Story Creation Talk | Human Nature and Personality——From the Story Creation of "Black Mirror" Season 3 | Farseer I did a Chinese question when I was in elementary school, "The most important thing in a novel is _____", I wrote "plot", the correct answer is "character". I don’t remember how the teacher explained it, but I was always opposed and opposed in my mind, so that I remembered this question for a long time, and it seemed that she did not convince me, nor did some of the literary reviews I encountered later. At that time, after I finished it, I was puzzled. I went home and asked my parents, but my parents didn't know. Until I started writing, and after more than ten years of writing dozens of short stories, I still don't have a definite answer, but I think the balance in my heart has changed from "plot" to "theme". Gradually tend to "character", perhaps, this answer is not important, I just like to think about this question. After watching the third season of "Black Mirror", I gave it a four-star rating, which was actually 3.69 points. The reason for the lower than expected rating is that although watching the show is full of pleasure, there is still a consistent problem with the Black Mirror series: concept first. , the worldview is greater than the characters, resulting in the disappearance of the characters and plots. This season, strictly speaking, has only one "character", which is Kelly in episode four. After watching the first and second seasons, I gave them high ratings, but soon I discovered that, except for the first episode of the first season, which was about the Prime Minister and the pig, the first episode of the second season was about the heroine and the man-made man. The story of "boyfriend", I can't remember anything else. Not to mention the conflicts, contradictions, and plot development of each episode, I can't even remember the technology that I want to complain about, and I can't remember which cute actor played it - in the end, it became one of my memory. It's a TV series that has no sense of existence, so I didn't follow it for a long time after the third season came out. Yes, the second episode was scary, the third was nerve-wracking, and the sixth was smooth and real, but I know I'm going to forget about them as quickly as I've read on the internet about some of the supposedly brain-inspired Same story. Now, the faces of the characters in these episodes have been blurred, and the differences between characters are getting smaller and smaller. Only episode 4, only Kelly, her words, her expressions, her choices, are firmly imprinted in my mind.
I also gradually discovered that my memory of the story, whether it is the development of the plot or the revealing of the theme, is all connected with the living "characters", without a unique character, a complicated life history or a complicated life history. The dilemma of choosing between, I won't remember this and who, and I'll forget the whole story. Brain holes don't appeal to me, never. Gotta have someone, gotta have someone. No matter how brilliant the idea, no matter how ingenious the turning point, no matter how profound the theme, if there is no one, I will not remember, I will feel joy, fear or excitement, but I will not think about it, and I will not remember it. How is there no character? Genre literature like science fiction is easy to lose "characters", because the author is easily fascinated by an idea, fascinated by a brain hole, and then use characters to satisfy the concept, fill the brain hole, and finally make a story about people. Write it as a set. Characters have become a tool for the ultimate mystery and the secret of the story to slowly emerge. The characters travel through time and space hard, or meet and fight with aliens, all in order to bring a difficult problem, a core problem, to the reader and make people think. This problem is either "brain in a vat", or "can people control artificial intelligence", or "what immortality means to people", "how is a parallel world possible", etc., but if you change the person, the problem is still will come to the reader, at the end of the story. In short, if we find that if we substitute any person in the position of the "protagonist", the final plot and ending are similar, then the characters here have no face and no personality. This story is the concept first. of. The episodes of Black Mirror I just mentioned fit this feature without exception. The most bland part of this season is the fifth episode: a soldier in war accidentally discovers that his perception and experience of the world are actually manipulated by a system implanted in his brain, and the most important of these is , is the imagination of the "enemy" he is destroying. In this story, the accident is the key, and which soldier the accident happened to has little effect on the ending. In the story we can't see the black soldier's past, his unique habits or speaking style, let alone whether there is something in him that will lead him to that "inevitable" ending.
In these stories, the "characters" are secondary, they are less important than the concept, they are less important than the setting of the world view and the "ultimate problem" of life, a new and wonderful idea is always compared to a living person. The former can bring more sensory stimulation and fluctuations in body fluids, right? In the field of science fiction literature, I have seen many friends who ask stories to compare "the brain hole is not big", and I have also seen a story asking "what is it trying to tell us?" (moral of a story) story), but rarely see someone say, "This person is very interesting", "If this person dies I won't watch it". Is it the individual that is too small and insignificant relative to irreversible scientific progress or macroscopic philosophical propositions? Or, we've seen people, we've seen individual choices live, but that's in serious literature, in love or historical stories, we look at science fiction and see reasoning, and that's not what we look at, when we watch science fiction, I care The fate of mankind, more than a single person. But it is strange that when there are obvious shortcomings in the characterization, we can be keenly aware of it. Does this mean that maybe we do not have no requirements for characterization in genre novels? As a million-word novel, "Three-Body Problem" has enough space to describe the characters, and enough time and plot to make us have an impression of a single character, but in the end, our impression of some main characters is still only a few left. Adjectives, several facialized labels, such as "tough guy", "Virgin Mary", "Wen Qing", not one or two classic lines, an iconic action. Of course, there are some stupid choices that we remember, but those are mostly used by readers to prove that Liu's ability to portray female characters is weak. We remember that from now on, no one can replace her. If you change her, the fate of mankind and even the fate of the galaxy will change. The ultimate proposition of "Three-Body Problem 3" and even the subtitle of this book will change. . Someone might object to me by saying that the reason why individual individuals are not highlighted is because these stories are meant to reflect general anxiety, general tension. Anyone who gets to that position is powerless. Everyone will make a similar choice, and whoever is the protagonist will develop a similar story, which shows that this is a problem for everyone, and a problem for humans. These all highlight the power of the "behind the scenes" and the importance of the "ultimate problem" that the author wants to show. What she wants to say is a universal, eternal, and huge contradiction, which is so huge that it exceeds the comprehension of individuals. The category, revealing the meaning of this contradiction, is far more important and urgent than "impressing a certain character in the reader's mind". What I want to talk about are eternal problems, such as the boundaries between time and space, such as value nothingness, such as the meaning of human existence, such as human nature. Yes, the core contradiction expressed in the "Black Mirror" series is also "Technology vs.
I loved episode 4 and remembered Kelly because she not only had history but made unique choices. After she stated her reasons in the quarrel with Yorkie, in the end, she did not play her cards according to common sense, but chose to go to the end of the world alone-why would she do this? Why didn't she make the same choice as her family as she said before? At this time, the meaning of what she said in the play really emerged: "All things considered, I guess I'm ready." "For what?" "For the rest of it." It is nothingness, and there are "nothing matters" everywhere. When you really see these things, you are truly prepared, to choose, to face the result of the choice, to undertake -- and to give up. Death doesn't solve anything, preserve anything, save anything, just like living can't, neither can eternal life. When both ends are empty, the choice becomes completely difficult, and people become powerless and weak. Of course, the choice is also becoming unimportant at this moment. For her, nothing is important anymore. Kelly's choice is a very personal choice. The process of her choice, the reason, and the background of everything are also presented in the story. This is not a story of a "human being" buried under the background of science and technology, a story of a weak and weak "human being", this is a story of a person who has the ability to make choices, convince himself, and bear the consequences. I saw humanity in this man, something tender and weak, something with a deep sense of hopelessness that would rather face the hopelessness. This is her struggle alone, and it is also a human elegy. Many people say that in science fiction stories, "I care more about the fate of mankind than an individual. I care more about human nature than personality. I care about beauty and love, far more than the joy, sorrow and anxiety of so-and-so." This is I'm not saying, "I love everyone, but it's hard to love one of my neighbors in reality." The reality is often, at least for me, that I love a person, and only from her can I see hope for the world. Faith in humanity, and compassion for the good and natural side of all things. First, I fell in love with a specific person. In this love, I learned to trust, learn to hope, and slowly gather courage.
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