Chapter 145 can you write better

When "Children's Years" is mentioned, friends who engage in literature will inevitably think of children's literature; when thinking of children's literature, the first question that comes to us is of course how to make it easy for children to understand.In fact, not only authors of children's literature, but authors of general literature should pay attention to this problem;No matter what we write, we have to ask first: Can we write more understandably? Judging from the factual evidence, it is as difficult to write articles that are easy to understand as to write articles that are difficult to understand.For people with simple minds, I am afraid that the writing will be considered superficial to others, and they will work hard on the words and sentences, trying to make others seem difficult to understand, but the result is not difficult to understand, but unreasonable.Recently there have been so-called mystical poems that emerged in this way.

At the same time, there are many people shouting "popularization" or "popularization" there, and many publications advertise "popular reading" or at least "intermediate reading", but it turns out that it is not the case at all.This is not because those people and publications have no sincerity in doing so, but because they are powerless and unable to do so. For example, a literary youth asked the instructors to instruct him on some creative methods, and the instructors gave him a large set of "superstructure" or "economic institutions."Literary and art youths have memorized this set of terminology, knowing that it will not help their own creations much, but feel that criticism is very useful, so they first become critics.In fact, those who criticize and those who are being criticized are equally confused; when the former thinks that this set of terminology is repeated, it becomes easy to read; From now on, he will follow the steps step by step, and he will not dare to cross the threshold again, so he will never be reborn for the rest of his life.

Adapting to this tendency, there are "interpretation of new terms" that occupy a column in some magazines, and even special dictionaries for new terms.Most of these dictionaries take pride in the fact that the more new terms they collect, the fresher they are. This dictionary can be a special feature of the book.But what we mean is that the value of a dictionary lies entirely in the ease of interpretation of its individual words.One of the first conditions is that all the words used in the explanation must be understandable without looking up a dictionary, otherwise, no matter how many entries the dictionary contains, it cannot be regarded as a good dictionary.For example, when we buy a literary dictionary and turn to the word "literature", we see that it is defined as: "A kind of art on the lower foundation of society—the economy—as one of the superstructure of society." This is in reading After three years of sociology and economics, people would not find it difficult, but ordinary readers think that his dictionary was bought for nothing.But you will feel that you are lucky if you buy it for nothing. The bad thing is that the person is like the scholar in the past who read the "Four Books".

We feel that the urgently needed dictionary is not this kind, but a concise dictionary like the "Oxford English Dictionary" that explains popular common words with very shallow definitions.Because now among the people who are not considered illiterate, people who can't even distinguish common terms such as "invention" and "discovery" still account for the majority. You use words such as "architecture" and "institution" to compare with They explained that they did not dare to say that they did not understand. But this is not a question of dictionaries.We feel that whether this can be written more understandably is a question that all people engaged in writing have to ask themselves from time to time, and it is especially important for theorists and critics.

The reason is that no matter what academic department theories belong to, a set of technical terms will naturally be produced, so literary theories borrowing terms from art, sociology, philosophy, etc. are naturally no exception.However, for the sake of general understanding, it is by no means impossible to avoid or dilute this set of terms as much as possible. As for creation, there is no need to use terminology in the first place, so whether it is easy to understand or not does not depend entirely on it.According to the author's own experience, this is closely related to the content of the work.When you pick up your pen, you feel that you have a lot to say, you have a lot to say, and of course you wish that others could understand it easily.Otherwise, if you feel that you don't have much to say, you will feel like you are spinning, so you will inevitably be a little hesitant, and it will inevitably be difficult for people to understand.

But the relationship of style is also important.There is a famous saying of the style theorists in the past, saying that "style is people".You can't force him to speak fluently if he is born with a stutter;Therefore, the so-called "Shen Bo Aoyan" Gong Zizhen absolutely can't do "women and children can understand" like Bai Juyi.But this is not impossible to correct with habit.First of all, the author must get rid of selfishness first, and completely remove the motives such as ostentation and ostentation. He must always be considerate of the readers and have a spirit of service at all times.Secondly, you must have courage, because most people’s articles are difficult to understand because they are afraid that others will think they are superficial.As long as you believe that your own ideas are worth publishing, then try to be as shallow as possible.Finally, a rhetorical note.Usually, rhetoric is regarded as a study of how to decorate words and sentences. I have even heard people say that it is "a trick played by the petty bourgeoisie", which is actually wrong.Rhetoric clearly tells us to use more movable type and less dead type; movable type is the type used in daily life.Emerson said: "Life is our dictionary." Regarding grammar and syntax, rhetoric also clearly calls us to try our best to keep the naturalness of everyday language.Therefore, true rhetoric will never teach us to write difficult words, but teach us to write easy words.And anyone who knows that writing is difficult to understand must know a little rhetoric.

Judging from the current situation, it seems that everyone has intentions to make the writing easy to understand, but there are still not many easy-to-understand writing. It can be seen that although it is easy to say, it is not easy to do, so let's put this point now. It is meant to be mentioned emphatically, maybe it is not superfluous. We hope that every writer in the future will consider seeking easy-to-understand writing as one of his goals, and we also hope that every critic will take this as part of his evaluation criteria.