The Fire in Fiction

by Donald Maass

  Usually.

  Kim Edwards wrote a major bestseller in The Memory Keeper's Daughter (2005), the story of a doctor, David Henry, who on a snowy night in 1964 finds that he must handle his pregnant wife's delivery, aided only by nurse Caroline Gill. Two babies are born, one a healthy son and the other a daughter with all the indicators of Down's syndrome. Dr. Henry tells his wife that the daughter died, but secretly instructs the nurse to bring the baby to an institution.

  Caroline Gill instead contemplates raising the handicapped girl herself. Dr. Henry learns of this and washes his hands of the matter. He wants to know nothing about it and wants his family to remain ignorant, a decision that will haunt everyone involved for years. Following this scene with Dr. Henry, Caroline considers the choice she must make:

  He left, then, and everything was the same as it had been: the clock on the mantel, the square of light on the floor, the sharp shadows of bare branches. In a few

  weeks the new leaves would come, feathering out on the trees and changing the shapes on the floors. She had seen all this so many times, and yet the room seemed strangely impersonal now, as if she had never lived here at all. Over the years she had bought very few things for herself, being naturally frugal and imagining, always, that her real life would happen elsewhere. The plaid sofa, the matching chair—she liked this furniture well enough, she had chosen it herself, but she saw now that she could easily leave it. Leave all of it, she supposed, looking around at the framed prints of landscapes, the wicker magazine rack by the sofa, the low coffee table. Her own apartment seemed suddenly no more personal than a waiting room in any clinic in any town. And what else, after all, had she been doing here all these years but waiting?

  She tried to silence her thoughts. Surely there was another, less dramatic way. That's what her mother would have said, shaking her head, telling her not to play Sarah Bernhardt. Caroline hadn't known for years who Sarah Bernhardt was, but she knew well enough her mother's meaning: any excess of emotion was a bad thing, disruptive to the calm order of their days. So Caroline had checked all her emotions, as one would check a coat. She had put them aside and imagined that she'd retrieve them later, but of course she never had, not until she had taken the baby from Dr. Henry's arms. So something had begun, and now she could not stop it. Twin threads ran through her: fear and excitement. She would leave this place today. She could start a new life somewhere else. She would have to do that, anyway, no matter what she decided to do about the baby. This was a small town; she couldn't go to the grocery store without running into an acquaintance. She imagined Lucy Martin's eyes growing wide, the secret pleasure as she relayed Caroline's lies,

  her affection for this discarded baby. Poor old spinster, people would say of her, longing so desperately for a baby of her own.

  I'll leave it in your hands, Caroline. His face aged, clenched like a walnut.

  "Everything was the same," Edwards writes, but of course it isn't. What has changed? Not the room or the light or the coming spring. What's different is Caroline's perception. Still, Edwards does not leave it at that. From this foundation she erects the tower of Caroline's looming decision. Caroline is not a Sarah Bernhardt, a person given to dramatic and emotionally driven actions. On the other hand, if she keeps the baby she cannot stay in her gossipy small town. "Twin threads ran through her: fear and excitement."

  And there you have it: emotional conflict. Competing desires, be safe or be happy. What keeps us reading here is not Caroline's mulling of the pros and cons. We know those. It's her indecision itself. What will she do? You can pretty much guess but even so Edwards keeps a modicum of mystery going by detailing Caroline's inner struggle. Onward we read.

  Tension in aftermath comes not from contemplation but from inner conflict.

  Also easy to skim in many manuscripts is travel. What does it take to bring us along for the ride? Swiss novelist Pascal Mercier's Night Train to Lisbon (2004) spent 140 weeks on the best-seller list in Germany. It's the story of a knowledgeable but unadventurous classics instructor, Raimund Gregorius, whose chance encounter with a Portuguese woman on a rain-slicked bridge awakens him to life. Intrigued soon thereafter by a Portuguese doctor and essayist named Amadeu de Prado, Gregorius impulsively embarks on the night train to Lisbon, there to seek more knowledge of that author. The j ourney takes him through Paris:

  An hour to Paris. Gregorius sat down in the dining car and looked out into a bright, early spring day. And there, all of a sudden, he realized that he was in fact making this

  trip—that it wasn't only a possibility, something he had thought up on a sleepless night and that could have been, but something that really and truly was taking place. And the more space he gave this feeling, the more it seemed to him that the relation of possibility and reailty were beginning to change. Kagi, his school and all the students in his notebook had existed, but only as possibilities that had been accidentally realized. But what he was experiencing in this moment—the sliding and muted thunder of the train, the slight clink of the glasses moving on the next table, the odor of rancid oil coming from the kitchen, the smoke of the cigarette the cook now and then puffed—possessed a reality that had nothing to do with mere possibility or with realized possibility, which was instead pure and simple reality, filled with the density and overwhelming inevitability making something utterly real.

  Gregorius sat before the empty plate and the steaming cup of coffee and had the feeling of never having been so awake in his whole life. And it seemed to him that it wasn't a matter of degree, as when you slowly shook off sleep and became more awake until you were fully there. It was different. It was a different, new kind of wakefulness, a new kind of being in the world he had never known before. When the Gare de Lyon came in sight, he went back to his seat and afterward, when he set foot on the platform, it seemed to him as if, for the first time, he was fully aware of getting off a train.

  Do you often contemplate the relationship ofpossibility and reality? I don't, I have to admit, but the vividness of Gregorius's interior life on his trip makes the journey unusually absorbing. Mercier uses the details of the dining car not to set the scene but in service of a moment of awareness: For the first time Gregorius is fully present on a train, his travel not theoretical or planned, and therefore more

  real. As great as the distance he has traveled to Paris is, the distance between his old and new self is even greater.

  It is not the road that keeps us reading but the inner life of the traveler. Note, though, that in the passage above Mercier does not simply relate how his protagonist feels. It is more dynamic than that. Change is delineated, and that in turn raises anticipation in us. What is going to happen to Gregorius? For now it doesn't matter. The change in him is enough to keep us engaged for a while longer.

  Violence ought to be a sure-fire attention grabber, but in the majority of manuscripts it is easy to skip through. That is especially true of stalker-killer scenes, easily the most common scene in unpublished fiction. You know how it goes: a ruthless, cold-blooded killer stakes out a victim, creeps up and ... Noooo! ... kills him. Such scenes always fall flat.

  Vince Flynn is a top writer of political thrillers. In Consent to Kill (2005), Flynn has a Saudi billionaire put a $20 million bounty on the head of Flynn's series hero, CIA assassin Mitch Rapp, and naturally the finest killers in the business are eager to fulfill the contract. To heighten the danger, Flynn needs to show these killers in action, and so one of them assassinates a Turkish banker with icy sangfroid:

  He glanced over the top of the paper and made brief eye contact with the man he was about to kill. Casually, he pretended to return his attention to the paper. He glanced across the lake and then to the left. There were a few people about. None of them were close and he doubted they were paying attention. He was now only steps away, and he could see from his peripheral vision that the target was turning away from him. Humans, the only animals in all of nature who willingly turned their back to a potential predator. Harry was almos
t disgusted with how easy this was going to be.

  Stepping toward the target, he followed him quietly for a few steps as the man walked toward the weeping willow. This was turning into a joke. The tree with its drooping wispy branches was the closest thing the park had to a dark alley, and the Turk was headed right for it. He stopped just short of the outer ring of branches and started to look toward the lake, undoubtedly expecting to see the pedestrian who had interrupted his privacy continuing on his way.

  The assassin did not extend the newspaper-encased weapon. He was too practiced for anything so obvious. He merely tiled the paper forward until the angle matched the trajectory that he wanted the bullet to travel. He squeezed the trigger once, and stepped quickly forward. The hollow-tipped bullet struck the Turk directly in the back of the head, flattening on impact, doubling in circumference, and tearing through vital brain matter until it stopped, lodged between the shredded left front lobe and the inner wall of the skull. The impact propelled the financier forward. The assassin had his right hand around the man's chest a split second later. He glanced down at the small coin-size entry wound as he went with the momentum of the Turk's dying body. The newspaper-laded hand cut a swath through the dense branches of the weeping willow, and two steps later he laid the dead man to rest at the foot of the tree. Harry quickly checked himself for blood even though he was almost positive there would be none. The bullet was designed to stay in the body and cause only a small entry wound.

  With everything in order, he left the dead body and the shelter of the tree and began retracing his steps. A hundred meters back down the footpath he asked his partner, "Are you free for an early lunch?"

  What makes this killer scary? Is it his precision? His bloodless hollow-tipped bullets? His appetite for an early lunch? I would say it is none of those things but rather the line: "Harry was almost disgusted with how easy this was going to be." There isn't enough challenge. This killer craves the thrill of the hunt and is contemptuous when he

  doesn't get it. I don't know about you, but those mixed feelings make me wonder how Mitch Rapp is going to fare against this whacko.

  And so I keep reading.

  There is plenty of writing advice on the Web, but no subject inspires so much discussion as sex. Opinions on the best approach to sex scenes are diverse but on one point pretty much everyone agrees: Everyone else writes them badly. That is not surprising. Arousal is a highly individual matter. Your turn on is my turn off. Bulging muscles? Bubble baths? You'd think writers were debating free trade.

  There is a second point of agreement, which is that mechanical tab-A-into-slot-B descriptions of the physical act are not arousing. After that it's pretty much a matter of atmosphere, suggestion, and metaphor. How to get it right? It may feel as frustrating as getting that first big score but there's a move that may help: inner conflict.

  Jennifer Stevenson's The Brass Bed (2008) is the first of a funny urban fantasy trilogy revolving around, guess what, a brass bed. This one is a little different, though. This brass bed is an antique. And haunted. Two centuries ago an English lord offended a witch by being haughtily careless of whether she was satisfied. She magically bound him to the brass bed. Her spell cannot be broken until he satisfies one hundred women. Flash forward. In present day Chicago the brass bed is a prop in a fraudulent sex therapy practice.

  Fraud inspector Jewel Heiss goes undercover, as it were, to show that miracle-cure claims for the brass bed are false, unaware that she is woman No. 100 to climb aboard. She dozes and in a dream finds herself in a conference room at the Department of Consumer Services, where a hunk appears:

  I must be dreaming. No buff guys ever came within a thousand miles of the Department of Consumer Services. She looked across the conference table at the hunk's unbelievably beefy shoulders and the set of his noble head, like the head of a particularly elegant horse, all dark masculine strength and grace.

  He looked right at her. I'm definitely dreaming. With all the perky size-five investigators in the room, he

  was looking at a six-foot, size-eighteen, dairy-farmer's daughter? He'd be wasted on the size fives. Here was a man big enough for her.

  He stood up and beckoned to her. Man, oh, man, was he big. The size fives disappeared, along with the Supervisors in Charge of Talking Slowly at Meetings and the doughnuts and coffee. Good thing, because he was reaching across the table and dragging her by the shoulders into his arms. She was startled at how warm and real his hands felt on her shoulders. In a dream you expect something vague.

  Nothing vague about his kiss. Masterful and hot, and yet his lips were cushiony.

  She reveled in the dream kiss, letting her back melt against him, letting herself droop across the conference table as if her bodice were being ripped away by a medieval knight, a hunk, half-naked medieval knight who kneaded her bare breasts with strong, hot hands, oh, man, oh man!

  "Where did you come from?" she murmured when his mouth lifted from hers.

  "1811," he said ...

  Is "big" your thing? Medieval knights? It doesn't matter. This isn't your idea of perfect seduction, nor mine (although the conference room table is appealing). Since it isn't the particular details with which Stevenson is working that are working on you, what is? Read the passage again. What creates tension is Jewel's simple disbelief at what is happening: "With all the perky size-five investigators in the room, he was looking at a six-foot, size-eighteen, dairy-farmer's daughter?" She wants him yet can't believe that he wants her. Voila. Conflict. Will she get him?

  Duh. Of course. Yet it's the uncertainty underlying Jewel's experience that keeps us reading to see how things will turn out. In sex scenes as much as any other part of fiction, true tension flows not from the outer actions but from the inner conflict.

  TENSION WHERE THERE IS NONE

  Certain passages in manuscripts are antithetical to tension. Among these are passages of description. Ask readers and most will agree: It is the thing that they almost always skim.

  How can you remedy that? For the setting of The Reserve (2008), esteemed novelist Russell Banks, known especially for Cloudsplit-ter (1998), turns to the rich men's getaway region of the Adirondack Mountains in the 1930s. There he spins the tragic story of left-leaning, married artist Jordan Groves, who becomes romantically entangled with femme fatale Vanessa Cole (discussed in chapter two), a twice-divorced beauty with hidden mental problems. Early in the novel, Banks describes Jordan's Adirondack home:

  The house was an attractive, sprawling, physically comfortable, but essentially masculine structure. Jordan had designed it, in consultation with Alicia, naturally, and had done most of the construction himself, in the process teaching himself basic plumbing, wiring, and masonry. Carpentry had been his father's trade, and Jordan, an only child, had learned it working alongside him as an adolescent and, briefly, after he came home from the war. The unconventional layout of the house and the strict use of local materials and even the fine details of the interior—banister rails made from interwoven deer antlers, yellow birch cabinets with birch bark glued to the facing, hidden dressers built into the walls, and elaborately contrived storage units, with no clutter anywhere and minimal furniture—reflected almost entirely Jordan's taste and requirements, not Alicia's. None of the windows had curtains or drapes or even shades to block the light, and during the daytime the house seemed almost to be part of the forest that surrounded it. And at night the darkness outside rushed in. ...

  What strikes you most about Jordan Groves's house? Is it the banisters made from interwoven deer antlers? Is it the portentous

  hidden drawers or unadorned windows that let the outer darkness in? The house is indeed a model of rustic Adirondack style, but by themselves those are just empty details.

  It is the truth behind them that makes them matter: The house is entirely an expression of the masculine needs and ego of Jordan Groves. Banks's passage is littered with foreshadowing, but that too would have little effect if he did not first clue us in to Groves's
own selfishness, which will be his undoing.

  Banks understands what I wish more novelists would grasp: Description itself does nothing to create tension; tension comes only from within the people in the landscape. A house is just a house until it is occupied by people with problems. When the problems are presented first, then the house builds a metaphor.

  Similarly, description of anything can create tension by working backwards to make plain the conflicts of the observer. How would you describe a yak? Let's take a look at how satirist Christopher Moore does it. Moore's novel Lamb (2002) is subtitled The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, which tells you pretty much what you need to know. Biff and Josh, as Christ is called, take a road trip across Asia and the Middle East during Josh's formative years. At one point, while killing time at a monastery in China, Biff is put in charge of the monks' yaks:

  A yak is an extremely large, extremely hairy, buffalolike animal with dangerous-looking black horns. If you've ever seen a water buffalo, imagine it wearing a full-body wig that drags the ground. Now sprinkle it with musk, manure, and sour milk: you've got yourself a yak. In a cavelike stable, the monks kept one female yak, which they let out during the day to wander the mountain paths to graze. On what, I don't know. There didn't seem to be enough living plant life to support an animal of that size (the yak's shoulder was higher than my head), but there didn't seem to be enough plant life in all of Judea for a herd of goats, either, and herding was one of the main occupations. What did I know?

  The yak provided just enough milk and cheese to remind the monks that they didn't get enough milk and cheese from one yak for twenty-two monks. The animal also provided a long, coarse wool which needed to be harvested twice a year. This venerated duty, along with combing the crap and grass and burrs out of the wool, fell to me. There's not much to know about yaks beyond that, except for one important fact that Gaspar felt I needed to learn through practice: yaks hate to be shaved.