On Douban Reading, Mu Zhi only has one work. The long suspenseful mystery novel "Mysterious Ridge" was released on the shelves as a weekly volume for three weeks in April 2017, and was re-released as a whole volume in May 2017. Both methods of listing have achieved high scores of over 9.2 points (out of 10), indicating that readers give high evaluations to both local scenes and details, as well as the work as a whole.
"Mysterious Ridge" Douban reading rating page.
Mu Zhi studied journalism at university and now works as a film director. The project he is currently working on is a commercial film with a realistic theme. It is still in the stage of script creation and often requires meetings with the screenwriter. His passion for storytelling can be traced back to his early childhood. His mother told him "365 Nights" and "Aesop's Fables" before going to bed every day. This gave him a strong desire to tell stories very early on, and he became interested in telling stories in junior high school. Try writing a novel.
has only written one work, but it has been at the top of Douban Reading's bestseller list for nearly a year. This is what many original authors who choose to write on the Douban Reading platform expect to achieve. The success of "Mysterious Ridge", in addition to Mu Zhi's innate love for stories, is also due to his proper writing schedule, using all his energy and time on the cutting edge, so as to "do not write when conceiving, and do not create when taking a break." ".
Mu Zhi
When writing "Mysterious Ridge", Mu Zhi first spent about a year conceiving the idea and eight months writing it. The daily creation volume must be controlled within 3,000 words, and he would stop when inspiration strikes. Organize your thoughts. There is a whiteboard in his study. Every time he has a new idea, he writes it on a small card and sticks it on the whiteboard. As the idea deepens, these messy ideas will change from scattered points into a line, and finally form a noodle. If you run out of inspiration, take a break. During the writing stage, you can write from eight or nine in the morning to two or three in the afternoon. After three in the afternoon, you will definitely not want to do anything related to writing novels.
"Mysterious Ridge" with nearly 300,000 words has lived up to the author's painstaking creation. Multiple serial murders are intertwined. After each murder, the murderer will leave clues to another murder on the deceased. , to challenge the police and readers. A consistent clue in the novel is the strange formula printed on the soles of each corpse. This formula in the novel has a basis in reality. It was discovered by American scholar George Price, so it is called "Price's formula." The formula
uses mathematical methods to prove that humans have no altruistic behavior. All superficial altruistic behaviors actually serve the reproduction of racial genes. It inherits the natural theory of "natural selection" and questions the existence of love and morality. Questions the attributes that distinguish humans from animals. Although this formula proving that human beings are "innately evil" was discovered by Price, it greatly conflicts with the value concept of "there is love and kindness in the world" that he himself upheld. In order to prove that there is love in the world and that human beings are not just animals, Price tried various good deeds, but he could not find a flaw in the formula. When the formula he found could not prove his world view, but the formula had no flaw, this The unsolvable ultimate conflict led him to a mental breakdown and suicide.
learned that Price's formula was purely unintentional. Mu Zhi first read the book "The Selfish Gene", which touched him greatly. In order to have a deeper understanding of the themes discussed in the book, he did a lot Extended research, and in the process, I learned about Price's formula. This formula inspired him to write the story "Mysterious Ridge" to interpret the theme of "love".
"Mysterious Ridge" book cover
"Mysterious Ridge" has a very inspiring subtitle "Love is sex, protection, devotion, killing, relief, and mystery." The murder case in the story involves the speculation of wealthy businessmen, political shady affairs, cults and heresies and other bizarre topics, which requires the author to have deep accumulation and do solid desk work.Although all the characters in the story are fictitious, the background of the story is based on a prototype, which was the plane crash that occurred in the Andes Mountains in 1972. When writing the novel, you need to use the knowledge reserve, which is done simultaneously with the writing of the novel. When Mu Zhi writes, he first outlines the framework of the novel and then fills it in with flesh and blood. The dominant factor in completing the story is intuition. Of course, having the confidence to use intuition to decide the direction of the story is also related to his rich film reading and knowledge. If you encounter a knowledge bottleneck, study immediately and sort out the uncertain and unclear knowledge points.
The readers of "Mysterious Ridge" are very active. Some of them can't help but put themselves into the protagonist's situation, and some of them talk about a certain joke in the comments of the novel. Mu Zhi's reply rate to comments and comments is also very high. Gao, it's more like a greeting and interaction between friends than a reply. When the second part was released, a reader wrote a review for the work at around 5 a.m. Beijing time. While predicting the identity of the murderer, he also expressed that he could not wait for the third part to be released. Mu Zhi left a concerned message below: "Dear friend, why don't you take a rest? You can read the book at any time. What should I do if my body is broken?" Later I found out that the reader was abroad at the time.
"If it doesn't look good, I'll give you your money back!" This is a "gift" that Mu Zhi once posted in the WeChat group of "Douban Suspense Firm". When "Mysterious Ridge" was first released, Mu Zhi opened a Douban group and invited readers to read the work by giving away redemption codes, which is enough to prove that he attaches great importance to readers' feedback. But he adopted a dialectical attitude towards readers' opinions and feedback.
"I attach great importance to readers' feedback. I think this is the most interesting part of this industry. Just like when you cook carefully, you will inevitably have some expectations of the diners' reactions." But at the same time, he also said that he is concerned about readers' comments. He does not absorb or filter opinions. He still uses the metaphor of "cooking vegetables" to understand the creative process. "Writing is like cooking. Don't cook lightly. Once the oil is hot, there is no looking back. No looking back is based on your preparation. No dish becomes delicious by recooking it, and no classic is modified by readers' opinions. "
Mu Zhi's little whiteboard, the conception process of "Mysterious Ridge"
When asked whether such a novel "based on an existing formula" is suspected of having a theme first, Mu Zhi said frankly: "I don't worry about the theme. First. When creating, I focus more on whether the characters are real, whether the rhythm is appropriate, whether the reasoning is rigorous, whether the plot has dramatic tension, etc. I don't allow my story to try to tell the reader anything, and give the reader a good paragraph. Reading time is my wish.”
Because he has been working in movies for a long time, his novels contain many scenes with strong action and visual impact, such as fighting and drag racing, and are known as the "Hollywood Screenwriter's Guide". "Story" written by Robert McKee was regarded as a model by him. The earliest "Mysterious Ridge" was created with the idea of a movie script in mind. However, after it was divided, it was discovered that the size of the story could not be supported by the resources on hand at the time. Mu Zhi settled for the next best thing and wrote it into a novel and put it on Douban for reading. After being released, it unexpectedly became a hit, and the "Mysterious Ridge" web drama project is also in progress.
The biggest revelation from the book "Story" to Mu Zhi is that human nature has gray areas, and nothing is black and white. Sharing rather than educating is Mu Zhi’s creative philosophy. Whenever the characters in the novel fall into the gray area of human nature, they have to face a dilemma. The choices made by each person will be based on their own growth process and environment. differences. The characters in novels are like this, and so are you and me in real life. "Everyone is worth loving, if you listen to their stories."
But when an author with a strong desire to "tell a good story" was asked about his "favorite mystery novel", he gave A "less standard" answer: "There is a novel I like very much - "The Enigmatic Eyes" by the Argentinian writer Eduardo Saccheri.Its impact on my creation is that I also hope to write such a non-drama, true, thick and touching work. ”
