The rules of setting the worldview in the novel, the four elements of the story structure

To create a novel, whether it is a novel, a novel, or a short story, before you start writing, you first need to frame the worldview in the novel. Setting a worldview is the first step in creating a novel.


Especially for those novels that are far from real life, such as sci-fi, immortals, fantasy, and supernatural novels, the construction of their worldview is even more important.


A good worldview will add luster to a novel, and a worldview that can justify itself is the cornerstone of a good novel.

What is the worldview of the novel?


I will first describe a simple world view setting with a paragraph: "In the ancient Hubian city, there are five major races of cattle, ghosts, snakes, gods and humans.


Under the protection of the patron saint "Yangwuzi", human beings live a life of peace and contentment. However, the ghost king "Fairy Changuang" was resurrected, united the cattle and snakes, attacked the gods, and sealed the great god "Yangwuzi".


The Protoss declined, and humans began to enter the dark rule of the ghost king. The brave Wuma vowed to find the secret secret of Xiaoshuo, the secret key hidden by Yangwuzi, learn the invincible magic, open the seal, rescue Yangwuzi, defeat the ghost king, and save mankind, so he and his partner Chang Gun embarked on a journey... …”

This text is easy to understand and is a concise worldview setting, but it is not a complete worldview. The easiest way to understand, you can use the game as a reference.

All operations in the game cannot be contrary to the world view. A worldview is any element that is constant and constant throughout the game.

To set the world view of a game is to set all the laws of a complete world that does not necessarily exist in reality and history.

It must be credible, complete, logical and not self-conflicting. It's not just the background of the story but the whole world.

Writing novels No matter what subject you want to write about, first stabilize your mind and start building a worldview. Different types of novels have different worldview settings. Even novels of the same genre may have very different worldview settings.


To put it bluntly, it is to design what kind of world the world in your novel is, what rules or rules it has, and what kind of characters it has...

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Be sure to let the reader accept the worldview in your novel from scratch, so as to enter the story situation you construct.

Some novels, we know that they are made up, but we just want to read and read them, and we enjoy reading them, and we don’t find them absurd. One of the reasons is that the worldview of the novels is awesome!


It's hard to tell a good story if the author is unfamiliar with his own fictional world.


Don't blindly think about a story and start writing. Then take it for granted that you already know its fictional world, when in fact, you know nothing.


You will find that when you write and write, your brain becomes blank, and you don't know how the plot will develop... Then you will inevitably have to continue searching for materials,He even resorted to movies or novels with similar backgrounds, began to plagiarize some familiar plots, and finally put it together to complete his own work. Such a novel, to succeed - impossible.


Even if they may indeed be talented, if they lack a deep understanding of the background of the story and the various things in the background, what they write will be rubbish. At the end of the day, it's the author who doesn't understand the world in his story.


Next, follow my rhythm and start to complete the worldview construction of the novel step by step.

1. Background

The setting in the story of the novel is four-dimensional, divided into the level of era, period, place and conflict.

The first time dimension is era.

Whether the story you want to write takes place in a historical period in which the world exists today, in a hypothetical future, or in an alternate universe.

So, the first step is to determine the era in which the story takes place in your novel. The era is also the location of the story in time.

2. Deadline

Determine how long the time span of the characters in the novel is in your story, decades? several years? How many months? even a few days?

Generally speaking, in realistic themes, with a long story period, the characters must have grown up. Stories with a short period are generally suspense, thriller, reasoning, police, criminal and criminal investigation. The time is short and the story is compact. The plot is tense.

From my personal experience, when writing a novel for the first time, the duration of the story should not be set too long. Generally speaking, for novels that focus on storylines, the time limit can be set within one year.

In this way, the story has room for development, and the characters grow without qualitative change (the so-called qualitative change refers to a person writing from middle age to old age, or from a child to adulthood. It’s just that the temperament changes from good to evil. , or going from dull to witty is not a qualitative change).

As for non-realistic themes, you don't need to pay too much attention to the duration of the story. Especially those kind of fantasy novels or fairy tales, the time limit of the story is earth-shattering.

3. Location

This is relatively easy to understand. Think about where the specific location of the story takes place? in which town? On which streets? In which buildings on which streets? In which rooms in which buildings?

What mountain did you go up to? What river have you crossed? What desert did you cross? Where to travel to? Out of the country? …In short, location is where the story is in space.

In a novel, the location of the story should not be too messy, and the story must be written around a main unit scene.

Before preparing to write a novel, prepare a piece of paper that is large enough.

Then all the architectural ideas that can be thought of are either written or drawn, and marked on it. Whether it's the character, the location, the key plot, or the reversal of the plot, I always sort and remember whatever comes to mind.

As the story unfolds, it is still necessary to keep adding and smearing on it. This large piece of paper is the ancestor of the legendary novel manuscript - the sketch for the construction of the story, and it is also the needle for you to complete the writing of the novel.

The level of conflict

The conflict level refers to the hierarchical system of the characters' struggle in the novel, the contradiction level.

In any novel, there will be contradictions, and without contradictions there will be no conflicts. No conflict is not a novel at all, it may be narrative prose, it may be poetry.

In some novels, the conflict may not be an external conflict, not very intuitive, not so clearly visible, but focused on the heart of the characters, to be precise, the conflict of "human nature" is written.

Most of these novels are the works of literary masters, so I won't talk about them here. This kind of work is not suitable for writing in a self-media column, and there is no prospect, at least not in a short period of time.


After the core of the story is determined, then construct the background of the story you want to tell: that is, the year in which the story takes place, how long is the story period, where is the location, and what kind of contradiction is the conflict level... Think over and over again until you change it to until you approve.


If you can keep up with my progress, I am confident that after the completion of my novel class in this column, the construction of your novel will basically be completed. details.


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