Everyone has their own preferences in reading. Some people like literature and poetry; some people like novels, literature and history; some people like science, tools, etc. Poetry and prose were my favorites when I was young. At that time, the books I could collect were too few, so I mostly subscribed to them.
When I was young, I subscribed to several publications such as "Poetry Magazine", "Prose", "Beautiful Articles", "Essays", and "Literary and Historical Knowledge" for nearly ten years. After getting married, I had no time and money to spend, so I stopped subscribing to books.
I always thought that I was familiar with essays, and I took it for granted that essays are a form of writing that can be used to record life and thoughts anytime, anywhere. It wasn't until I read "Write What You Want to Read" by Taiyan Tanaka and saw his definition of essays that I realized that my understanding was very superficial, rough and inaccurate.
The author said that he looked up the dictionary and the explanation is "an article that writes down and records feelings in a free form." This explanation really seems more casual. Not as close to how I feel.
In other words, essays are a series of mental activities such as our thoughts about them after seeing and hearing "things", that is, matter, or the emotions triggered by the objects, etc., written with pen. Write it down, and have the idea and impulse to read it, it is an essay. In a word, the essay must contain events and images, that is, the unity of matter and spirit.
Take film reviews as an example: For example, when we watched the movie "Hello, Li Huanying" starring director Jia Ling, Jia Ling in it traveled back to her mother's era and saw the youth of her mother Li Huanying. The story, the friendship with her mother and a series of storylines, etc., as well as feeling Jia Ling's longing for her mother and her regret that her son wanted to raise her but could not stay close to her, etc.
We follow the storyline and experience joys and sorrows together. If we just focus on the story events of the movie, we will fall into a state of only retelling the plot of the movie; if we only focus on describing the feelings and thoughts after the movie, it will be very difficult. If you don't describe the plot of the movie, you will only focus on the imagery and get stuck in the expression of your own thoughts and emotions.
Both of the above are expressions that deviate from the combination of things and images in an essay, so they are not essays. There are shortcomings if there is no description of the movie story and no expression of thinking and emotion. It cannot arouse people's passion or flow, and it will be difficult for readers to like it, and it will not become a hit article.
From this point of view, in the era of online articles, readers like articles that are unified with events and images, that is, the so-called articles with pictures and truth, stories and thoughts.
Regardless of book reviews, movie reviews, emotional stories, or growth articles, they are all inseparable from story sharing and point of view analysis, which is what we often call opinion articles and information increment.
These articles contain these two points. If you want to write explosive articles, just remember "the intersection of events and images", that is, the unity of matter and spirit.
Writing what you want to write and what you want to read doesn’t include both? The author simply changes the matter of writing into another perspective where I am the subject, allowing us to be both authors and readers. We should please our inner selves first, and then write for our outer selves. The two selves merge. Two into one, I like it, and many readers will also like it. It’s hard not to think about an article like this.
Seeing the author's understanding of essays and explosive articles in "Write the Articles You Want to Read" gave me a lot of inspiration. Thinking about it, it is true. We only need to tell the stories we like well, and add Don’t you think readers also like good and in-depth articles? The accumulation of thinking power can only rely on continuous reading and output.