小说与文学2022goodtimes.sc编辑精选
乔治·桑德斯谈短篇小说的艺术
George Saunders on the art of the short story
导读
这篇是乔治·桑德斯谈短篇小说艺术的访谈。桑德斯是当代短篇大师,他的经验对写作者理解短篇小说如何抓住读者非常实用。评论区还延伸到具体篇目推荐、独立作者生态和短篇的“记忆语言”,可当作延伸阅读与练习清单。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
把短篇当成“记忆”来写:让读者留下的不是一个完整情节,而是一种情绪、一个反复回放的自我地标,这样篇幅短也能留下重量。
- 02
用极短篇(flash fiction)练取舍,比如桑德斯的《Sticks》,逼自己只保留最必要的动作与细节,检验每句话是否承重。
- 03
主动去读你没听说过的作者和选集;每篇被选中的作品背后常有几十上百份投稿,读到好作品时也顺便提醒自己:被拒是常态,不是判决。
- 04
读完一篇好短篇后,试着用一句话写出它“像什么记忆”,再回头看作者用了哪些细节制造这种感觉,把这种手法移用到自己的稿子里。
HN 评论精选
短篇的力量在于像记忆一样运作,情绪与片段比情节更持久。
我觉得桑德斯完善了小说中“用记忆的语言说话”的那部分:最短的形态近似一个笑话,较长的形态则像一段关于自己的感受,重播时成为“我是谁”的地标——比如“我在那个地方读那本小说的那段日子”。很高兴在 HN 看到这个。我觉得短篇可能会复兴:现在没理由再为卖一堆纸辩护,而人们也不想要太沉重冗长的东西。
motohagiography查看英文原文
I think Saunders has perfected the part of fiction that speaks the language of memory. It's somewhere between a joke at its smallest, and a feeling about oneself that replays as a landmark of who we are as the effect of its longer forms, like 'the time I spent in that place reading that novel.' Such a pleasure to see this on HN. I could see short stories having a renaissance because there is no reason to justify selling people a bunch of paper anymore, and nobody wants things that are too much.
多读不知名作者;投稿录用率极低是行业常态。
过去三周我读了大约四十个短篇。一方面很高兴这里有关于短篇的讨论;另一方面,我最喜欢的一些故事来自不太知名的作者,想到他们很难像名人那样获得大量点赞,就觉得难受。顺便说,独立出版极其艰难,但很多作品非常优秀。找个时间,去挑一本全是从未听说过的作者写的短篇选集看看,你可能会惊讶(前提是编辑靠谱)。另外:通常每一篇被录用的作品背后有十到一百份投稿,所以如果你担心读到的东西不够好,其实已经有人替你筛过一轮了。
barbariangrunge查看英文原文
I’ve read about 40 short stories over the last 3 weeks. On the one hand, I’m glad to see a thread about them in here — that is awesome! On the other, a lot of my favourite stories have been from lesser known authors and it feels bad thinking of how hard it would be for one of them to get a lot of upvotes like a famous person would For those who don’t know, indie publishing is extremely arduous, yet a lot of the work is excellent. Some time, go out and pick a short story collection by a group of authors you have never heard of and check it out! You might be surprised by what you find (provided the editor was good). Note: there are often 10-100 submissions for every one that gets accepted too, so you are already having the less interesting ones filtered out for you, if you ever worry about that
极短篇是练习短篇写作的好入口。
桑德斯的《Sticks》是我常推荐的极短篇之一。我这一年一直在写短篇,是很大的挑战,和写代码很不一样。
ideopunk查看英文原文
Saunders' "Sticks" is one of my go-to flash fiction recommendations. https://www.unm.edu/~gmartin/535/Sticks.htm I've been writing short stories all year and it's a great challenge. It's quite different from writing code. https://conorbarnes.com/stories
公版资源里有大量被忽视的短篇经典可读。
Standard Ebooks 上有很多优质的公版短篇小说选集;我自己做过的最喜欢的是列昂尼德·安德烈耶夫的作品。他常被称为俄国的爱伦·坡,但有自己明确的风味,《墙》是个好例子。
robin_reala查看英文原文
We’ve got a load of good public domain short fiction compilations at Standard Ebooks;[1] the favourite that I’ve produced has to be Leonid Andreyev’s work.[2] He’s often referred to as the Russian equivalent of Edger Allan Poe, but he has his own definite flavour. “The Wall” is a good example.[3] [1] https://standardebooks.org/subjects/shorts [2] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/leonid-andreyev/short-fiction/herman-bernstein_alexandra-linden_l-a-magnus_k-walter_w-h-lowe_the-russian-review_archibald-j-wolfe_john-cournos_r-s-townsend_maurice-magnus [3] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/leonid-andreyev/short-fiction/herman-bernstein_alexandra-linden_l-a-magnus_k-walter_w-h-lowe_the-russian-review_archibald-j-wolfe_john-cournos_r-s-townsend_maurice-magnus/text/the-wall
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