Techniques of the Selling Writer

by Swain, Dwight V.

  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:

  a. Necessity of readjustment in your focal character, and thus necessity of change in his state of mind.

  b. Degree of change.

  c. Immediacy of change.

  d. Difficulty of decision.

  e. Difficulty of action.

  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 . . .

  a. Summarize facts and mechanics.

  b. Detail that which is so emotionally pertinent that it holds the potentiality of creating tension or otherwise changing your focal character’s state of mind.

  Writing the M-R unit

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

  a. Write a sentence without your character.

  b. Follow it with a sentence about your character.

  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.

  This is especially true while you’re still a beginner, getting the feel of this device. For example, you do not fall into th
e trap of writing, “Now, Brad saw the red Jag pick up speed,” etc.

  The reason you shouldn’t do this is that it’s very, very easy for the inclusion of any mention of your character in a motivating sentence to transform said sentence into one of reaction; or, at least, to mix the whole thing up to the point where there’s a feeling of clutter to the sequence.—Whereas what you want is something that confuses your reader not at all . . . external circumstance pure and simple, state of affairs to motivate your focal character. You even make it a point to watch your language: “careening recklessly” is the terminology of an outside observer—onlooker, not driver.

  The second sentence, in turn, is a reaction sentence. That is, it’s about Brad. It describes how he behaves in consequence of the action that takes place in Sentence 1. His state of mind is made clear by the use of the phrase “stiff-lipped,” and the fact that he “grinds” out his cigarette.

  Another example? How about a love story:

  Dave’s hands were very sure, very skillful.

  A strange, raw-edged sort of panic gripping her, Sue pushed him away.

  Sue is our focal character. Sentence 1, external to her, provides motivation, in the form of Dave’s action. Sentence 2 shows how she reacts. We even tell how she feels—“A strange, rawedged sort of panic gripping her . . .”

  By now, someone no doubt is complaining that the onesentence limitation isn’t valid.

  He’s right, of course. Often two, or three, or even more sentences may be needed in order to present a given motivation or reaction with proper impact. So what we’re really dealing with is what might be termed one unit of motivation and one unit of reaction.

  Thus, take Example 1. That first, motivating sentence leans over a bit on the cumbersome side. Breaking it up and elaborating might make it stronger:

  Now, with a roar, the red Jag picked up speed. Careening recklessly, it hurtled down the drive; then, with a scream of protesting tires, fishtailed out onto the highway.

  More vivid, right? Easier to read! And we’ve even eliminated the implication of simultaneity conveyed by the “as” of the original version.

  Brad’s reaction can stand a little attention, too:

  Stiff-lipped, Brad turned from the window. “I’ve had it!” he snapped, grinding out his cigarette. “The little bitch can go to hell!”

  Yet though extra sentences may sharpen up your copy, there still are virtues to the one-sentence rule. When you’re just learning, for example, you tend to kid yourself that you need a lot more verbiage than really is essential. Given half a chance, some of us would feel it necessary to mention that fury seethed within Brad; that his blue eyes grew bleak; that muscles knotted at the hinges of his jaws; that his nostrils flared and his fists tightened and his face flushed. As the saying goes, the kitchen sink would be there too if we could only figure out a way to get it through the door!

  Even more important is the issue of confusion. The moment you get two sentences in a unit, there’s also the danger that you’ll give your reader the impression that there are two (or more) motivations in a row, or two (or more) reactions.

  Here’s a sample:

  Stiff-lipped, Brad turned from the window. He snapped, “I’ve had it!” He ground out his cigarette.

  The problem is that each new declarative sentence with your character as subject tends to appear to constitute a fresh reaction, unless you handle it carefully. The moment you say something like, “He got up. He crossed the room. He opened the window. He peered out,” your reader gets the feeling that all’s not well . . . classifies the passage as jumpy and jerky.

  Now such choppiness is acceptable for effect, upon occasion. But overworked, it can destroy you.

  The thing that bothers your reader, though he’s seldom aware of it, is the absence of anticipated sentences of motivating stimulus. Your construction makes him feel as if they should be present. But they aren’t there.

  A reconstruction will show you what I mean:

  He got up.

  “Steve, wait!” The girl sounded just a little frightened now.

  He crossed the room.

  Fingers unsteady, she plucked at the throat of her dress. “Please—I mean—oh, I feel so weak, so faint. . .”

  He opened the window.

  Rain-freshened evening air eddied into the room, bringing with it a rattle and drone of traffic noises.

  He peered out.

  Each of your character’s actions now is motivated, even though the writing is rough and awkward. And high time! Confusion is a luxury you simply can’t afford. So, see to it always that your line of M-R development is kept absolutely straight and clear and to the point.

  Does this mean that every choppy passage demands insertion of motivations or reactions?

  Not necessarily. Often, the answer is merely to juggle words or sentence structure until you achieve a surface unity; an impression of continuity that draws apparently divergent elements into a single motivation or reaction.

  For example: “Getting up, he crossed the room, opened the window, and peered out.”

  Simple, eh? You shouldn’t have any trouble with that . . . even though you surely will!

  To maintain the flow of mounting emotional intensity in your copy, continue to alternate sentences (or, if need be, larger units) of stimulus and response, cause and effect, motivation and reaction:

  . . . and so on, step by step, as your character—and your reader—live through the rising action of the scene.

  Note also that such rising action is an interaction, actually. For just as your focal character reacts to his external motivation, so the world outside reacts to him. Whatever he does will have an effect on others.

  So much for the M-R unit . . . the concept of motivation and reaction as it applies to fiction. Deceptively simple at first glance, it sometimes poses problems of choice that are little less than fiendish.

  Fools will sneer at the motivation-reaction pattern as mere mechanics; or, with equally unhappy results, will attempt to use it as a mere mechanical device.

  Clods will snatch at the first motivation that comes to hand, then pair it with a painfully obvious reaction.

  Literary nit-pickers will drag forth a thousand instances in which master craftsmen have achieved brilliant effects while appearing to ignore completely every precept here set forth.

  (After all, shouldn’t any of us be able to duplicate the feats of a professional marksman the first time we get a gun in our hands?)

  Writers with better sense will recognize the M-R unit for what it is: a tool, infinitely valuable, whose use they must master so completely that its skilled manipulation becomes automatic and instinctive. How well it serves them will depend on their own sensitivity, their choice of materials, their insight into character, and their talent at deciding which bits to build up and which to subordinate.

  How do you least painfully achieve such mastery?

  The best way, I suspect, is to write in whatever manner comes easiest for you, paying no attention to any rules whatever.

  Then, go back over your copy and check to make sure that each reaction is motivated; that each motivating stimulus gets a reaction; and that ineptitude in use of language has not in any way confused the issue.

  Do this conscientiously on a hundred pages of copy, and on the hundred-and-first there’ll be few errors in motivation or reaction.

  Meanwhile, it’s time you turned at least part of your attention to the dramatic scene as a useful tool for building conflict.

  * Carefully, in this instance, is a good example of a word with connotations to color apparently objective description. It implies importance and/or strong interest (Why consider anything “carefully” if the item considered isn’t somehow vital or otherwise intriguing?) and hints at danger: The situation apparently makes caution advisable.

  CHAPTER 4

  Conflict and How to Build It

  A story is a chain of scenes and sequels.

  How do you build a story?<
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  With scene.

  With sequel.

  Two basic units. That’s all. Master their construction and use and you’ve won half the battle. At least.

  To that end, you need to learn five things:

  1. How to plan a scene.

  2. How to plan a sequel.

  3. How to write a scene.

  4. How to write a sequel.

  5. How to mesh the two together.

  A scene is a unit of conflict lived through by character and reader.

  The big moments in your story are scenes. Or, to put it the other way around, if you want some incident or bit to loom large to your reader, cast it in scene form.

  A sequel is a unit of transition that links two scenes.

  How do you handle them? Let’s start with . . .

  The scene in skeleton

  To repeat: A scene is a unit of conflict, of struggle, lived through by character and reader. It’s a blow-by-blow account of somebody’s time-unified effort to attain an immediate goal despite face-to-face opposition.

  What are the functions of scene?

  a. To provide interest.

  b. To move your story forward.

  How does a scene provide interest?

  It pits your focal character against opposition. In so doing, it raises a question to intrigue your reader: Will this character win or won’t he?

  Exhibit A: Round X of a prize fight. Will Our Boy knock out the villain—or vice versa?

  How does a scene move your story forward?

  It changes your character’s situation; and while change doesn’t always constitute progress, progress always involves change.

  Again, consider the prize fight: A hero knocked out is in a far different situation than he was at the beginning of the round.

  Same if he knocks out the villain.