Techniques of the Selling Writer (12 page)

Why?

Because your reader needs a clear and simple standard by which to judge the degree
to which an event is important or inconsequential.

Wordage, length, gives him a yardstick with which to make this measurement. If you
describe a thing in tremendous detail, he figures there must be something important
about it. If you dismiss it with an aside, he takes it for granted that it holds no
profound significance.

The issue is never words for words’ own sake, however. On the contrary. Words are
merely the tool you use to make crystal clear the reasons why your character is experiencing
fear and tension in the first place.

To understand this properly, look first at the nature of danger.

Danger is objective. It’s something that exposes you to the possibility of injury,
loss, pain, or other evil.

A speeding bullet may be a danger. Same for a typhoid germ . . . a new neighbor . . .
an old rival . . . a flash flood . . . a roller skate on the darkened front steps.

Fear is subjective. It’s an individual’s feeling-response when he perceives danger.

No one can translate danger into fear until he becomes aware that said danger exists.
The speeding bullet may strike you dead while you stand relaxed and carefree, laughing.
The typhoid germ enters your system undetected, while you think only about how good
the water tastes. The new neighbor appears friendly; the old rival, a dead issue.

So, you feel no fear.

But suppose you
do
recognize the danger.—Perhaps you glimpse the marksman as he brings up his gun. Or
it dawns on you as you drink that the water came from the contaminated well. Or you
catch the glance that passes between your neighbor and your wife. What then?

Then, fear may come . . . a subjective alarm signal that puts you on an emotional
war footing . . . mobilizes all your resources of energy and alertness for self-preservative
effort.

That mobilization involves a multiplicity of glandular and muscular reactions. The
common term for it is tension.

How does all this apply to story?

As always, the key factor is your focal character. Your story
centers on him and his developing situation: the changes in external circumstance
that we call state of affairs; the changes in internal attitude referred to as state
of mind.

Any change in state of affairs brings with it the potentiality of danger.

Why?

Because it forces your focal character to readjust . . . to revise his behavior to
fit the new situation. Face him with an unfamiliar girl or boss or car or drink, or
inject a new element into an existing relationship, and he must decide how to act
where it’s concerned.

So?

The new behavior he chooses may not work out. His attempted readjustment may only
plunge him into trouble.

Consciously or unconsciously, he knows this. Therefore, to a greater or lesser degree,
he fears . . . even though he might deny any hint of such, and declare his state merely
one of alertness or interest or attention.

Enter tension.

Note where this puts the issue: not in the event, but in the character’s reaction
to that event; not in external circumstance, state of affairs, but in the affected
person’s attitude, his state of mind.

Thus, your character’s external stimulus, his change in state of affairs, may be notice
of a promotion, or a telegram announcing a million-dollar inheritance, or a pretty
girl begging him to kiss her. It still can generate fear and tension in him.

Why?

Because it forces him to choose a course of action—one of many, quite possibly.

If he chooses wrong, the results may be disastrous. Yet you never can know for sure,
in advance, whether the choice you make will be the right one.

Take the matter of the pretty girl, for instance. Your character’s first reaction
is to kiss her, enthusiastically.

And yet . . . should he, really? Isn’t it a bit out of line for any girl, let alone
a pretty one, to come to a young man begging kisses? What’s her motive? Why has she
chosen him, among all the men available? Is she trying to compromise him? To make
another man jealous? To pull off some wild publicity stunt at his expense? Can she
be emotionally disturbed—?

The possibilities are well-nigh infinite. So, your character hangs teetering on the
brink of action—reconsidering his situation, re-evaluating his position, trying to
decide whether or not the game is worth the candle.

In brief, he faces a change in state of mind, and it bothers him. Whichever road he
takes, he’ll never again be quite the same. Let him succumb to the girl now, without
loss, and tomorrow he’ll be a fraction bolder—and not just in regard to girls, either.

Let him succumb with disastrous results, and he may turn timid or bitter or even vicious.
Let him withdraw, turn down his chance, and the result may be self-righteousness or
self-contempt.

Now not all situations in which your character finds himself will demand major soul-searching.
Neither will all motivating stimuli that impinge upon him. The biggest part of life
is always routine. Habit takes care of it.

Further, not all hazards that face your character will, to the same degree, prove
pertinent; story-related. A soldier may sleep through a barrage which, by any objective
standard, puts him in a position of total jeopardy. But you, writer, give it only
casual mention because battle, at this point, isn’t the issue.

Then, our soldier receives a Dear John letter, reacts to it with a plunge into deep
depression, and loses his will to fight.

You thereupon devote page after page to detailing his every stimulus and reaction,
because this is a love story and your character’s state of mind where his girl is
concerned is its core and heart, the crucial issue.

Always, the points you bear down on are those that influence the development of your
story
.

The time you need detail is when your focal character’s state of mind changes
.

The place to summarize is where no such change takes place
.

The trick is to keep asking yourself, “How does my character feel about the changes
that are taking place in his world, his state of affairs?”

If his course of action is clear-cut and non-dangerous; if his state of mind remains
smooth and untroubled—then summary is permissible.

If, on the other hand, he’s in a spot where all his efforts seem to come to naught,
and disasters pile up, and he’s forced repeatedly to ask himself, “What should I do
now to avert this catastrophe that threatens to engulf me?”—then pour on the detail!

(Incidentally, it should here be noted that it isn’t necessarily necessary to go inside
a character’s head in order to indicate change in his state of mind. While introspection
is, at times, a useful tool, the objectivist school of writing as exemplified in Hemingway
and Hammett has clearly demonstrated that it’s quite possible to show what’s going
on by detailing behavior and appearance.)

To what degree can you afford to summarize?

Here a little judgment helps. Obviously, you often can get away with more in a long
story than a short one; and skill in handling makes a tremendous difference. But in
general, you may bridge almost any amount of time or space,
so long as your character’s problem and state of mind remain essentially the same
.

Thus, a gigantic “fact”—a war fought, a country swept away, a decade passed—may be
presented as a single unified motivating stimulus. Whereupon, your character’s reaction—one
small feeling, a sadness at such waste—may suffice to bridge the gap, because his
original problem and state of mind have remained virtually the same through it all.

Or, to put it in different words, externals have changed; but you’re still dealing
with the same old story, of how your particular character deals with his private danger.

Why use so much detail at moments of crucial change?

Partly, as previously noted, to impress your reader with the event’s importance.

Partly, to give proportion to your presentation . . . lay it out not on a plain or
plateau, but in peaks and valleys.—More of this later.

Partly, to build up the scene and milk it dry of every drop of drama.—More of this
later, too.

But above all, you use detail to make it absolutely clear to your reader precisely
why
your character does as he does . . . the pattern his thought and feelings follow;
the strengths and weaknesses of his logic.

A portion of that
why
is subjective . . . a matter of your character’s character. But another segment is
more or less objective: external factors which influence your character’s degree of
tension and hence the amount of detail in which you present the incident.

Five aspects of this objective segment are:

Thus, you may or may not feel threatened when a guest points out to you that you’ve
erred in serving chablis at room temperature rather than chilled. But a sentence of
life imprisonment, for most of us, makes readjustment an absolute necessity.

In the same way, the degree of threat you feel when you catch your wife kissing your
best friend is unlikely to prove as intense as that which you experience if you find
the two in bed together.

Immediacy? A falling safe demands one brand of readjustment and change in state of
mind; the fact that you must remember to renew your lease next month, another.

Where difficulty of decision is concerned, most of us would have little trouble were
we to have to choose between exposure as braggart and white liar, and murder of the
person who would expose us. But would your choice be as easy if you discover that
your dead father has embezzled bank funds, and you now must decide whether to devote
your life to repaying the loss, as a matter of principle, when no one will ever know
the truth if you keep silent?

Again,
deciding
what to do may be easy, with a Bengal tiger on the loose. But
doing
it may prove a trifle harder.

And so it goes. Each and every factor must be considered, if your copy is to maintain
proper balance. Given a minor tension, you may decide that the change in state of
mind involved is so slight that you can afford to ignore it, gloss it over. A major
change, on the other hand, demands detailing . . . a subtle change, perhaps even more,
simply because it’s harder to make clear and believable.

One thing, however, is certain: Few aspects of writing are more vital. Overplay your
tensions, or underplay them, or ignore them, and almost certainly your story will
fail to satisfy.

Difficulties, in turn, generally reflect an effort to get too much mileage from a
given M-R unit. To clarify anything, or build up its importance, demands fragmentation.
Break down your material into smaller and smaller units! Spell out each flicker of
meaning or feeling. Detail each nuance. If you don’t know why your character stopped
trading at one grocery and switched to another, go back and consider concrete instances,
and the trivia that made those instances significant. Probe beneath the generalizations.
Pinpoint the impolite clerk, the bad eggs, the nasty cashier, the thumb on the scales.
Or even the scuttling cockroach, the penny overcharge, the tiny overemphasis on “sir”
or “ma’am.” Be petty and finicky and gimlet-eyed. Get down to specifics. Deal on a
bedrock level with each individual motivating stimulus and character reaction.

By way of recapitulation, then . . .

Writing the M-R unit

How do you go about writing a motivation-reaction unit?

Like this:

Now, with a roar, the red Jag picked up speed, careening recklessly as it hurtled
down the drive and out onto the highway.

Stiff-lipped, Brad turned from the window and ground out his cigarette.

Our focal character here, let’s assume, is the gentleman y-clept Brad. The first sentence—the
one
without
Brad, the one in which he isn’t mentioned—is of course a
motivation
sentence. It describes what it is that your character is going to react to, and it
does so in terms precise enough to make it plausible that he react in the manner you
wish.

Most important of all is the fact that your character does
not
appear anywhere in the sentence, either by noun or pronoun.