Immediate Fiction

by Jerry Cleaver

  How many emotions/thoughts can be dancing in the mind of the character at one time? How many emotions can you feel at once? Well, you might feel guilt, anger, sadness, regret, and relief at the death of a loved one. And all of them will be pulling at you at once. Now, we can't do them simultaneously on the page, or we'd be typing one sentence on top of another. But we can have these emotions affecting the character one right after the other in a scene by having the character have a sad thought, a guilty thought, an angry thought, etc.

  Oh, Lord. Mom's gone. I don't know if I can stand it. She didn't deserve this. What a rotten world. And I'm one of the rottenest. I really let her down. I could have done more—a lot more. But why me? I'm not her only kid. John never even called. Let it go. She's at peace. No more pain, thank God. It's over.

  What we're after in fiction is the full experience. We rarely feel only one thing at a time. Life is seldom so simple. Crisis usually involves being pulled in many directions at once, internally as well as externally. So, when you write, look for all the emotions that the character could possibly be feeling at one time. If he could be feeling it, he should be feeling it.

  A LITTLE TENDERNESS

  Here's a scene:

  "You're a rotten, lousy, self-centered, inconsiderate bastard," she said to her husband.

  "And you're a crude, ignorant, repulsive old hag," he said.

  Are you sympathetic to these characters, moved by them, identified? Chances are, you're not particularly touched by them. Why is that? There's plenty of emotion. Why isn't it reaching you? See if you can figure it out. It has to do with emotion—the emotion they're having and the source of it.

  Let's try it again, only differently:

  "I told you I was cooking your favorite dinner tonight and we'd eat at eight o'clock. You said you'd be home in time," she said. "At eight o'clock, I had everything ready—table set, candles lit, wine poured. All the food was ready. I waited. You weren't here at eight-thirty. I sat here like a fool, watching the food get cold. Nine o'clock, nine-thirty, you're still not here. You didn't call. Now you come through the door at ten o'clock acting as if nothing is wrong. You rotten, self-centered bastard. You make me feel worthless."

  Is that version more involving? If so, why? What's in this version that isn't in the first? Can you identify it? The answer is not that there's more detail or more dialogue. It's a specific emotional ingredient that isn't in the first version.

  In the first version the characters are expressing anger only. Now, anger is a fine emotion. It's all over the place in literature and life. We

  need it. But anger is a response to something else. Something that happens first, something that makes us angry. What is anger a response to? Anger is a response to injury and pain. If something makes you angry, it's hurt you or caused you pain first. Without expressing the injury, the pain, you're not giving the reader (or the character) the full experience. Anger is only the surface.

  If someone comes in ranting and raving and cursing, you ask, "What's wrong?" If the angry person answers, "What do you mean, 'What's wrong?' I'm angry. That's what's wrong." You would ask, "What made you angry?" Intuitively we know there's more and want to find out what this person's angry about. We're always going for the deepest cause in fiction. It's about root causes, going to the deepest level possible—to the level of vulnerability.

  VULNERABILITY = IDENTIFICATION

  Vulnerability is what we re naturally drawn to. If someone is hit by a car, we don't say, "I'll be right there as soon as I help this boy tie his shoe." No, we rush to the person who needs us most, the one who's most vulnerable. It's part of our nature. And it goes as deep as evolution and natural selection. It's what we've had to do to survive as a species. Ask yourself, "Who are the most vulnerable creatures in human society?" Babies. We're naturally drawn to protecting babies. Who would not freak out at seeing a baby crawling across an expressway?

  Vulnerability is the natural and necessary ingredient for identification. When you get close to someone in friendship or in love, you reveal your weaknesses, your vulnerability. That's how you really get to know someone—by reaching his humanity, his tenderness, his vulnerability. When a character is faced with a serious threat, he's wor-

  ried and frightened. He's vulnerable. So, even when we're writing about adults, we're getting to the baby in them, the baby in all of us— the tenderness, the humanity. Only through vulnerability can we create identification. Even when writing about macho, tough-guy gangsters, we have to get to it." 'You hurt me, Vinnie. You really hurt me,' he said, then pulled the trigger."

  WHAT YOU KNOW

  You may have heard the old rule "Write what you know." It's what many writing teachers tell their students they must do. Here's a little anecdote that addresses that issue.

  When E. L. Doctorow was being interviewed about his book Billy Bathgate—a novel about a young boy who ingratiates himself with Dutch Schultz. the gangster, the interviewer asked him about a particular scene in which a veteran gangster takes the kid out in the woods, gives him a pistol, and shows him how to shoot it. The interviewer said that the scene stood out in her mind as unusually vivid and personal.

  "You must've had a lot of experience with guns," she said.

  What do you think Doctorow's answer was?

  He said, "I've never touched a gun in my life."

  "Then how could you write such a scene?" she said.

  Doctorow went on to say (paraphrase), "I think about how it might feel to hold a gun, how it would probably feel, and how I imagine it would have to feel to me and how I would respond to it. Then, if I do my job well, you have the kind of response you did."

  Write what you know? No. Write what you can imagine. After all, imagining is knowing—a special kind of knowing that can reveal as much or more truth than our real experience.

  Then what about writing about characters who are totally different from you? Again, forget write what you know. Instead, write what you can figure out. And you can figure out most human experience. Why? Because you're human and all humans are made of the same stuff. We all start out with a full set of emotions and the same potential for good or evil, etc. We grow into adults with the same emotions and needs, except that they're in each of us to different degrees and in different amounts. Plus, we satisfy them in very different ways since our experience twists each of us into a different shape. Mother Teresa loved caring for others. Donald Trump loves making money. The hit man loves killing. It's the same emotion, but it's satisfied in different ways. In the first, it's an expression of good (Mother Teresa), and in the last it expresses evil (the hit man).

  There's a little bit of everything in all of us. We all have a bit of sadism, masochism, homicide, suicide, etc., inside of us. Most, if not all, of us at some time in our lives have felt like killing someone. If you haven't, it might help to work on it. Having these urges doesn't mean that we follow through on any of them. That's what makes the difference between us and those who do awful things.

  An excellent book that shows how the same psychological needs drive even the most vicious of us is Mind Hunter, by John Douglas. Douglas is the FBI agent who developed profiling to help identify and capture serial killers. There's an eerie and uncomfortable similarity between serial-killer psychology and our own. What the killers do is horrible, but it all makes complete sense once you understand their mentality. If it didn't make sense, Douglas wouldn't be able to look at a crime scene and say that the person who killed had poor communication skills and probably stuttered. He did, and he was right.

  So, you shouldn't be intimidated when faced with the need to create characters you don't understand. The trick is to find a way to put yourself in their place in order to figure them out. Fine, but how do

  you put yourself or get yourself into their place, their frame of mind? Well, we can turn to the helping professions (social work, psychology, etc.) for some guidelines.

  When working with someone who's emotionally disturbed and acting strange or
crazy, there are two things to keep in mind. First, no matter how strangely someone is behaving, what they're doing makes perfect sense to them and would make sense to you if you understood how they experienced the world. There's nothing crazy about it to them. So, you need to look for the logic in the character and his actions. That's not so easy, so the second thing is to ask yourself, "What would make me act that way? What would be going on in me to make me, drive me, to do the same thing?" Answering these questions will take you close enough to create a believable character. All of our behavior (sensible, wacky, sane, crazy) obeys the same psychological principles. It's all in us. Everything is in every one of us. So look to yourself for the answers.

  FINAL THOUGHTS ON THOUGHTS

  As I said, the workings of a character's mind is the hardest part of all of this. It's the thing that you will have the least access to in the early drafts. Often, the physical reaction will be what emerges first. When it does, put it down, recognizing that there's more to it since the mind leads the body. Just keep moving, knowing more needs to be done next time around. On each successive draft, you'll get more and more of the character's mind, and eventually you'll have what you need. Once you do, consider getting rid of the physical response. Use it only if it's necessary. "Necessary" means it gives us something significant about the character we wouldn't get without it.

  When you're having trouble trying to figure out what the character is feeling, try asking, "What does he think about all of this? What's in his mind?" What's in his mind is usually worries, fears, and hopes. What is he worried and afraid will happen? What does he hope will happen? Forgetting about emotions and focusing on revealing all of the character's thoughts will uncover his feelings.

  The mind is dramatic and wild and exciting, but it's also confusing and contradictory, so don't be surprised if it's where your writing is the most clumsy and obvious. That's fine. Like everything else in writing, it takes practice. The main thing is that you know what to work on.

  EXERCISES

  Remember the scene with Larry and my wife that I used in chapter 3 to demonstrate the story form? There were no thoughts included at all. We didn't know what I (the husband) was thinking. I'm going to give you that scene again so you can practice putting in the thoughts. Whatever you imagine the husband's reactions would be is fine.

  Start with the husband watching his wife kiss his best friend in the kitchen. Put in what you imagine he would be thinking. Put in his worries, fears, and hopes at every possible opportunity. If you can't come up with exact thoughts, make a list of the kinds of thoughts that he could be having, and come back and make them more specific later. Remember, this is the hardest part of all. You may only get little pieces of it each time through. That's fine. Also, if it's too difficult, let it go for now. You can come back and do it at a later date if you get the urge.

  Start with the husband's reactions the moment he sees the kiss, then his thoughts as he goes to the door and enters the kitchen. Put in anything and everything he could be thinking throughout the scene. You can cut back later. Here's the scene:

  "Hi, guys," I say happily as I come in. "Here're the smokes."

  They thank me, and both light up. Larry pours himself some Scotch.

  "How'd it go while I was gone?" I say, flopping into a kitchen chair.

  "Fine," my wife says.

  "How about you, Lar? Enjoy yourself in my absence?"

  He glances at my wife quickly. "I did," he says.

  "Good. I was worried you might get lonely. But, when I saw you through the window, I could see you didn't need me to entertain you."

  "Well," Larry says. "We both missed you, and we're glad you're back."

  "That's right, honey," my wife says. "It's not the same without you."

  "Of course not," I say. "Say, hand me the butcher knife, darling."

  "Butcher knife, what for?"

  "No reason. I just feel like holding it."

  "Don't be silly," she says.

  "No, really. Indulge me."

  "Will you stop?" she says.

  "Stop what? You don't trust me with a knife? What is this: no sharp objects for the lunatic?"

  "Very funny," she says.

  Larry stares at me, smiling weakly.

  "Afraid I'll hurt myself—slit my wrists—or my throat? What do you think, Lar? Can I be trusted with a knife in my own kitchen with my best friend and my loyal wife?"

  "Of course you can," Larry says flatly, then downs his Scotch.

  "Damn right. Hear that, angel? Larry trusts me. He trusts you. We all trust each other. So pass me the knife, sweets."

  The above is a chapter-subject exercise (applying the craft presented in the chapter). But we still have our ongoing short exercises and the full-story exercise to work from. If you're into the ongoing story, work on that. If you want to do one of the short exercises (full-scene or three-word), do that. Also, you may be into something of your own. Work on whatever attracts you. The main thing is to write. However, I realize that you may have no time to write and are only doing the 5 minutes a day. If that's where you're at, do your 5 minutes. The 5-minute method is described in chapter 12. It can be used to work on any of these exercises.

  First are the scene exercises:

  • Hiring someone or trying to get hired.

  • Firing someone or trying not to get fired.

  • Death of a loved one.

  Here are the three-word combinations:

  • Bathtub, cat, marijuana.

  • Dove, castle, midget.

  • Gorilla, toupee, extraterrestrial.

  If you want to work from the settings and characters, use those from the previous chapters.

  FULL STORY, PART THREE.

  A quick reminder. Go over what you wrote last time and check it for want, obstacle, action as laid out in the last chapter.

  The next part of the infidelity story is the actual confrontation through action that the injured lover takes. She or he can confront the cheating party directly or can be trying to get the goods on him or her

  by spying, hiring a detective, getting friends involved—anything you can dream up that you want to use.

  Remember that every scene is a little story (want + obstacle + action) in which the character is trying to make something happen, get information, etc. Each scene has a scene resolution but not a final resolution. In the scene resolution, things are still worse than they were at the beginning. They must be. If they're not, the story is standing still. The tension and drama rise from scene to scene and chapter to chapter. Things are worse at the end of every scene and every chapter until the story ends (final resolution), when they get better or end in disaster. In Romeo and Juliet, it's one continual downhill slide. If a character gets his hopes up early on, it's only to have them dashed in the next encounter. Each scene and chapter ends in the mind of the character, who is stewing over his plight and trying to figure out what it means and what to do next. We end in the character's mind, so we know where we're at, where the character (and we) have moved to.

  [7] Showing

  If I say, "He was a dangerous person, a walking time bomb," are you gripped by the character? You may be interested or even a little hooked since a walking time bomb promises action and excitement, but you're not there yet.

  See how the following affects you:

  He was going to kill somebody. Maybe kill himself before it was over. His six-shot Smith and Wesson lay in the glove compartment. She had a six-inch, ventilated, blue steel barrel, a tight coil hammer that bit into your thumb when you drew it back, and one of those polished crescent triggers, cool to the touch. She was fully loaded, so smooth and trim he got a hard-on thinking about her.

  That gives you an experience rather than a general idea of the character. The first example tells you about the character in general terms. This one gives you the experience of him by means of personal specifics, shows you who he is, shows him acting in the immediate mo-

  ment. The first statement is in th
e language of the author—from the outside. The second is in the language of the character—from the inside. The first we call telling. The second we call showing. An unfortunate choice of terms in some ways, since we talk about storytelling, being a good storyteller. Then, when you get into the actual craft, we go on to make this distinction between telling and showing in which telling is bad and showing is good. "Show, don't tell" is the old writing rule. And rightly so, since showing is the most fundamental of all writing techniques. Showing is to story as heat is to cooking.

  The author says, "He was an awful person." The reader says, "Show me." You have to prove it because saying it doesn't make it so. You must create the experience. You must make it happen because the reader will take your word for nothing. But if you show the actual experience, happening here and now, word for word, right before our eyes, the reader will be there, living it through the character.

  If I went on to tell you our dangerous time bomb character was angry, narrow-minded, and cruel, it wouldn't do much to you. You wouldn't experience much more about him. But if I showed him acting angry, narrow-minded, and cruel, it would be another story. See how the following affects you:

  He could feel the heat coming through the floorboard as he pressed the pedal of the piece-of-shit Chevy he'd stole. He was on a two-lane, ass-backwards, redneck road somewhere in the Florida Panhandle. It didn't matter. It could be Texas, Virginia, or Arizona. It was all the same. Hauling his broken ass in this can of Sterno, getting to where he needed to go, which was any fleabag motel that would take him. The kind of run-down dump on the side of this dry lick road where some fat dumpling of a toothless daughter of her own brother/father snickers when

  you tell her you need a room and she thinks you want it to get laid or do something perverted to yourself.

  Maybe he'd shoot her too.

  The world's like that. You end up doing something you thought you never would. What the fuck!

  The fuck was, it was hotter than an oven on Thanksgiving in this tin can with no air-conditioning. Just his goddamn luck, the first old fool he robbed outside of Jacksonville had a car that didn't have no air. Who the hell buys a car in Florida that don't have air? The stupid old fart actually tried to stop him from getting into the car. He'll see what a fool he was when he wakes up in the hospital and sees his foot looking like hamburger. He woulda shot him in the head if he knowed the son-of-a-bitch had no air.