Literary Master 1978.

Chapter 96 "The Wreath at the Foot of the Mountain" published

It was another Wednesday, and Lin Chaoyang went to the Chinese Department to attend Lin Geng’s class.

After class, Lin Chaoyang asked, "I haven't seen Lao Ye in class these two times."

Old Ye is Ye Junyuan, the big brother of the Chinese Department class of 77.

Chen Jiangong replied: "I defected from the school and was admitted as a graduate student at Renmin University."

"Can I take the postgraduate entrance exam as a freshman?"

Lin Chaoyang's question was not answered, so Chen Jiangong dragged him to Building 32 and asked Lin Chaoyang to help him look at the newly written script.

"How would I know anything about scripts? I still have to go to work!"

"A jack of all trades, you are a great writer now."

Chen Jiangong dragged Lin Chaoyang to the dormitory and took out the script he had just written in its first draft - "Conscience".

Lin Chaoyang didn't know much about drama creation and wanted to be modest, but Chen Jiangong said, "They are all storytelling, they are not much different, just give your opinions."

Of course, Chen Jiangong's words cannot be taken seriously. From the perspective of readers and viewers, there is really not much difference between novels and scripts. It's nothing more than a change in form.

But if you look closely, there are huge differences between the two, whether in the purpose of creation, expression method, structural characteristics or reading/viewing experience.

For example, novels usually use detailed written narratives, which include a lot of inner monologues, environmental descriptions, and various rhetorical and narrative techniques.

But a script is different. It mainly relies on dialogues and stage cues to advance the plot. The language must be refined and concise, and be able to be presented to the audience in the most intuitive way.

The structural requirements of a novel are also relatively free, and the author can flexibly arrange chapters, perspectives, and chronological order according to his own ideas.

The script must have a compact structure, a strong sense of rhythm, and focus on the design of scene transitions and dramatic conflicts. It is usually divided into acts or scenes, and each scene revolves around a specific conflict or time.

It is easy for most people to get into novels, but reading scripts requires a certain amount of patience. Many people’s first feeling after reading a script is “dry”.

It briefly explains the time, place, and environment, and then describes the characters' dialogues, expressions, and body movements. All it shows readers is the objectively existing material world.

The era style displayed in the script, the emotions given to the characters and the ups and downs of the plot are all completed by the feelings of readers and audiences.

"Conscience" is a one-act play about the two daughters of a provincial director of a police department. One day, they took a blind old man they met on the street home. The blind old man's daughter died unjustly 20 years ago, and the old man cried so hard that he went blind.

Now the buzzing has passed, the old man came to the provincial capital to seek justice for his daughter, and Director XF was the blind old man's son-in-law. It was he who "sacrificed his own relatives for the sake of justice" and exposed his wife. The two daughters were also the old man's granddaughters.

In the play, only Director XF understood the relationship between the few people, but in the end he had the heart to burn the old man's SF letter.

Lin Chaoyang has never written a script, but he has seen many scripts and drama performances.

The story of "Conscience" has typical features of scar literature. It may seem a bit tacky forty years later, but it is still very fresh now, especially in the handling of the final ending, which is quite clever.

"Well written."

"Really good?" Chen Jiangong asked somewhat unconfidently.

"I'm a layman, what do you expect me to say? Just based on my personal feeling, it's pretty good."

Chen Jiangong felt a little regretful, "Your level is not good enough. You can't even see the problem."

Lin Chaoyang looked at him fiercely and asked, "Did I ask you to look at the script with me?"

"Just kidding, just kidding!" Chen Jiangong apologized with a laugh and asked, "Just tell me, just say whatever you want."

Lin Chaoyang flipped through the script again, weighing every word for a long time.

“I think this line can be changed.”

"Change it to what?"

The place Lin Chaoyang was referring to was the scene in the play where Director XF said to the blind old man, "Don't be unreasonable."

He said, "Follow up with two more sentences."

"With what?"

"Director XF: Don't be unreasonable.

Blind old man: Chief, I am right!

Director XF: Even if you have a reason, you can’t make trouble! "

Chen Jiangong frowned, "Is this an emphasis? That's right."

"Have you read the People's Daily these past two days?" Lin Chaoyang asked.

Chen Jiangong shook his head and said, "I haven't seen it." "You are still a college student?"

Lin Chaoyang took the opportunity to mock Chen Jiangong and urged him, "Let's talk business."

"There's an article in the newspaper that talks about the SF masses, and there's a sentence in it."

Chen Jiangong's eyes lit up, "Is that it?"

"Ah."

Chen Jiangong immediately crossed out his original line and added two more lines according to Lin Chaoyang's instructions. The more he watched, the more ironic and spicy it became.

Finally, he couldn't help but give Lin Chaoyang a thumbs up, "What a talent!"

With these two lines, Chen Jiangong became even more certain of Lin Chaoyang's talent in writing. He held Lin Chaoyang tightly and refused to let him go, insisting on polishing the script.

"I have to go to work. I'll do it at home in the evening."

Lin Chaoyang finally found an excuse to escape from Building 32. When he got off work, he saw Chen Jiangong waiting at the entrance of the library.

"Why are you like a dog-skin plaster?"

Chen Jiangong was not angry at his mockery, and said with a drooling smile: "Isn't it for art?"

If a cultured person has no shame, no one can stop him.

Lin Chaoyang brought Chen Jiangong home. When Tao Yushu heard that Chen Jiangong was going to tinker with a play, he immediately became interested and urged Lin Chaoyang to help revise the script.

Loving to make trouble is probably the biggest commonality between Tao Yushu and Chen Jiangong.

With Tao Yushu's supervision, Lin Chaoyang had no choice but to accompany Chen Jiangong to work on the script. After three consecutive nights, he finally finished the script, and Chen Jiangong let him go.

"Yushu, thank you so much, you must come to the premiere!"

"no problem."

Chen Jiangong and Tao Yushu said goodbye happily, completely ignoring the cattle and horses beside them.

I have been busy for several days, but no one said "thank you" to me. Say thank you?
Lin Chaoyang sighed deeply. Why were the people around him so fond of making trouble?

In a blink of an eye, the eighth issue of "People's Literature" has been published for more than a week. As a literary magazine of the highest level in the Chinese literary world, "People's Literature" has unquestionable appeal among readers, with sales of almost every issue reaching 400,000 to 500,000 copies.

In the first three or four days after the publication of this issue of People's Literature, the sales of the magazine remained at the same level as previous issues, but the situation began to change suddenly on the fifth day.

Readers flocked to the magazines, and sales of magazines in many bookstores and newsstands increased by two or three times the usual amount every day. The inventory that should have lasted for a month was sold out in just one week.

Those who work in the book industry are very clear about this situation. It must be that there are good works in this issue of People's Literature.

The bookstore staff didn't even need to flip through the magazine to know why this issue was so popular.

As the main work of this issue of "People's Literature", the title of "The Wreath under the Mountain" was prominently printed on the cover of the magazine in the form of a headline.

The situation that "People's Literature" encountered in bookstores, newsstands and post offices across the country also occurred after the previous issue of "People's Literature" was released.

The July issue of People's Literature just published Jiang Zilong's "The Record of Director Qiao's Taking Office". As one of the pioneering works of reform literature, "The Record of Director Qiao's Taking Office" has been sought after by readers since the day it was published, making the sales of that issue of People's Literature take a beautiful upward curve.

The August issue of People's Literature suddenly became popular and seems to be even hotter than the previous issue.

As inventory was running out, Xinhua Bookstores across the country gave feedback to Renwen Press.

But at this time, Renwen Publishing House had no time to care about the bookstore's delivery request, because on the second day after this issue of "People's Literature" was published, they received a purchasing request from the army to purchase 50,000 copies of the eighth issue of "People's Literature" at one time.

Fifty thousand copies of the magazine is not a lot for the monthly sales of People's Literature, but because the army made the purchase request suddenly, Renwen Publishing House and the printing factory they cooperated with were caught off guard.

After hastily printing more magazines for the army to purchase, Renwen Publishing House finally found time to deal with the bookstore's delivery requests.

The disconnect between reprinting and delivery resulted in a direct result in the eighth issue of People's Literature being hard to come by in various places.

At this time, half a month has passed since this issue of "People's Literature" was released for sale, and the reputation of the novel "The Garland under the Mountain" has spread like a virus among the vast readership.

Since February of this year, the war between our country and our southern neighbor has always been the focus of public attention. Although the war nominally lasted only a month, in fact small-scale conflicts have continued to this day.

Regarding neighbors who repay kindness with enmity, ordinary people have a simple idea that they must be taught a severe lesson.

But at the same time, the Chinese people are also concerned about the hard fighting and heroic sacrifices of the soldiers on the front line.

At this time, the eighth issue of "People's Literature" containing "The Wreath under the Mountain" was published.

As the first novel set against the backdrop of this war, "The Garland under the Mountain" attracted a lot of attention from readers immediately after its publication.

(End of this chapter)