353: Why write Chapter 353 – Bonus Chapter Sponsored by <A Qi Qi Qi Qi Qi>

The entire venue fell silent.

The breathing of tens of thousands of people was kept extremely low, as if afraid of shattering something fragile.

Lin Que held the microphone, standing in the very center of the spotlight, and waited for a full three seconds.

"That is—why you write."

Six words.

Lin Que's voice wasn't heavy, but after being transmitted through the venue's sound system,

every word seemed to be individually plucked out and placed right next to everyone's ears.

"If you think about how to get a high score while writing an essay, you will never write words that strike the soul or move the graders."

He adjusted the angle of the microphone in his hand, and his voice dropped half a pitch.

"True writing that strikes the soul is when you split yourself open and let the readers see the blood and bone inside."

The moment those words landed, a hum of noise immediately rose within the main hall of the Olympic Sports Center.

Students from several high schools in the front rows looked at each other, discussing the deep meaning of the sentence in hushed tones.

Lin Que looked at those slightly confused young faces below the stage, realizing that for fifteen or sixteen-year-old high school freshmen and sophomores,

the concept of "splitting open bone and blood" was still too abstract.

He paused, his tone becoming more direct:

"To put it simply, you must write the truth—the truth that makes even you feel afraid, moved, ashamed, or angry.

Don't try to guess what the graders want to see; write the things you are most afraid to write in your own diary."

As his voice fell,

there was a total vacuum of sound for five seconds.

Then, applause erupted from the inner field area first.

It was an instinctive reaction to being struck by something.

A girl from Jiangcheng No. 6 High School in the front row clapped until her hands were bright red and almost stood up, but three schoolmates beside her quickly held her back.

This wave of standing people was like falling dominoes, spreading from the front of the inner field to the back,

then climbing to the second-floor stands, and finally reaching those faces at the furthest edges of the third floor who had originally been watching with a wait-and-see attitude.

The applause lasted for nearly twenty seconds, and even the metal trusses above the venue's dome resonated with it.

Fang Zhiyuan clapped until the webbing of his thumb was numb. Wu Di was even more exaggerated;

he was about to stick two fingers into his mouth to blow a loud whistle when Li Bowen quickly covered his mouth.

A visible divide appeared in the reactions within the teaching research area.

Zhou Min and the row of young and middle-aged teachers behind her were already clapping.

Zhou Min put strength into her palms, each clap sounding solid.

She turned her head to glance at Teacher Wu beside her; the latter's thermos had long been forgotten on the armrest,

and with hands clasped in front of his knees, he was clapping vigorously.

On that face which usually loved to nitpick, any trace of scrutiny had completely vanished.

Zhang Chaowei did not clap.

But his eyelids, which had been half-closed, were now fully open. His gaze moved from his notebook and locked tightly onto the youth standing in the spotlight on stage.

The cap of the fountain pen between his fingers was flipping unconsciously, the metal clip making a faint 'click-clack' sound against his fingernail.

He stared at the remaining handwriting on the whiteboard, his mind repeatedly chewing over that phrase: "split yourself open."

On stage.

The aftershocks of the applause gradually dissipated.

Lin Que walked to the table at the side, unscrewed the cap of a mineral water bottle for a sip, and unhurriedly placed the water back where it was.

He picked up the whiteboard eraser and cleanly wiped away all the previous content.

The gaze of the entire audience followed his hand.

He uncapped a marker and wrote four large characters on the blank surface.

Exam Essays.

The moment the strokes finished, a very faint creak came from the teaching research area as the pressure on chair backs shifted.

At least a dozen teachers sat up straight at the same time.

The pen cap spinning between Zhang Chaowei's fingers stopped.

Lin Que put down the pen, looked at the blue teaching research area below the stage, and spoke calmly.

"Next, we will enter the third segment. This part might be of more interest to the teachers present than the students."

He didn't give anyone time to react and pushed directly forward.

"I know many teachers here are thinking: what right does a seventeen-year-old student have to talk about exam essays here?"

At least seven or eight people in the first three rows of the teaching research area subconsciously shifted their sitting positions.

This sentence brought the doubts hidden in their hearts directly to the table.

Lin Que paused for a beat, a very slight curve appearing at the corner of his mouth.

"Then let me put it another way. I won't talk about how an exam essay should be written."

His gaze swept past Zhang Chaowei's face and landed on the teachers further back who were poised with their pens.

"What I am talking about is what exactly an exam grader's eyes are looking for when they decide what score to give you within sixty seconds."

When those words were dropped, the teaching research area was silent for a full three seconds.

The pen Zhou Min had just picked up froze in mid-air.

Zhang Chaowei leaned forward another five centimeters, his left hand firmly pressing down on the open notebook on his knees.

He wasn't looking for something; he was afraid of missing something.

Lin Que turned to the whiteboard and used the marker to draw a horizontal timeline, marking the start as '0' and the end as '60 seconds'.

Then he placed two markers on this axis, splitting the sixty seconds into three intervals.

For the first segment, he wrote:

First 15 seconds — Title + First Paragraph.

Second segment:

Middle 30 seconds — Structural Framework + Core Argument.

Third segment:

Last 15 seconds — Conclusion Tie-back + Overall Impression.

"A grader has to mark hundreds of papers a day on average."

Lin Que tapped the start of the timeline.

"The psychological mechanism of the first fifteen seconds they spend on your essay is exactly the same as when you scroll through short videos.

It's not reading; it's filtering."

The students in the audience were stunned for a moment.

"Your title and first paragraph are the beginning of a short video.

If you don't make their finger stop, no matter how well you write later, it's all for nothing."

This analogy was too precise.

In the front row of the inner field, several boys who scrolled through short videos year-round reflexively touched the phones in their pockets, then looked at each other with strange expressions.

The discomfort of being "called out" and the clarity of "so that's how it is" were mixed together, making it hard to describe the feeling.

The reaction in the teaching research area was even more complex.

Zhou Min pushed up her glasses, her eyes flickering.

She didn't make a sound, but she was secretly shocked.

During peak grading periods, when she had flipped through one or two hundred papers, the speed at which she scanned titles was indeed no different from swiping on a phone.

This kid has practically mastered the psychology of a grader.

Teacher Wu beside her also unconsciously gripped his thermos tighter, clearly having been poked in a sore spot.

Zhang Chaowei's fountain pen had returned to the paper.

This time, his writing speed was even faster than before.

His handwriting slanted to the right, and the thickness of the strokes was uneven; he was clearly desperately trying to keep up with the output speed on stage.

Lin Que started a new line on the whiteboard and wrote three phrases.

Create Cognitive Conflict.

Compress Information Density.

Hint at Conceptual Height.

"The Three Principles of the Title Hook." He put down the pen and turned around.

"Let's look at the negative examples first."

He listed three lines of text vertically on the right side of the whiteboard.

Negative 1: On the Power of Persistence.

Negative 2: That Flower Blooming in the Heart.

Negative 3: A Brief Discussion on the Meaning of Life.

"The first one is a 'one-size-fits-all'.

The moment a grader sees these words, their mind automatically completes every sentence you're going to write next.

Persistence is victory, try again if you fail, give a famous person as an example.

They don't even need to look further to know what your conclusion is."

A wave of low laughter and several embarrassed coughs came from the back of the inner field.

"The second one looks literary, but in reality, it conveys no information.

What kind of heart? What kind of flower? The grader won't guess for you.

They will only put a question mark in their mind and then look down with that question mark.

And reading with a question mark versus reading with expectation are two completely different mindsets.

The former is looking for flaws; the latter is looking for highlights."

The laughter grew louder, mixed with several low exclamations of realization.

"The third one pretends to be profound. Once the words 'Brief Discussion' appear, you've already defined your own article—that what I'm about to say might not be deep enough.

The ceiling of the grader's psychological expectations is pushed down by you at the title stage."

He reached out and drew a horizontal line through each of the three negative examples, then wrote three new lines of text beside them.

Revision 1: Persistence is a War of Attrition with Oneself.

Revision 2: Flowers Bloom Where There Is No Soil.

Revision 3: Meaning is a By-product of Living.

The three sets of comparisons were arranged side-by-side on the whiteboard, with the large screen zooming in to project them simultaneously.

The students in the first five rows of the inner field leaned forward almost at the same time.

Several people's lips moved silently as they recited those three revised titles in their hearts.

Fang Zhiyuan's pen tip jabbed into his notebook, the force so great that the paper was indented.

He copied the three sets of comparisons word for word, looking up at the whiteboard with eyes that seemed to be looking at a treasure map.

Lin Que didn't linger on the titles.

He wiped away the content on the right half and drew a diagram of a three-step staircase at the position of the second time interval, "Middle 30 seconds".

The first step was labeled: Common Sense Level.

The second step: Evidence Level.

The third step: Reflection Level.

"The essence of a College Entrance Examination argumentative essay is not to prove your viewpoint is right." He tapped the top of the stairs.

"It is to prove that your thinking is one level deeper than others."

He pointed to the first step.

"The Common Sense Level—truths everyone can think of.

Protecting the environment is important, honesty is the foundation of being human—you don't need to argue these things; the grader already knows them.

Writing them in an essay is equivalent to saying a correct but useless platitude."

The pen tip moved up.

"The second level, the Evidence Level.

You start giving examples, bringing out a famous story or a set of data to support your viewpoint.

The essays of most candidates stop here."

He drew a bold dividing line between the second and third steps.

"This line is the watershed between a high score and a perfect score."

The ink under Zhang Chaowei's pen spread into a small blot; he was writing so fast that the pen stayed on the paper for too long.

But he couldn't be bothered to care, his gaze fixed deathly on that dividing line.

"The third level. Question the very evidence you just provided." Lin Que's voice slowed down.

"Most candidates don't dare to take this step because they feel that questioning their own evidence is like destroying their own foundation.

But what the grader wants to see is precisely this courage and this clarity.

Being able to realize that your own argument has boundaries is more valuable than the argument itself."

The rustling sound of notes being taken reached its peak for the entire public class at this moment.

The sound of tens of thousands of pens hitting paper at once was low and dense, like a silent rainstorm.

Lin Que looked around and set the marker back on the table.

"Just talking about theory might not give you a clear concept."

He turned sideways and nodded toward the side of the stage.

The technicians received the signal, and the image on the large screen switched.

This year's national College Entrance Examination essay prompt, along with the original source material, was projected in its entirety on the ten-meter-high LED screen.

Every word was clear enough to be seen from the last row on the third floor.

The gazes of tens of thousands of people were fixed on the screen at the same time.

Lin Que switched the microphone from his left hand to his right and walked to the front of the whiteboard,

facing that exam question they had all written, all racked their brains over, and all left regrets on in the exam hall.

"Now, I will use the three-step staircase you just saw to break down this prompt on the spot."

...