The literary era since 1979

Chapter 29 Born to Do This (asking for monthly tickets and recommendation tickets)
“Quanjude!!”

Fang Yan's joyful voice echoed in the yard.

"Put this on the table and open it when we eat." Fang Yan handed the bag of roast duck to Fang Yan, and handed the duck rack to Yang Xia, "Mom, use this to make soup."

"How did you become so extravagant, kid? How much do all these ducks cost?"

Yang Xia kept complaining.

"Not much, half is only 5 yuan."

Fangyan grinned.

Yang Xia gasped, "5 yuan is not enough, Yanzi, your first month's salary hasn't been paid yet!"

"Mom, I think it's more than that. Yanzi gave you two duck racks, which means you ate two. Half a duck is 5 yuan, and two and a half ducks are 2 yuan, and this doesn't even include the cost of the garlic seasoning lotus leaf pancakes."

Fang Hong put her hands on her hips, her face livid.

"Oh my god, Yanzi, you ate more than half a month's salary in one meal at Quanjude. How can you eat so much?"

Su Ya's eyes widened.

"Mom, I think it's necessary to hold a family meeting." Fang Hong said seriously, "Let's criticize and self-criticize Yanzi's bad lifestyle of eating and drinking lavishly and spending money lavishly."

"Why are you still criticizing and self-criticizing?"

The dialect was both funny and sad.

"Shouldn't it be? A meal costs 25 bucks!"

Fang Hong felt heartbroken.

"Um, Sister Hong, your family meeting..."

Su Ya's eyes look at the nose, and the nose looks at the heart.

"Ahem, sister, you misunderstood."

Fang Yan shook his head and laughed, "I was treated to a meal at Quanjude by someone else. These two duck bones are what we had left over, so I packed them up and brought them back. But I couldn't just bring you duck bones, so I bought half a duck, the bag that Yan Zi brought into the house. In total, I spent just over 5 yuan, it really wasn't that much."

"dinner?"

Su Ya, Fang Hong and others looked at each other.

"Yes, today is a happy day and worth celebrating."

Fangyan smiled.

"What happy occasion?"

Fang Hong and the others cast curious glances at them.

"Look, my "The Shepherd" won the National Excellent Short Story Award." Fangyan took out the certificate and prize from his bag.

"what!"

Su Ya was shocked. She and Fang Hong each grabbed one side of the certificate and looked from left to right and from top to bottom. They had indeed won the prize!

"and this."

The dialect man was reborn, but his drinking capacity was not. He was half drunk and half awake, and he looked more dazed than usual. He unfolded his notebook and boasted, "Look again, who wrote this?"

"Ba, Ba...Jin."

Fang Hong and Su Ya were shocked and stood there in a daze.

"Who is he?" Yang Xia asked puzzledly.

"Mom, let's talk about this later. You should stew the duck bones quickly. If it's left overnight, it will probably go bad."

Fangyan raised a smile.

"Two duck bones are too much for stewing soup. How about this, we have one, Xiaoya's family and Jianjun's family will get one each. Each family can use it half to replenish the body. It's so tiring to review until late at night every day." Yang Xia looked at Su Ya with heartache.

"Thank you Aunt Yang."

Su Ya secretly glanced at the slightly drunk Fang Yan.

Fangyan smacked his lips and said, "Mom, I'm going to go into the house and drink some water."

"Don't rush back to the house. I'll chop the duck and you can send it to Xiaoya's house." Yang Xia said, "Yaya, go to Jianjun's house."

"Don't bother Yanzi, I can do it myself."

Seeing Su Ya shaking her head, Yang Xia stared at Fang Yan with disappointment, stretched out her foot, and kicked him lightly as a reminder.

Fang Yan sighed and escorted Su Ya and Ya Jiazi to the left wing. It was actually not far away, and the door of the house was just a few steps away.

"Congratulations, Iwako."

"Thank you."

"I didn't expect you to have changed so much after you came back from cutting in line."

"People always have to grow up."

"Yes, you didn't like reading or studying before."

Su Ya stopped and looked at him, "Now he is so successful in literature, publishing novels, becoming an editor, and now he has won a national award and got Ba Lao's autograph..."

"Maybe I was born to do this."

Fangyan curled his lips.

Su Ya blinked, "More than that! I think you are a gift from God. You are so talented in literature. I have read The Horse Herders and Loess Plateau more than ten times. To be honest, I am beginning to envy you. How can you make such great progress?"

“Maybe I want to improve too much.”

Fangyan's eyes flickered.

"Yes, you are right, progress!"

Su Ya's eyes lit up, "You are so far ahead of me now, I must also make progress, otherwise I will be left behind by you."

"If you work hard in the college entrance examination this year and get admitted to university, you will surpass me in academic qualifications." Fangyan raised his hand.

"That was not what I meant."

Su Ya hesitated for a moment: "I want you to help me look at the poems I wrote and give me some suggestions for revision."

"Have you finally made up your mind?"

"I've made up my mind. I want to make progress with you!"

"Okay, very energetic."

Fang Yan said, "Give it to me now?"

"I'll give it to you in a few days, just take a look at it when you have time."

"no problem."

Fangyan was very interested in the poems written by Su Ya. He had never seen any of them in his previous life, but he finally saw them in this life!
"I have arrived."

Su Ya stood at the door.

"Then I'll go back. You should study hard and make progress! Make progress!"

Fangyan shouted half-jokingly as he backed away.

"Go to hell, you're asking for a fight!"

Accompanied by Su Ya's angry voice, he strode back to his home. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a glass in Liu Jianjun's house. A ghost suddenly floated by. It was probably Liu Jianjun peeking.

"Have you sent Xiaoya home?"

Yang Xia brought duck bone soup from the kitchen.

Fang Yan nodded, "By the way, Mom, someone may come to my house to see me these days. When the time comes, please invite them to come in and sit down."

"Who?"

"It's a very important person. One of them is called Xie Jin, who wears glasses. It was him who invited me to Quanjude. If it's him, please call my unit and I'll go home right away."

…………

The next day, it was lunch time.

The phone in the editorial office rang, breaking the silence.

After Fang Yan answered the phone, he told Ji Xiuying, Wang Jie and others that he would come back later in the afternoon. Then he heard Li Yue calling him:

"Is it another call from the movie studio?"

"I kept you guessing."

"How could I not guess? I received calls from two film studios in the past morning. One is Beijing Film Studio and the other is Bayi Film Studio. They both want you to shoot The Shepherd. Which one is it this time?"

"Shangying."

Fangyan told the truth and hurried home.

After comparing three companies, I found that the Beijing Film Studio and the Bayi Film Studio were not as attractive as the Shanghai Film Studio, and they did not send out directors equal to Xie Jin. The balance in my heart was already tilted in this direction.

"Iwako."

"Thank you, Director."

As soon as they entered the house, they greeted each other.

"Then let's start talking about the script now."

Xie Jin took out a copy of "Yenching Literature and Art" from his briefcase. Without a doubt, it was the issue that published "The Shepherd".

"Director Xie, don't be anxious, take a look at this."

Fangyan took out a thick stack of papers from his bag.

“This is the outline…”

Xie Jin flipped through it casually, but when he saw the densely packed words, he frowned and turned the page, "This is not an outline, this is..."

"The script of 'The Horse Herder'." Fang Yan said.

“You wrote it in one night?!”

Xie Jin was greatly shocked. He thought “tonight starts at 7 o'clock” was a joke, but he didn't expect it to be true.

Fangyan knew that one night was too exaggerated, so he said that the Xi'an Film Studio had asked him to write a script before, and he started writing at that time.

“That’s too fast.”

Xie Jin calmed down immediately. He had been in the industry for almost 30 years and had seen all kinds of storms and similar situations.

It is often the first time a writer becomes a screenwriter. He is eager to show off, but lacks understanding of film scripts. He thinks that he can simply delete and modify the novel and add some "time", "place" and "dialogue".

The truth is, writing a screenplay is much more complicated than writing a book.

The "complexity" here means that a novel only needs to be oriented towards readers, while a script needs to be oriented towards the entire filming team including the director and actors.

Over the years, Xie Jin has seen many writers who work as screenwriters. They shine like meteors for a while and are in the limelight, but they soon fall and disappear into the night sky. It is precisely because they do not have this talent.

Does he have this ability?
Looking up at Fangyan, he had already made the worst-case scenario plan in his mind. If the script was not good, he would find a professional screenwriter from Shanghai Film Studio.

With this thought in mind, he kept flipping through the pages, but the more he flipped through, the more he felt something was wrong. His face changed drastically, "Yanzi, this script..."

"Xie Dao, what do you think?"

Fangyan leaned forward.

"Ah, ah, not bad, very good."

Xie Jin stared at him with eyes sparkling, "Yanzi, is this really your first time writing a script? You've never written one before?"

"Yes, Director Xie, what's wrong? Is the format wrong or is there something wrong somewhere else?" Fangyan asked curiously.

"not yet."

Xie Jin flipped through the book from beginning to end. When he reached the last few pages, he saw a few stick figures drawn in square frames.

Suddenly he was surprised and said, "You even drew a storyboard!"

"I drew some. When I was writing the script, these scenes kept popping up in my mind. But I didn't draw them all. First, I'm not a good artist, second, I don't have enough time, and third, I'm afraid it will affect your thinking."

Fangyan took a sip of water.

“Creation is about collision.”

The more Xie Jin looked at it, the more surprised he was. Although the painting was crude, it did not prevent him from understanding the language of the picture. The transitions were smooth and appropriate, and some of them even coincided with what he had thought.

This is the level you reached when you wrote a script for the first time?

It seems like I was born to do this job!

"What do you think?"

Fangyan refilled his cup with hot water.

"These pictures are great, very great, exactly the lens effect I wanted. These scenes in the movie can be shot and edited like this." Xie Jin cast a scrutinizing look, "Yanzi, did you come up with all these when you were writing the script?"

"Some of them are, and some of them came to my mind earlier, when I was writing the novel "The Shepherd"."

"You already have it when you're writing a novel?!"

"Yes."

Fang Yan raised his lips and said, "I just wrote down all these pictures in words. Let's put it this way, the pictures of The Shepherd came first, then the novel, and then the script."

　Thank you to Tianxia Zongheng Youwo and Haohan 3393 for the 100 starting coins.

　　Monday's daily post: Please read, recommend and vote for me.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)