Manual For Fiction Writers

by Block, Lawrence

  Richard Stark, on the other hand, rarely does much rewriting. The two paragraphs quoted above very likely took final form in first draft. I don't do too much rewriting, either, but I have found when editing my copy that one change I'm apt to make involves verbs. When something's wrong with a sentence, more often than not it can be improved by changing a verb or two, making one of those action words more active, or more specific, or less ordinary, or, well, just plain better.

  Back when I was in the eighth grade, right around the time dad and other barons made King John sign the Magna Carta, my English teacher had us think of synonyms for get. I have a feeling she may have been somewhat obsessive on the subject. In any event, she had us compile a lengthy list of alternatives for this verb, which she decried as banal, nonspecific, and a blight upon the mother tongue.

  Well, early learned is late forgotten, and it's a rare morning when I type something like

  I got dressed, got myself downstairs and out of the house, pausing to get the mail out of the mailbox. When I got to the corner I got a paper from the newsdealer, then got a good breakfast at the Red Flame. I got a headache when I got the day's first cigarette going, but I got the waitress to get me a couple of aspirins and that got rid of it. Then I got out of there. On the way out the cashier told me a joke, but I didn't get it.

  For exercise, you might want to rewrite that deathless paragraph.

  Then again, you might not.

  I don't want to leave you with the impression that the unusual and colorful is always more desirable than the flatter and more ordinary verbs. What words you use and how you use them depends on what you're trying to accomplish, and that's as true with verbs as anything else. Colorless verbs have their place. So does repetition. There might be a time when you would want to write:

  He walked to the corner, turned left, walked three blocks, waited for the light to turn, then walked two more blocks to Glenda's apartment.

  You get a much different quality by having him walk than if you made the bleeder stroll or march or sashay or whatever. By using the same verb three times in a sentence, you underscore the neutral quality of the verb. Without a single adverb to tell you how he walked, we wind up with a sense of how he did it, depending of course on what we know already about the character and his situation.

  He legged it to the corner, made a sharp left, stared at the light until it went green, then quick-marched two more blocks to Glenda's apartment.

  Is that better? Or worse? It depends, obviously, on what the sentence is supposed to do. It's unquestionably a whole lot different, though, and the difference is vested in the verbs.

  For myself, prose style is largely intuitive. I don't often give it conscious thought while I'm actually writing. Nor would I suggest that you scrawl PUT VITAMINS IN YOUR VERBS on the wall above your typewriter. There's not much point in becoming self-conscious about your style.

  I would suggest that you notice, in your reading, how other writers use verbs, and what you do or don't like about their techniques. See what changes you'd make, in their writing and in your own. And, if you're interested in watching a master put not only verbs but all the other parts of speech through their paces, you might make the acquaintance of Pelham Grenville Wodehouse.

  CHAPTER 39

  Modifiers for Mood-Swing

  FIRST YOU write the story, Hemingway is supposed to have said. Then you go back over what you have written and cross out all the adjectives and adverbs. The result is a clean, spare, honest prose, stripped to the bare essentials without the intrusion of the author's perceptions.

  I don't suppose that was the worst advice ever, especially at the time it was given, when the American novel was being reborn in a freshet of clean, spare, honest prose. I have read stories whose authors could profit by taking Hemingway's advice literally; a blue pencil would greatly help passages that run something like this:

  The tall, ungainly woman walked haltingly up the winding tree-lined path that led to the large green-shuttered sprawling old white mansion. Her old arthritic vein-corded hands gripped her silver-topped cane, and its worn brass ferrule stabbed feebly at the unyielding earth with every faltering step she took-.

  Cumbersome, isn't it? The modifiers pile up all over the place, and it takes us as long to read about it as it takes the lady to get to the house. What does the same passage look like stripped?

  The woman walked up the path that led to the mansion. Her hands gripped her cane, and its ferrule stabbed at the earth with every step she took.

  That's better, certainly, if only because some of the clutter is gone and the prose has a better rhythm to it. But I don't think we can safely conclude that the quality of any prose passage is in inverse proportion to the number of adverbs and adjectives it contains, and that these parts of speech ought to be ruthlessly purged from our professional vocabularies. Because there is one significant fault which the second example bears in relation to the first. It's trimmer, unquestionably, and it reads faster, but it gives us a lot less of the picture than does the first example.

  When we read the stripped-down version, we don't know if the woman in question is young or old, tall or short, sprightly or lethargic. We have no picture of the path she's walking or the house she's approaching. We get hints from some of the verbs and nouns; we'd know even less than we do, for example, if the path led not to a mansion but to a house, if her hand held her cane instead of gripping it, and if the tip of the cane didn't specifically stab the earth but simply touched it. Even so, there are details to this picture which can only be sketched in by means of adjectives and adverbs.

  Thus there is a question of balance involved. If we use sufficient modifiers to describe everything in full detail, we'll produce clumsy prose and spend several pages just getting the old lady up the path to the house. If we cut out the modifiers, the reader won't know what's going on.

  There's no single right way to write anything, this sample passage included. The writer has to make choices, and generally makes them quickly and intuitively at that. The writing of prose, you see, is rather more like painting than photography. We cannot point a camera and, with the click of the shutter, record instantly all that is visible to the lens. Instead we must wield words as a painter wields a brush, spotting a detail here and there while leaving another section purposely vague.

  The woman walked haltingly up the path to the green-shuttered mansion-

  That's one way, focusing on the woman's walk and the house's green shutters. If this were a class, I might suggest that you try rewriting the passage yourself, producing three different versions of it. (And you might elect to do that on your own, class or no class.) Instead, let's have a look at some other examples.

  The body of the whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue, it has not lost anything in bulk. It floats away, the water round it torn and splashed by the sharks, and the air above vexed with flights of fowls, whose beaks are like so many poniards in the whale. The phantom floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the din. For hours and hours from the ship that sight is seen. Beneath the sky, upon the face of the sea, wafted by breezes, the mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.

  That, of course, is from Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. It is, however, rather different from the way the author wrote it, and is more like what would have resulted had he gone back and crossed out the adjectives. Melville, as it happened, used a great many adjectives in this passage. Having read it once in an abridged version, please consider it in full:

  The peeled white body of the beheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue, it has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal. Slowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and splashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale. The vast white headl
ess phantom floats further and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats, what seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the murderous din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that hideous sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon the fair face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, the great mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.

  Adjectives certainly bring this scene to life?or to death, one might prefer to say. Some of Melville's phrases make the passage almost unbearably vivid?the peeled white body, the rapacious flights of screaming fowls, the vast white headless phantom floating in the murderous din.

  But notice, if you please, what Melville does in the final sentence of the passage. All of a sudden the adjectives change altogether in tone. All at once the author is directing our attention to the unclouded and mild sky, the fair face of the pleasant sea, the joyous breezes. The effect is shocking, and Melville has heightened it by selecting?deliberately, I would assume?adjectives which are not merely gentle and positive and life-affirming, in contrast to those employed earlier, but adjectives which are definitely bland and unimaginative, even banal. The fair face of the pleasant sea? The joyous breezes? The unclouded sky? These would be clichŽs but for the context in which they appear.

  We can decide for ourselves why Melville wrote that last sentence the way he did. Perhaps he wished to contrast the enormous energy of destruction with the banality of life. Perhaps he wanted to show life going on in the face of death. Perhaps, like so many writers, he didn't have anything consciously in mind but merely thought the paragraph would have a certain something going for it if he wrote it in that particular fashion.

  The passage from Moby Dick is additionally instructive because the author uses several different kinds of modifiers. First we have these adjectives which simply describe, and do so in an uninflected fashion. The peeled white body of the beheaded whale?these adjectives fill in a picture for us without telling us how the author feels about it, or suggesting how we ought to feel. The ship, we are told, is stationary. The body floats slowly. The sky is unclouded.

  A second class of adjectives includes those which, while still deliberately factual, are concerned as well with our response to what is going on. It is a fact that the sharks are insatiate, that the fowls are rapacious and screaming, that the bulk of the dead whale is colossal, but how we feel about the noise and appetite of the scavengers and the size of the whale is colored by the choice of modifiers.

  Other adjectives are still more subjective. That the din is murderous is not a measure of its volume, nor does it have anything to do with what is actually going on?the whale is already dead, so the act performed by birds and sharks is only figuratively murderous. That the sight is hideous is similarly a conclusion of the author. Finally, fair and pleasant and joyous are wholly subjective, telling us nothing about the actual effect or appearance of the sea and the breezes but instructing us as to how they are to be perceived.

  As a general rule, I believe we do best to stick to adverbs and adjectives which describe and limit our employment of those which attempt to control the reader's response. Modifiers of the latter sort don't add any detail to the picture we are painting. They add clutter, and they simultaneously interpose the author's perceptions between the writing and the reader.

  Consider:

  She was a pretty girl, with a cheerful grin and a keen glint in her warm eyes. Her figure was well-proportioned, her clothing attractive.

  There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with those two sentences, and they certainly don't glare at one. But they're quite empty, and if a writer were to go on in this vein for pages on end, the result would be deadening. Because we don't see the girl any better after she's been thus described than we did before. We know that the disembodied narrator likes the way she looks, but we don't know what she looks like, nor have we been given any reason why we should believe that she's pretty, that her clothing's attractive, that her grin is cheerful and her eyes warm.

  The same two sentences, I might add, would be somewhat less objectionable in first-person narration, where everything is deliberately filtered through the perceptions of the narrator, whose reactions to phenomena are a legitimate part of the story. Even so, this isn't very good writing. The modifiers are not descriptive but judgmental.

  These judgmental adjectives are handy. While they're a natural refuge for the lazy writer, who finds it much easier to dictate the reader's reaction than to take the trouble to sketch in a picture, they're useful as well when one doesn't want to waste space describing something of minor importance. If a bit player strides by carrying a blaring transistor radio, it may be simpler to call it harsh and obnoxious than to discuss the nature of the music played and its decibel count.

  It all depends, of course, on what you're trying to do. I wouldn't care to propose any rules here. There are no good and bad adjectives?all have their place, even good and bad. Nor would I want you to think too much about what I've written here while you're doing your own writing. Afterward, though, when you reread what you've done, you might want to see whether your modifiers, your descriptive words, do the job you've given them. Should they be more or less specific? Should they be more descriptive? More judgmental? Are you trying to control the reader's reaction? Should you aim for more show and less tell? Have you overloaded your prose with adverbs and adjectives? Or have you gone overboard in the other direction, being rather too sparing in their use?

  I'll wish you the best. I'm just breezing along with the joyous breeze, floating on and on, till lost in infinite perspectives.

  CHAPTER 40

  Writing With Your Eyes Closed

  WRITING'S SO hard I can do it with my eyes shut.

  Now that I've got your attention, let me explain. Some of my most productive time as a writer of fiction is spent seated at my typewriter with my fingers still and my eyes closed. In this fashion I'm able to see a picture within my mind. Once I've seen and experienced it, it's a much simpler matter to open my eyes, hit the typewriter keys, and convert what I've seen into prose and dialogue.

  Suppose I'm about to write a scene that takes place in some minor character's furnished room, a setting I haven't previously described in my work-in-progress. I'll sit back, close my eyes, and let an image of that room come into my mind. The picture I create in my mind may indeed be that of a room I've visited sometime before in real life. It may be wholly imaginary. Most likely, it will be a combination of elements, containing aspects of rooms I've seen, rooms I've read about, images that linger in the back of the mind from plays and films and conversations.

  When you think of an apple, what picture comes into your mind? No particular apple, I don't suppose. You've doubtless seen thousands, from Macintosh to Cezanne, and while they certainly don't all look alike neither do they hang around in the memory as individuals. But all of those apples you've seen and smelled and held in the hand and chomped into have merged in the mind to the point that you conjure up an image when you hear the word apple.

  But let's get back into that imaginary room. I'll see it first from the doorway, say, if that's where my viewpoint character stands when he takes his first look at the place. I'll pay some attention to the furniture. There's a bed, of course. And a chest of drawers. Any chairs? What do they look like? A rug on the floor? Linoleum? What kind of shape is it in?

  Pictures on the wall? A calendar, perhaps? Is the bed made? The room itself?is it neat or disorderly? Any windows? Curtained or shaded or what?

  How big is the room? Does the bed take up most of it? Just how much room is there to move around?

  Now the answers to these questions derive both from the demands of the story and the picture with which my mind has supplied me. In other words, certain things about the room are predetermined by what's already been established about the person who inhabits it, his character and his circumstances. The action which will take place in the room is another predeterminant; if somebody's goi
ng to find something in the closet, for example, the room has to have one. But other elements of the room?a floor lamp with a fringed shade, a fireplace that's been sealed off and painted over?may have nothing to do with the demands of plot and characterization. They're just part of the scenery.

  Furthermore, I may never mention or describe them when I write the scene.

  This is an important point. This process of visualization is not designed solely to enable the writer to describe what he has seen to the reader. That may not even be its primary purpose. Visualization is most valuable to me because it allows me to experience what I see in my mind?and then, having had the experience of the furnished room or the apple or whatever, I can write out of that experience in creating fiction for my own purpose.

  What does this mean? Well, maybe I can give you an example. The passage which follows is an unremarkable one from a novel of mine and describes the fatal heart attack of one of the characters.

  He returned to his own house, ate dinner with his wife at the usual hour. He helped her load the dishwasher. While it ran they sat with newspapers in the front room. First he read the Times while she read the Buffalo News. Then they traded. She was reading Clive Barnes's review of a new English play when he said, Syl?

  She lowered the paper. His face looked drawn and his expression was one of puzzlement.

  I don't feel well, he said.

  What's the matter? Stay right there, I'll phone Irv Zucker.

  Oh, it's probably nothing, he said, and then he sat back in his chair and died. Her eyes were on him as it happened and she knew instantly what had happened. He was there and then he was not, he was gone.

  I've bothered to quote this passage because I remember the extent to which I visualized it before writing it. I had a very strong image of the room in which those two persons sat reading their newspapers. I saw their chairs and knew the distance between them. I felt the mood in the room, relaxing with newspapers after cleaning up the dinner dishes. I saw each character from the other's point of view. And, as the scene unfolded, I felt it.