Manual For Fiction Writers

by Block, Lawrence

  Next we meet Mrs. Abercrombie, who has her breakfast, looks at her mail, recalls the circumstances of her husband's death, and quietly dies in her bed. It is a peaceful death, and we perceive it as no tragedy; for years Mrs. Abercrombie has been waiting to die that she might be reunited with her husband in heaven.

  The servants are shaken by her death, especially when Plunkett reveals that Mrs. Abercrombie had been in the process of altering her will. The estate is to pass to an institution for the study of rare grasses, but Mrs. Abercrombie's solicitors just that morning had written to her about her projected change of will, by the terms of which her servants would have life tenancy on the property prior to its passing into the hands of the research institution. But the woman has died before the revised will could be prepared.

  All of the servants begin to see what their lives will be like elsewhere, and the outlook for them is uniformly unpleasant. It is at this point that Plunkett conceives of burying the woman on her property and concealing her death, and he begins trying to sell this plan to the rest of the household. He starts with the rationalization that they would merely be carrying out her actual wishes and before long reaches the point of lying, telling the assembled company that Mrs. Abercrombie expressed the wish to be buried on her own land. He argues that the doctor can be gotten round, painting the picture of the doctor as an incompetent responsible for deaths in the past, virtually senile, and something of a toper. Gradually he begins to win them over, overcoming the objections of the cook, but having a hard time getting round Miss Bell, the second gardener. Eventually, with the doctor ringing the doorbell, Plunkett's rationalizations have become increasingly desperate, acrimony between him and Miss Bell has been unsheathed, and the man's excitement even leads him to a grammatical lapse, this last the first such failing which Tindall, his occasional bedmate, has known him to make.

  Enter the doctor. Plunkett takes him to the bedroom, then reveals his plan?and it is at this point that we the readers realize his plan is absurd. We've accepted it wholeheartedly up to this point, but now we are hearing it as it were with the doctor's ears, and it's nonsense. Nor is the doctor the humbler Plunkett has led us to expect?the bumbler we've wanted him to be. Plunkett's plan to blackmail him into silence, which struck us as just and reasonable when it was hatched in the kitchen, now comes across as base and impossibly ill-conceived. Of course the doctor won't go along with this, and of course he shouldn't, and how could we have ever thought otherwise?

  So much for the plan. The doctor's opening the door has let the cool air of reality into the house. But more has happened than that a plan has been proposed and dashed. The delicate relationship between the parties in the house has been forever changed. They who had been a family are now a collection of strangers ill at ease with one another.

  But Mr. Trevor has one more zinger for us. Because the doctor realizes from a glance at the solicitor's letter that all of this has been for naught. Mrs. Abercrombie's instructions to her lawyers would be honored despite the fact that the will has not yet been drawn and signed; her intent was clear and her untimely death will not prevent her wishes from being carried out. Plunkett did not realize that, none of them did, and thus the flaws in their characters ruined their prospects, and it's far too late for the woman's last wishes to change things; these people, forever changed by their moral weakness, cannot possibly go on living together.

  Do you see what I'm getting at? It's not the idea of Last Wishes that makes it a powerful experience for the reader. It's what the author has done with the idea, primarily in terms of the structure of its plot. I'm afraid I've ruined the story for you in order to provide this illustration, but in a larger sense I have not; a story as good as Last Wishes is not easily ruined. If you've an interest in short fiction, I would strongly urge you to pick up a copy of Angels at the Ritz and read the story for yourself. And read the rest of the stories while you're at it; Mr. Trevor makes a habit of this sort of thing.

  CHAPTER 30

  No More Mr. Nice Guy

  I'M NOT much on Hitler jokes as a general thing, but here's one from somebody's old nightclub routine that has lingered in the mind. The fuehrer's in the bunker, see, in the spring of '45. Messengers bring him one piece of dreadful news after another. German forces are reeling back from catastrophic defeat on every front. The Allies are advancing in the west and the Russians are on the outskirts of Berlin. The Third Reich, built to last a thousand years, is collapsing.

  All right, Hitler snarls. All right! They have gone too far! From now on, no more Mr. Nice Guy!

  Ahem. Levity aside, boys and girls, the subject of today's class is motivation, and it would seem to me that?yes, Arnold?

  Ê

  Could you define motivation for us, sir?

  Ê

  I suppose so, Arnold. Motivation is the business of supplying your fictional characters with plausible reasons for them to act as you would have them act in order for your stories to be dramatically effective.

  And motivation is not something which can be merely taken for granted, like blue eyes. You can just say that a character has blue eyes and let it go at that. You don't have to explain that his mother also had them, that her ancestors came from a village in Sweden where everyone was blue-eyed. You may mention as much if you want, but the reader will generally accept most of the physical aspects of your characters as given. He'll take your word for it.

  He won't take your word that such a character feels a burning desire for revenge, or to right a wrong, or to get a better job, or to steal a car, or whatever you would have him do. He'll accept the ordinary?if your lead character is an accountant, let us say, he may add a column of figures without provoking a quibble from the reader. It is an ordinary part of an accountant's day to add a column of figures. But if he rushes off to British Columbia to extinguish a forest fire, or to light one, you'd better have furnished him with a reason for so doing.

  Ê

  Then motivation is necessary when a character does something extraordinary?

  Ê

  Hmmm. I guess that's as good a way as any to put it. It might be of more practical value to say that motivation is important at those points in a narrative where a reader might wonder why the characters are acting in a certain way when they might act in another, or not act at all.

  There have been times in my own life when I have had particular difficulty supplying my characters with adequate motivation. One time, I recall, I went for several months without writing anything because I couldn't think of a single reason for any character to care strongly enough about anything to take any real action in any direction. Plots just wouldn't form themselves in my mind, or wherever in a person's anatomy they tend to take shape. On another occasion, I began writing several novels in succession, each of which died on the vine somewhere around page sixty, perishing out of a massive failure of the author's imagination. I couldn't summon up a reason for any of the characters to Go On, or dream up anything for them to say or do if they did.

  Did you want to say something, Rachel?

  Ê

  Just that we're all glad you're feeling better now, sir.

  Ê

  Why, thank you, Rachel. Now where was I?

  No matter. I read a book recently that will serve us as a particularly good example of how a skillful author can motivate his characters and make us believe the dramatic validity of their actions. How many of you have read Wilderness, by Robert B. Parker? Raise your hands if you've read it. Haven't any of you read it? Arnold?

  Ê

  I guess the general feeling, sir, is why buy hardcover suspense novels?

  Ê

  I see.

  Well, let me tell you about Wilderness then, since you haven't had a chance yet to read it for yourselves. The hero is a writer named Aaron Newman. He runs and lifts weights to keep in shape, and is passionately devoted to his wife of twenty years, this notwithstanding the fact that their marriage is rather crumby.

  One day, while jogging home fr
om the gym, Newman witnesses a murder. An honorable man, a man concerned with honor, he goes to the police and agrees to testify against the murderer, a notorious hoodlum. He returns from the police station to find his wife tied naked in their bedroom, a warning from the hoodlum. She has not been raped, merely violated optically and emotionally.

  His code of honor notwithstanding, Newman promptly knuckles under, earns the contempt of the police by retracting his identification of the killer, and sets about trying to live with himself and his wife. This is made rather more difficult by his recognition of the fact that the sight of his wife, bound and helpless, has had an undeniable aphrodisiacal effect on him. Furthermore, his inability to protect his wife from these savages makes it harder for him to live with himself and accentuates his wife's propensities to reveal contempt for him in any number of ways, and?yes, Edna?

  Ê

  I think you're trying to say she's a ballbreaker, sir.

  Ê

  Thank you, Edna.

  Now comes a test of Parker's ability to motivate his character. The plot he's devised calls for Newman and his wife to launch themselves upon a mission of revenge, to expunge the humiliation they have suffered by taking the law into their own hands and committing an uncharacteristic act of homicide. They are taking vengeance out of proportion to the injury inflicted upon them; although their adversary is unquestionably a murderer himself, all the Newmans have suffered at his hands is intimidation.

  Mr. Parker makes this work by motivating his character a little at a time, and by arranging plot developments that derive naturally and directly from the characters and situation he has established. The idea of killing the hoodlums first comes up in a drunken conversation, with Newman throwing it out with macho bravado. The wife seizes on the idea?she wants these men dead and seems to have no trouble articulating the desire. And Chris Hood, a bar owner and friend of Newman's, takes up the idea.

  Hood is an important character. He killed men in wartime, and rather liked it. His life since then hasn't come to much. The Newmans' mission of vengeance is an opportunity for him to live intensely as he has not been able to live in years. Furthermore, Hood has the skills for this sort of thing. With his assistance, the whole operation becomes conceivable.

  The Newmans want to get the thing over and done with as quickly as possible, to kill their enemy and get away with it. Hood, however, has an infinite capacity for taking pains that ultimately amounts to a delaying tactic?he'd like to devote a lifetime to planning and reconnaissance and rehearsal, because once the dirty deed is done his d'�tre will no longer have any raison. This is excellent for plot purposes, in that a problem in many novels of vengeance is that the logical thing for the characters to do?i.e., take revenge quickly and directly?would bring the book to an abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion some twenty thousand words down the road, while a more circuitous route leaves the reader wondering why the characters aren't brighter and more to the point. Hood's vacillation, like Hamlet's, is not unreasonable, and it is Newman who is frustrated by it, not the reader.

  Right about this point Mr. Parker boosts the ante a little. Although we may have accepted the Newmans' motivation in desiring revenge, it's been something they want, not something they need. Revenge might help their relationship, but the notion of killing some stranger to bolster your marriage is not something you're likely to encounter in Dear Abby. Indeed, we might have trouble avoiding some sympathy for their opponent as he goes through life as an unwitting target.

  No problem. We learn that the hoodlum has elected to make assurance doubly sure by hiring a killer to hurry Newman off to kingdom come. We meet the killer as he plans his crime, and he's himself killed on Newman's own doorstep by Chris Hood, whom we've seen before on solitary, secret night vigils in the Newmans' yard, vigils which have seemed absurd until now.

  See how the stakes have gone up? It's now kill-or-be-killed, because it's to be expected that their adversary will hire another killer when he learns of the failure of the first. This incident, too, makes the whole thing much more real for the Newmans. They have to take it seriously.

  The locale shifts to the wilderness, where their quarry goes on a hunting trip along with his son and the two henchmen who violated Ms. Newman. Our trio is in pursuit, and it is in the wilderness that Hood is able to indulge his passion for war games and strategy sessions. His skills have never been more valuable, yet paradoxically he becomes a liability here, missing opportunities for an easy kill because he cannot bear to see the game end.

  Hood dies, finally, in a skirmish with the hoodlums. At the same time, Newman is recognized; again the stakes are raised, in that their opponent knows Newman's identity and will not rest until Newman is dead. And Hood's death has disarmed the Newmans. They have to rely on their own resources now, on resources they may not in fact possess.

  At this point?yes, Rachel?

  Ê

  Don't spoil the story for us, Mr. Block.

  Ê

  I wouldn't dream of it. I don't know that I could, even if I were to carry this plot summary to the book's conclusion, because the excitement in Wilderness lies not merely in what happens but in how it happens, and in how the characters act and react and how they are affected by their actions and reactions.

  I see our time's almost up for today. I hope I've given you a glimmering of the way an author's ability to motivate his characters affects the reader's response to the story, not merely creating suspense along the way but making us care what happens to these people. There are other elements of the book I'd discuss if we had more time?the cameo relationship between the hired killer and his woman, for instance, which is a provocative contrast to the Newman marriage. I hope you'll read the book and see for yourself.

  I hope, too, that I've answered your question, Arnold.

  Ê

  What question was that, sir?

  Ê

  Why buy hardcover suspense novels? And I'm sure you won't have too much trouble uncovering my motive for so doing. My own most recent hardcover suspense novel is readily available wherever good books are sold. I expect all of you to go right out and buy it.

  CHAPTER 31

  Think You've Got Problems?

  WANT TO hear a terrific idea for a story? Just listen to this. After a war, a whole bunch of guys are anxious to get back home to their wives and sweethearts and aged mothers. So they get on board their ship, have a nice smooth voyage, and the next thing you know they're all back home, safe and sound, and everybody's happy.

  You don't like it?

  I don't know why not. It worked pretty well a while back, when a guy named Homer wrote it and called it The Odyssey. It's worked well any number of times since then, its latest incarnation being Sol Yurick's recently filmed novel, The Warriors. Homer was writing about veterans of the Trojan War, Yurick about members of a teenage gang, but the problem in both stories is the same?i.e., getting home safe.

  And problem, after all, is what a story is about. To one extent or another, every story or novel involves a lead character's attempt to cope with a problem. If the lead is well drawn and human and believable and sympathetic, if he's the sort with whom the reader can strongly identify, then the reader will want things to work out for him. And, if the problem is believable and significant and urgent, the lead's successful resolution of the problem becomes important to the reader.

  You couldn't ask for a better hero than Odysseus, and returning safely and swiftly to Ithaca is a fine central problem, whether you're a bunch of Greek soldiers or the Cornell football team. But what has made that voyage a memorable one for readers down through the millennia is the fact that it was never smooth sailing, not for a minute. From the time they left Troy, Odysseus and his merry men were constantly in hot water. They no sooner stared down the Cyclops than they had to steer between Scylla and Charybdis. If the Sirens weren't calling them, Circe was turning them into swine. The tension never stopped.

  The title characters in Yurick's novel don't have it much easier.
Their central problem is returning safely from the Bronx, no easy task for any New Yorker at the best of times. It's especially difficult for the Warriors because members of dozens of other gangs are dogging them every step of the way, determined to kill them. For Yurick's Warriors, as for those ancient Ithacans, life is just one damned thing after another.

  Pay attention.

  Because we are about to fasten upon an essential truth.

  Fiction is just one damned thing after another. If your hero, however likable he may be, confronts his problem, however desperate it may be, and just plain goes ahead and solves it, you have not got something Publishers Weekly is going to call a real page-turner. But if he keeps dodging one menace only to rush headlong into the jaws of another, and if his prospects keep getting worse, and if he winds up with more perils than Pauline, then you just might be on the right track.

  Understand, if you will, that I am not just talking about adventure stories. A problem, in fictional terms, need not to be quite so heart-pounding an affair as a voyage through hostile waters. It might be obtaining a master's in comparative linguistics, or coming to terms with one's sexual identity, or getting out of a bad marriage. And the perils along the way need not be of the lashed-to-the-railroad-track variety; they are whatever incidents complicate the story, render its successful outcome in doubt, and force the hero to overcome them in order to survive.

  When I first started writing fiction, just a couple of months after the boys made it back to Ithaca, I had trouble with troubles. I might be able to limn a suitably heroic hero, and I might confront him with a sufficiently dire problem, but then I tended to let him go ahead and solve it cleverly and expeditiously and lickety-split.

  I knew what I was doing wrong but I didn't seem to be able to do anything about it. I knew there was no real tension if a character fell into a pit and then hopped back out again. I knew that things had to get worse before they could get better, that my hero's efforts to solve his problem had to lead him deeper and deeper into trouble before he could finally win through to glory. I knew all that, and knowing helped me a little, but I still tended to make things easy for my hero. The result of this was two-fold; my stories rarely went on for more than fifteen hundred or two thousand words, and they rarely developed much in the way of tension. When they sold, it was to minor markets.