This article provides an in-depth analysis of Zhihu Salt Selection Story Writing Portal, from recognizing its “spiritual fast food” nature to mastering skills such as “cool” design and emotional rhythm control, to helping you avoid misunderstandings, improve your writing ability, and save a lot of learning costs with the help of AI to improve efficiency.
We often see a bunch of people on the Internet blowing that Zhihu writes salt selection stories, the threshold is low, the money is fast, and a mobile phone can earn more than 10,000 yuan a month and reach the peak of life.
Every time I see this, I want to laugh.
It’s really that simple, the money is too easy to earn, is it your turn?
Today we will break this matter apart and crush it, and see what kind of tricky it hides in Zhihu Salt’s choice of this bowl of rice, and where ordinary people want to eat it.
01 Forget “Zhihu” first, remember “Story Club”, and you are getting started
Many people went astray as soon as they came up.
As soon as you hear “Zhihu”, the words “elite”, “dry goods” and “depth” automatically pop up in your head.
It’s over, and I want to write some kind of human insight and social criticism, and the writing is so messy that I feel sorry for the platform like Lu Xun.
This is a misunderstanding.
Zhihu Salt Selection, to put it bluntly, its essence is no different from the “Story Meeting” and “Bosom Friend” sold at the train station decades ago.
It is not for you to come to class, it is to provide users with a “spiritual fast food” that can quickly enter and quickly obtain emotional stimulation in ten minutes on the subway, in the toilet, and fishing.
What’s the core? Just one word – “cool”.
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How to make readers happy? It’s not that your writing is awesome, but whether the core of your story is exciting enough.
In the battle between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, the daughter-in-law finally stopped being angry, and the evil mother-in-law was treated obediently with a trick at the bottom of the pot, which was called cool.
The workplace novice was bullied by the old fritters, and finally pretended to be a pig and ate a tiger, drove away all the villains, and became a director, which is also cool.
The poor boy was dumped by the gold worshiper, but turned around and inherited hundreds of millions of family property, and drove a sports car to participate in the class reunion, which is still cool!
You have to figure this out first.
You’re not a writer, you’re just an emotional masseuse.
Your words are your hands, and they must be accurately pressed on the reader’s “cool point”.
I can’t figure this out, no matter how well you write, you are also self-satisfied, and it only takes 0.5 seconds for the reader to skip away.
02 A story that can sell for money is not “written”, but “designed”
Well, you know to write a “cool article”.
And then what? I have an idea in my head, such as “I traveled back and became my mother’s best friend”, I think it’s very good, turn on the computer and start drying?
If you really want to do this, I guarantee that you will get stuck when you write 10,000 words, and the hole dug in front cannot be filled behind, and the characters will collapse when they say they will collapse.
The layman relies on inspiration, and the insider relies on the process and design.
Before a story is written, you have to draw the drawings clearly like an architect.
This drawing is the outline.
But it’s not the kind of “what to write in the first paragraph, what to write in the second paragraph” taught in school.
Your outline has to be a design for an “emotional roller coaster”.
You have to think about it, the first chapter, that is, the thousands of words that are read for free, what do you use as a hook? It has to be a big hook.
For example, “The illegitimate son brought home by my husband was identified by DNA and is my own brother.”
You see, this hook is gone, suspense, ethics, and conflict are all there.
There are 10,000 “sinkholes” in the reader’s mind, can he not look down?
The beginning hooks the person, and then what?
You have to plan the rhythm.
When should I give some sugar to make readers feel sweet? When do you have to stab a knife to make the reader’s heart tighten? When does the protagonist have to be driven to a dead end, and readers feel that “it’s over, it’s over, and it’s dead”? And when did the protagonist Jedi fight back and return all the previous grievances tenfold and a hundredfold?
These are not written blindly, they are designed.
You should read more of the famous salt selection stories on the list, don’t just watch the fun.
You take a small notebook and write down what you do in each chapter.
Look at it, is there a small reversal in the third chapter? Chapter 5 Is it dead? Chapter 8 Did the male protagonist drop his vest? If you dismantle a lot, you will know in your heart.
Once you’ve laid out the general track of this emotional roller coaster, you start filling it with stuff.
At this time, every word you write must be useful.
Either push the plot or set up a character.
For example, if you write that the protagonist is poor, don’t just say “he is very poor”, how boring it is.
You have to write that he eats instant noodles, and when the noodles are finished, the soup is reluctant to pour, so he beats an egg and goes in, and it’s another meal.
This kind of detail is called establishing a character.
Oh yes, there is another trick that many people don’t know.
You finish writing a chapter, don’t rush to send it.
You put it there, do something else, and come back in a few hours.
Or, you can use the reading function of your phone and let it read it to you.
As soon as you hear it, you will know where it is awkward, where it is not easy to read, and which sentence is pure nonsense.
This works better than watching it a hundred times yourself.
03 Let’s have some dry goods that others don’t say
Just know the above, you are still a novice.
If you want to look professional, you have to understand some “black words”, or in other words, understand some more low-level logic.
The first is called “emotional gap”.
It’s not enough to have a cool point, you have to have a “holding back point”.
You have to let the protagonist be stepped into the mud first, looked down upon by everyone, and the reader is about to have a heart attack.
Just like a spring, the harder you press, the higher it bounces.
Without the ultimate “grievance” in the front, there will be no ultimate “coolness” in the back.
Many novices can’t write well because they don’t dare to “abuse the master”, and the protagonist has been going smoothly, so the story is as flat as plain water.
The second is called “poor information”.
Especially if you write suspense or workplace struggles, this trick is king.
What is poor information? You know, the characters in the story don’t know; Or character A knows, character B doesn’t. You as the author, you are God, and you control the flow of information.
When do you throw a clue that makes the reader feel smarter than the protagonist and guess the next move, he will be happy.
When will you reveal another piece of information that overturns all the reader’s previous guesses and makes him shout “What the hell can you do?” He will be even more happy.
Playing with poor information is playing with the reader’s heart.
The third is called “character hook”.
The plot has hooks, and the characters must also have them.
Don’t come up and write the protagonist as a perfect person.
No one loves to see a perfect person.
You have to give him something wrong, even some seemingly contradictory traits.
For example, a female killer, ruthless, but likes to raise succulents.
A domineering president, decisive in killing in the mall, but when he goes home, he is afraid that his wife will be scared to death.
This sense of contrast makes the characters stand up at once, which is more useful than you writing 10,000 words.
Readers will feel that the characters are more real and interesting because of this “contrast cute” or “imperfect”.
04 AI is a knife (comes with a dragon-slaying “spell”)
It’s 2025 now, if you don’t use AI at all, pure hand-to-hand fighting, then I can only say that you are very brave, but it’s not necessary.
However, AI is a tool, a sharp knife, but it is not a cook.
You expect it to directly make you a table full of Manchus and Han, that’s pure a dream.
You have to learn how to use this knife.
The key is how you talk to it, that “prompt”.
Stop being silly and saying “help me write a story”.
You have to think of it as an employee you hire with specific skills with a high salary, and you have to give it a very detailed “job description”.
The following two, you can directly copy the past and use them, which can help you solve many problems from having no idea to not being able to write.
Mantra 1: Specially used to help you “create something out of nothing” a powerful story framework when your mind is empty
# Instructions: Zhihu Salt Selection Story Brain Storm and Outline Generator
## Role-Playing
You are now an “old cat” who has been in the Zhihu salt selection circle for many years, and your grasp of humanity, coolness, and reversal has reached the point of perfection. Your language style is not the kind of serious academic, but a bit ruffian, to the point, full of network sense and complaints. You’re bringing a new person now, which is me.
## Mission Background
I, your new apprentice, now only have a vague idea of a story, and I need you, a veteran, to help me expand this idea into a flesh-and-blood story outline that can be popular at a glance.
You have to remember that our target audience is young people who want to seek intense emotional stimulation in fragmented time, and they don’t have the patience to watch the foreshadowing, and what they want is direct, rough pleasure.
## Core Rules
1. Strong start: A “king bomb” level hook must be thrown in the first chapter, so that the reader will be amazed by the “damn it”.
2. Emotional roller coaster: The plot of the entire outline must have ups and downs, and the feeling of grievance and coolness must alternate, and the intensity of the cool points must be higher and higher each time.
3. Character contrast: The protagonist cannot be a perfect saint, he must have shortcomings and an unknown side, and this sense of contrast is the core charm.
4. End-of-chapter suspense: At the end of each chapter, it must be stuck in a gripping place, just like in an American drama. ## My vague idea I want to write a story about a “fake daughter”, but I don’t want to write the kind of person who cries when he is discovered. I want this fake daughter to know that she is fake from the beginning, and has been secretly laying out.
## Start Execution
After listening to my bad idea, you first comment on it in your poisonous style, and then follow the rules above to help me start from scratch and build a detailed plot outline of at least 10 chapters. The outline should be said in a chat tone, don’t use the 1234 list. In each chapter, you have to tell me [what is the main thing in this chapter], [where is the emotional explosion], and [how to hook people at the end].
Come on, start your show.
Mantra 2: It is specially used to turn the paragraphs you wrote like plain water into spirits
# Instruction: Online plot “magic change” retoucher
## Role-Playing
You are a movie storyboard who is extremely good at “scene reconstruction”, nicknamed “Detail Maniac”.
You have a cleanliness obsession with words and can’t stand any flat and straightforward descriptions without a sense of picture. Your task is not to write, but to fill the “skeleton” words I gave you with flesh and blood, light and shadow, and heartbeat.
## Core Competencies
– Sensory bombardment: You will mobilize your senses of sight, hearing, smell, and touch to drag the reader into the scene.
– Externalization of emotions: you never say “he’s angry”, you write “his back teeth crunch and the blue veins on his neck burst one by one, like a cage trying to break free from the skin”.
– Lens language: You will use close-ups, slow motion, perspective switching, etc. to make the text feel cinematic.
## Mission requirements
The following paragraph was written by me, very dry and boring.
You need to “magic” it into a tense scene of at least 300 words.
Remember that you are not allowed to use any words that directly describe emotions (e.g., sad, happy, nervous, scared), but must be expressed through details and actions.
## Original Text
Wang Wei pushed open the door of the conference room and saw that the plan he had worked hard for was said to be his own credit by Manager Li. He was very angry, but he didn’t dare to attack, so he had to endure it. ”
## Start Execution
Detail maniac, it’s your turn.
Change the garbage text above to me into a clip that can be made directly into a movie. I want to see the change of light and shadow at the moment Wang Wei pushes the door, hear the faint sound of air flowing in the conference room, and feel the stiffness and trembling of every inch of his muscles from head to toe.
Let’s go.
You see, talking to AI like this is the only way it can really help you do its job.
It is a tool man with no emotion but super execution.
You have to be the “person” who gives orders.
In fact, the job of knowing the salt selection story can make money, but it is by no means easy.
You may want to go bald for a start, or you may explode because of bad data.
Behind all the skills that can be realized is boring and persistence that you can’t see.
But the good thing is that it really works you.
Exercise your insight into human nature, exercise your logical skills, and exercise your storytelling skills.
