Dialogue guest Teng Xiaolan (writer, winner of the Lu Xun Literature Prize, author of the novel "Home of the Heart") Wang Xueying (reporter of this newspaper)
The TV series "Home of the Heart", adapted from the novel of the same name by Teng Xiaolan, the award-winning writer of the Lu Xun Literature Award, is now on the air.
Taking "buying a house" as the starting point, the play draws out rich clues and numerous characters from the Shanghai family of four generations, and derives from multiple levels of society, unfolding the Shanghai life picture scroll with the temperature of the times and the fireworks of the world for the audience.
"House of the Heart" from the small days of citizens, tastes the big taste of urban life, buys a house from the heart, promotes the development of the plot, and explores changes in human nature and world conditions: integration into Shanghai, marriage maintenance, emotional pursuit, workplace development, personal growth, my heart Anju...arouses the audience's thinking when chasing the drama.
Through the dialogue between writers and critics, the audience can better understand the writer's process and experience of creating the family emotional drama "Home of the Heart" from novels to scripts.
The writer's deep affection for Shanghai has become her creative motivation, telling the story that everyone is living hard and tirelessly, reflecting the "tenacity" and "accessibility" of Shanghai people.
Find a balance between dramatic conflict and character authenticity
Wang Xueying: How do you feel when you see your fictional novel turned into a figurative TV series, and when you see your Gu family live on the screen?
Are "them" the "them" you have in mind?
"Home in the Heart" allows the audience to see the Shanghainese who were born and raised here; the old Shanghainese who came back after struggling for half a lifetime; the new Shanghainese who kept working hard to stay in this land.
Different "Shanghai people" have brewed together today's "Shanghai flavor".
At present, when Shanghai is fully fighting the epidemic, the hit of "House of the Heart" made me feel the strong heartbeat of Shanghai, and I remembered what you said in your creative talk: "Shanghai, as the city where I write, always treats her Have very deep feelings." Watching the lively Shanghai life drama in "Home in the Heart", do you have a lot of emotions about Shanghai, Shanghai people, and life in Shanghai?
Teng Xiaolan: "Home in the Heart" is the first script I wrote.
Novelty is also apprehensive.
Looking at the bustling Shanghai morning on the screen, I was really excited and my heart was pounding.
I haven't seen the finished film before, and I'm also in the position of an ordinary audience, but not all audiences. After all, I know the content, which feels amazing.
"Home in the Heart" is very life-like, which is what director Teng Huatao is good at.
From the beginning, a large number of various characters were displayed in front of the audience.
Some friends sent me a message, "It's very Shanghai-like", which made me very happy.
I have always had deep feelings for Shanghai, and it was my original intention to write this work to describe Shanghai and its people.
I hope that "Home in the Heart" will allow readers and audiences to see how Shanghai people live.
Shanghai people will not be perfect, there will be such and such problems and conflicts will arise.
Life cannot be smooth sailing, especially in literary and artistic works, which will magnify these contradictions and conflicts.
But I hope that the contradictions are not intentional, but naturally generated from the perspectives of the characters.
A balance must be found between dramatic conflict and character authenticity.
It is very important to make everyone feel good-looking and feel that the work is credible, that the characters are conceivable in reality, that they speak "people" words, and do "people" things.
Life is not easy, maybe it's the intuitive impression you get after watching "Home of the Heart".
I also hope that when you feel that "life is not easy", you will cherish the present and the people in front of you more.
Even in the face of adversity, there is still hope in life.
Just like the city where the whole people are fighting the epidemic at the moment, although it is not easy, there will eventually be a time when the spring flowers will bloom.
Wang Xueying: Compared with the writing of novels, what is the new creative experience in the scriptwriting of "Home of the Heart"?
What makes you feel difficult, what is the most fulfilling?
When did you have the feeling that the light boat has crossed the mountains?
Teng Xiaolan: The novel "Home of the Heart" was completed in July 2019.
The script creation started at the end of 2019 and took a year and a half to write.
Writing a script for the first time was indeed a challenge.
Some people on the Internet ridiculed that the original author was a "mother" and the screenwriter was a "stepmother".
I am both a "mother" and a "stepmother", sometimes I can't bear it, and sometimes I have to be ruthless.
Because fiction and screenplay are two different art forms after all.
The mother is not afraid of being scolded by others behind her back, and she can do whatever she wants with the child she gave birth to, while the stepmother is relatively cautious and looks forward to the future.
Novels can be told in a straightforward manner and are more willful and casual, while scripts have to capture the audience in a short period of time and take more consideration.
I am a person who is willing to try new things. I am used to writing novels, and I also want to try screenwriting.
The writing process of the script was relatively smooth.
The entire creative team of directors, producers and planners are very professional and efficient. Every time a manuscript is submitted, there will be feedback very quickly, and they will give very specific opinions. Even if it needs to be revised, it is not a simple negation. , but will help me think about details and bridges, and re-architecture.
Gave me a lot of help for this "new guy".
I am very grateful to them, especially director Teng Huatao, he is a director who can quickly guide the screenwriter to enter the state and find the feeling.
The beginning of everything is difficult, and the first five episodes of the script have the most changes.
I wrote about six or seven drafts before and after, but it gradually became smoother after that, and there were relatively few changes.
How Citizens Use "Heart" to Live Big Feelings in Their Small Days
Wang Xueying: From the "face" of the house, "House of the Heart" penetrates into the "interior" of Shanghai's citizens' life, and truly captures the mirror image of family life.
The four generations of the Gu family, young and old, attach great importance to family gatherings on weekends.
The current situation of each family's life and the release of various news, the discussion and resolution of big and small matters in the big family, the characters who appear have their own "mindful thoughts", but the "family" still has tolerance and centripetal force, which truly reveals the people of Shanghai. The bittersweet taste of living at home.
These vivid life scenes in the TV series deduce your understanding of the relationship and connotation between "home", "heart dwelling" and "house"?
Teng Xiaolan: "House of the Heart" takes the house as the starting point, and depicts various characters, reflecting the current living conditions of the people of all walks of life in Shanghai, as well as the changes in the values reflected behind them.
"House" is the face, and "heart" is the inner child.
"Heart" is placed in front of "house", and it is more about the residence of people's soul, not just the placement of the body.
The house is a topic Shanghai people can't get around.
But "Home of the Heart" is more concerned with the changes in human nature and world conditions.
What is written is the present, including the review and sorting of the past time, as well as the vision and prospect of the future.
People in the city, whether they are old Shanghainese or new Shanghainese, are living and working hard but with relish.
Home is a small home, and life is also a small life, but as long as you use "heart", you can live a big feeling.
Wang Xueying: "Home of the Heart" adopts the setting of two female protagonists. The drama uses a cross-montage method to show the rhythm of my sister-in-law's day-to-day life. Gu Qingyu is a strong woman born and raised in Shanghai with a successful career; Feng Xiaoqin is a new Shanghai native and a Shanghainese. The foreign daughter-in-law of other people, they are the same generation of the post-80s generation. Their relationship is the focus of the novel's narrative and the driving force for the development of the plot.
From the creation of novels to TV series, have you strengthened the dramatic tension between them?
Do you think the two actors performed a rich layer of characters?
Teng Xiaolan: "Home in the Heart" tells the growth of two women.
The episode starts with "Aunts and Sisters Fighting", you come and go, see tricks and tricks.
Eyes and brows, bright or dark.
These are two powerful women.
Although their identities and circumstances are quite different, they are all clear-minded and full of action, and in Shanghai dialect, they are called "clamping heads" (powerful characters).
So at the beginning of the episode, there was a bit of a feeling of "nails hitting iron heads" and "Mars hitting the earth".
As the story unfolds and the context lengthens, the characters naturally become more three-dimensional and complex.
They are by no means the kind of "aunt and sister-in-law war" in the market in the general sense. Their contradictions are not only due to the prejudice of regional portals, but more about the difference in values and concerns between the two.
The series of things that they have subsequently experienced is a process that "people" must go through in self-recognition and growth.
Everyone in life is a complex complex, not black and white.
In the end, the sister-in-law and sister-in-law reached a "reconciliation", in fact, they understood, "I can't completely forgive you, but I understand you gradually." Reconciling with each other is also reconciling with yourself.
This is also a password for people to get along with each other in the city to achieve harmony: maintain a friendly distance and "come to heart".
The identity and personality of the sister-in-law are completely different. Feng Xiaoqin is more down-to-earth, while Gu Qingyu is very cold; Feng Xiaoqin can let go, but Gu Qingyu must "hold".
When the two actors interpret their roles, they have different ways and styles. They both acted very well, and they were accurate and grasped the roles.
Dog blood only needs one action and moving is a process
Wang Xueying: The life situation displayed in the literary and artistic works echoes the life experienced by the audience. The characters in the works are like the people around us, looking up and not looking down. Debao, Defu, the Zhou family brothers and sisters in "The World", etc. These works are very down-to-earth and arouse the audience's inner resonance.
From "City within a City" to "House in the Heart", you love to tell stories about Shanghai, the daily life of the city, from the characters' situation in the times and the plot of self-growth to form the novel's rich social information and active life texture.
"House of the Heart" confronts the life of Shanghai people with "buying a house" and asks about the hearts of modern people. Since the TV series was launched, it has formed a topic and rushed to the hot search. From your own creative practice, how do you understand "down-to-earth" and how to temper it Realistic ability, how to present the mood of the times and people's life in a realistic way?
It is not easy to tell realistic stories well, and it is indeed a "required course" for telling Chinese stories well.
Teng Xiaolan: In literary and artistic works, it is actually quite difficult to grasp the proportions of "grounding".
No matter how down-to-earth the life in the works is, it is actually different from the real life.
When we say "realism" now, we are not copying "reality", but the author's own interpretation, so that the "life" presented in the work is recognized by the vast majority of audiences and feels that it is true and credible.
For example, "naked makeup" is the highest level of makeup, and it looks like no makeup, but "naked makeup" is absolutely different from plain face.
In my opinion, the ideal state of the down-to-earth life described by the author should be similar to "naked makeup", without any trace, omitting the part that everyone knows, and it is easy to understand some subtle and real existence of people getting along with others. What is overlooked is highlighted.
Wang Xueying: "Home of the Heart" presents in a changing and developing city, the characters' hardships on the way to pursue their dreams, and the process of finding a place for my heart, without deliberately creating warmth, beautifying the protagonist, or using filters to purify family affection. Romance and aesthetics are used to package the truth of life, but dare to touch the accidents and regrets in life. In the story you wrote "Everyone is living hard and tirelessly", does it contain the "Shanghai people"? Tenacity" and "Mastery"?
Some viewers commented that "Home of the Heart" is fascinating as "smart but warm fireworks in Shanghai". How do you understand that the power of literature lies in facing the truth, and the charm of literature lies in soothing people's hearts?
Teng Xiaolan: "Home in the Heart" is not a work with a happy ending in the traditional sense.
You are right, I do want to reflect the "tenacity" and "accessibility" of Shanghai people from this story.
It's not easy to live, so you must be "tough" and go through a lot of ups and downs in order to "reach".
Literary and artistic works will definitely write about suffering, contradictions, and conflicts. If the author's expression during creation is drawn into an emoji, he (she) should frown, sigh, and have deep compassion, even when smiling. Tears, rather than ecstatic, relish.
At the same time, you have to hold back your strength, and the pen head is loose and tight, and the effect is completely different.
Dog blood and moving, sometimes only one step away, such as writing a moving love, there must be countless details before, and the romantic atmosphere felt by readers or audiences is all the author has made countless rational efforts and preparations: Containing but not revealing, you advance and I retreat, if you want to talk, you will go back and forth... Every step is stuck at that point.
There are no hard gimmicks, every sentence is an conceivable dialogue between lovers, and the scene is also a scene in life. It seems everyday and plain, but when put together, it is indescribable.
Dog blood may only require an action, while moving is a process.
The author is obliged to write about the process, no matter how difficult it is.
Show the beauty and love of this world to the world, so that people will always have good thoughts, compassion and hope in life.