Techniques of the Selling Writer

by Swain, Dwight V.

  Miller lay very still, his knuckles white on the glasses. . . .

  A motivating stimulus, and the start of the focal character’s reaction. One approach, out of an infinity of possible approaches. Each of us would do it differently—differently each minute, even—for each of us can only be himself as he is at this moment.

  Are all motivating stimuli this lengthily or this tightly drawn?

  Of course not; no more than all shots in a movie are close-ups.

  Thus, the scene on the lake might begin:

  Motivating stimulus: The lake lay like a drop of icy rain, caught in a cleft of a thin green leaf.

  Character reaction:

  Feeling: (NOT STATED)

  Action: Hunkering down in a clump of spruce high on the mountainside, Miller considered it carefully.*

  Speech: (NOT STATED)

  Motivating stimulus: The camping trailers stood at the lake’s south end, Godden’s tent beside them. . . .

  . . . and so on.

  Thing is, close-ups are emphasis shots, shots to make a point. They hit the hardest, count the most.

  When you’re trying to make a point, it’s best if you don’t miss the target. Right?

  To that end, don’t hesitate to frame tightly and move in close . . . if you feel it’s necessary.

  Back to our lesson: If the focal character dislikes something, you bear down heavily on its undesirable features in your description; and vice versa.

  Thus, if he sees a girl through love’s haze, you never get around to mentioning her harelip or off-color glass eye.

  Or, you stress her positive points: her tenderness, her well-turned ankles, the glow of affection that lights up her face.

  Or, you do both.

  If the focal character fears the villain, on the other hand, you focus on that gentleman’s cruelty, his cunning, his viciousness, his lightning-fast reflexes, his heavy thews, the knife-scars he bears as tokens of the night he crippled three Moros running amok on Palawan.

  So much for significance. It’s precisely as simple and as complex as that.

  There remain two other vital characteristics of the effective motivating stimulus: pertinence, and motivity.

  The pertinent stimulus is one relevant to the matter at hand, the immediate issue.

  But don’t stop there. Always, the matter at hand itself has a function: to move your story forward . . . to develop the situation in the path you want it to take.

  To that end:

  (1) The pertinent stimulus must show some change in the external world—your focal character’s state of affairs.

  (2) This external change must be such as logically to evoke some change in his internal world also—his state of mind.

  (3) This internal change must reasonably lead him to behave in the manner you want him to in order to move the story forward.

  Consider the scene at the mountain lake. Our purpose was to motivate our focal character to proceed with his adventure. So, we presented an external stimulus thus:

  Agnes’ face came into focus, then. The blonde hair was matted, the worn plaid dress in rags,

  and so on.

  Whereupon, the focal character reacted:

  Miller lay very still, his knuckles white on the glasses. . . .

  Now suppose we changed the stimulus just a trifle:

  Agnes’ face came into focus, then. The blonde hair was smooth and neatly combed, the worn plaid dress clean even though in rags. She was laughing, and even at this distance the blue eyes seemed to dance with life. Hugging the battered doll to her, she looked down and spoke to it fondly.

  The reaction?

  Miller lay very still. Then, slowly, his hands relaxed and the color came back to his whitened knuckles. . . .

  Thus, Miller again is motivated; again reacts, showing feeling. But this feeling is different from the one before. It points the scenes that follow in a potentially different direction.

  And that’s the test of pertinence. Not just, “Is this stimulus relevant to the immediate issue?” but also, “Does it keep the story itself on target, moving toward the twin goals of outcome and total effect I want it to achieve?”

  So much for pertinence. It demands merely that you view each M-R unit in the perspective of the story as a whole.

  But it’s one thing for a story to move forward; another for it to seem to your reader as if it were so moving. Those motivating stimuli which help to induce this feeling that your story isn’t standing still may be said to have motivity.

  To be motive, a stimulus must spur your focal character to action. Instead of letting him rest on his laurels, it jerks him up and boots him in the pants.

  To that end:

  (1) The motive stimulus is one which demands response.

  (2) The response demanded is of such a nature as to keep your focal character active.

  Too many variables are involved to warrant making these points more explicit. In general, however, what you need is the stimulus that demands adjustment on the focal character’s part. Fluffy white clouds aren’t enough; a thunderhead that makes him race for cover may be. Beads of moisture forming on a cold glass don’t call for action; the glass slopping red wine onto a snowy tablecloth does.

  —Though of course fluffy clouds or beaded glass may do very well if they’re in such context as to make imperative immediate, active response from your focal character.

  Understand, please: This is not an appeal to eliminate all mood and color. The sense of movement isn’t the only, or even necessarily the most important, element in your story. Motivity is a matter of degree and pacing, not an absolute. You’ll always have a host of stimuli that ignore it.

  However, your story may sag if you forget about it altogether. Beware the habitual or “file-and-forget” type of thing! Better that a girl’s eyes challenge your character, or an alarm bell ring, or a man seize him by the wrist. For then he’ll have to decide just what to do about it, and act; and that’s what makes for a sense of movement.

  So much for motivity, and for the motivating stimulus itself.

  Now, what’s on the other side of the fence? What, specifically, is involved when your focal character reacts?

  The character reaction

  A character reaction is anything your focal character feels, thinks, does, or says in consequence of a motivating stimulus that impinges on him.

  To this end, it must be:

  a. Significant.

  b. Pertinent.

  c. Motive.

  d. Characteristic.

  e. Reasonable.

  All our observations on the vital importance of careful selection and description of motivating stimuli apply equally to character reaction.

  In addition, we may say that a reaction is properly significant only when it reflects precisely the image you seek to create. It must capture the exact shadings and nuances of mood. Tenderness can be a thing of infinite gradation, and so can cruelty, or rejection, or lust. If you try to draw a picture of your character as behaving in a kindly manner and, in addition, inadvertently leave the impression that he’s somewhat of a fool for so behaving, the bit may do more harm than good.

  Why does a reaction confuse? Most often, because you the writer haven’t made up your mind as to precisely the effect you seek to achieve. You must decide, definitely and concretely: Is your character stupid, or stuporous, or at loose ends? Is he defeated, or merely faking defeat?

  Then, your decision made, you must implement it with the right reaction—demonstrate your character’s character and state of mind in terms of the thing or combination of things he feels or thinks or does or says.

  Above all, make it your rule that if a reaction is in any way confusing, it must be clarified or left out.

  What about the pertinent reaction?

  It’s the one which links the character to the story as you have conceived it. It moves him down the road you want him to follow. If the situation and your concept demand reckless courage, he’ll behave differently tha
n he would if you’d planned the scene for laughs or pathos.

  The motive reaction? Insofar as practical, let your character respond actively to whatever happens to him.—It’s even possible to make a character quite actively passive, you know: “Joe stood very, very still” . . . “Sam forced the tension from his muscles; breathed deeply in one last grim, raw-nerved effort to relax” . . . “Limp, silent, Helen let the sound wash over her in sleekly ululating waves.”

  Equally important, the motive reaction often is designed to bring about further change in the world outside your character: Hero’s fingers let go of the coin; his antagonist’s eyes flicker as it falls. Heroine’s foot depresses accelerator pedal; car picks up speed; traffic cop kicks motorcycle forward.

  A characteristic reaction is one that’s in keeping with your character’s known character. The Milquetoast doesn’t suddenly slug a gorilla. The strong silent type doesn’t burst forth with flowery speeches. Is your character phlegmatic? Volatile? Sullen? Tender? Weak? Passionate? Irritable? You pays your money and you takes your choice. But whatever he is, it will have a bearing on each of his reactions.

  Reasonable means that your focal character’s reaction should make sense in terms of the motivating stimulus he’s received. Unless he’s been established earlier as some sort of nut, he doesn’t burst into tears over a fancied slight, or knife a friend for an inconsequential five-minute delay, or accept unwarranted abuse from petty tyrants.

  In other words, you should not show him overreacting, under-reacting, reacting incongruously, or the like, within the frame of reference of situation, stimulus, and character.

  So, how would your character react? In view of his motivating stimulus, what will he do?

  There should be no problem if you lead your reader step by step. Link motivation and reaction tightly enough, and he can’t help but understand how your character feels.

  Which means only that you, first, must see each motivating stimulus as your focal character sees it . . . with his background, his attitudes, his dynamics and insights.

  Then, you let him react in character.

  If you’re a girl and like a boy, your reaction to a pass will be different than if you loathe him.

  Said reaction also will differ according to what specific kind of girl you are . . . your habitual reaction to passes.

  If you chance on a holdup, you’ll react one way if you’re an honest citizen; another, perhaps, if you’re an ex-con on parole.

  Well, it sounds easy, anyhow.

  But it still doesn’t tell us just how far to go.

  The problem of proportion

  Life is an unending succession of motivation-reaction units. Your lungs lack air; you draw a breath. Your stomach empties; you search for food. The sun grows hot; your sweat glands ooze. Every minute, every hour, every day, your whole system works to maintain that unique internal balance physiologists know as homeostasis.

  Yet in any story, some parts are presented in greater detail than are others. Here, whole chapters are devoted to action that takes place in fleeting minutes. There, a lapse of years may be passed over in a sentence.

  So, how do you decide how much attention to give each element, each segment? How long should you write a given passage? Or how short?

  Answer: You write to fit.

  To fit what?

  Feelings.

  How do you measure feelings?

  You check them with an emotional clock.

  There are, you see, two kinds of time in this world: chronometrical, and emotional. One, you measure with a watch; the other, with the human heart.

  Chronometrical time is objective. It offers sixty seconds to every minute, sixty minutes to every hour. And your minutes and my minutes and the Greenwich Observatory’s minutes are pretty much the same.

  Emotional time, by way of contrast, is relative, subjective, and based on feelings. In no two of us is it precisely the same.

  The late Albert Einstein summed up the situation where emotional time is concerned, in a capsule comment on relativity: “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute, and it’s longer than an hour.”

  What gives emotional time so wide a range?

  Tension.

  If you’re relaxed, time races by. If you’re tense, it stands still.

  What’s behind tension?

  Fear: the fear that something will or won’t happen.

  Take a birthday picnic. The sky’s blue, the temperature perfect, the food superb, your wife loving, your daughter doting; and all the while, in the back of your head, you think small, pleasant thoughts of how well things have worked out for you through this past year.

  You’re relaxed, happy, unafraid. Time races by.

  But suppose, instead, that this is another, not-so-happy day. You pace the floor in a shabby hospital lounge that smells of fear and phenol, waiting for word to come down as to whether your youngest child will live or die. Panic rides you; draws your belly into a chill, rock-hard knot. The seconds drag by like hours; the minutes pile up in eons. Each footstep, each distant whisper, makes your nerves jump. Your tongue grows thick with too much smoking. Your eyes burn. Your clothes feel dirty, rumpled. Even though you shaved less than an hour ago, your beard is stubble rasping on your knuckles. . . .

  Because tragedy is in you; because you live with the specter of a loved one’s death, tension rides high and time stands still.

  In writing, you translate tension into space: The more tense the situation as your focal character experiences it, the more words you give it.

  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 force
s 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.