by How to Tell A Story- The Secrets of Writing Captivating Tale (mobi)
JUST SAY NO
The idea of conflict can be reduced to the word no. Throughout a book, something or someone is saying no to your characters. Usually, it's a person or a number of people saying no. And they're saying no in the scenes and throughout the book. Each time someone says no to your protagonist it increases the narrative's emotional potency, depending on how you resolve the issue of overcoming that particular obstacle.
Let's examine Compromising Positions, a novel by Susan Isaacs. In this novel, about a woman who lives in the suburbs whose life is kind of dull, the protagonist becomes fascinated by the murder of a local dentist, who happened to be a bit of a ladies' man. The protagonist decides to snoop around and investigate this murder. What does her husband do? Does he say, "Oh, sure honey, that's a great idea"? Of course not. He says, "Don't do this. You're making a fool of yourself, you're embarrassing me, you're neglecting your duties at home."
What do the police say? "Oh, what a fine thing. You're going to help us get the murderer"? No. They say, "Stay out of it. Mind your own business."
No, no, no, no, no. That's what a narrative is, whether fiction or nonfiction: the conflict generated by people saying no to your characters and your main character in particular pursuing her goal anyway.
The problem is, within the scene, even though somebody or something is saying no to your character, you need to get the opposition to say yes by the end of the scene or you won't have much movement in your narrative. The question is, How are you going to get to this point?
MAKE ME A BELIEVER
You can't just have characters say, "No. No, no, no, no. Oh, OK. Yes." It's going to seem contrived. Readers have to believe that something happened within that scene that got those characters to turn around and say yes.
In the Jordon's Wager excerpt, we saw Rachel go from no to yes because she and Jordon discover they have something in common—a mutual dislike of the coal companies.
You can get to yes a number of ways. You can get to yes by raising the payoff for something. For example, in a private detective's office, a beautiful woman comes in and says, "I want you to take my case. I want you to find my brother who's missing. He was last seen working on the docks in Boston."
The detective says, "No, I can't do that." The woman says, "Oh please."
"No."
They go back and forth until toward the end she says, "You know, I find you very attractive."
And he starts thinking, Well, maybe I can do this. He's gotten around to yes because she used seduction.
The reverse of that is some sort of coercive blackmail—a stick, as opposed to the carrot of seduction. A man in a black hat says to the detective, "I need you to take this mysterious box to California."
"What's in it?"
"I can't tell you."
"I'm not going to take it."
No, no, no. And finally, the man in the black hat says, "You know, I'd hate to see you have a bad accident—or maybe a friend of mine will give your daughter a ride home from school tomorrow." A threat. So our hero thinks, When you put it that way.... Readers understand how he got from no to yes.
But the most common way for getting from no to yes is something internal to the character. In this example, Jeff has been abandoned by his wife. He's kind of sad and goes off to be a big brother with a Big Brother/Big Sister organization. He's sitting at the table talking about this kid George, who may become his little brother. The counselor, who's telling Jeff about George, is not making young George sound too appealing. The counselor says, "Well, George is a nice enough kid, but he'll steal your stereo and who knows what else." Jeff thinks, Maybe I don't want to work with this kid after all. No, I better not take him. No, no, no.
But, as the interview goes along, the counselor says something about George not having a father, and Jeff says, "Let me ask you something. Was George abandoned?" The counselor says, "Yes, he was." And Jeff says, "OK, I'll work with him."
Why? Because Jeffs found out that he shares something in common with George: They've both been abandoned by people who at one time cared about them. Jeff now identifies with George, and readers can believe that emotional experience has gotten him from no to yes.
One more thing about conflict: Don't let it intensify too quickly. You don't want people coming into the room and spilling out all their conflict quickly with yelling and shouting. You want to play it a bit more subtly. Hold that lid on. Hold onto the conflict. Release it gradually.
EXERCISES
1. Go through five scenes you've written and look for who or what is saying no and what she or it is saying no to. If you can't find a person, an event or a force saying no, you're going to have to rewrite the scene because there's no conflict.
2. Suppose a woman is dying of AIDS and her bitter, estranged husband can't forgive her for cheating on him and infecting their only child. How does she get him to forgive her as she lies on her death bed? Or does she? Write the scene.
Chapter Ten
Theme and Subplot
Whenever you mention to people that you're working on a book, they probably ask, "What's it about?'' You may tell them, for example, "Well, it's about a woman who decides to buy a ranch in Arizona." But what if you had to give them a one-word answer?
The answer to that question is the theme of your book.
There should be in your narrative a single idea, echoed throughout the book at many levels. Maybe it's freedom. Maybe it's integrity, loyalty, regret, sorrow—something. This is the theme of your story.
In Good If It Goes, a young adult novel by Gary and his wife, Gail, the theme is tradition. It's about a Jewish boy who's soon to have his bar mitzvah but who would rather play basketball. And those things are in conflict. It's also about his relationship with his grandfather. But if it had to be reduced to a single word, the story is about tradition.
I'm going to show you a scene from Gary and Gail's book, and you'll see how this idea of tradition is woven into the narrative.
David is twelve years old. He's been informed that he's got to take Hebrew lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays—the same days he wants to play basketball. He's not happy about it, and he talks to his mother and says I don't want to do this, and she says you've got to do this, you're Jewish, it's the tradition. He talks to his father, and his father says listen to your mother. So, he decides to go to his grandfather, Max Levene, and try to get his grandfather to convince his parents that he shouldn't
have to go to Hebrew school, that he shouldn't have to bother with this tradition of the bar mitzvah.
The family goes to temple one morning, and after returning to the grandfather's house, Max says,' 'I take David for a walk.'' David is telling the story:
Grampa led me down behind his house into some woods that stretch for about a mile, I guess, all the way to the turnpike. In the autumn here the leaves on the trees are gold and red and lots of other colors and on a sunny afternoon like this was, they're just incredibly bright. It was real basketball weather.
"To the stream," Grampa said. There's a stream down behind Grampa's house, which is the main reason he bought the house years ago. He lived near a stream when he was a kid in Germany.
"You know," Max Levene said as we moved down the hill kind of slowly because Max isn't all that young anymore, "when I was a boy in Germany my father would walk with me and my brothers and sisters down to the stream on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. There we would say a prayer and then we would shake out our pockets in the stream. It was said that we were shaking away our sins. This is a custom called Tashlich. Then we would walk home and Mama would be waiting with home-baked challa and wine and we would dip the challa in honey and everyone would wish everyone a sweet new year."
When we got down by the stream, Grampa reached in his pockets and took out his handkerchief and his keys and put them on the ground by a tree. Then he stood by the stream and he yanked his pockets inside out and he shook them over the stream. "David," he said, "you got some sins you want to get rid of?"
We sat for a while by the stream without talking and
then Max Levene said, "What is the problem?''
"Grampa," I said, "I've got to play basketball this year. This is absolutely my last chance. I'll never make the team next year in high school. I'm too short. Randy and I started the Shrimp League just so kids like us could play on a team."
' 'So why is this a problem?"
"Ma and Dad won't let me play," I said.
"Hmmn," Grampa said. He says "hmmn" a lot. "This is strange,'' he said.' 'Your mother and your father love you. Why would they not let you do something that is so important to you? They must have a very good reason.''
"No, Grampa, they don't have any good reason."
"Oh? So what is this reason they have that is not so good?"
"Hebrew school."
' 'Hebrew school? This is a problem?''
"My bar mitzvah!" I said. "I'm getting my haftorah pretty soon and that means I have to go to Hebrew school twice a week to learn it. Tuesdays and Thursdays! And the Shrimp League games are on Tuesdays, and even if they weren't, there just wouldn't be time for everything, with homework and all."
' 'Hmmn," my grandfather said.
"It's just not fair, Grampa. I don't care about being bar mitzvahed. It's not important to anybody except them, but they won't listen to me. You're the only one who can convince them. They'll listen to you."
Grampa didn't say anything for a long time. He just stared at the stream. Then he said, "What makes you think that I would tell your parents you should not go to Hebrew school, my grandson?"
"Because you're an atheist," I said. "You don't believe in God."
"Agnostic," he said.
" 'Agnostic ? What's that?"
"It means I'm not sure about God."
"Well, if you're not so sure there's a God then you don't believe in bar mitzvahs, right?"
"My grandson,'' he said,' 'it is sometimes difficult for me to believe there is a God who should allow what has happened to my family and our people over the years. You know what I'm talking?"
"You mean about the Nazis and the concentration camps and all that?"
"Yes, David," he said. "All that." He said it more to himself than to me. Most of Max Levene's family had been killed in Germany because they were Jewish. "So," Grampa said, "this is not a God I can believe in, though I don't say you shouldn't. This you must decide for yourself. But I believe in our people, David, and it seems to me that if there is a God he would want you to be a bar mitzvah boy like your father before you. It is the tradition."
"I know, I know," I said. There was that word again. Tradition. "But Grampa," I said, "I don't believe in tradition."
"Oh?"
' 'Yeah, Grampa, really! I thought about it, I really did, and I think that what's going on now is what's really important, not a bunch of stuff that happened years ago. "
"So you do not believe in tradition? Of this you are sure?"
"Yes," I said. "I'm sure."
"Oh," Grampa said, "I am so relieved. The money I will save."
' What are you talking about, the money you' 11 save?'' I said. For a minute I thought Max Levene was getting nutty.
"On your birthday presents," he said. "And on Cha-nukah I'll save a fortune. Yes, yes. With all the money I'll save, I'll buy maybe a new car."
"Grampa, what have birthday presents got to do with it? And Chanukah presents?"
"It is tradition," he said. "Nothing more. Why do we give a present to a boy on his birthday? Because it is the tradition, that's why. And Chanukah. Tell me, David, your Christian friends, do they also think tradition is not important? Their parents will be happy to know this. No more Christmas shopping!"
"But that's different," I said. "Birthday presents and Christmas presents, that's not the same as being bar mitzvahed."
"I know, " he said. "Being a bar mitzvah boy is even more important."
For a while we didn't say anything....
Finally, Grampa spoke.
He lifted his hand a little bit and he said,' 'You see the stream, David. The traditions are like a stream, too, a stream that flows through the generations of Jewish people. You don't do this bar mitzvah for God, my grandson, you do it for your people in the past and in the future.... If there's no tradition, there's no people. " ...
I felt pretty lousy as we walked back up through the woods and into the house. Everyone was standing around the kitchen when we walked in. Ma looked at me as if the answer to some question were written on my face. Then she looked at Max. Then Dad looked at me. Then he looked at Max. Nobody said anything for a minute. Then Nana said, "Come, everybody come into the dining room."
Nana had baked a beautiful challa and it was sitting on the dining room table. It's a big loaf of bread shaped like a crown, which Jewish people eat on special holidays. We all gathered around the table while Grampa sliced the challa. Then we each took a piece. Nana walked around carrying a bowl of honey. We dipped our bread in the honey and everybody wished everybody else a sweet new year. Dad came over and put his arm around me.
"So did you have a nice walk with your grandfather?" he said.
"I've had better," I said.
Dad squeezed me a little tighter. Grampa poured the wine, and when everybody had a glass, Dad lifted his high in the air. "To David," he said, "to David."
Tradition is the theme running through that scene. In fact, it's a word and a theme that runs through the whole book, the plots and the subplots. David is a Boston Celtics basketball fan, as Gary was. And, during the course of the story he's saying he doesn't believe in tradition, in particular the Jewish tradition.
At one point, he goes to a Boston Celtics basketball game with his uncle, and he looks up and he sees hanging from the rafters all these banners that the Celtics won over the years for championships. And his uncle says, "Yeah, they're a great team. With a great tradition." David is a little surprised at the use of this word tradition, and he says, "What do you mean?" His uncle explains to him the winning ways of the Celtics is also a tradition. David begins to see that tradition is not just something he practices on Saturdays in the temple, it's something that occurs throughout his life on a number of different levels, just as it occurs at a number of different levels throughout the book.
So what is the word for you? If you haven't figured it out yet, don't worry about it.
Gary once told me he talked about this to author Marilyn French. She wrote the novel The Women's Room. She said, ' 'I wrote about three hundred pages of my novel before I knew what I was writing about. And then I understood. I was writing about rage." Rage is what it was for her in that novel. What is it for you? What's the theme? What's the controlling idea throughout?
Figure that out, even if it changes as your book grows in the organic way that books grow, and you will have an answer to how to invent incident and subplot, what kind of viewpoints will work and what kind of overarching metaphor can be woven throughout the narrative that will underscore, subtly, the theme you're writing about.
In music, you have melody and you have harmony.
In writing, you have story and theme.
Theme is particularly relevant when it comes to creating subplots. The subplot in your narrative is not just something a character happens to be doing while the events of your narrative take place; it is something that relates to the plot in some structural way.
In short, the story, or plot, of your book is a sequence of events that are linked; the theme is what your book is about, the glue that gives your story a coherence and a unity of metaphor and invention; subplot is usually one of the main means of demonstrating or showing (rather than telling) that theme without the need for some kind of editorial comment.
SUBPLOT EMPHASIZES THEME
Remember the movie 48 Hrs, with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy? We can guess that in the past, this cop has had a partner who
somehow let him down, or maybe got killed. This cop has trouble working with partners. Then an officer is killed with the Nolte character's gun and he vows to catch the bad guys. Trouble is, he has to do it using the help of a partner—a criminal (Eddie Murphy) who used to hang around with the killer and knows his haunts and habits. So, in order to nail the bad guy, the cop arranges for the convict to get a forty-eight-hour pass out of jail, in the officer's custody.
So here we have a guy who is forced into a partnership with someone he doesn't much like, and who gradually, and grudgingly, gets to like and rely on the most unlikely of partners.
At various times throughout the movie, we see the cop in conflict with his girlfriend. They sleep together, but then he rushes off without much romance. They talk on the phone, but he's always got something more important he has to do right at that moment, so he puts her on hold, they fight, she hangs up on him. Clearly, his inability to work with partners extends to more than just police work.
This whole strand of narrative with the detective and his girlfriend is a subplot. It shows that the cop has a life beyond the confines of the main narrative, but it is not extraneous; it has a function that plays into the main story line. What is that function? It's to emphasize an important aspect of this guy's character even though it has no direct bearing on the pursuit of the killer.
Actually, no one else ever meets the girlfriend, although the new partners talk about her, briefly, as they slowly forge a bond. When the story finishes, and the two—together—capture (read kill, in this case) the bad guy, the girlfriend doesn't appear, so there is no scene resolving the conflict with her. Yet we really don't notice this or even feel bothered by it. Why?
Because audiences—including readers—instinctively understand that plots and subplots deliver "messages" about each other. So when, in the main story, we see Nolte's character finally learn to work in partnership and friendship with someone else, we don't need it to be spelled out for us that this will probably spill over into his personal life. If things worked out with the convict, the implication is that they will eventually work out with the girlfriend. So there's no need for a final subplot scene to underscore what we already know.
