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觉得静和诚最重要《曾国藩：笨人十道》
曾氏一族的天资并不出色。曾国藩的父亲曾麟书一生考了十七次秀才，一直到四十三岁，才勉强过关。笨拙的人没有智力资本，因此比别人更虚心；笨拙的人从小接受挫折教育，因此抗击打能力特别强；笨拙的人不懂取巧，遇到问题只知硬钻过去，因此不留死角。正是这与众不同的“笨拙”，成就了曾国藩非同一般的精明和高明。
今天我们来看看“笨人”曾国藩的成功之道。
“勤"之道
曾国藩说“天下古今之庸人，皆以一“惰”字致败。”以勤治惰，以勤治庸，不管是修身自律，还是为人处世，一勤天下无难事。
笨人，普通人，最需要的就是下笨功夫，要勤不要懒惰。据说，曾国藩考秀才考了9次。曾国藩能够打通科举这条路，靠的完全是“笨劲”。父亲要求他，不读懂上一句，不读下一句。不读完这本书，不摸下一本书。不完成一天的学习任务，绝不睡觉。他不懂什么“技巧”，什么“捷径”，只知道一条路走到黑，不撞南墙不回头。这种“笨拙”的学习方式，在他身上培养起超乎常人的勤奋、吃苦、踏实精神。
虽然曾国藩考秀才考了九年，但是一旦开窍之后，后面的路就越来越顺。中了秀才的第二年，他就中了举人，又四年，又高中进士。而那些早早进了学的同学，后来却连举人也没出来一个。他总结自身经验，多次说这得益于自己基础打得好，所以“读书立志，须以困勉之功”。
"敬"之道
曾国藩在给儿子的遗训中说，主敬则身强。他说，庄重宁静则一天比一天强，安闲散纵则越来越懒惰。如果不论人多人少，事大事小，都以恭敬之心相待，不敢懈怠，那么身体的强健，还有什么令人怀疑的呢?
当无事时，敬以自持；而有事时，即敬之以应事物。一个人如果能做到“敬以存心”，身心都会湛然澄澈。就好像一位精明的主人，能够将自己家中管理整饬得井井有条。而心如果不敬，就像一个家没有了主人，各种混乱就会随着而来。敬就是谨慎的状态度、敬就是不懈怠的状态，人只有保持这种状态，才能不断进取，似有天助。
“静”之道
曾国藩每天都要静坐一会儿，许多为人处世、治学从政的体会和方法都从静中来。尤其在遇到重大问题时，他更是不轻易作出决定，总要通过几番静思、反复权衡之后，才拿出一个主意来。为让气氛更宁馨些，还往往点上一支香。每见到这种情况，家人有再大的事也不打扰他。
曾国藩说，凡遇事须安祥和缓以处之，若一慌忙，便恐有错。盖天下何事不从忙中错了。故从容安祥，为处事第一法。整天慌里慌张的人，难成大事，就是因为缺了“静”和“安详”的智慧。
曾国藩研究专家唐浩明曾经对此有精辟的论述。他说人到中年，见闻增多，阅历渐丰，人脉繁富，办事有方，这是好事。但同时人也变得思虑过重，欲望太多，精力分散，神志纷披，则又不是好事。如何让复杂变得简单，让纷披变得清澈，让分散变得集中？这需要静以修心，“静”是 去“躁”的 良方。
“诚”之道
曾国藩一生待人接物更是以诚为本，以拙为用。他一生要求自己“不说大话，不求虚名”，做事“情愿人占我的便益（宜）断不肯我占人的便益（宜）”。别人以巧似伪欺骗他，他却仍然以诚以拙相待。
曾国藩说到做到。左宗棠在“瑜亮情绪”的促使下，一生不服曾国藩，始则挖苦打击，终则以怨报德，曾国藩却终生未还一手。李鸿章作为他的弟子，也时常和他耍心眼、逞私心。曾国藩却因为爱李之才，始终不改对李鸿章的关心、爱护、包容、提携。李鸿章因此终生感激涕零，到晚年更开口不离“我老师”三个字。
因为这种质朴的为人处世方式，曾国藩一生朋友极多，麾下谋士如云，猛将如雨，指挥如意，得道多助，成就了“洪杨一役”的最终胜利。曾国藩的精神核心可用一个“诚”字予以概括，不投机取巧，不做苟且之事。
“谨”之道
所谓“谨”就是指谨慎，就是要时时提醒自己做人要低调、收敛，不要得意忘形、贪得无厌。曾国藩常常讲，人是不可能全的，不要去求全。他说人生最好的状态应该是“花未全开月未圆”。正因为他时时秉持这样的理念，在打下南京城、剿灭太平天国、手握三十万重兵、部下竭力劝说他面南背北时，他才能抵御诱惑、不为所动，从容写出“倚天照海花无数，流水高山心自知”这样境界高远的诗句。
“恒”之道
所谓“恒”指的是有恒心，生活有规律，饮食有节，起居有常。曾国藩给自己规定，必须做到自订的十二条功课，即：敬、静坐、早起、读书不贰、读史、谨言、养气、保身、日知所亡、月无忘所能、作字、夜不出门。他把自己制定的一系列必须遵循的规矩严格施行，一坚持就是一辈子。
涤旧生新
为了明确修身励志的理念，曾国藩把自己的号改为“涤生”。所谓“涤”就是涤去过去不好的东西，“生”就是重新获得新生。以“从前种种譬如昨日死，以后种种譬如今日生”的决绝心态昭示他告别过去、追求崭新境界的决心。
“从前种种，譬如昨日死；以后种种，譬如今日生。”这句话出自《了凡四训》这本书，意思是要我们于从前之恶习、恶业决裂，斩断与过去不好的自己的联系，从新开始，修身立业。《周易》、《大学》都强调“日新其德”，意思更近一层，要求我们每天都要斩断与过去恶习的联系，每天都要更新自己。
但问耕耘，莫问收获
我们每个人都有自己的一亩田，有心人却不懂耕种，只想着收获，这注定要落空。人生应该首先学会耕耘，才能考虑收获。
“但问耕耘，莫问收获”，曾国藩最先说过这句话。很多人都以为曾国藩只要耕耘，不要收获，其实不然。曾国藩的意思是你耕耘就好了，不要去担心收获。只要耕耘，自然有一天你就会有收成。期待丰收，那你精神压力很重，会徒增苦恼。
把握当下，守一不移，只要去努力了，将来就会有希望。担忧和等待，根本没有什么帮助，反而是障碍。你越在意它，可能它越不会来，你要做的只是现在不断地去准备，最后它就来了，所谓不期而至，不期然而来到。
一生之成败，皆关乎朋友之贤否
《周易》上说，方以类聚，物以群分。一个人结交什么样的朋友，很大程度上能反映这个人在道德、做人做事等方面的品味。在交友方面，曾国藩总结了八交九不交的原则。八交：
一要交胜己者。从其身上学习优点，互相切磋，提高自己，结交这样的朋友，对人生大有益处。
二要交德盛者。心态平和，总是称赞别人。
三要交趣味者。心胸开阔，生活态度积极，和这样的人常来常往，可增加无限人生乐趣。
四要交每事吃亏者。凡是每事宁愿自己吃亏，牺牲自己利益的人，必为君子。
五要交直言者。“直友难得”，能直言不讳者，往往存诚务实，患难时每每即是这样的人还在你身边。
六要交志趣远大者。有宏大抱负之人，必能成就一番事业。
七要“交惠在当厄”者。在别人困难的时侯，肯出援手，最为可交。
八要交体谅人者。能理解人、体谅人、体贴人，可称宜友。
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《Story》-- Robert McKee
P5 The world of eminent artist always strikes us as somewhat exotic or strange. Like an explorer parting forest leaves, we step wide-eyed into an untouched society, a cliche-free zone where the ordinary becomes extraordinary.
Once inside this alien world, we find ourselves. Deep within these characters and their conflicts we discover our own humanity. We go to the movies to enter a new, fascinating world, to inhabit vicariously another human being who at first seems so unlike us and yet at heart is like us, to live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality. We do not wish to escape life but to find life, to use our minds in fresh, experimental ways, to flex our emotions, to enjoy, to learn, to add depth to our days.
P5 We are often mislead into thinking that a screenplay is quicker and easier than a novel. But screenwriters learn that economy is key, that brevity takes time, that excellence means perseverance.(坚持不懈）
P7 Talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: they are moved by a desire to touch the audience.
Story is about respect, not disdain（轻蔑），for the audience, Writer has to keep ahead of the sharp perceptions of a focused audience. You must shape you story in a way that both expresses your vision and satisfies the audience’s desire.
P19 More often than not, the better the storytelling, the more vivid the images, the sharper the dialogue.But lack of progression, false motivation, redundant(千篇一律）characters, empty subtext, holes, and other such story problems are the root causes of a bland, boring text.
Of the total creative effort represented in a finished work, 75% or more of a writer’s labor goes into designing story. Who are these characters?What do they want?Why do they want it?How do they go about getting it?What stops them?What are the consequences?Finding the answers to these grand questions and shaping them into story is our overwhelming creative task.
Designing story tests the maturity and insight of the the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart. Story demands both vivid imagination and powerful analytic thought.
P24 Truth is located behind, beyond, inside, below the surface of things, holding reality together or tearing it apart, and cannot be directly observed, to just tell day-to -day facts, this writer sees only what is visible and factual,he is blind to the truth of life.
P25 Story is metaphor for life.
P34 Story value are the universal qualities of human experience that may shift from positive to negative, or negative to positive, for one moment to the next.
A Story event creates meaningful change in the life situation of a character that is expressed and experienced in terms of a value and achieved through conflict.
A scene is action through conflict in more or less continuous time and space that turns the value-charged condition of a character’s life on at least one value with a degree of perceptible significance. Ideally, every scene is a story event.
A beat is an exchange of behavior in action/reaction. Beat by Beat these changing behaviors shape the turning of a scene.
An act is a series of sequences that peaks in a climactic scene which causes a major reversal of values, more powerful in its impact than any previous sequence or scene.
Story climax: A story is a series of acts that build to a last act climax or story climax which brings about absolute and irreversible change.
To plot means to navigate through the dangerous terrain of story and when confronted by a dozen branching possibilities to choose the correct path. Plot is the writer’s choice of events and their design in time.
Classic design means a story built around an active protagonist(主角） who struggles against primarily external forces of antagonism（对手） to pursue his or her desire, through continuous time, within a consistent and causally connected fictional reality, to a closed ending of absolute irreversible change
P67 All cliche can be traced to one thing and one thing alone: The writer does not know the world of his story.
A story’s setting is four-dimensional: period, duration, location, level of conflict.
Level of conflict is the story’s position on the hierarchy of human struggles.
P70 A story must obey its own internal laws of probability. The event choices of the writer, therefore, are limited to the possibilities within the world he creates.
Consciously and unconsciously, the audience wants to know your “laws”, to learn how and why things happen in your specific world. You create these possibilities and limitations through your personal choice of setting and the way you work within it. Having invented these strictures, you’re bound to a contract you must keep. For once the audience grasps the laws of your reality, it feels violated if you break them and rejects you work as illogical and unconvincing.
The first step toward a well-told story is to create a small,knowable world.
You must possess a commanding knowledge of your setting in such depth and detail that no one could raise a question about your world--from the eating habits of your characters to the weather in September--that you couldn’t answer instantly.
P5 The world of eminent artist always strikes us as somewhat exotic or strange. Like an explorer parting forest leaves, we step wide-eyed into an untouched society, a cliche-free zone where the ordinary becomes extraordinary.
Once inside this alien world, we find ourselves. Deep within these characters and their conflicts we discover our own humanity. We go to the movies to enter a new, fascinating world, to inhabit vicariously another human being who at first seems so unlike us and yet at heart is like us, to live in a fictional reality that illuminates our daily reality. We do not wish to escape life but to find life, to use our minds in fresh, experimental ways, to flex our emotions, to enjoy, to learn, to add depth to our days.
P5 We are often mislead into thinking that a screenplay is quicker and easier than a novel. But screenwriters learn that economy is key, that brevity takes time, that excellence means perseverance.(坚持不懈）
P7 Talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: they are moved by a desire to touch the audience.
Story is about respect, not disdain（轻蔑），for the audience, Writer has to keep ahead of the sharp perceptions of a focused audience. You must shape you story in a way that both expresses your vision and satisfies the audience’s desire.
P19 More often than not, the better the storytelling, the more vivid the images, the sharper the dialogue.But lack of progression, false motivation, redundant(千篇一律）characters, empty subtext, holes, and other such story problems are the root causes of a bland, boring text.
Of the total creative effort represented in a finished work, 75% or more of a writer’s labor goes into designing story. Who are these characters?What do they want?Why do they want it?How do they go about getting it?What stops them?What are the consequences?Finding the answers to these grand questions and shaping them into story is our overwhelming creative task.
Designing story tests the maturity and insight of the the writer, his knowledge of society, nature, and the human heart. Story demands both vivid imagination and powerful analytic thought.
P24 Truth is located behind, beyond, inside, below the surface of things, holding reality together or tearing it apart, and cannot be directly observed, to just tell day-to -day facts, this writer sees only what is visible and factual,he is blind to the truth of life.
P25 Story is metaphor for life.
P34 Story value are the universal qualities of human experience that may shift from positive to negative, or negative to positive, for one moment to the next.
A Story event creates meaningful change in the life situation of a character that is expressed and experienced in terms of a value and achieved through conflict.
A scene is action through conflict in more or less continuous time and space that turns the value-charged condition of a character’s life on at least one value with a degree of perceptible significance. Ideally, every scene is a story event.
A beat is an exchange of behavior in action/reaction. Beat by Beat these changing behaviors shape the turning of a scene.
An act is a series of sequences that peaks in a climactic scene which causes a major reversal of values, more powerful in its impact than any previous sequence or scene.
Story climax: A story is a series of acts that build to a last act climax or story climax which brings about absolute and irreversible change.
To plot means to navigate through the dangerous terrain of story and when confronted by a dozen branching possibilities to choose the correct path. Plot is the writer’s choice of events and their design in time.
Classic design means a story built around an active protagonist(主角） who struggles against primarily external forces of antagonism（对手） to pursue his or her desire, through continuous time, within a consistent and causally connected fictional reality, to a closed ending of absolute irreversible change
P67 All cliche can be traced to one thing and one thing alone: The writer does not know the world of his story.
A story’s setting is four-dimensional: period, duration, location, level of conflict.
Level of conflict is the story’s position on the hierarchy of human struggles.
P70 A story must obey its own internal laws of probability. The event choices of the writer, therefore, are limited to the possibilities within the world he creates.
Consciously and unconsciously, the audience wants to know your “laws”, to learn how and why things happen in your specific world. You create these possibilities and limitations through your personal choice of setting and the way you work within it. Having invented these strictures, you’re bound to a contract you must keep. For once the audience grasps the laws of your reality, it feels violated if you break them and rejects you work as illogical and unconvincing.
The first step toward a well-told story is to create a small,knowable world.
You must possess a commanding knowledge of your setting in such depth and detail that no one could raise a question about your world--from the eating habits of your characters to the weather in September--that you couldn’t answer instantly.
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P89 Genre study is best done in this fashion:First, list all those works you feel are like yours, both successes and failures. (The study of failures is illuminating....and humbling.) Next, rent the films on video and purchase the screenplays if possible. Then study the film down into elements of setting, role, event, and value. Lastly, stack, so to speak, these analyses one atop the other and look down through them all asking: What do the stories in my genre always do? What are its conventions of time, place, character, and action?Until you discover answers, the audience will always be ahead of you.
P91 talent is like a muscle: without something to push against, it atrophies....he may find inspiration for the scene that will lift his story above the ordinary.
P95 The most important question we ask when writing a love story is :“What’s to stop them?” For where’s the story in a love story? Two people meet, fall in love, marry, raise a family, support each other till death do them part....What could be more boring than that?
P99 Writing is for long-distance runners. Ask: What is my favorite genre? Then write in the genre you love. For this is your kind of story, the kind of film you’d stand in line in the rain to see.Be honest in your choice of genre, for of all the reasons for wanting to write, the only one that nurtures us through time is love of the work itself.
P101
True Character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure--the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.
Is he loving or cruel? Generous or selfish? Strong or weak? Truthful or a liar?Courageous or cowardly?The only way to know the truth is to witness him make choice under pressure to take one action or another in the pursuit of his desire. As he chooses, he is。
Pressure is essential, Choices made when nothing is at risk mean little. If a character choose to tell the truth in a situation where telling a lie would gain him nothing, the choice is trivial, the moment expresses nothing. But if the same character insists on telling the truth when a lie would save his life, then we sense that honesty is at the core of his nature.
P103 What seems is not what is, People are not what they appear to be.
Taking the principle further: The revelation of deep character in contrast or contradiction to characterization is fundamental in major characters. Minor roles may or may not need hidden dimensions, but principals must be written in depth--they cannot be at heart what they seem to be at face.
Character arc
Taking the principle further yet: The finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes that inner nature, for better or worse, over the course of the telling.
P105
Force characters into more and more difficult dilemmas where they must make more and more difficult risk-taking choices and actions
P105 Character ARC
Taking the principle further yet: The finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes that inner nature, for better or worse, over the course of the telling.
1, the story lays out the protagonist’s characterization
2, led into the heart of the character.His true nature is revealed as he chooses to take one action over another
3, this deep nature is at odds with the outer countenance of the character, contrasting with it, if not contradicting it. We sense that he is not what he appears to be.
4, having exposed the character’s inner nature, the story puts greater and greater pressure on him to make more and more difficult choices.
5, by the climax of the story, these choices have profoundly changed the humanity of the character. Hamlet’s wars, known and unknown, come to an end. He reaches a peaceful maturity as his lively intelligence ripens into wisdom:“The rest is silence.”
Structure and character functions:
The function of structure is to provide progressively building pressures that force characters into more and more difficult dilemmas where they must make more and more difficult risk-taking choices and actions, gradually revealing their true natures, even down to the unconscious self.
P111 The source of all art is the human psyche’s primal(美学）, prelinguistic（最初的） need for the resolution of stress and discord through beauty and harmony, for the use of creativity to revive a life deadened by routine.
Story is,at heart, nonintellectural, it expresses idea directly through the senses and perceptions, intuition and emotion. We must never mistake criticism for art. Intellectual analysis, however heady, will not nourish the soul.
Aesthetic emotion (艺术情感）:sympathy, empathy, premonition, discernment....our innate sensitivity to the truth.)
P113 The problem is not to start writing, but to keep writing and renewing inspiration. We realy know where we’re going, writing is discovery.
Storytelling is the creative demonstration of truth. A story is the living proof of an idea, the conversion of idea to action. A story’s event structure is the means by which you first express, the prove your idea....without explanation.
Master storytellers never explain. They do the hard painfully creative thing--they dramatize. The principle is universal: the story’s meaning, whether comic or tragic, must be dramatized in an emotionally expressive story climax without the aid of explanatory dialogue.
Controlling Idea(一个清晰的idea）may be expressed in a single sentence describing how and why life undergoes change from one condition of existence at the beginning to another at the end.
P115 The more beautifully you shape your work around one clear idea, the more meanings audiences will discover in you film as they take your idea and follow its implications into every aspect of their lives. Conversely, the more ideas you try to pack into a story, the more they implode upon themselves, until the film collapses into a rubble of tangential notions, saying nothing.
A complex story may contain many forces for change.
P119 He fashioned his stories by playing idea against counter-idea.
Progressions build by moving dynamically between the positive and negative charges of the values at stake in the story.
P120 Didacticism（说教）
A note of caution: In creating the dimensions of your story’s “argument”, take great care to build the power of both sides.
Man love war.
P122 A great work is a living metaphor that says,“life is like this.” The classics, down through the ages, give us not solutions but lucidity, not answers but poetic candor; they make inescapably clear the problems all generations must solve to be human.
P125
The idealistic “ love triumphs when we sacrifice our needs for others”;
The pessimistic“Love destroys when self-interest rules”;
The Ironic “ Love is both pleasure and pain, a poignant anguish, a tender cruelty we pursue because without it life has no meaning.”
The compulsive pursuit of contemporary values--success, fortune, fame, sex, power--will destroy you, but if you see this truth in time and throw away your obsession, you can redeem yourself.
P127
《Out of Africa》is the story of a woman living the 1980s ethic of “I am what I own”. Karen’s first words are“I had a farm in Africa.” She drags her furniture from Denmark to her possessions that she calls the laborers “her people” until her lover points out that she doesn’t actually own these people. When her husband infects her with syphilis, she doesn’t divorce him because her identity is “wife”, defined by her possession of a husband. In time，however, she comes to realize you are not what you own; you are your values, talents, what you can do. When her lover is killed, she grieves but is not lost because she is not he. With a shrug, she lets husband, home, everything go, surrendering all she had, but gaining herself.
P131
Climax and extract from it your Controlling Idea. But before you take another step, ask yourself this question: Is this the truth? Do I believe in the meaning of my story? If the answer is no, toss it and start again. If yes, do everything possible to get your work into the world. For although an artist may, in his private life, lie to others, even to himself, when he creates he tells the truth; and in a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.
P137 A protagonist is a willful character.
A fine story is not necessarily the struggle of a gigantic will versus absolute forces of inevitability. Quality of will is as important as quantity. A protagonist’s willpower may be less than that of the biblical job, but powerful enough to sustain desire through conflict and ultimately take actions that create meaningful and irreversible change.
The true strength of protagonist’s will may hide behind a passive characterization.Consider Blanche DuBois, protagonist of 《A STREET NAMED DESIR》， At first glance she seems weak, drifting and will-less, only wanting, she says, to live in reality. Yet beneath her frail characterization, Blanche’s deep character owns a powerful will that drives her unconscious desire: What she really wants is to escape from reality. So Blanche does everything she can to buffer herself against the ugly world that engulfs her：She acts the grand dame, puts doilies on frayed furniture, lampshades on naked light bulbs, tries to make a Prince Charming out of a dullard. When more of this succeeds, she takes the final escape from reality---she goes insane.
On the other hand, while Blanche only seems passive, the truly passive protagonist is a regrettably common mistake. A story cannot be told about a protagonist who doesn’t want anything who cannot make decisions, whose actions effect no change at any level.
P139 The Protagonist must have at least a chance to attain his desire.
An audience has no patience for a protagonist who lacks all possibility of realizing his desire. The reason is simple: no one believes this of his own life. No one believes he doesn’t have even the smallest chance of fulfilling his wishes. But if we were to pull the camera back on life, the grand overview might lead us to conclude that, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” that most people waste their precious time and die with the feeling they’ve fallen short of their dreams.As honest as this painful insight may be, we cannot allow ourselves to believe it. Instead, we carry hope to the end.
P140
The protagonist has the will and capacity to pursue the object of his conscious and/or unconscious desire to end of the line, to the human limit established by setting and genre.
A story must build to final action beyond which the audience cannot imagine another.
The audience wants to be taken to the limit, to where all questions are answered, all emotion satisfied--the end of the line.
P91 talent is like a muscle: without something to push against, it atrophies....he may find inspiration for the scene that will lift his story above the ordinary.
P95 The most important question we ask when writing a love story is :“What’s to stop them?” For where’s the story in a love story? Two people meet, fall in love, marry, raise a family, support each other till death do them part....What could be more boring than that?
P99 Writing is for long-distance runners. Ask: What is my favorite genre? Then write in the genre you love. For this is your kind of story, the kind of film you’d stand in line in the rain to see.Be honest in your choice of genre, for of all the reasons for wanting to write, the only one that nurtures us through time is love of the work itself.
P101
True Character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure--the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature.
Is he loving or cruel? Generous or selfish? Strong or weak? Truthful or a liar?Courageous or cowardly?The only way to know the truth is to witness him make choice under pressure to take one action or another in the pursuit of his desire. As he chooses, he is。
Pressure is essential, Choices made when nothing is at risk mean little. If a character choose to tell the truth in a situation where telling a lie would gain him nothing, the choice is trivial, the moment expresses nothing. But if the same character insists on telling the truth when a lie would save his life, then we sense that honesty is at the core of his nature.
P103 What seems is not what is, People are not what they appear to be.
Taking the principle further: The revelation of deep character in contrast or contradiction to characterization is fundamental in major characters. Minor roles may or may not need hidden dimensions, but principals must be written in depth--they cannot be at heart what they seem to be at face.
Character arc
Taking the principle further yet: The finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes that inner nature, for better or worse, over the course of the telling.
P105
Force characters into more and more difficult dilemmas where they must make more and more difficult risk-taking choices and actions
P105 Character ARC
Taking the principle further yet: The finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes that inner nature, for better or worse, over the course of the telling.
1, the story lays out the protagonist’s characterization
2, led into the heart of the character.His true nature is revealed as he chooses to take one action over another
3, this deep nature is at odds with the outer countenance of the character, contrasting with it, if not contradicting it. We sense that he is not what he appears to be.
4, having exposed the character’s inner nature, the story puts greater and greater pressure on him to make more and more difficult choices.
5, by the climax of the story, these choices have profoundly changed the humanity of the character. Hamlet’s wars, known and unknown, come to an end. He reaches a peaceful maturity as his lively intelligence ripens into wisdom:“The rest is silence.”
Structure and character functions:
The function of structure is to provide progressively building pressures that force characters into more and more difficult dilemmas where they must make more and more difficult risk-taking choices and actions, gradually revealing their true natures, even down to the unconscious self.
P111 The source of all art is the human psyche’s primal(美学）, prelinguistic（最初的） need for the resolution of stress and discord through beauty and harmony, for the use of creativity to revive a life deadened by routine.
Story is,at heart, nonintellectural, it expresses idea directly through the senses and perceptions, intuition and emotion. We must never mistake criticism for art. Intellectual analysis, however heady, will not nourish the soul.
Aesthetic emotion (艺术情感）:sympathy, empathy, premonition, discernment....our innate sensitivity to the truth.)
P113 The problem is not to start writing, but to keep writing and renewing inspiration. We realy know where we’re going, writing is discovery.
Storytelling is the creative demonstration of truth. A story is the living proof of an idea, the conversion of idea to action. A story’s event structure is the means by which you first express, the prove your idea....without explanation.
Master storytellers never explain. They do the hard painfully creative thing--they dramatize. The principle is universal: the story’s meaning, whether comic or tragic, must be dramatized in an emotionally expressive story climax without the aid of explanatory dialogue.
Controlling Idea(一个清晰的idea）may be expressed in a single sentence describing how and why life undergoes change from one condition of existence at the beginning to another at the end.
P115 The more beautifully you shape your work around one clear idea, the more meanings audiences will discover in you film as they take your idea and follow its implications into every aspect of their lives. Conversely, the more ideas you try to pack into a story, the more they implode upon themselves, until the film collapses into a rubble of tangential notions, saying nothing.
A complex story may contain many forces for change.
P119 He fashioned his stories by playing idea against counter-idea.
Progressions build by moving dynamically between the positive and negative charges of the values at stake in the story.
P120 Didacticism（说教）
A note of caution: In creating the dimensions of your story’s “argument”, take great care to build the power of both sides.
Man love war.
P122 A great work is a living metaphor that says,“life is like this.” The classics, down through the ages, give us not solutions but lucidity, not answers but poetic candor; they make inescapably clear the problems all generations must solve to be human.
P125
The idealistic “ love triumphs when we sacrifice our needs for others”;
The pessimistic“Love destroys when self-interest rules”;
The Ironic “ Love is both pleasure and pain, a poignant anguish, a tender cruelty we pursue because without it life has no meaning.”
The compulsive pursuit of contemporary values--success, fortune, fame, sex, power--will destroy you, but if you see this truth in time and throw away your obsession, you can redeem yourself.
P127
《Out of Africa》is the story of a woman living the 1980s ethic of “I am what I own”. Karen’s first words are“I had a farm in Africa.” She drags her furniture from Denmark to her possessions that she calls the laborers “her people” until her lover points out that she doesn’t actually own these people. When her husband infects her with syphilis, she doesn’t divorce him because her identity is “wife”, defined by her possession of a husband. In time，however, she comes to realize you are not what you own; you are your values, talents, what you can do. When her lover is killed, she grieves but is not lost because she is not he. With a shrug, she lets husband, home, everything go, surrendering all she had, but gaining herself.
P131
Climax and extract from it your Controlling Idea. But before you take another step, ask yourself this question: Is this the truth? Do I believe in the meaning of my story? If the answer is no, toss it and start again. If yes, do everything possible to get your work into the world. For although an artist may, in his private life, lie to others, even to himself, when he creates he tells the truth; and in a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.
P137 A protagonist is a willful character.
A fine story is not necessarily the struggle of a gigantic will versus absolute forces of inevitability. Quality of will is as important as quantity. A protagonist’s willpower may be less than that of the biblical job, but powerful enough to sustain desire through conflict and ultimately take actions that create meaningful and irreversible change.
The true strength of protagonist’s will may hide behind a passive characterization.Consider Blanche DuBois, protagonist of 《A STREET NAMED DESIR》， At first glance she seems weak, drifting and will-less, only wanting, she says, to live in reality. Yet beneath her frail characterization, Blanche’s deep character owns a powerful will that drives her unconscious desire: What she really wants is to escape from reality. So Blanche does everything she can to buffer herself against the ugly world that engulfs her：She acts the grand dame, puts doilies on frayed furniture, lampshades on naked light bulbs, tries to make a Prince Charming out of a dullard. When more of this succeeds, she takes the final escape from reality---she goes insane.
On the other hand, while Blanche only seems passive, the truly passive protagonist is a regrettably common mistake. A story cannot be told about a protagonist who doesn’t want anything who cannot make decisions, whose actions effect no change at any level.
P139 The Protagonist must have at least a chance to attain his desire.
An audience has no patience for a protagonist who lacks all possibility of realizing his desire. The reason is simple: no one believes this of his own life. No one believes he doesn’t have even the smallest chance of fulfilling his wishes. But if we were to pull the camera back on life, the grand overview might lead us to conclude that, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” that most people waste their precious time and die with the feeling they’ve fallen short of their dreams.As honest as this painful insight may be, we cannot allow ourselves to believe it. Instead, we carry hope to the end.
P140
The protagonist has the will and capacity to pursue the object of his conscious and/or unconscious desire to end of the line, to the human limit established by setting and genre.
A story must build to final action beyond which the audience cannot imagine another.
The audience wants to be taken to the limit, to where all questions are answered, all emotion satisfied--the end of the line.
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P141
The Protagonist must be empathetic(代入感）；he may or may not be sympathetic.
Sympathetic means likable , Tom Hanks is likable, the moment they step onscreen, we like them. We’d want them as friends, family members, or lovers. Then have an innate likability and evoke sympathy.Empathy is more profound response.
Empathetic means “like me”. The unconscious logic of the audience runs like this:“This character is like me. Therefore, I want him to have whatever it is he wants, because if I were he in those circumstances, I’d want the same thing for myself.”Hollywood has many synonymic expressions for the connection:“somebody to get behind,”“someone to root for.” All describe the empathetic connection that the audience strikes between itself and the protagonist. An audience strikes between itself and the protagonist. An audience may, if so moved, empathize with every character in your story, but it must empathize with your protagonist. If not, the audience/story bond is broken.
Empathy is absolute, while sympathy is optional. The audience identifies with deep character, with innate qualities revealed through choice under pressure.
P144 Unexpected
In story, we concentrate on that moment, and only that moment, in which a character takes an action expecting a useful reaction from his world, but instead the effect of his action is to provoke forces of antagonism. The world of the character reacts differently than expected, more powerfully than expected, or both.
I picked up the phone, call Jack, and say:“sorry to bother you, but I can’t find Dolores’s phone number. Could you---” and he shouts :“Dolores? Dolores! How dare you ask me for her number?” and slams down the phone, Suddenly, life is interesting.
P178 Fine writing emphasizes Reactions(surprising reaction)
P181 A story is a design in five parts: The inciting incident, Progressive complications, crisis, climax, resolution.
Setting is defined in terms of period, duration, location and level of conflict.
P182 Whenever human beings gather to do anything, there’s always an uneven distribution of power.
Love relationships are political ,An old Gypsy expression goes “ He who confesses first loses.” The one be loved controls the relationship.
P186 Authenticity has nothing to do with so-called reality. A story set in a world tha could never exist could be absolutely authentic. Story arts do not distinguish between reity and the various nonrealities of fantasy, dream, and ideality. The creative intelligence of the writer merges all these into unique yet convincing fictional reality.
P188 Believability is the key to terror.
The inciting incident radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist’s life.
P196 For better or worse, an event throws a character’s life out of balance, arousing in him the conscious and/or unconscious desire for that which he feels will restore balance, launching him on a Quest for his object of desire against forces of antagonism(inner, personal, extra-personal),He may or may not achieve it. This is story in a nutshell.
P243 As audience, we experience an emotion when the telling takes us through a transition of values. First, we must empathize with the character. Second, we must know what the character wants and want the character to have it. Third, we must understand the values at stake in the character’s life. Within these conditions, a change in values moves our emotions.
P244 Story must create these dynamic alternations between positive and negative emotion in order to obey the law of diminishing returns.
The law of diminishing returns , true in life as well as in story is this : The more often we experience something, the less effect it has.
The law of diminishing returns is true of everything in life, except sex, which seems endlessly repeatable with effect.
P246 In film, feeling is known as mood, Mood is created in the film’s text: the quality of light and color, tempo of action and editing, casting, style of dialogue, production design, and musical score. The sum of all these textural qualities creates a particular mood. In general,mood, like setups, is a form of foreshadowing, a way of preparing or shaping the audience’s anticipations. Moment by moment, however, while the dynamic of the scene determines whether the emotion it causes is positive or negative, the mood makes this emotion specific.
P252
Subtext is the life under the surface--thoughts and feelings both known and unknown, hidden by behavior.
Nothing is what it seems, This principle calls for the screenwriter’s constant awareness of the duplicity of life, his recognition that everything exists on at least two levels, and that, therefore, he must write a simultaneous duality: First, he must create a verbal description of the sensory surface of life, sight and sound, activity and talk. Second, he must create the inner world of conscious and unconscious desire, action and reaction, impulse and id, genetic and experiential imperatives. As in reality, so in fiction: He must veil the truth with a living mask, the actual thoughts and feelings of characters behind their saying and doing.
As old Hollywood expression goes:”If he scene is about what the scene is about, you’re in deep shit.”
Actors are created with material form the subtext, not the text. An actor brings a character to life from the inside out, from unspoken, even unconscious thoughts and feelings out to a surface of behavior. If there is no inner life, no subtext, it is unactable because there’s nothing to act.
Something is happening because it’s in the unspoken thoughts and emotions of the actors. As we see through the surface, we’ll lean back with a knowing smile:“Look what happened.They are not just changing the tire on a car. He thinks she is hot and she knows it. Boy has met girl.”
P255 We never fully express the truth, for in fact, we rarely know it.
P257
The Technique of scene analysis
1. Define conflict
2. Note opening value: positive or negative
3. Break the scene into beats: the exchange of action and reaction is a beat. As long as it continues, Character A is “Groveling at her feet”But Character B is “Ignoring the plea,”it’s one beat, even if their exchange repeats a number of times, it’s still one and the same beat. A new beat doesn’t occur until behavior clearly changes.
4. Note closing value and compare with opening value
Compare this note to the one made in step two, if the two notation are the same, the activity between them is a nonevent. Nothing has changed,therefore nothing has happened.The scene is flat.
5. Survey beats and locate turning point
P266
These two people have a relationship. Each feels like the injured party, and each knows the sensitivity of the other so well that they hurt each other with ease.
P270 《Casablanca》Analyze 5
1.Approaching her/ignoring him
2.Protecting her/rejecting him
3.Apologizing/rejecting him
4.Excuse making/rejecting him
5.Getting his foot in the door/opening the door
6.Getting down on his knees/asking for more
7.Guilt-tripping her/guilt-tripping him
8.Saying Goodbye/Refusing to react
9.Calling her a coward/Calling him a fool
10.Sexually propositioning her/hiding her reaction
11.Calling her a slut/destroying his hope
P289 Pacing
On one hand, we desire serenity,harmony, peace, and relaxation,but too much of this day after day and we become bored to the point of ennui and need therapy.As a result, we also desire challenge, tension, danger, even fear. So the rhythm of life swings between these poles.
P291 It is just like sex. Masters of the bedroom arts pace their lovemaking. They begin by taking each other to a state of delicious tension short of--and we use the same word in both cases--climax, then tell a joke and shift positions before building each other to an even higher tension short of climax, then have a sandwich, watch TV. And gather energy to hen reach greater and greater intensity, making love in cycles of rising tension until they finally climax simultaneously and the earth moves and they see colors. The gracious storyteller makes love to us. He knows we are capable of a tremendous release。。。。If he paces us to it.
A typical two-hour feature plays forty to sixty scenes.
P296 Symbolic ascension
Like images in our dreams, it invades the unconscious mind and touches us deeply--as long as we’re unaware of its presence. If, in a heavy-handed way, we label images as “symbolic”, their effect is destroyed. But if they are slipped quietly, gradually, and unassumingly into the telling they move us profoundly.
P310 William Goldman argues that the key to all story endings is to give the audience what it wants, but not the way it expects.
People think happiness means never suffering, so they never feel anything deeply.
What the audience wants is emotional satisfaction.
The ending must be both inevitable and unexpected.
P317 we never do more than we have to, expend any energy we don’t have to, take any risks we don’t have to, change if we don’t have to.why should we?
P320 A story that progresses to the limit of human experience in depth and breadth of conflict must move through a pattern that includes the contrary, the contradictory,and the negation of the negation.(否定之否）
P323 Many parents hate their children, many children hate their parents, and they fight and scream and say it. In other fine films, although a parent bitterly resents and secretly hates his or her child, they pretend to love him, when the antagonist adds that lie, the story moves to negation of the negation.how can a child defend himself against that?
In Wall Street Gekko feels impoverished because no amount of money is enough。 A billionaire， he acts as if he were a starving thief, grasping for money at any illegal opportunity.
If a story doe not reach the negation of the negation, it may strike the audience as satisfying--but never brilliant, never sublime.
The Protagonist must be empathetic(代入感）；he may or may not be sympathetic.
Sympathetic means likable , Tom Hanks is likable, the moment they step onscreen, we like them. We’d want them as friends, family members, or lovers. Then have an innate likability and evoke sympathy.Empathy is more profound response.
Empathetic means “like me”. The unconscious logic of the audience runs like this:“This character is like me. Therefore, I want him to have whatever it is he wants, because if I were he in those circumstances, I’d want the same thing for myself.”Hollywood has many synonymic expressions for the connection:“somebody to get behind,”“someone to root for.” All describe the empathetic connection that the audience strikes between itself and the protagonist. An audience strikes between itself and the protagonist. An audience may, if so moved, empathize with every character in your story, but it must empathize with your protagonist. If not, the audience/story bond is broken.
Empathy is absolute, while sympathy is optional. The audience identifies with deep character, with innate qualities revealed through choice under pressure.
P144 Unexpected
In story, we concentrate on that moment, and only that moment, in which a character takes an action expecting a useful reaction from his world, but instead the effect of his action is to provoke forces of antagonism. The world of the character reacts differently than expected, more powerfully than expected, or both.
I picked up the phone, call Jack, and say:“sorry to bother you, but I can’t find Dolores’s phone number. Could you---” and he shouts :“Dolores? Dolores! How dare you ask me for her number?” and slams down the phone, Suddenly, life is interesting.
P178 Fine writing emphasizes Reactions(surprising reaction)
P181 A story is a design in five parts: The inciting incident, Progressive complications, crisis, climax, resolution.
Setting is defined in terms of period, duration, location and level of conflict.
P182 Whenever human beings gather to do anything, there’s always an uneven distribution of power.
Love relationships are political ,An old Gypsy expression goes “ He who confesses first loses.” The one be loved controls the relationship.
P186 Authenticity has nothing to do with so-called reality. A story set in a world tha could never exist could be absolutely authentic. Story arts do not distinguish between reity and the various nonrealities of fantasy, dream, and ideality. The creative intelligence of the writer merges all these into unique yet convincing fictional reality.
P188 Believability is the key to terror.
The inciting incident radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist’s life.
P196 For better or worse, an event throws a character’s life out of balance, arousing in him the conscious and/or unconscious desire for that which he feels will restore balance, launching him on a Quest for his object of desire against forces of antagonism(inner, personal, extra-personal),He may or may not achieve it. This is story in a nutshell.
P243 As audience, we experience an emotion when the telling takes us through a transition of values. First, we must empathize with the character. Second, we must know what the character wants and want the character to have it. Third, we must understand the values at stake in the character’s life. Within these conditions, a change in values moves our emotions.
P244 Story must create these dynamic alternations between positive and negative emotion in order to obey the law of diminishing returns.
The law of diminishing returns , true in life as well as in story is this : The more often we experience something, the less effect it has.
The law of diminishing returns is true of everything in life, except sex, which seems endlessly repeatable with effect.
P246 In film, feeling is known as mood, Mood is created in the film’s text: the quality of light and color, tempo of action and editing, casting, style of dialogue, production design, and musical score. The sum of all these textural qualities creates a particular mood. In general,mood, like setups, is a form of foreshadowing, a way of preparing or shaping the audience’s anticipations. Moment by moment, however, while the dynamic of the scene determines whether the emotion it causes is positive or negative, the mood makes this emotion specific.
P252
Subtext is the life under the surface--thoughts and feelings both known and unknown, hidden by behavior.
Nothing is what it seems, This principle calls for the screenwriter’s constant awareness of the duplicity of life, his recognition that everything exists on at least two levels, and that, therefore, he must write a simultaneous duality: First, he must create a verbal description of the sensory surface of life, sight and sound, activity and talk. Second, he must create the inner world of conscious and unconscious desire, action and reaction, impulse and id, genetic and experiential imperatives. As in reality, so in fiction: He must veil the truth with a living mask, the actual thoughts and feelings of characters behind their saying and doing.
As old Hollywood expression goes:”If he scene is about what the scene is about, you’re in deep shit.”
Actors are created with material form the subtext, not the text. An actor brings a character to life from the inside out, from unspoken, even unconscious thoughts and feelings out to a surface of behavior. If there is no inner life, no subtext, it is unactable because there’s nothing to act.
Something is happening because it’s in the unspoken thoughts and emotions of the actors. As we see through the surface, we’ll lean back with a knowing smile:“Look what happened.They are not just changing the tire on a car. He thinks she is hot and she knows it. Boy has met girl.”
P255 We never fully express the truth, for in fact, we rarely know it.
P257
The Technique of scene analysis
1. Define conflict
2. Note opening value: positive or negative
3. Break the scene into beats: the exchange of action and reaction is a beat. As long as it continues, Character A is “Groveling at her feet”But Character B is “Ignoring the plea,”it’s one beat, even if their exchange repeats a number of times, it’s still one and the same beat. A new beat doesn’t occur until behavior clearly changes.
4. Note closing value and compare with opening value
Compare this note to the one made in step two, if the two notation are the same, the activity between them is a nonevent. Nothing has changed,therefore nothing has happened.The scene is flat.
5. Survey beats and locate turning point
P266
These two people have a relationship. Each feels like the injured party, and each knows the sensitivity of the other so well that they hurt each other with ease.
P270 《Casablanca》Analyze 5
1.Approaching her/ignoring him
2.Protecting her/rejecting him
3.Apologizing/rejecting him
4.Excuse making/rejecting him
5.Getting his foot in the door/opening the door
6.Getting down on his knees/asking for more
7.Guilt-tripping her/guilt-tripping him
8.Saying Goodbye/Refusing to react
9.Calling her a coward/Calling him a fool
10.Sexually propositioning her/hiding her reaction
11.Calling her a slut/destroying his hope
P289 Pacing
On one hand, we desire serenity,harmony, peace, and relaxation,but too much of this day after day and we become bored to the point of ennui and need therapy.As a result, we also desire challenge, tension, danger, even fear. So the rhythm of life swings between these poles.
P291 It is just like sex. Masters of the bedroom arts pace their lovemaking. They begin by taking each other to a state of delicious tension short of--and we use the same word in both cases--climax, then tell a joke and shift positions before building each other to an even higher tension short of climax, then have a sandwich, watch TV. And gather energy to hen reach greater and greater intensity, making love in cycles of rising tension until they finally climax simultaneously and the earth moves and they see colors. The gracious storyteller makes love to us. He knows we are capable of a tremendous release。。。。If he paces us to it.
A typical two-hour feature plays forty to sixty scenes.
P296 Symbolic ascension
Like images in our dreams, it invades the unconscious mind and touches us deeply--as long as we’re unaware of its presence. If, in a heavy-handed way, we label images as “symbolic”, their effect is destroyed. But if they are slipped quietly, gradually, and unassumingly into the telling they move us profoundly.
P310 William Goldman argues that the key to all story endings is to give the audience what it wants, but not the way it expects.
People think happiness means never suffering, so they never feel anything deeply.
What the audience wants is emotional satisfaction.
The ending must be both inevitable and unexpected.
P317 we never do more than we have to, expend any energy we don’t have to, take any risks we don’t have to, change if we don’t have to.why should we?
P320 A story that progresses to the limit of human experience in depth and breadth of conflict must move through a pattern that includes the contrary, the contradictory,and the negation of the negation.(否定之否）
P323 Many parents hate their children, many children hate their parents, and they fight and scream and say it. In other fine films, although a parent bitterly resents and secretly hates his or her child, they pretend to love him, when the antagonist adds that lie, the story moves to negation of the negation.how can a child defend himself against that?
In Wall Street Gekko feels impoverished because no amount of money is enough。 A billionaire， he acts as if he were a starving thief, grasping for money at any illegal opportunity.
If a story doe not reach the negation of the negation, it may strike the audience as satisfying--but never brilliant, never sublime.
