Su Shi's prose presents rich and colorful artistic features, and he draws artistic nutrition from his previous works extensively, among which the most important source is the heroic momentum of Mencius and strategists in the Warring States Period, Zhuangzi's rich associations and chic writing style.
Su Shi said to himself, "My writing style is like a spring of thousands of miles. It can be produced everywhere, and the flat land is easy to gush out. It twists and turns with rocks, shapes with things, and is unknown. What is known often depends on what it does and often stops at what it can't stop. "
Su Shi's essays have various styles, which can be roughly divided into argumentative essays, narrative essays and essays. The appearance of these essays marks the highest achievement and complete victory of the ancient prose movement in Song Dynasty.
First, the argumentative essay is eloquent and magnificent, integrating discussion and literary talent, paying equal attention to emotion and reason, with bright and fluent language, good at image reasoning and literary value.
The historical and political comments he wrote in his early years have a strong habit of strategizing, and sometimes they are amazing and unreasonable. For example, On Jia Yi accused Jia Yi of not knowing how to make friends with ministers in order to win the trust of the court. On Fan Zeng's suggestion that Fan Zeng should be righteous emperor to punish Xiang Yu, there are also many original opinions that are enlightening. Although historical and political essays show Su Shi's extraordinary talent, essays, letters, prefaces and postscripts can better reflect Su Shi's literary achievements. These essays are also good at renovation, but their forms are more lively and their arguments are more vivid, often mixed with narration and lyricism. They strengthen logical persuasion with artistic appeal, so they are more beautiful than historical and political essays.
Secondly, his narratives include monument biography, brushwork and prose, among which landscapes and pavilions are the representatives.
Su Shi is good at creating a new realm for articles with arguments, and is good at expressing the integration of appreciation of natural scenery and understanding of life philosophy. Landscape travel notes, such as "Fu on the Red Wall" and "After Fu on the Red Wall", show the characteristics of arguing with scenery.
The pavilion is like "The Story of Rain Pavilion". First, the reason for the preface of the pavilion is described, then the rain situation is recorded, and then the joy of people is rendered. Articles, like water waves, are natural in arts and sciences. Most of his narratives are literary prose, and he uses narrative, description and lyricism in artistic techniques, and writes casually.
Thirdly, Su Shi's essays are mainly short and disorderly letters, inscriptions, miscellaneous notes and essays, which can best reflect the author's true temperament and true thoughts.
Miscellaneous essays mostly describe the author's experiences and feelings in daily life, such as Night Tour in Chengtian Temple. This kind of essays are eclectic, and their writing features are handy and scrawled.
The overall artistic characteristics of Su Shi's prose are "vivid" and "fluent", with the beauty of roundness, intricacy, naturalness and truth, good at using metaphors, multi-image thinking, poetic tendency, affectionate and imaginative writing.