Starting from today, we will update 10,000 words every week - and some suggestions for novel writing.

I took a long breath in front of the computer. I finally felt a little more relaxed at the beginning of today. I plan to write novels for a long time in the future, so this text will serve as a starting declaration (although I feel that the word "manifesto" is not suitable for my age, but I can't find a better one).

There are many young people who are interested in this these days. In this article, I plan to share my true feelings with you. Firstly, I will encourage you, and secondly, I will talk about a few gossips about writing. Maybe you will find it useful.

When I was in high school, I was a book addict. I read everything, including prose, poetry, novels and biographies. What to write? I once seriously considered this problem with my adolescent mind: forget about poetry, I might be able to come up with some novel sentences, but to say that I can write a poem is really a compliment to me. Modern poetry seems to be just that, but when it comes to format and rhythm, everything is indispensable, which is annoying. It's not that I can't do prose. At that time, no matter what essay topic the teacher assigned, I always wrote it like Zhang Xiaofeng or Lin Qingxuan. But in the end I gave up. I had experienced too few stages in life, and no matter how hard I worked, the prose I wrote was just a joke. There is no need to think about biographies, reportage, etc. The audience is small, writing is laborious and thankless, and the key is that I don’t like it myself.

Then the only choice seems to be novels. So during my middle school days, I left behind a dozen beginnings of long novels of 30,000 to 20,000 words, and dozens of short stories that I thought were wonderful. Although this number is not much, it is in middle school after all. I wrote during self-study, in classes I didn’t want to listen to, and during free activities in physical education class, I wrote on a cold and heavy stone table. When I got home, I piled my notebook on top of the materials and wrote. As the words poured out of my pen one by one, I seemed to turn into a flying bird. It was a joy that was hard to describe but easy to understand.

Yes, writing makes me happy. This is the motivation and motivation for all my novels.

In my opinion, writing a novel requires preparation in three aspects.

First of all, let’s be clear: you have to know what kind of novel you want to write and what kind of novel you can write. If you want to write avant-garde novels that are innovative in structure, subject matter, and techniques, you have to look at the literary pioneers of the year: Joyce, Calvino, and Proust. If you want to write classics and masterpieces, you have to read big books by masters: Dickens and Tolstoy. If you want to write a short story about Hemingway, you can't avoid it. If you want to write about unrealistic Haruki Murakami, you can't avoid it. Even if you want to write a short story about fighting monsters on the Internet, you have to refer to the characters and world view of the great writer. To take a step back, no matter what book you read, you can accumulate ideas and materials for future creation (here I recommend Robert McKee's "Story", it is simply a masterpiece), and the basis of accumulation is the understanding of your own writing path. Be aware. Inspiration is not easy to reason with others, but the experience of reading thousands of books and traveling thousands of miles will be useful throughout your life. The more you see, the more good ideas you will naturally have.

Accurate positioning of one's own abilities and dreams is the greatest responsibility for life.

Of course, this is limited to people who take writing as a long-term hobby or career.

I have visited several writing platforms in the past. I wrote about chicken soup. There were a lot of emotions and few people who worked hard. Many people regard the writing platform as a new QQ space and a new Weibo. They post it as soon as they finish writing. They even post it without even looking at it a second time. They only care about how many people comment and how many people like it. I feel in my heart that editing on these platforms is not easy. If you have to do a lot of things to choose generals among the dwarves, you will inevitably get upset. You should at least be able to find the bright spots in the stuff you write. In my opinion, it is unreasonable to submit a manuscript after writing it without revising it. A singer who cannot harmonize is not a good singer, and a writer who does not revise his works cannot be considered a writer.

Also, writing a novel requires an incredible amount of information. It’s a shame for a novelist to not know everything about the world he writes about. If you have enough information, the world you build will be authentic and believable. Take the article I wrote "In a Place That's Not Greenland" as an example. When I saw the theme of 2027, I found myself thinking of the Arctic. I wanted to write about the Arctic in this article, and I must write about the Arctic - such a strong desire. But I know nothing about the Arctic, what should I do? I started to look up information. I looked up the physiological characteristics of snow algae, I looked up the distribution of polar bears, I looked up the appearance patterns of the aurora... In the end, this knowledge did not appear in the novel, but I knew that without this work I would not be able to write this. A novel.

Through extensive reading, persistent practice, and tireless revision, everyone can improve the lower limit of their concept of "what's good".

When Mo Yan received the Nobel Prize, his speech was called "I am a storyteller". This was because he was being too modest. A good novel must mean a good story, but a good story may not necessarily become a good novel.

The three elements of a novel: characters, plot, and environment. The story merely represents the plot. When judging a novelist, we often look at three aspects: language, narrative (structure), and story. Language is the face, story is the body, and narrative is the legs. If you do two of these three aspects well, people will definitely buy your novel. Take Feng Tang as an example. The characteristics of his novels are well known: beautiful language, neat narration, but poor story. But this does not prevent his novels from being good-looking and easy to sell. He is indispensable in modern Chinese literature, which also proves that novels are not very dependent on storytelling (actually, it would be better to give "In Search of Lost Time" as an example, but I didn't insist on reading it myself, so after thinking about it, I gave it up) . Therefore, to write a novel, we must pay more attention to its literary nature. The focus is not what kind of story it is, but how we express a story. Every Hollywood blockbuster always has a plot you can guess. Why do you still watch it? Do you still find it enjoyable? This is why.

That’s enough nonsense. I write this today mainly because I am happy, and I don’t plan to modify it (slapping myself in the face so soon...). I hope everyone likes it.

I didn’t know until I saw Zuizuidu’s answer on Zhihu in December last year. I tried writing something on it and it seems to be very useful. I was busy a while ago, so I posted two articles I wrote when I was seventeen, but no one read them. A week ago, I finally took a breather and wrote a short essay. I received encouragement from many friends, and I was very moved for a while. Finally, after finishing my busy work, I established this rule: update 10,000 words every week.

Of course I don’t have the ability to write an article every day, but if I write this today, I’m afraid I won’t regret it in the future, so I’ll just try my best. These 10,000 words mean at least two short stories every week. After I finish the structure of the long story, I have to work hard to update it every week. Thanks to the fact that I had no books to read before, I might occasionally write some book reviews. I am extremely lazy and have no perseverance. If I don’t force myself to follow such rules, I’m afraid I’ll just end up like before.

To be honest, I have as many stories as I have in my mind, but I rarely actually write them. One is that sometimes I am too busy, but I feel that I am not good enough. My writing habits may be very bad. I always worry about whether the inspiration and the novel itself can be highly unified, so that many good ideas slip away in vain. Thinking about it on the other hand, maybe I just have a high vision and a low hand, and what I actually wrote may not seem worth mentioning to an expert. But no matter what, I want to persist from now on, maybe I can open up a world I have never seen before. Friends, I need your supervision and encouragement. I am an ordinary writer. I just hope that the words written by me can make you like them a little bit and instantly.

Sincerely, thank you.