by Donald Maass
Later in Winkie, Chase subjects the bear to harsh interrogation and a mock trial. Both are spun out at length and in great detail; the longer and more detailed, the funnier it gets. In other words, the humor isn't in the teddy bear itself. Hilarity springs from the bear's too-real situation. The unfortunately familiar details of torture and secret trials are what make this a parody. The bear is merely a device for making hypervigilism against terrorism look ridiculous.
Political satire exploits one of the richest veins of irony that we've got, so why aren't more novelists mining it? Perhaps because politicians are already too close to self-parody? I'm not sure, but there's no doubt that Christopher Buckley is perhaps our finest political satirist. His novel Boomsday (2007) tackles a dry subject—the
coming retirement of the Baby Boom generation and the financial drain it will place on America—in a way that is a nonstop hoot.
The heroine of Boomsday is not a Boomer but a Gen X public relations whiz kid named Cassandra Devine, who writes a popular blog on which she vents her frustrations. Most recent of these is her anger over higher taxes being imposed on her generation in order to finance the Boomers' retirement. As Cassandra sees it, her future is being mortgaged so that Boomers can retire in comfort and improve their golf games.
On her blog, Cassandra urges rebellion. Attacks on retirement communities follow. Gatehouses are stormed. Golf courses are burned. Cassandra gets in trouble but she is unrepentant. She dreams up an even more outlandish idea, which she uses her promotional skill to push. The media quickly picks up on it:
"From Washington, tonight, a novel proposal on how to solve the Social Security crisis. For that story, we go now to our correspondent, Betsy Blarkin."
"Thanks, Katie. Cassandra Devine, the twenty-nine-year-old blogger who calls herself Cassandra, is back in the news. Last month, she urged young people not to pay taxes and to storm the gates of Boomer retirement communities.
"At a press conference today, she unveiled a plan that, she says, would solve the problem by making the government solvent.
"Her solution? The government should offer incentives to retiring Boomers—to kill themselves."
"'Americans are living longer. Okay, but why should my generation spend our lives in hock subsidizing their longevity? They want to live forever—we're saying, let them pay for it.'"
"Under Devine's plan, the government would completely eliminate estate taxes for anyone who kills them-self at age seventy. Anyone agreeing to commit suicide
at age sixty-five would receive a bonus, including a two-week, all-expenses-paid 'farewell honeymoon.'
"'Our grandparents grew up in the Depression and fought in World War Two. They were the so-called Greatest Generation. Our parents, the Baby Boomers, dodged the draft, snorted cocaine, made self-indulgence a virtue. I call them the Ungreatest Generation. Here's their chance, finally, to give something back.'"
"Devine has even come up with a better term for suicide: 'Voluntary Transitioning.' I spoke with her earlier today after her press conference. ...
"Ms. Devine, do you expect anyone to take this proposal of yours seriously?"
"Well, Betsy, you're interviewing me on network television, so I'd say that's a good start. If you're asking why am I proposing that Americans kill themselves in large numbers, my answer is, because of the refusal of the government, again and again, to act honestly and responsibly. When Social Security began, there were fifteen workers to support one retiree. Now there are three workers per retiree. Soon it will be two. You can run from that kind of math, but you can't hide. It means that someone my age will have to spend their entire life paying unfair taxes, just so the Boomers can hit the golf course at sixty-two and drink gin and tonics until they're ninety. What happened to the American idea of leaving your kids better off than you were? If the government has a better idea, hey, we're all for it. Put it on the table. Meanwhile, we're putting this on the table. And it's not going away."
"A number of experts that we spoke to, including Karl Kansteiner of the Rand Institute in Washington, actually agreed that such a measure, however drastic, would in fact solve the Social Security and U.S. budget crisis."
"The average American now lives to seventy-eight, seventy-nine years old. Many live much longer. We cur-
rently are experiencing what could be called a surplus of octogenarians, nonagenarians, and even centenarians. If the government didn't have to pay benefits to these elders, say, past the age of seventy, the savings would be vast. Enormous. Indeed, tempting. Certainly, it is not a solution for, shall we say, the faint of heart."
"Others, like Gideon Payne of the Society for the Protection of Every Ribonucleic Molecule, call Devine's idea 'morally repugnant.'"
"Have we finally reached the point where we are advocating mass murder as a national policy? This entire plan, this scheme, is an abomination in the eyes of the Almighty. I tremble for my country. This woman should be ashamed."
"Cassandra Devine doesn't appear in the least ashamed. Indeed, she seems quite determined. Katie?"
"Thank you, Betsy Blarkin in Washington, for that report. Finally, tonight, Wal-Mart announced that it has obtained permission to open a one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-square-foot megastore on the Mall, in Washington. ..."
Students of English literature will recognize in Cassandra's plan echoes of Jonathan Swift's seminal satire of the eighteenth century, the essay "A Modest Proposal," in which he proposed solving the problem of the population explosion in Ireland by eating babies. Cassandra's plan has the similar satire value, but did you also notice Buckley's deft parody of an evening news broadcast? He combines in this passage the techniques of both satire and parody to make a point. It isn't Boomers who are at fault; it's the U.S. government, which repeatedly ducks the coming crisis.
If you are writing a satire, studying the lengths to which these novelists go is essential. I have quoted a few choice passages above, but the novels cited generate satire over their entire lengths. They are funny for hundreds of pages. If your current manuscript is a satire,
how will you sustain the hilarity? I promise you, it is more work than you imagine.
FUNNY VOICES
As I mentioned at the outset of this chapter, there are a thousand ways to be funny. Another of them can embed itself in one of the most common of elements of fiction writing: the narrative voice.
It's easiest to examine this as applied to a first-person narrator. It isn't necessarily true that a narrator needs to be a stand-up
comedian, although chic-lit is full of smart-mouthed heroines, of
course, as is (strangely) a genre at the opposite end of the spectrum, vampire-hunter novels. Odd and offbeat narrators can supply plenty of wry lightness even in a heavy story. Think Holden Caulfield or Forrest Gump.
Gary Shteyngart made a sparkling debut with his novel The Russian Debutante's Handbook (2002) but also turned in a strong sophomore title, Absurdistan (2006). Absurdistan is the story of a large (in many senses) Russian man, Misha Vainberg, who was educated in America and even has an American girlfriend, but who finds himself trapped in Russia and unable to get a new visa after his father in St. Petersburg kills an Oklahoma businessman and then turns up dead himself.
In an attempt to influence the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Misha pens his appeal, the novel, opening it in his typical vainglorious-yet-melancholy fashion:
This book, then, is my love letter to the generals in charge of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. A love letter as well as a plea: Gentlemen, let me back in! I am an American impounded in a Russians' body. I have been educated at Accidental College, a venerable midwestern institution for young New York, Chicago, and San Francisco aristocrats where the virtues of democracy are often debated at teatime. I have lived in
New York for eight years, and I have been an exemplary American, contributing to the economy by spending over US$2,000,000 on legally purchased goods and services, including the world's most expensive dog leash (I b
riefly owned two poodles). I have dated Rouenna Sales—no, "dated" is the wrong term—I have roused her from the Bronx working-class nightmare of her youth and deposited her at Hunter College, where she is studying to become an executive secretary.
Now, I am certain that everyone at the Immigration and Naturalization Service is deeply familiar with Russian literature. As you read about my life and struggles in these pages, you will see certain similarities with Ob-lomov, the famously large gentleman who refused to stir from his couch in the nineteenth-century novel of the same name. I won't try to sway you from this analogy (I haven't the energy, for one thing), but may I suggest another possibility: Prince Myshkin from Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. Like the prince, I am something of a holy fool.
You have to wonder if Vainberg is being serious in addressing himself to the INS in such bombastic terms; hopefully not. Even so, his comparisons of himself to the antiheroes of Russian literature and his boasting about expensive dog collars he has purchased lend credibility to his claim of being a "holy fool." Do you get the feeling that outrageous things are going to happen to Vainberg? You would be right. His semi-crazy voice has already got our expectations in line.
Novelists who work with first-person narrators have a natural advantage when creating funny voices, but third person can work, too.
Our lord of low comedy is undoubtedly Carl Hiaasen. His send-ups of Florida low-lifes, crooks, and politicians have delighted readers for a dozen outings. In Skinny Dip (2004), he builds a caper around the revenge scheme of heiress Joey Perrone, whose husband pushes her off the stern of a cruise ship. Never mind why. It has to do with his role in an environmental scam. Trust me, it's wacky. Anyway, you don't have to go beyond the first page for a dose of Hiassen's signature voice:
At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perrone went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. Plunging toward the dark Atlantic, Joey was too dumbfounded to panic.
I married an asshole, she thought, knifing headfirst into the waves.
The impact tore off her silk skirt, blouse, panties, wristwatch and sandals, but Joey remained conscious and alert. Of course she did. She had been co-captain of her college swim team, a biographical nugget that her husband obviously had forgotten.
Bobbing in its fizzy wake, Joey watched the gaily lit Sun Duchess continue steaming away at twenty nautical miles per hour. Evidently only one of the other 2,049 passengers was aware of what had happened, and he wasn't telling anybody.
Bastard, Joey thought.
How does Hiaasen send us a signal not of distress but of mirth? With his choice of words. What would be your feeling if you were plunging toward the sea from a deck railing many stories high? Joey feels "dumbfounded." Her first thought on hitting the water is "I married an asshole." What's funny here is the contrast of Joey's dire situation with her dry, understated attitude. The technique is simple.
Try it yourself. Invent any disaster, oh, say an airliner plummeting toward a remote mountainside, both its engines trailing smoke. Now play against the expected tone employing your point-of-view character:
Figures, he thought, wouldn't you know the drinks cart hadn't yet reached his row? He really needed a Jack-and-Coke. Condemned to die, and he wasn't even getting a last request.
In other words, you don't have to make the events of your story funny in themselves. You don't need the zany voice of a first-person comedian. You don't need a big target like Washington, D.C. You don't need a dictionary of words that are automatically funnier than your everyday vocabulary. All you have to do is construct an unexpected contrast to what is happening.
Try it out: Dire circumstances/dry response or dry circumstances/ dire response. Coffee spill? Pull the fire alarm. Dating problems? Compose a list of ten reasons why spending a year knitting pashmina shawls in a Himalayan monastery is a great idea. Get it? Or make up your own comic style. Or steal the techniques. Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker won't sue and couldn't anyway. They're dead.
Besides, this stuff is free.
If nothing else, try a little hyperbole. Every writer wants humor in her novel. Few have it. For me, I would settle for once in a while having my eyebrows raised or the corners of my mouth twisted into a smirk. Whether over the top or mildly heightened, witty jabs or roundhouse humor, it would be great if reading manuscripts got to be a little more fun.
Even a serious novel needs to occasionally exaggerate for effect. Try it out. Who knows? Maybe you will discover that you have the sensibility of a satirist. If so, you can make shish kebab out of everything in life that bugs you.
Then we'll all be having a nice time.
Unfortunately, there is no test that measures whether any given fiction writer has what it takes to be a career novelist. If it did exist, though, for me that test would put heavy emphasis on one particular trait: an instinct for tension.
Conflict is story. We hardly need discuss that any further. Every novelist who's gotten beyond the beginner stage knows it. What many do not grasp, though, including many published novelists, is that what keeps us turning hundreds of pages is not a central conflict, main problem, or primary goal.
Think about it. If that was all it took to keep readers involved to the end, then all you would have to do is set a principal plot problem at the outset. Then you could indulge yourself however you like for hundreds of pages.
Imagine.
Of course, it is not like that. Conflict must be present in smaller ways throughout. Most novelists understand that too, or say they do. Despite that, I am able to skim vast swaths of virtually all manuscripts and portions of many published novels.
Have you ever skimmed a novel you were reading? How much of it? A little generally is not a problem. Skim a lot, though, and you probably will give up on that book, am I right?
What is it, then, that keeps us reading all the way? Is it conflict within each scene? Is it a character in every chapter who has a clearly stated goal? Is it avoiding low-tension traps such as backstory, aftermath, landscape, and weather openings, empty exposition, and un-needed dialogue? Is it keeping the action moving? Is it throwing in sex and violence for occasional jolts of adrenalin and allure? Is it luck?
What keeps us reading every word on every page of a novel is none of that. Consider the page-turners on your shelves that do open with weather or scenery, or quickly dump in backstory, or linger in aftermath and indulge in exposition. How do those authors get away with it? Are they so successful that we overlook their flaws? Do they have a free pass?
Doubtful.
Conversely, think about those highly plotted, action-packed novels that didn't hold your attention. Think about the violence that moved you not at all and the sex scenes that you skipped. Weren't those novelists doing it right, writing by the rules? Then, how come you set those novels aside?
Holding readers' attention every word of the way is not a function of the type of novel, or a good premise, tight writing, quick pace, showing not telling, or any of the other frequently taught principles of storytelling. Keeping readers constantly in your grip comes from the steady application of something else altogether.
Micro-tension.
Micro-tension is the moment-by-moment tension that keeps the reader in a constant state of suspense over what will happen, not in the story but in the next few seconds. It is not a function of plot. This type of tension does not come from high stakes or the circumstances of a scene. Action does not generate it. Dialogue does not produce it automatically. Exposition—the interior monologue of the point-of-view character—does not necessarily raise its level.
When you don't have micro-tension, you are slowly losing your reader. When you do have micro-tension, you can do anything. You can open with weather, linger over the landscape, leave in backstory, describe at length, write about pure emotion, build anticipation from a wisp of atmosphere, and even make a riveting passage out of nothing at all.
Micro-tension is easily understood but hard to do. I know
this because when teaching it in workshops I watch participants nod in understanding when I explain it, but see them stare helplessly at their pages when they try to do it themselves.
So, let's start with this concept: micro-tension has its basis not in story circumstances or in words: it comes from emotions and not just any old emotions but conflicting emotions.
Let's see how it works.
TENSION IN DIALOGUE
In real life most of what people say to each other is drivel. Transcripts of genuine dialogue, as in police wire taps, is a chronicle of halting, disjointed, nonlinear incoherence. Really, it's a wonder that we understand each other.
Dialogue in novels is, thank goodness, unnatural. The author has time to think it through. Characters express exactly what they mean. They speak in complete sentences. They do not get interrupted. Even so, much dialogue in manuscripts feels unimportant even when there is a lot to say.
That can be especially true when information is being exchanged. Info dump is nevertheless info dump even when it's batted back and forth in dialogue. But some authors can make an exchange of facts riveting. How do they do it? I can tell you one thing: What makes such dialogue gripping is not the inherent fascination of the topics of viral engineering, corporate case law, or somebody else's crazy family.
Early on in her novel White Lies (2008), Jayne Ann Krentz faces the problem of explaining to the readers the defining quality of her heroine, Clare Lancaster: She is a human lie detector. Now, this is not so unusual in the world of Krentz's Arcane Society, subject of a number of her stories. Still, being hip to every white lie you're told must be highly annoying, even paralyzing. How does Clare live with that talent?
In the following passage, Clare explains to hero and romantic interest Jake Salter (himself a parasensitive) how she copes:
"Let me get this straight," he said. "You're a human lie detector and you don't mind that most people lie?"
She smiled slightly. "Let me put it this way. When you wake up one morning at the age of thirteen and discover that because of your newly developed parsenses you can tell that everyone around you, even the people you love, lie occasionally and that you are going to be driven crazy if you don't get some perspective, you learn to get some perspective."