than ten days, made the ground very muddy, and even the official road was full of muddy puddles and mud, making it difficult for pedestrians to walk. Only by relying on animal power can they walk slowly on the muddy road.
In the last paragraph, the perspective is pulled to the ground.
Therefore, we can roughly sum up a set of routines for writing landscapes:
From the perspective of six senses; In order, distance and size can be combined; Content, grasp the main scenery.
Description of five senses
Description of the five senses, that is, from five angles of vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch, can help you describe almost all environments and scenes, such as a scene where a character who is writing your novel goes to the seaside to play.
Visual description: the blue sea is endless. She just wants to walk by the sea and wear cool clothes, but she sees her skin covered with a thick layer of sunscreen and exposed to the sun, which looks shiny and watery.
Auditory description: The roaring sea breeze kept blowing. Not far away, the splashing sound of the ebb and flow of the tide was full of harmonious rhythm, so her mood was much relaxed.
Smell description: She stood by the sea and took a deep breath. The refreshing sea breeze was salty and mixed with a little fishy smell.
There are not many examples of taste and touch, and you will find the description of the five senses very useful, because it extends from the perspective of people and can make readers feel immersive.
portrait
First, draw a line.
The text is simple and plain, and there is no rendering. It describes the image of things without strong color description, does not use rhetorical devices such as metaphor and analogy, or uses adjectives less or less. For example:
"At that time, a dark and thin gentleman with a moustache came in, wearing glasses and holding a stack of books, big and small." (Mr. Fujino of Lu Xun)
A few words activated the image of a scholar who lived frugally and studied rigorously.
Second, comedy sketches.
That is to say, with exaggerated techniques and teasing tone, the characters are outlined as grotesque and absurd images to express ridicule, hatred, sympathy and other thoughts and feelings. For example:
"If he looks down, he can't see his toes, and the raised part in the middle will block the line of sight. Sparse gray hair, neatly combed back, dipped in water, no one is messy. There is no wrinkle on her white face, like steamed bread just out of the pot. Because of fat, the nose and eyes are particularly small; Because it is small, it is particularly exciting. " (Wang Runzi "Selling Crabs")
Through the description, the image of "filter tip" was shaped: old and fat, neat and elegant, rich and superior. The description is permeated with the author's ridicule.
Third, the description of rich colors.
That is, vivid and vivid language, multi-faceted, multi-level, multi-angle, detailed and comprehensive description of characters. For example:
"? Sitting in the south is a thin, 50-year-old China man; Wearing a gown with yellow teeth and a cigarette holder in his mouth, followed by a puff of smoke. "
"His face is yellow and white, and he is worryingly thin, like a person who has recovered from a serious illness, but his spirit is very good and there is no sign of depression. His hair is about an inch long. Obviously, he hasn't cut it for a long time, but he stands in high spirits. The beard is striking, like a script written in thick ink? One? Words. "
"Yellow with white face, worrying thin, head straight with an inch long hair; A robe with yellow feather yarn; Official agency? One? Word-shaped beard; Holding a yellow cigarette holder in his left hand, the cigarette end has been blackened. " (A Lei's One Side)
In these three places, the author depicts Lu Xun's mental outlook under difficult conditions through comprehensive and meticulous descriptions, and a great soldier image of "getting older and more tenacious" stands in front of us.
There are many ways to describe people, each with its own advantages, and students can use them flexibly according to the needs of writing.
We can't write without an author. Writing people can't do without writing the flesh and soul of the characters, and do everything possible to make the characters stand up, plump up and lively. However, as can be seen from students' exercises and papers, many characters are papyrus and puppet people, and four things should be avoided when describing characters.
One bogey: the stereotype of Facebook.
Example 1: I carefully looked at my new classmate, tall, neither fat nor thin, with a crew cut; Looking down, under two heavy eyebrows, a pair of bright eyes, a straight nose and a wide mouth, a slightly black face; Wearing a white sweatshirt, a pair of gray pants and a pair of tennis shoes; He is carrying a schoolbag in his left hand and a net bag in his right. There is a new football in the net pocket. Reading this passage carefully, we will find that the characters described by the author appear dull and lack spirituality.
First of all, when describing a character, don't cover everything like painting a face. When describing a character's appearance, we should grasp its most striking features. For example, the image of Yang Er's sister-in-law created by Mr. Lu Xun in Hometown only captures the characteristics of "prominent cheekbones", "thin lips" and "hands resting between moustaches, without skirts, and feet spreading out, just like the compasses with thin feet in drawing instruments", and a vivid and bitter image is portrayed in a few strokes. Secondly, the description of characters should not be the same. For example, after "two thick eyebrows, a pair of bright eyes", plus "blinking eyes, bright eyes, and some naughty expressions", the characters are much more vivid; For example, after "there is a new football in the net bag", the subjective speculation that "I can see it is a tiger on the court" can also show the personality characteristics of the characters; If you want to make the characters more vivid, you might as well add some dynamic descriptions: "He seemed to perceive that we were watching him, so he smiled at us unnaturally, looked down at the football in his pocket and kicked it gently with his right foot."
Two bogeys: dragonfly light water.
It is very important to write clearly the reasons for psychological activities to express the characters. When we describe the psychological activities of characters, we should go into their hearts and try to figure out their deepest context. Write clearly what the characters are thinking and how they think, and do everything possible to fully show the process of their inner dynamic activities. Otherwise, the characters will be pale and powerless. Please look at the following example:
Example 2: When I walked into the office, I met Mr. Cao's eyes, which were full of blame. I shouted "Mr. Cao", and Mr. Cao nodded, only "hmm".
How to make the characters in the last paragraph "live"? First of all, write the feeling of "I" walking into the office: "I walked into the office with uneasy heart"; Secondly, it shows my specific feelings when I met Mr. Cao: "The teacher's eyes were completely devoid of kindness and kindness, but full of blame, so a burst of fear came to my heart, and I only felt my palms sweating, as if I could hear the sound of my own heartbeat"; Once again, I highlighted the change of my voice when I called Mr. Cao: "I had to call" Mr. Cao "with a forced smile, and even my voice trembled a little"; Finally, write the expression and attitude of the teacher's response, which can be described as follows: "Teacher Cao frowned and snorted." Such a strong color makes the psychological activities of the characters more concrete and real. After reading this passage, it seems that there is a nervous image of a middle school student who is about to be criticized.
Three bogeys: the mechanical action of pulling foreign films
Action description is the most important and commonly used way to describe characters. In our familiar literary works, there are vivid descriptions of movements everywhere, such as Grandet's unique movements before his death, Jin Fan's unexpected madness after being recruited, and Kong Yiji's "school"? The ostentation of nine pence and the embarrassment of "touching" four pence. Writer Lessing said: "The main thing is to make people move and express their personality characteristics through actions." If you mechanically copy a character's movements, that person will become a "zombie". Please look at the following example:
Reluctantly, I stood up, took my math book and went to the blackboard to do the problem. I have broken chalk several times, too. A simple math problem took more than ten minutes.
The first paragraph only objectively and mechanically wrote what the characters did, and there was no coherence between the actions, just like a "Latin film" and a "cartoon". How to connect each picture? We can add specific action descriptions to clearly describe the process of "how to do it" and turn it into a wonderful flowing "video". For example, since I "don't want to stand up", I should "slowly walk to the podium with a book, first choose one chalk after another in the chalk box, and then wipe and write for a long time".
Four bogeys: recording a single conversation
The language used to describe characters is not recorded, but should be as Mr. Lu Xun pointed out: "The language used to describe characters enables readers to see people from their words. "To reach this level, it is necessary to pay attention to the description of characters' language must conform to their age, experience, identity, cultural education and other characteristics, and must reflect their characteristics.
Ex. 4: As soon as my sister's female companion left, the whole family began to talk. "no! Can't grow up! " Sister said. I asked my mother, "What do you think?" Mother said, "I didn't see it clearly." "I think he is a second-degree disability." The younger brother said. "Nonsense! I saw it, no problem! " Mom said. My sister said: "The second-degree disability I said is that I am less than one meter eight!" " ""that's right! In our family, people are either 1.8 meters or second-class disabled. "The younger brother said." Dad is disabled in the second degree, only 1.7 meters, "I said.
This passage only "records" what the characters say, but does not write the tone of the speaker and the expression, expression and action of the speaker when he speaks. If we can pay attention to these, we can enhance the sense of existence and three-dimensional sense, and we will be immersed in them when reading, such as meeting people and listening to their voices. If you want to show your sister's arbitrariness, you can let your sister "speak freely"; "I" seems to disagree with my sister's point of view. I am a steady and cautious person. I can add such parenthesis as "I stared at her and turned to ask my mother"; In order to highlight my brother's pride and arrogance, I might as well let him "proudly shake his 1.8 meter long body" to speak.
People live, so do the characters in the article. As long as we carefully observe and show the actual situation in life in detail, the characters in your pen will be full and bright.
Environmental description
Environment is the "soil" of a character's life and the foundation of the formation and development of his character.
First, a series of descriptions unfold the plot of the story.
In the article, the repeated use of scenery description can not only make the plot more real and attractive, but also unfold the plot naturally. Scenery description appeared three times in an essay entitled "Concern". The beginning is described like this:
"The drizzle is like a continuous line, and my troubles are like this continuous rain, which has no end."
The middle went on to say:
"Looking around, bamboo forests are more beautiful in the rain, and clusters of green leaves are greener and brighter after being washed by rain."
At the end, the author wrote about the scenery:
"I just stood in the rain and watched my father and daughter disappear in the fog. Suddenly there was a heat flow in my heart. " "The rain is still falling, but the rain has become my mother's hand, stroking me and running."
The same rain, but with three different emotional words, the plot is natural. The article written in this way is clear-cut and full of emotion.
Second, the scene description reveals the emotions of the characters.
Infiltrating the inner "emotion" into the external things naturally is the "emotion is contained in the inside and originated from the scenery" in writing. Only when there is emotion in the scenery and there is scenery in the scenery can the scenery and water be integrated into one. The so-called "sadness is sorrow, joy is joy" is the truth. Lu Xun's novel "Hometown" begins with a gloomy and cold winter atmosphere, and the desolate and lifeless rural scenery appropriately sets off his sad mood. Sun Li's article "Lotus Lake" begins with a poetic description of the night, only to reveal the quiet and happy mood of aquatic sister-in-law. Due to the proper use of scenery description, there are elegant tastes of "picking chrysanthemums under the east fence and seeing Nanshan leisurely", and there are also sorrows of "where the petals have shed tears and where the lonely birds sing their sorrows". A student in the story on the grass has such a description, the author does not directly write the inner yearning, but only says:
"After a rain, the grass is greener, and the green grass suddenly looks like a large piece of the eldest son, turning this piece of grass into a thick carpet. I think it's not grass that breeds, but thoughts that can't stop. "
This kind of sentence is implicit and affectionate, which is different from the general description of scenery.
Third, the comparative description sets off a profound theme.
Environmental description can also reflect the different feelings of characters in different times and situations through scenery. Du Fu's "The stinking road of Zhumen wine freezes people to death" has always been told by people, because there is a strong and sharp contrast between the two. In the article "The Trouble of Grade Three", the author and "Feng" first met on a sunny spring day, and wrote:
"For the sun, this is a particularly good spring. Soft breeze, warm sunshine, and the new green blooming on the branches all make people feel a kind of vitality. The vast field is like a light green carpet, which is endless. "
Later, due to various reasons, the author had to be different from Maple Leaf. At this time, the author used a scenery description, but it was not the beauty of spring, but the depression and loneliness of autumn. Through different scenes in the Spring and Autumn Period, the article vividly describes the great changes of the characters' mood and profoundly reveals the theme of the article.
Fourthly, the description of dreams reflects the expectation of characters.
In the article, you can also use the writing method of "virtual to real", that is, setting off the real society with illusory scenery and reflecting the inner feelings or expectations of the characters. For example, in Yang Shuo's article Haicheng, he first spent a lot of pen and ink on the illusory mirage, trying to write its charm. Then write down the real Haicheng you saw when you were looking for it? The thriving Changshan Islands. At this time, the author lamented, "The Changshan Islands we saw are even better than a mirage." The more beautiful and magical the illusory mirage is, the more vibrant the city will be in the process of socialist construction.
Yang Wanli, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, wrote such a poem: "Spring flowers, autumn, winter, snow and ice, don't listen to Chen Yan, just listen to the sky (the meaning of nature)." Indeed, environmental description can't write scenery for the sake of scenery, let alone "the scenery is not enough". We should learn to let the scenery speak, so as to "add icing on the cake" to our articles.