Techniques of the Selling Writer (22 page)

Confession editors sometimes say, “Start on the day that’s different.” A Hollywood
axiom recommends, “Start with an
arrival.” Pulp writers used to advocate starting with a fight. A general rule, across
the board, has been that you should start with trouble.

So, where
should
you start?

Which immediately brings up another question: What do you
need
, to start a story?

You need change.

“Start on the day that’s different”? Something made it that way—a
change
from someone’s accustomed routine; what had been.

“Start with an arrival”? An arrival is injection of a new element into a situation;
therefore, a change.

“Start with a fight”? Some deviation from the
status quo
caused that fight to explode at this particular time and place.

“Start with trouble”? Trouble is only a name for what happens when new developments
can’t be fitted into an existing pattern.

So, change is the thing you need to start a story.

Next question: How do you build the beginning of a story around change?

You need four things:

These four items are listed here only as
ingredients
of the beginning, you understand; necessary elements; components. No order of presentation
is implied.

Now, what’s there to say about each one?

By the
existing situation
, we mean the state of affairs in which your focal character functions.

In a suburban home on a quiet weekday morning, that state of affairs may be placid.
On a battlefield, it may be violent. At a high-level business conference, every word
may crackle with tension. Along a shady creek-bank, the mood may be one of peace and
relaxation.

But whatever the situation, your focal character accepts it. It follows an anticipated
routine.

Enter
change.

Change is some new element or relationship injected into the existing state of affairs.
Something happens that makes the original situation different. Perhaps the temperature
drops, or the sun comes up, or a stranger enters, or a girl says yes.

In the quiet household, change may be a leaky pipe or a visiting neighbor or a backfiring
truck that wakes the baby. On the battlefield, it may be a machine gun that jams,
or a sniper’s bullet that kills the squad leader, or an enemy rush that cuts off a
unit.

—Not that changes necessarily appear to be disastrous. Good news—new information received
on anything from health to weather—may upset a situation every bit as much as bad.

So: Change impinges on an existing situation.

And someone is affected by it.

This
affected character
is one whose state of mind is somehow altered by the modification in state of affairs.

This, of course, presupposes that the character has a state of mind to alter. That
is, he can’t be a blank when you introduce him. His behavior must reveal already-existing
attitudes, principles, prejudices, direction.

So, faced with a change in his state of affairs, this character reacts in characteristic
fashion.

Nor does it matter whether his actions are warranted, objectively, by the facts of
what has happened. How he interprets those facts—how he
feels
about them, subjectively—is what counts. For if you rob a grocery store tonight,
and tomorrow morning a squad car pulls up in front of your rooming house, you very
well may jump to and act on the conclusion that you’re about to be arrested—even though,
in actuality, the officers have stopped merely to investigate a smoking trash pile.

In the same way, loss of one friend may spell loneliness to a man, even though he
moves through a crowd of others. Many a woman sees tragedy and old age in the first
slight creping of her skin. Named West Coast manager, an executive quits because he
thinks he rated a home-office job.

Situation, change, character. Three essential ingredients down; one more to go.

Consequences.

That one can spell the difference between success and failure when you start a story.

Sweeping down, wind stings pedestrian. He shivers . . . turns up his collar . . .
hugs his coat tighter about him . . . hurries on home.

And that’s all.

Same way, a girl runs a red light. A cop stops her. The girl smiles. The cop tears
up the ticket. The girl drives off.

No aftermath. By tomorrow the incident is forgotten.

An old woman lives for her son’s rare visits. He comes. She berates him for his neglect.
He ignores her and goes away again.

The state of affairs is back where it began.

To start a story, a change must prove the trigger for continuing consequences.

That is, it must set off a chain reaction. Responding to change, your character must
do something that brings unanticipated results. He must light a fire he can’t put
out.

Thus, regardless of your story’s original situation, or the initial change, sooner
or later—and preferably sooner—the affected character must find himself in an intolerable
state of affairs.

What’s intolerable?

Anything is intolerable which endangers a person’s chances of attaining or retaining
something subjectively important to him.

Or, to put it even more simply, it’s anything he finds too upsetting to ignore.

If you like to walk, and arthritis begins to stiffen up your feet, it’s a painful
annoyance.

If your livelihood depends on walking—that’s intolerable. Win or lose, you’ll fight
against it any way you can.

A wife contemptuous of you is an affront to your pride.

One who backs her contempt with demands for a divorce and property settlement that
will leave you penniless is intolerable.

The lazy, insolent, disobedient child may be frustrating and infuriating. The one
who sets fires every chance he gets forces you to do something about him.

Existing situation plus change plus affected character plus consequences equal desire
plus danger.

Desire plus danger plus decision opens any story.

Decision is a factor we’ll take up later. For now, just remember that the stronger
your character’s desire and the stronger the danger that threatens it, the stronger
your opening.

If the intolerable element can be personified—given life in an active opponent—that’s
even better.

So much for the ingredients you mix into your story’s beginning.

And that brings us back to the place we started: Where do you open?

Each story constitutes a new and unique problem. No one ever knows for sure just which
spot is the best from which to start. Given identical material, no two writers would
begin at precisely the same point.

But in general—?

There’s an old rule-of-thumb that you should open just before the trouble starts . . .
or just as the trouble starts . . . or just after the trouble’s started.

Let’s modify that a bit . . . substituting
change
for
trouble.

Change is what creates your story. So, start as close to change as possible.

More specifically, start
just before
the change impinges . . .
just as
it takes place . . . or
just after.

Thus, if a tornado is what precipitates your story, you might open with generalized
concern about the weather this particular morning . . . or with the tornado sweeping
down . . . or with your focal character bleakly surveying the shattered wreckage of
his farmstead.

If a beautiful blonde is to be slain, we could begin with her alive and in characteristic
action . . . or reeling back with a shriek before the killer’s onslaught . . . or
lying in alley or park or boudoir, stiff and stark and dead.

—And just in case I make “change” and “trouble” seem too close to synonymous in the
examples above, note that the pattern works just as well on two miners striking it
rich: Opening
1 shows them on the verge of giving up . . . Opening 2 lets sand swirl from one’s
pan to reveal a dozen nuggets . . . Opening 3 finds the miners by their fire that
night, gloating over their triumph.

Which of these approaches is best for your particular story?

That’s your decision, and no one else can make it for you. However, certain points
are worth consideration:

This doesn’t mean that you can’t zero in first on existing situation. But today’s
readers tend to be impatient. You either hook them fast or not at all. Film people
say that in Europe you can start a picture with half-a-dozen cloud shots, just to
set the right mood. But in the United States, your audience begins to shift in its
collective seat on shot 2, and shot 3 had better have a bomber hurtling through the
overcast unless you want to play to an empty house.

Similarly, in fiction, a beginning that opens with a half-page description of the
old family manor will probably kill you dead, dead, dead.

To evaluate any phenomenon, you need perspective. A change that comes out of nowhere,
unrelated to any background or existing situation, may lose most of its impact. The
blow struck by a thug in a barroom brawl has different implications—and touches a
different reader interest level—than the punch thrown by a preacher.

“I dropped to one knee and fired twice,” wrote Carroll John Daly, beginning one of
his Race Williams stories in
Black Mask
many years ago. Although this is the very first line, obviously the change in state
of affairs that precipitates the yarn has already taken place, offstage, and Williams
is reacting to it.

This kind of fast take-off is fine, if you’re as deft at it as Daly was. But many
a new writer, tackling it, has difficulty incorporating a smooth explanation of precisely
how the whole business started.

So there you are. Every opening has its problems, and you yourself must choose between
them.

And if you choose wrong?

Well, so what? You won’t be the first or the last man to learn the hard way, from
his own mistakes!

In terms of actual presentation, a good first paragraph is one that persuades your
reader to read the second.

To this end, you should write Paragraph 1 in such a manner that it piques your reader’s
curiosity.

To rouse curiosity in anyone, raise a question in his mind. Specifically, make him
wonder, “Hey, what’s this leading up to?”

How do you do this?

You present your material in terms which indicate that you
are
leading up to something.

This demands that you state and/or imply:

Classification of approaches in this manner is as an aid to clarity only. In practice,
the degree of overlap between categories is great, and there’s no point to trying
to keep them separate.

To be unique is to be without a like or equal.

To call attention to uniqueness is to make your reader wonder what you’re leading
up to.

The job can be done obviously: “She was the only artificial woman in the world.”

Or, subtly: “He couldn’t sleep that night.” (
That
is the keyword.
It implies that most nights he
can
sleep . . . but something different about this one prevents him from so doing.)

Or, on a variety of levels in between: “It was a different sort of a town.” “The contrast
between the two girls was what he noticed.” “’It’s this week or never,’ Susan said.”

If the beautiful blonde turns out to have multifaceted insectile eyes, or the book
on Grandma’s parlor table is illustrated with luridly pornographic pictures, or the
hero starts out the story by proclaiming himself a damned fool—it’s unanticipated.
Intrigued, readers read on, to find out what’s behind it all.

Instead of getting off the elevator at her usual floor this morning, Eunice rides
two stops higher, then walks back down.

Mr. Hersey approaches the front door of his home . . . gets out his key . . . pauses
. . . walks back down the steps . . . goes around the house to the back door and enters
there.