Techniques of the Selling Writer

by Swain, Dwight V.

  It’s this secret self that climax tests.

  Why?

  Because you can fool the world, and sometimes you can even fool yourself. But you can’t fool your own feelings. They tell the truth about you, every time, without regard for rationalizations or excuses.

  That’s why climax is so vital. Only as we see a man in crisis, when under stress he acts on feeling, can we gain the final, conclusive proof we need to determine whether or not he deserves to attain the goal he seeks.

  Your reader likes that. If he himself were to be judged, he hopes it would be on such a basis. He knows that externals can deceive. He recognizes his deficiencies in strength and intelligence and status. Over and over again, reality has forced him to acknowledge flaw and weakness.

  But his feelings, his impulses—those are different! He lives in a world of good intentions. He sees himself as, at heart, a man of principle and honor. That’s his inner reality.

  In an ultimate test, he feels that he would prove it.

  So you test your focal character by the same standard.

  To that end, you strip away all pretense from him. You make him reveal himself as he really is.

  How?

  You offer him an easy way to reach his goal.

  Thus, Ichabod has sweated blood for sixteen pages now, in his pursuit of fair Griselda. It’s time to bring the business to an end.

  So, you build a climax scene. In it Ichabod discovers that his rival, Roderick, was driver of the hit-run car that crippled Griselda’s brother.

  Roderick promptly agrees to let Our Hero have the lady—providing that Ichabod will remain diplomatically silent about Roderick’s guilt.

  It’s a fair enough deal, isn’t it? What Griselda doesn’t know won’t hurt her, and wealthy Roderick will even go so far as to endow Brother for life.

  Besides, Brother was only a drunken bum to start with. Ichabod detested the very sight of him.

  As an alternative, if Ichabod refuses to play ball, Roderick will accuse him of the crime, plus blackmail. True, Griselda may not be convinced. But enough doubt will be raised in her mind that things will never be the same between her and Ichabod again.

  So, Ichabod now has an easy way to reach his goal: All he needs to do is keep quiet.

  He also has a disastrous alternative: to speak, and lose Griselda. In fact, with all Roderick’s wealth and power arrayed against him, he might very well end up convicted of hit-run himself.

  Two specific, concrete, alternative courses of action. They constitute a fork in the road for Ichabod . . . a test situation to bring final, conclusive evidence as to whether or not he’s worthy of reward.

  If he accepts Roderick’s offer, he gets Griselda and, in her, fulfillment of all his dreams.

  If he refuses, the payoff is black oblivion. On all counts.

  Not much of a choice, is it? Intelligence, logic, and self-interest stand shoulder to shoulder on the side of buying Roderick’s scheme.

  Against it—well, what is there? Square-type puritan prejudices against conspiring to help a criminal evade the penalty for his crime? Silly scruples over marrying a girl under false pretenses? Qualms of conscience involving words like right and honesty and love and justice?

  Abstractions all. They count for nothing.

  That is, unless principle means more to you than victory.

  And that’s the way you set up the situation for a climax scene . . . an easy path to goal on the one hand, a disastrous alternative on the other, and your focal character standing at the fork in the road.

  What are the most common weaknesses, in climax?

  (a) The focal character isn’t properly boxed in.

  In other words, the perceptive reader (and an amazingly high proportion of readers are perceptive) instantly spots loopholes in a climax situation: “Why doesn’t Suzy just tell John that her dad’s gone broke?” “Isn’t Brent bright enough to realize that his aunt was senile when she made him promise to stay on in that old house?” “What keeps Link from calling the police?”

  Result: a spoiled climax.

  Remedy: a writer who thinks his story through, then plugs all loopholes and boxes in his focal character before the climax.

  (b) No barrier of principle blocks the easy way.

  All her life my mother’s hated whisky worse than snakes. Now she lies dying, and I’m too broke to give her proper care. To make matters worse, my fiancée returns my ring. A man who can’t look after his dying mother has no business taking a wife, she says.

  Enter the town bootlegger. He offers to loan me the cash I need, on my tacit agreement to let him set up a secret still in the swamp on Mother’s farm.

  Should I take the money? It’s an easy way out.

  But there’s also a matter of principle involved; a moral issue. For in sanctioning the still I’ll be betraying everything that Mother believes in.

  Of such materials are solid climax situations built.

  Suppose, however, that it’s an old friend, and not the bootlegger, who offers me the money. What then?

  Even to ask the question is to see the climax fade away.

  Why?

  Because the function of climax is to test character, and without principle at stake there can be no test. The friend’s money has no strings attached. I can accept it with no qualm of conscience.

  Result: no conflict.

  And no climax.

  Shall we spell out the message? When we talk about an “easy way,” it’s easy from a material standpoint only. On a moral level, it must nail your focal character to the cross. Though “practical” considerations back it 100 per cent, it should bear an emotional price too high for your character to pay.

  (c) The alternative to the easy way isn’t sufficiently disastrous.

  The way to make a focal character sweat in climax is to build his alternative to sheer catastrophe.

  Thus, in (b)’s example, Hero stands to lose not just Mother, but Girl too.

  Partly, this is because it’s too easy on a hero to center the climax on his saving or sacrificing someone else’s interests. All of us do wonders with rationalization in that area. If Mother is old, already dying, and I can make a show of virtue by refusing whisky money—well, maybe it won’t be so hard to stand on principle, at that.

  When my own neck’s in the noose, on the other hand; when I’m set to lose not just a dying mother but the girl I love so desperately as well, I perhaps tend to think a bit more realistically. The temptation to take the easy road is stronger.

  But over and beyond this, you build tension higher if, to stick with principle, your hero must throw himself completely and utterly into the teeth of fate. Then, a “right” decision sacrifices everything; gains nothing. All common sense, all logic, all self-interest, bar his way.

  (d) The focal character’s goal isn’t important enough and/or attractive enough to him.

  A man seeks a goal—something he yearns to attain or retain. His pursuit of it brings him face to face with a situation that reeks of potential calamity, disaster. One step more, and he’ll plunge over the brink.

  What does he do then?

  He backs off. Fast.

  That is, he does so unless the something he seeks is ever so important to him, subjectively. The casual, the trivial, the transient—as motivations, they just aren’t strong enough.

  What constitutes a good goal?

  It’s one which, in the character’s eyes, stands as his key to future happiness.

  Consider the child who doubts his mother’s love. If only the basket he makes can be the best in all the kindergarten crafts class, perhaps she’ll take him in her arms.

  Life without those arms is too terrible a thought to bear. It colors the child’s whole picture of world and future.

  Therefore, construction of a superior basket is a good goal. Q.E.D.

  An old man sits writing his memoirs. He has no hope that the scrawl will bring him fame or money. But if he can only explain the things he’s done and wh
y he’s done them, perhaps his son will some day read, draw insight from the words, and cease to sneer.

  There can be happiness even in the dream that someone dear may understand you after you’re long gone.

  So, what constitutes a good goal?

  Any objective that your focal character envisions as shaping his future, his chances for happiness.

  What doesn’t?

  Anything he doesn’t see as affecting, and affecting substantially, the life he’ll lead and the way he’ll feel in days and years ahead.

  (e) The situation isn’t built up sufficiently.

  The climax is the biggest moment of a story; its peak of peaks. To dismiss it casually is to throw all your other work away.

  So much for climactic situation. Now, let’s move on to our second point:

  (2) You force the character to choose between the two courses available to him.

  To make a choice between self-interest and principle is difficult for any of us, in any situation, at any time.

  Especially if catastrophe hangs over us like the sword of Damocles.

  Part of your job in climax, therefore, is to show precisely how hard such decision-making is.

  How do you do this?

  You prolong the agony for your hero.

  Sometimes, that means breast-beating and hair-pulling. Others, merely a moment of aching tension, with flashes of significant detail against the silence.

  In any case, your focal character must sweat and suffer, whether we watch the scene from inside his skin or out.

  And then, at last, he decides.

  Decision itself involves two problems:

  (a) How do you force it?

  (b) What tips the scales in the right direction?

  Where (a)’s concerned, urgency is of course the answer. The girl turns to leave. The villain raises his gun. The friend cries out for help.

  Whereupon, your character must decide . . . right now.

  In (b), however, the question itself tends to be misleading. For there’s no trick to making your character go the way you want. You just hit the right keys on your typewriter!

  More critical is an unstated, implied issue: How do you make your reader believe that Hero would choose emotion over logic?

  Phrase it that way, and once again the answer is simple: You use a gimmick.

  Understand, a gimmick is by no means the only way to get your character to react as you wish. But it’s certainly one of the most practical and useful devices for so doing. By all means, master it.

  Actually, a gimmick utilizes the principle of conditioned reaction, much as the Russian physiologist-psychologist Pavlov used a bell to train dogs to salivate on demand. In fact, we may define a gimmick as some material object or sensory phenomenon made to serve as an emotional bell.

  Your first step in developing a gimmick is to choose such an object or phenomenon—one that evokes a strong emotional reaction in your hero.

  You also demonstrate that this emotional reaction is linked to adherence to principle where said character is concerned.

  You do this early in the story. Preferably, you do it several times.

  Then, at the critical moment in your climax, when the focal character hangs on the verge of taking the easy way, you reintroduce the gimmick once more.

  Promptly, your character reacts, precisely as he did before—with emotion; with a sudden upsurge of passion for principle.

  On the crest of that upsurge, he makes his “right” decision; and it’s instantly logical and believable to your reader that he should do so.

  Why?

  Because he, the reader, has been conditioned to expect an emotion-based reaction from the character whenever the gimmick comes on stage.

  Thus, let’s say that, early, you make your reader aware that Hero wears a silver St. Christopher’s medal on a chain about his neck. In some passing incident, it’s brought out that Hero’s mother gave it to him, and that he wears it not only because it was her last gift, but because it makes him feel closer to her . . . reminds him to live up to the standard of rectitude that she set.

  Other such incidents follow, at intervals through the story. Each time, Hero responds similarly, with deep feeling for his mother and her virtue; with quickened pulse and heightened conscience.

  Now comes the climax. Hero stands at the fork in his private road, torn between right and wrong, good and evil, principle and self-interest.

  Which way will he go? What course will he follow?

  The villain buffets him. Hero’s shirt tears open. The chain breaks. The medal sails across the floor.

  The medal. Symbol of all Hero’s mother meant to him.

  For an instant, Hero stares at it; and in that moment lies decision, surging up on the tide of emotional response and past conditioning a simple silver trinket brings.

  Do you see how gimmick operates? You can use it in almost any story, crudely or subtly according to your tastes and skill. Here, it takes the form of a wedding ring . . . there, a strain of music . . . a battered bullet . . . a broken doll . . . a wisp of fragrance that reminds someone of a half-forgotten girl’s perfume.

  So small a detail, the gimmick.

  And so big.

  Because it holds the power to explode climax into decision.

  So: Hero’s mind now is made up. We’re ready for the third step in our climax pattern.

  (3) You make the character translate his choice into an irrevocable climactic act.

  There’s a saying very pertinent to climax: “Don’t just stand there. Do something!”

  Doing something, in climax, means translating decision into an irrevocable climactic act.

  Next to decision itself, it’s the most important facet of your climax.

  Why?

  Because decision remains meaningless till you act upon it. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. All of us are quick to come forth with well-meaning resolutions. We promise to be kinder, to stop smoking, to put our dirty clothes in the laundry hamper, to mow the grass each and every week.

  A day or a month later, we’re back yelling at the wife, making like a chimney, leaving the bedroom a litter of soiled underwear and smelly socks, and blithely ignoring the shaggy yard.

  So it is in climax also. Decision alone won’t do the job. What you seek is a road to resolution of your story—one that will pave the way for release of your reader’s tension.

  That demands a change in the situation set up by the climax. Further, said change must be wrought by your focal character, not luck or blind fate.

  To that end, the peak of climax is a pivot. It flips the situation over. The rest of the story, the resolution, hangs on it.

  Such a flip demands motive force. The climactic act provides it.

  So, let’s lay down an axiom: A climax is always an act.

  That act is performed by the focal character. Until he moves, nothing happens. And virtuous thoughts are not enough.

  The earlier portions of the climax are merely build-up to this moment. The climactic act itself stands as a pinnacle, like a burning glass that brings the rays of the sun into sharp focus in order to start an all-consuming fire to follow. For in the instant that he makes his play, your character changes the whole balance of the story situation.

  As an added bonus, such an act saves you all sorts of explanation. Your character’s decision, as such, may never be verbalized. Hero probably won’t even be aware of his mental processes. He just does the thing that conscience and feeling tell him he must do, and the act itself says more than words.

  What, particularly, characterizes the climactic act?

  Its irrevocability.

  Caesar, crossing the Rubicon, burned his bridges behind him. Once the knife is thrust or the trigger pulled, the murderer never can return life to his victim.

  A climactic act should be like that: an ultimate commitment. When your hero signs the paper or throws the switch or spits in the villain’s eye, it should close the door forever on the poss
ibility of his turning back.

  Consciously or otherwise, your focal character knows this. Acting, he waives the privilege of changing his mind later.

  Such a move sends tension soaring. Before, your man had a choice. He could abandon principle and take the easy road to his objective. He didn’t have to lay out his hopes and dreams as a burnt offering.

  Now, however, all chance to choose is thrust aside. There remains only the hard road, the road of sacrifice and suffering, with its apparently inevitable disaster.

  Acting, Character challenges fate and the villain to do their worst. In so doing, he distills the story question down to essence: Will the course he’s chosen crucify him?

  Tension hangs at a peak while Reader awaits answer.

  Why?

  Because Reader’s own heart is in it. Whether he can put it into words or not, he knows that in the climactic act he has seen man rise above self-interest. And that, to most of us, comes out as heroism.

  So, at long last, your focal character has demonstrated that he deserves to win. What now?

  Specifically, what does the focal character get?

  How to resolve story issues

  The resolution of a story is the payoff. It rewards or punishes your focal character for his decision in crisis, as epitomized in the climactic act.

  In the process, it releases tension and leaves focal character and/or reader with a feeling of fulfillment.

  The steps by which you trigger this release and create this feeling are three in number—the fourth, fifth and sixth points listed when we began our discussion of how to end a story:

  (4) You reward or punish the focal character for his climactic act, in accordance with poetic justice.

  (5) You tie up any loose ends.

  (6) You focus fulfillment into a punch line.

  Now, let’s consider each of these items in detail.

  (4) You reward or punish the focal character for his climactic act, in accordance with poetic justice.

  Given a correct decision, what the focal character wants determines what he gets.