(5) (End)
——Some learned skills——
In the past few weeks, I have consciously read and studied some other people's novels. Here are a few tips I have learned.
1. Based on characters and the world, not events.
The characters, the relationship between the characters, the characters' demands and the specific power settings are the root of the contradiction. The intuitive manifestation of the character's psychology in a hypothetical situation is the source of drama.
The creation of characters is not just about shaping, but more importantly, it is organically linked with the plot.
Characters have their own goals and demands, and when there is collision and interaction between them (not necessarily a direct conflict), the story happens.
2. Pay attention to ductility.
The appearance of any character, the turning point of the story, and the emergence of a setting can all be followed up, allowing the story to develop organically.
Until this article is discontinued, the Wandering Mall line has not been developed, which is really a pity. Now that I think about it, part of the scenes involving the three shadow brothers of the Black Crow Plundering Army could have been cut off and transferred to the Wandering Mall. Try to get multiple parties to interact.
A more ideal situation is to design the characters/forces/contradictory points/explosive points that you will contact in the future in advance, and then extend it forward to the previous plot. For example, if a certain force is predetermined to be important in the future, the characters who appeared before may come from this force; if an important mystery is predetermined to be solved, the villain who appeared before will know part of the information about this mystery. Work backwards from the results and "throw out the thread" forward.
3. The importance of suspense
I used to think that only suspense and mystery stories need to focus on suspense. This is a mistake that I take for granted.
Suspense is important in all stories. Even if readers know the ending of a story from the beginning, for example, if the protagonist survives a crisis, "how" the protagonist survives can still create suspense.
(1) Diverse character goals——
In addition to the simple and one-sided success of "defeating the enemy", the "conditions for level victory" (the goals that the characters need to achieve) can also be diverse, and the characters may need to achieve multiple goals at the same time, the more the better. Typical goals are as follows -
·Obtain a secret from the enemy.
· Solve a specific mystery. Find the murderer/mastermind
·Resolve a big crisis. (It may include multiple steps such as discovering the source of the crisis, finding a solution, and implementing it)
·Obtain a key item.
·Get someone's recognition and favor/activate allies you can win over.
·Respond to opponents’ provocations without intensifying conflicts.
·Escape from a location.
(2) The external environment, resources and obstacles that can affect the achievement of the character's goals.
External environmental elements are not only physical scenes (terrain suitable for assassination), but also more abstract resources and obstacles. For example, a piece of intelligence (the leader will go to the suburbs at the beginning of every month), some restrictions that are highly bound to the world view (acting in the city will alert the police), a specific social environment, etc.
(3) Information asymmetry.
I have used a lot of information asymmetry between characters in the story (dramatic irony), so I won’t go into details.
(4) Set characters with different goals. (See below)
5. Add multiple characters instead of being limited to binary confrontation.
Half of the plots of "Lord" consist only of the binary confrontation between the protagonist and the enemy. There is no problem when similar plots appear for the first time, but as the length becomes longer and longer, the sense of sameness and boredom will become apparent.
Introducing characters outside of the antagonistic sides into the story can make the story more interesting. Here are some typical non-binary confrontation characters:
You can win over neutral characters as allies, people who need to be rescued and helped by the protagonist group, tradable people, another villain, one of your own from the enemy, mentors who can answer questions, and strong backup who will only provide limited help occasionally.
For example, in "Fights Break the Sphere", the protagonist goes deep into the desert snake tribe to seize the Qinglian Earth Core Fire. In the hundreds of thousands of words, the various forces involved include:
·Medusa Fang (owner of strange fire)
·The protagonist and Yao Lao (the goal is to obtain the strange fire)
·Furuga Fang (the goal is to obtain the strange fire, negotiate the deal first, if not, rob it by force)
· Yun Yun among Furukawa and his party (she is Furukawa’s ally, but she is also friends with the protagonist)
The relationship between the characters is not complicated. The dramatic tension is mainly reflected in two places——
One is the suspense brought about by the triangle relationship. The development of the character relationship between Medusa Fang and Furukawa Fang is directly related to whether the protagonist's goal can be achieved. If the two parties successfully reach a deal, then the protagonist will inevitably fail, and if the negotiation between the two parties breaks down, the protagonist will have the opportunity to take advantage of the situation.
The second is that Yun Yun belongs to Furukawa and his party, and has a conflict of interest with the protagonist. But privately, he is friends with the protagonist and will not kill him. This conflict between a character's apparent identity and his or her inner essence is a commonly used element in novels. The bandit in "Let the Bullets Fly" is the county magistrate, and the angel is the undercover agent of hell in "The Lord Is Undercover".
6. Discovery.
Discovery refers to the transformation from ignorance to knowledge, a character's new discovery of his or her identity or relationship with other characters, etc., which means the revelation of new information.
Regularly and continuously throwing out new information is an important source of story appeal.
In "The Lord Is an Undercover", the information that Xifer knows that "Blue Star will be destroyed in three years" is too light and confirms this too easily. This also makes the subsequent plot less attractive.
A better plot arrangement may be that after seeing the scene of the World-Destroying Heavenly Fire, Xiphiel was not completely sure what it meant. As the subsequent plot developed, he gradually determined what it represented. Then it immediately followed the puzzle of "Who destroyed Blue Star", and the process of solving the puzzle with new information was seamlessly connected.
7. Breaking point
The breaking point is the unexpected but reasonable plot. Usually it is the appearance of an important character, the unfolding of a story that will have a profound impact on the follow-up, or the revelation of a big mystery.
It is the most shocking part of the twists and turns in the story.
All the explosive points are rooted in the foreshadowing of the past plot. If the importance of a certain character is not exaggerated in advance, the character will not be shocking when he appears on the stage; if a character is not shaped in advance, the death of this character will not be possible. It will be calm; if there is no world view that can give people an initial impression, the appearance of the emperor and the world's best master will lack impact.
Frequent explosions for the sake of explosion will only lead to meaningless reversals. Only based on the world view and characters can we create explosion points when needed. The worldview here is not necessarily a complete world, it can also be the internal structure of a small organization, the sum of the relationships between characters in a school, etc.
·Explosive point splitting.
When the total number of characters and foreshadowing is limited, the number of explosive points a story can produce is also limited. Reasonably splitting a big explosive point and presenting it regularly and step by step can not only make the story continue to have explosive points, It can also make emotional transitions and outbursts more natural.
For example, in "One Piece", the breaking point of "Saab, the second-in-command of the Revolutionary Army, caused a big trouble in the Holy Land" was actually split into several parts by Oda. In order:
· Saab’s friends cried when they saw news reports of Saab in the Holy Land. "Saab, how could he..."
·The news reported that "Saab killed King Kobra (a kind king)", Sabo's friends did not believe that he did it.
·Saab called his people and said that he had seen the secret of the Holy Land and discovered that there was someone on the vacant throne at the top of the world. Just as Sabo was about to say something, the country he was in was denuclearized.
·Saab survived the nuclear explosion and described his experience in detail.
8. Multi-line parallelism.
The story advances multiple lines at the same time. When a certain line encounters a clear obstacle, the advancement is suspended. (stuck)
Then advance another line. The clues/resources obtained in another line may be returned to advance the previous line.
Multiple lines have common characters/places that serve as intersection points for multiple lines.
(End)(End of this chapter)