Rebirth 2004: A lone figure in the literary world

Chapter 118 Tell me the truth, how was "The Great Doctor" written?

Soon, readers of "Youth" discovered that they could buy stickers with cartoon images of the author, which were different from those included with the magazine, at newsstands, stationery stores and bookstores.

Although Shanshan pasted the entire cover on the first day, she felt that Xuetao GG's cartoon image was a little small. Even if it was pasted in the center of the magazine cover, it was not conspicuous enough. She felt a little regretful.

However, the next day when she passed by the newsstand at the entrance of the community, she saw a stack of color-printed paper on the magazine shelf of the newsstand. The top one was Shuang Xuetao, but it was twice as large as the original version that came with the magazine.

It would be so cool to post this on the cover of "Youth"!
Shanshan timidly asked the boss, "How much is this one?"

The boss said, "2 yuan per ticket, 1 yuan for 3 tickets."

Shanshan breathed a sigh of relief. The price was not expensive, just the price of a bottle of Coke, so she paid for it without hesitation.

Similar scenes frequently appeared in all urban areas across the country where the subscription volume of Youth Magazine was relatively concentrated. Even many people did not buy Youth Magazine, but after seeing the good-looking cartoons designed by Xia Da, they could not help but pay for a few copies and took them home to paste on pencil cases and school bags - and also learned about the magazine by the way.

Zhang Chao’s idea is actually to combine the QQ Show that Penguin has already launched with the QQ Space decoration that has not yet been launched, and then use outstanding image design to trigger readers’ collecting habits.

The emotional value a youth literature magazine provides to readers is hierarchical.

"New Sprouts" and "Fireworks" mainly provide a kind of reading stimulation, beautiful wording and sentences and fresh stories that can immerse readers.

Xiao Si's "Island" provides a dream-making experience. The extreme plot, dazzling material arrangement, and extremely gorgeous language expression give readers a strong sense of immersion.

The latter is obviously better than the former in marketing, so in the original time and space, Xiao Si's magazines occupied more than 75% of the market share of youth literature journals.

Zhang Chao certainly couldn't outrun Xiao Si in this race, so he changed his approach, which was to fully interact with readers and enhance their sense of participation.

Whether it is creating comic characters for authors, letting readers design their own covers, or voting on works in each issue, his goal is to make "Youth" no longer just a simple content output, but a literary playground.

As for the content, Zhang Chao was not worried. He had read all the manuscripts and found them to be not as "serious" or "pure literature" as he had expected.

After all, these authors are only around twenty years old. No matter how "profound" their works will be in the future, their current works are still relatively shallow.

Zhang Chao's "The Great Doctor" is the most mature work in the entire magazine.

A large number of readers of Youth came for Zhang Chao’s new works, and The Great Doctor greatly satisfied their expectations for Zhang Chao’s “growth”.

At the same time, it also dispelled the doubts that Zhang Chao would lose himself after he stopped writing "youth literature".

"The Great Doctor" is set against the backdrop of a magnificent historical canvas, and uses a delicate and emotional style to outline the medical career paths of three young men.

Although the more than 2 words in the first issue are just the beginning, its tight rhythm and oppressive disaster atmosphere are enough to make people unable to stop reading.

In late April, the novel writing course in the Yanshi University Writers Class directly turned into Zhang Chao's sharing class on his experience with "The Great Doctor".

The teacher of this class is Liu Zhenyun, the author of One Sentence is Worth Ten Thousand Sentences. He said in class: "In the past, our works based on real historical themes often took two routes - one of which was to write about the struggles and struggles of small people in the torrent of history, and how to realize their own value in the course of history.

Another approach is to take a real historical figure as the protagonist, artistically recreate his image, enrich the details, and write about the key role he played in the historical process.

However, Zhang Chao's "The Great Doctor" took a third path - closely embedding fictional literary characters with historical events, and even fully interacting with real historical figures, allowing fictional characters to play a key role in the historical process.

This not only requires a solid historical foundation, the ability to fully and freely master and use historical materials, but also requires extremely strong creative and logical abilities to be able to move freely between fiction and non-fiction.

——How did you come up with the idea of ​​writing a novel like this? Tell us about it. "

The classmates all shouted, "Zhang Chao, you must tell the truth. If you resist, you will be punished severely!"

Zhang Chao was asked by Liu Zhenyun to go to the podium. He sorted out his thoughts before saying, "In fact, my writing style is inspired by two art forms. The first is martial arts novels.

Mr. Jin Yong's "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" uses the fictional hero Guo Jing to interact with real historical figures such as Temujin and Tolui, and he also becomes a key figure in Mongolia's destruction of the Khwarezmian Empire and the city of Xiangyang's resistance to the Mongolian army.

In his last novel, The Deer and the Cauldron, the protagonist Wei Xiaobao is more deeply involved in history. Another martial arts novelist, Huang Yi, has a modern special forces soldier who returns to the Qin Dynasty to help Qin Shihuang unify the country in his A Step into the Past. In his The Twin Dragons of the Tang Dynasty, the protagonist Kou Zhong competes with Li Shimin for supremacy.

These martial arts novelists are not afraid of writing like many of us writers, and I wonder why we can't do the same. Reverence for history and unbridled imagination can actually coexist. "

Zhang Chao's words caught other writers, including Liu Zhenyun, by surprise. They thought Zhang Chao would talk about classics such as "Water Margin" and "New Stories", but he turned out to be talking about martial arts novels. Someone immediately asked, "What about another art form?"

Zhang Chao smiled shyly and said, "There is another art form that people may not agree with, and that is video games. Especially the classic work "Uncharted Waters" produced by the Japanese game company Anchi in the 90s."

The students were shocked. Martial arts novels were still considered literature, but what on earth were games?

Someone immediately questioned: "Zhang Chao, are you kidding us?"

Zhang Chao became serious at this time and said seriously: "Of course not. We all know the 'eight great arts', right? Painting, sculpture, architecture, music, literature, dance, drama, and film. And video games are the ninth great art."

Liu Zhenyun stopped the agitated students and said, "Let Zhang Chao finish what he is saying."

Zhang Chao said: "These art forms can feed back on each other. For example, when we write novels today, when describing scenes and actions, language with a 'sense of camera' is indispensable, otherwise it will appear dull. But before the advent of film, almost no writers had a 'sense of camera'. Only masters like Balzac, when inspiration occasionally bursts out, some of their writing touches the edge of a 'sense of camera'.

This is how movies feed back novels. The same is true for games. "Uncharted Waters" is an adventure game set in the Age of Discovery. The history, geography, politics, commerce, military, religion, customs, etc. in the game all have strictly verified sources, and there is almost no fiction.

However, the protagonist, Leon Farrell, is a virtual character. However, players can control this virtual character and participate in various historical events, such as the Treaty of Tordesillas signed by Portugal and Spain, the Portuguese expedition to Ethiopia and the naval battle with the Turks, and the British king recruiting a privateering fleet.

Most of the "supporting characters" encountered by the protagonist in the game are also famous figures in history, such as the Italian mercenary general Andrew Doria, the Caribbean pirate Jack Lacombe, and the Ottoman admiral Billy Reiss.

It was during the process of playing games that I discovered the benefit of using virtual characters to participate in real history - freedom. If the protagonist is a real historical figure, then his life trajectory is fixed, and all we can do is tinker with it.

But fictional characters are different. As long as there is no contradiction in the logic of time and space, he can appear at any time and any place and participate in any historical event that I am interested in. I think this kind of novel is interesting to write. "

After Zhang Chao finished speaking, it was like dropping a bomb into the deep water. There was no sound at first, but after a while the water surface began to boil and surge, and even soared into the sky.

Students in Yanshida's "Writers Graduate Class" are generally in their 30s and 40s. How could they have played "Uncharted Waters"? Most of them still have the impression of video games like Contra and Street Fighter 2. They have no idea how far the game industry has developed.

If I made these remarks at Yanjing University, I guess more students would understand me.

How could playing games inspire literary creation and lead to such an excellent work as "The Great Doctor"? The students in the writer class could not sit still and asked Zhang Chao about all kinds of details.

Some students even asked Zhang Chao to help them install games on their computers.

The lecturer, Liu Zhenyun, finally managed to quiet everyone down and asked Zhang Chao another question: "Fiction and historical facts are contradictory after all. How do you strike a balance between the two?"

Zhang Chao thought for a while and said, "Historical events are often woven together by multiple light and dark clues. The light clues are driven by real historical figures, especially important figures. So I will let the characters in my works disappear into the dark clues of history and play a key role in the unknown places.

In this way, we can strike a balance between fiction and historical facts, avoiding too much fiction that would make the novel too entertaining, and also avoiding piling up historical facts that would make the novel too stagnant. "

Liu Zhenyun said: "Your speech today is very important. Summarize it and publish it. I have a hunch that with you paving the way and "The Great Doctor" being a good example, I believe this type of historical novel will be very popular in the future."

Zhang Chao nodded and said, "Actually, one of my colleagues is very good at writing this kind of novel. He has a book coming out soon. I'll send it to you first."

Liu Zhenyun said with great interest: "Okay, I'll give you my email address later."

Zhang Chao smiled and said, "If Teacher Liu thinks it's well written, why don't you write a preface for it..."

Liu Zhenyun: “…”

At this time, a classmate joked, "Do you think that in ten or twenty years, there will be a novelist who creates a fictional character who is born in our time and becomes a writer, making friends with everyone and talking about writing? That would be so much fun!"

"To be a writer, you need to have works. To write about a character like this, do you have to write a bunch of works for him?"

"Just copy! Copy the works that everyone else, including Teacher Liu and Teacher Yu, will write five or ten years from now. Are you still worried that you won't become a great writer?"

"That won't work. Plagiarism is shameful!"

"Oh, it's just fiction, why take it so seriously..."

(End of this chapter)