Mao Zonggang, a famous literary critic in the early Qing Dynasty, commented on The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, saying that "a well-written person has nowhere to write, but there is nowhere to write", that is, novels are good at using contrast and contrast to shape characters. This comment also puts forward an artistic proposition of writing out of nothing and being realistic.

"Seven points of historical facts and three points of fiction" vividly illustrates the artistic characteristics of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms seems to grasp the historical picture of the whole Three Kingdoms period as a whole, but this book has great virtual elements in many storylines and characterization. From a historian's point of view, it can't be a book of historical value. This is just like Zhang Xuecheng, a scholar in the Qing Dynasty, said in The Story of the Ice Chen: "Only the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is seven points practical and three points fictional, which often confuses viewers."

The so-called "seven facts" means that the main framework, main characters and major events in the works are designed and organized according to the real situation recorded in historical books, thus giving people a basic sense of historical realism. "Three-point fiction" means that in the detailed description of characters and events, using the wonderful fragments of folk rumors and the author's own fictional imagination, under the premise of not affecting the historical truth, the artistic charm of stories and characters is maximized. When the novel portrays the characters, according to the materials provided by the history books, with the help of imagination and fiction, the author pays attention to the rationality and coherence of the plot at the same time of fiction, carefully interspersed with stories, cleverly conceived, and adopted legends instead of blunt fiction. For example, the well-known "Grass Boat Borrows Arrows" was originally written by Sun Quan in ruxu in the third year after Battle of Red Cliffs; In the novel, Kong Ming uses arrows to describe his ingenious plan. Another example is the famous "Three Visits to the Cottage", which is only a brief introduction in many works; The Romance of the Three Kingdoms plays an artistic role in Zhuge Liang's dubbing due to the need of characterization, but it takes eight chapters to render this historical story magnificent and fascinating. As a novel with a historical theme, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms first faces the relationship between historical truth and artistic creation. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms has made great achievements in art, that is, it correctly handled the relationship between the two and provided a successful model for later historical novel creation.

The Romance of the Three Kingdoms adopts the method of typed characterization.

This type of description method is first manifested in its singleness, that is, an important image has a major and prominent feature, which plays a decisive role in the internal factors of the image and is enough to support the whole image. Such as Cao Cao's treachery and cruelty; Liu Bei's generosity, benevolence and righteousness; Zhuge Liang's wisdom and loyalty; Guan Yu's bravery and loyalty; Dong Zhuo's cruelty; Zhou Yu's narrow-mindedness and so on. Secondly, it is characterized by stability. The main characteristics and other factors of the characters are basically stable, lacking the development and changes in both vertical and horizontal aspects, and are in a classic silent state. For example, Zhuge Liang succeeded in borrowing arrows from grass boats because he mastered the climate change of the Yangtze River in winter. Burning Bowangpo is to make full use of the natural characteristics of the geographical environment.