In the imperial city, a lot of ordinary people gathered on the streets, and just when everyone was at a loss, a person walked out of the crowd and came to a high platform in the distance.

"Folks, please listen to the old man! There are rebels outside the city! They are about to come in! We are waiting for them to sit back and wait for them to die! If we take up arms and fight them, there may be hope for survival! In that case, why don't we fight the rebels to the death! Take up your weapons! Fight the rebels to the death!" the old man said, picking up the crutch in his hand, raising it, and then shouted.

The people in the audience also picked up hoes and sticks and prepared to fight them. Then under the order of the old man, these people went towards the top of the city tower, and then the royal guards who were originally guarding on the side did not feel a burst of surprise, because they had not yet figured out what these people were going to do, but soon they smiled, only to see that these people just climbed on the top of the city tower, and they threw at the rebels downstairs, and the rebels did not realize that the people in the city had been put into battle, and when the stones galloped towards the rebels downstairs, it did not take long to dispel the momentum of the enemy army.

"What's going on, why did the soldiers in front stop the siege?" the butler asked the strategists beside him when he saw that the soldiers in front of him had stopped the siege.

"Your Excellency, you are above. Hearing Ouyang Feilong's inquiry, the strategist on the side pointed towards the city tower in the distance. Seeing the strategist like this, the butler looked at him with disdain, and thought to himself: What's the matter? Isn't it just the Royal Forest Army in the costumes of a few ordinary people, what's the big deal? But it didn't take long to realize what was going on.

"No, how can there be so many ordinary people on the city tower? Could it be that these people are the opposite?" Seeing the people on the city tower full of people's clothes, the housekeeper really realized the reason.

On the other hand, at this time, Li An, who was hiding in the city, was hiding from the search of Queen Mu, because Li An was dressed in white, so everyone was very good to identify this person, and it didn't take long to investigate, the Royal Forest Army and the people investigated Li An's whereabouts, so a group of people were ready to round him up, although Li An's martial arts were extraordinary, but it was difficult for his fists to reach four hands, so Li An was still very scared in his heart.

Li An knew that he had seen his appearance for everyone, and he must not appear in front of people like this, so he was ready to repair it a little, only to see Li An holding a broken tile to cut off all his beard, and then took off his clothes again, and suffered from a beggar's outfit, and smeared some ash on the corner of his face, and after the matter was successful, Li An blended into a group of beggars in the alley.

At this time, the official in charge of searching this place walked towards this small alley, and Li An, who was originally calm, didn't know why at this time, his mood suddenly became heavy.

The difference in his eyes came towards him, Ang Li didn't feel shocked in his heart, it was broken, could it be that his disguise was not successful and was discovered?

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To the author.

The novel depicts the four taboos

Remember Ellemo. Renard's golden words: "I always try to get rid of what the reader will skip over. —Barnaby. Conrad

"Why don't you throw them away?" said one famous writer to me, "tear them up, get rid of them," and he was commenting on the first 72 pages of a novel I had spent a whole year writing, and I wrote with great interest the 72 pages that I revised over and over again. I was dumbfounded. What am I doing wrong?

I was 24 years old in St. California. Barbara visits her parents, and I learned about Sinclair from the newspaper. Lewis was also in the same city at the time. I've always wanted to meet the first American Nobel laureate, Babbitt and Main Street. "Arrowsmith", "Elmer". Author of a series of works such as Gartley. So I mustered up the courage to write him a note telling him that I wanted to be a writer and that I wanted to meet him. To my surprise, the next day he invited me to afternoon tea.

Towards the end of the meeting, he asked for a novel. I went home and picked up the first 75 pages of the hopeful novel, and I was very proud of this beginning, which is a wonderful description of the novel's protagonist's imminent foray into the Azores. So when the next day the great writer asked me to remove the first 72 pages, I was undoubtedly in a huge blow.

"But...... But ......," I argued, "I have to do the background and atmosphere, don't I?"

"Rendering 72 pages?" he retorted, "If I wanted to know about the Azores, I would consult the Geography of Nations, not a novel." ”

He then adds this helpful advice to any author: "People read novels for feelings, not for knowledge." It's good if they gain some knowledge while being infected by feelings, but feelings always come first. Mere descriptive writing cannot make a novel great. Your narrative comes to an abrupt halt when the ship in your work comes to shore on a picturesque island, but there is no shortage of wonderful things in the last three pages, conflicting emotional characters, and I read more. ”

As a result, because he liked the following chapters, he hired me to be his writing secretary. I traveled with him to Williamstown, Massachusetts, where I spent an unforgettable and rewarding 6 months.

There, I learned the first taboo of the four taboos: no matter how beautiful the writing is, don't let the description bring your narrative to a halt.

The writer of the novel must keep this in mind: don't overdescribe anything, whether it's the Teton Mountains, the sunset, or the zebras on Waikiki Beach. Otherwise, the strength of your narrative will suffer, and you will leave a dangerous gap in the reader's attention.

Remember Ellemo. Renard's golden words: "I always try to get rid of what the reader will skip over. ”

Readers do want to skip what doesn't work.

What is invalid content?

"Anything that deviates from the main story line can be called invalid. ”

Any explanations, explanations, and descriptions that are not related to your narrative are invalid. They are like a dam blocking the development of the storyline.

That doesn't mean you can't tell the story of a doctor, a lawyer, or a whaler without revealing all sorts of facts about the profession. But you should do this subtly and unobtrusively, and you should intertwine this common sense well with the protagonist's action conflicts and the backbone of the narrative. Through the infiltration of knowledge, we can effortlessly get from Scotto. Douro learned the law from Tom. Clancy there learned about submarines, from Michael. Crockyton knows Japan there.

It should make your descriptions vivid and rich and serve the various actions of the protagonist. You can describe the sunset behind the purple mountains, the old cow drinking water by the river, but why not through the eyes of the protagonist of the novel?

This brings us to the second taboo: don't waste too much time describing unimportant circumstances.

I once received a manuscript of a short story with such a description that might be telling.

Colly looks out the window of the train and the train is carrying her through the countryside to San Francisco, where she will have her wedding. The train stopped in the town of Bigriver (sign read: population 251) in Aiwa, and her rows of lifeless houses were all the same, even the big yellow dog sleeping in front of it.

Earlier, Bigriver was a thriving mining town, but now it is in decline and no longer has the life it once was. She was a man on crutches selling newspapers on the platform. The town is made up of Matthew. Krum (1850-1899) was founded in 1892, and one of the things it can be most proud of is Teddy in 1912. Roosevelt had been here all day, "wonderful," he said. The train whistled twice, and Colly said goodbye to the small town of Bigriver, never to be seen again.

Such words in a long novel are a waste of space, let alone a short story. The only reason why this description of the town has survived is that Colly has more or less connected it to her past or future. Try to compare:

Even though Corrie had never seen them, she knew the town well, and like all other towns, Colly hated them. She came from a town that was very similar to Bigriver, but by a different name, in West Virginia. Now, thankfully, she will go to a city, a bustling metropolis where her beauty and musical talent will be appreciated. She couldn't wait for the train to leave the ugly town.

or the opposite reaction:

Colly immediately fell in love with the town, whose tree-lined dirt roads, whitewashed chapels and sleeping dogs defended the tranquil atmosphere. Perhaps after getting married, she will be able to convince Ed to leave crowded San Francisco and settle in a small town that resembles Bigriver, where she plans to have three children, which will be a good place to raise them.

In both cases, the depiction of the town is well-founded, and we can learn a little about the protagonist, including her hopes, her dreams, and her character. Therefore, a reasonable and effective depiction of the physical object should be the character's reaction to the surrounding environment. You can assign any emotion to the environment, such as "hate" in example 1 and "love" in example 2.

Novelist David. Rogie once declared, "A description in a good novel is more than just a description." The danger of most background depictions is that a flurry of beautiful declarative sentences and interruptions in the narrative push the reader into a lethargic situation. ”

Keep in mind Roggie's aphorism and type it on a slip of paper and stick it in front of your computer or typewriter: "A description in a good novel is more than just a description." ”

The third taboo in the description is: don't waste the reader's attention on an inconsequential matter.

This is the most common mistake beginners make. Here's a striking example from a secondary school student's assignment.

He slowly got up from his chair and walked to the door, he hesitated. He gripped the metal doorknob with his wrinkled, wet hands, which felt cold. He slowly twisted it to the left, and thumped open the brown oak door. Then, step by step, he stepped into the midday sun, old shoes creaking under his feet, and he climbed the stairs and started his 1959 Ford pickup truck into the city, killing his brother.

Obviously, the article focuses on unimportant behaviors.

This admonition can be expanded to include not focusing on the inconsequential nature of the story. Only on the characters who play a role in the story. For example, "a herald with a hideous face and a widowed mother from Yugoslavia," or "the saxophone-haired, gum-chewing hostess studying to become a court stenographer," can divert our attention from the couple at the dinner table, our protagonists.

The fourth taboo of description is: don't generalize, be specific.

"The sky is blue, birds are flying around, the mountains in the distance are blurred, and the green fields smell good. ”

We will immediately know that we are dealing with an amateur writer or, to put it nicely, a lazy writer. Why? Because this description is a generalized picture of a vague and unfocused scene. We could have described this scene in a different way:

The sky is the kind of sky that children draw, downright deep blue. The mountains stretch like the backs of dinosaurs, and herringbone geese hover overhead. The verdant fields exude the fragrance of new pastures.

If you have to write about static scenery or weather, get creative, like Virginia Wolfe's description of the heat in "The Waves":

The flames of the sun struck the mountains of the south, all the way into the bottomless riverbed, and the water under the high suspension bridge shrank suddenly, and the flames struck the walls of the orchard, so that every piece of masonry almost reached its melting point, purple and purple, so hot that it seemed to melt at the touch of a touch, and turned into a pile of hot debris.

No one has said better about the taboo generalization of writing than the great Russian writer Chehev. In one of his letters, he admonished a writer friend to avoid generalizations and generalizations: "I think that the true description of nature should be rather brief and relevant to the subject. Cliché depictions such as 'the sunset bathed in the waves of the black sea, the purple golden light pouring down' and so on. When depicting nature, it is necessary to grasp the details and to such a point that even with your eyes closed, you can still describe the scene. If you write, 'On the dam, the neck of a broken glass bottle reflects a bright star, the statue reflects a round black shadow, and a wolf slowly appears in view and begins to run,' you are describing the effect of a starry night to the extreme. ”

Obviously, the problem here is to be "specific in the details".

Recently, I read a novel in which the author begins like this: "The heroine is intently reading a book on the bus. ”

What kind of book is so attentive to reading? The author did not explain.

If she had read Anna Karenina, Playboy, Surviving with Cancer, Learning Law Without Leaving Home, Realm and Stream of Consciousness, How to Write a Romance Novel, or Gray's Anatomy, we would have been able to get a glimpse of her character, because each of these books reflects a very different character.

If it was a beautiful young lady reading a book about cancer, we would be interested. A little girl reading "Fields and Stream of Consciousness" will be equally interested, and an elderly woman reading "Playboy" will be curious. Undoubtedly, this will make us know more about the heroine than "she reads intently".

So when you sit down to write, remember that it's not "a drink" but "a martini", not "a dog" but "a poodle", not "a bouquet of flowers" but "a bouquet of roses", not "a skier" but "a budding young girl", not "a hat" but "a high-crowned corner hat", not "a cat" but "an Abyssinian cat"2 not "a gun" but "a new automatic pistol of 0.44 caliber", not " a painting" but a painting of "Manet's 'Olympia'".

Combining the description of the four taboos with the golden and jade words of Chehefu, we get a rule that all good authors should follow when describing: be specific!