The next day, on the mountain, in an unfinished exercise book, he had already written down ten jokes.
However, this still did not solve the big problem. Story Magazine was a monthly publication, and how much would you get paid for a joke or a little joke? Ten yuan at the most. Although ten yuan was not a small amount for a 12-year-old at this time, it was only a drop in the bucket for the situation he was facing.
He still had to think of something, something longer, that would earn him at least a few hundred yuan.
Then there was the problem of content. Not only did it have to be in line with today's mainstream, it also had to be appropriate for his age and experience.
With his amateur level, he could be a critic, but if he wrote it himself, the chances of it being accepted by a magazine would definitely be low, which would defeat the purpose of making money quickly. Then he could only learn from or copy others.
In the first few years after graduating from secondary school, he would buy some literary works after work. Later, when he was selling things everywhere, especially after he opened his own store, he read nothing but the news and online literature. Obviously, he couldn't use the news, and as for online literature, it was often millions of words long, so of course he couldn't remember it all, but it was just right for condensing into novellas or novels.
He recalled and then felt that there was still a problem. There are probably very few magazines that currently accept fantasy, magic, and immortal themes. Pure martial arts is fine, but there is too little pure martial arts online literature. With Jin Da and the others as role models, there are not many people who have the courage to write pure martial arts, and even fewer who are good at it.
Moreover, he is currently 12 years old and has basically no life experience, so it is not appropriate to write about conquering the world, building an imperial harem, or travelling to different worlds.
It would be fine if he became a prodigy or a child prodigy, but he didn't want to be seen as a demon.
So what should he do?
Students, schools, realistic, in line with mainstream values. He thought and thought, and while he couldn't think of such an article, he did come up with a few movies.
In 1998, not long after starting work, he watched the movie 'Not One Less' directed by Zhang Yimou, which starred non-professionals in their real names. Later, he watched Ni Ping's 'Big Beautiful Feet', which was also quite impressive because it was more closely related to his childhood.
If 'Big Beautiful Feet' is more idealistic, then 'Not One Less' is more realistic, or more in touch with everyday life. So he watched it at least three times: the first time to watch, the second time to appreciate, and the third time with a bit of a mischievous interest, looking for mistakes and nitpicking.
After all, he is not a professional actor and has no previous acting experience, so there are still quite a few awkward parts in his performance. It is also a bit inappropriate to feel a sense of accomplishment in being able to find a flaw in the work of a well-known domestic director.
So, even now when he recalls it, he can tell you the plot of this movie 80% of the way, so he can completely adapt a story based on this movie. There are plenty of literary works adapted into movies, so let me adapt a movie into a literary work.
In addition, an important point is that he later checked and found that the movie was based on the novel 'There's a Sun in the Sky' by the writer Shi Xiangsheng, which was only published in 1997. Of course, he has never read the original work either, but in 1992, if he now adapted the movie into a novel, it means there is no possibility of plagiarism.
Moreover, among Director Zhang's many masterpieces and author Shi's numerous works, borrowing this story for a while will not have any impact on them! Feng Yiping was making excuses for himself.
He is not a professional writer, and he writes very slowly. At the same time, because he is used to using computer pinyin input methods, he often forgets the words when he picks up his pen, so he had to bring a dictionary with him to the mountain.
In this way, it took a week for him to finally finish writing the nearly 30,000-word novel, which is called 'Not One Less'.
Film and literature are two different cultural carriers with completely different forms of expression. In the film, due to the time limit and the limitations of non-professional actors, some details are not as meticulous, and some plots are not as smooth. There are still some areas that can be refined and improved.
For example, in the village, there is only one adult, the village chief, who appears on screen. None of the other parents are mentioned, except for Zhang Jike's bedridden mother. In reality, this is of course unreasonable. In particular, if the whole school of children are taken to the brick factory to carry bricks, wouldn't the parents notice and stop them? Feng Yiping plays with this a little here to make the story seem more plausible.
For example, Wei Minzhi stopped everyone in front of the TV station and asked to see the station manager. A day passed, but the station manager was nowhere to be seen. The next day, he suddenly appeared in the office, but knew nothing about it and only found out after being reminded by his subordinates. He immediately called over the female doorman, who was supposed to appear completely natural and unadorned, and criticized her, before trying to find a way to help Wei Minzhi. The plot twist was too abrupt and a bit awkward.
Feng Yiping added some more material. Wei Minzhi didn't have enough money to buy a ticket, so she got on the bus to the city without a ticket. On the way, the ticket inspector checked the tickets and wanted to make her get off the bus. She told the ticket inspector about her situation, but the ticket inspector had seen too many people not buying tickets and had become numb to it. So the ticket inspector didn't believe what she said, and even if what she said was true, he wouldn't be moved and still wanted her to get off the bus.
At that time, there were two men and a woman on the bus. They were three middle school students going to school in the city. They paid for her. Middle school students are always a bit passionate, and since there were two men and a woman, the boys wanted to show off in front of the girls. There was also a bit of competition between the two boys, so they both paid.
Wei Minzhi went to the city, while the middle school students returned to school. The middle school girl told her classmate about the incident she encountered on the way. The girl returned home and told her father, who was the director of the TV station, about the story at the dinner table.
With this addition, Feng Yiping felt much more comfortable.
Feng Yiping spent another day reading through and checking the story several times, and only finalized it when he felt there were no problems.
As for 'Big Beautiful Feet', because there were a lot of emotional entanglements mixed in, such as Zhang Meili and Wang Shu, Xia Yu and her husband, it was not quite suitable for a 12-year-old boy with his mouth fluff still not fully grown to write such a story for the time being.
Once the story was finalised, the next question was which magazine to send it to. Feng Yiping had a good impression of one magazine in particular, which he felt was more suitable: Shouhuo (literally 'harvest'). This was a literary magazine founded by Mr. Ba Jin, and Feng had bought several issues in the past.
Now he just needed to find out the mailing address of Shouhuo, which could only be found at the Xinhua bookstore in town. And, because there was no email yet, manuscripts sent to the magazine at this time always had to be typed on lined paper, which also had to be bought. And with such a thick stack of paper, it definitely couldn't be sent by regular mail, and stamps and envelopes also cost money. Plus, the little jokes sent to Story Club also had to be sent by express mail, which added up to several yuan.
It is not good to ask your parents for this money, they don't have it. It is estimated that it will be difficult to convince them to find a way to borrow it for such an uncertain matter. After thinking about it, Feng Yiping felt that only one person could help him with this task, and that was his grandfather.
There were still five days until the start of the new school year. Feng Yiping discussed with his parents that he wanted to go and see his grandfather and spend a few days there. His parents agreed, thinking that he had been helping out at home for nearly two months during the summer holiday, cutting firewood on his own initiative and injuring his foot. Now that there were only five days left in the summer holiday, and he said he was going to see his grandfather, they agreed.