Little Notes on Flower Arranging

Editing a piece is like arranging flowers.

Flower stems differ in height and spacing, and can be crossed and angled in various ways. When arranging flowers, you always have to shift them around and compare.

Long and short sentences are much the same. Set them out in a lively, varied arrangement, and they won't seem stiff.

Arranging flowers also means resisting the urge to use too many.

A mass of red and green, crowded tightly together, makes the picture too full and loses its elegance.

You should know that just three or four wintersweet branches, tilted in an ancient bronze vase,

already evoke the scene of "a hundred flowers daring to bloom in snow, while one branch ushers in spring before all the rest."

So leave a little space between the branches, so the flowers can breathe.

Prune branches and leaves when needed, and cut plot points when needed, too. Keep your writing clean, and leave some space on the page.

Those are my humble thoughts.

Written by Sheng Zhuo on the twelfth day of the third lunar month in 2005.

Theme: Growth