Chapter 77 on fiction

Regarding the writing of novels, people often hear people ask whether it is better to describe a true story or a completely fictional one? There seems to be an extreme between the two, but if you are obsessed with either end, it is not good; if you fuse the two together and inject some unique thought blood, it will be a living creation.Because if only based on fantasy fiction, if it is completely divorced from the possibility of reality, it will not be able to make readers feel; and if it sticks to describing only true stories, it will be difficult to express a complete ideological system of the author.Therefore, the two must not be isolated.

The French novelist Maupassant, who enjoys the reputation of the king of short stories, said in his article "On the Novel": Literary art deals with some ingenious and pretentious changes, with certain structural techniques, to show an important event, and for the rest of the events , according to their importance, give corresponding reliefs to them, so as to produce the special, real and profound feeling that the author wants to point out.Therefore, realism seems to follow the usual logic of facts, giving people a real but complete illusion, instead of copying it down rigidly according to the endless chaos of facts.

Therefore, the great disciple of Flaubert concluded that a talented realist should also be a spiritual visionary. Maupassant believes that novel descriptions that are completely obsessed with facts are naive (meaning that there is no creative thinking).He said that since each of us has our reality in our thoughts and in our senses, our eyes, our ears, our sense of smell and our various tastes should be able to create and create and share all people in the world. Common sense of reality. Some writers are not used to using omniscient point of view to focus on the appearance and character of a character in a paragraph of text (although some readers are used to accepting such a description), but hide and spread and naturally reveal in the whole novel. The reader's final impression is complete.So does Maupassant, who, with regard to characters, believes that psychology should be hidden in books, just as its reality is hidden in life through facts.Therefore, he said that a calm and objective writer is not good at explaining a character's mental state, but is looking for the behaviors and postures that will inevitably make this mental state complete under certain circumstances, so as to make him feel better. In a book there is a certain discipline throughout, so that all its deeds and all its movements are his nature, his thought, and his will.Everything that hides this is the skeleton of the work, just like the invisible bones in the human body, and just like the artist does not paint the bones in the human body.

Regarding the style of writing, Maupassant does not advocate sticking to one style, but he has very strict requirements for the use of words. Even if you go around the room three times, you must find the most appropriate word.Whatever it is that one wants to say, he says, only one word can express it; one verb can animate it; or one adjective can qualify its character.Therefore, we must seek until we find the word, the verb, or the adjective, never resting on the laurels, nor resorting to sham phrases, even clever shams, to avoid difficulty. no. Therefore, he quotes the lines of the seventeenth-century French poet and critic Poyallot:

A well-used word can teach people strength.