Techniques of the Selling Writer

by Swain, Dwight V.

  So, what releases tension?

  Fear creates tension. Dissipation of fear releases it. If you’re afraid the boss plans to fire you, a raise or a promotion may improve your outlook. If you’re dubious about your chances with a girl and she smiles at the right moment, that smile may change your mind. If the issue is ulcers, a few X rays might calm your nerves.

  Do all dissipations of fear give the same degree of release; the same satisfaction?

  No. Fear is a complex thing, and a matter of degree. You never can eliminate it completely. The promotion may create doubts in you as to your adequacy to the new job. The girl’s encouragement may make you wonder, later, whether she encourages others also. The X rays can set you searching for another ailment to account for the pains you feel.

  It’s the same in story. Not all dissipations of fear give your reader the thing he seeks.

  What does he seek?

  He seeks security.

  What constitutes security?

  Safety. Freedom from danger or fear of danger.

  What gives this sense of security to your reader?

  The feeling that he controls his own destiny; that he’s not a pawn of blind fate or a helpless victim of chance or a hostile universe.

  It’s the same for all of us, in life as in fiction. Infinitely small, pitifully weak, we face a world that’s both frightening and overwhelming. So, a dozen times a day—a hundred; a thousand—we question our own adequacy: Can we really cut it in our pressure-laden private situation? Do we actually stand a chance to win happiness?

  Constantly, we need encouragement and reassurance. We yearn for some small demonstration that it’s worth our while to go on fighting.

  If happenstance alone is what decides the issue, we know we’re licked before we start. Luck’s just not sure enough to tie to, and we’ve got experiences to prove it.

  What we want, instead, is a setup where what we do has a bearing on outcome. We need to feel as if how a man behaves, his personal performance, helps to decide the way he fares in this life. We like the idea of individual worth and individual reward.

  In practical terms, this means that a character’s fear shouldn’t be cleared away by accident or coincidence. Happy circumstance shouldn’t solve his problems. Your reader gains no ultimate story satisfaction from a resolution in which lightning strikes the villain, or the convenient death of an Australian uncle ends the hero’s financial crisis. He wants an outcome in which man masters fate. It’s one of his deepest emotional needs.

  To create this sense of control, this feeling of security, you must relate your story material to reality in such a manner as to help give life meaning to your readers, by reaffirming their wishful thinking and emotion-based convictions.

  To that end, in each story you write, you establish a cause-effect relationship between your focal character’s behavior and his fate; his deeds and his rewards.

  Here’s how:

  a. You pit your character against danger.

  b. You let him demonstrate whether he deserves to win or lose.

  c. You fit the story’s outcome to his behavior, in terms of poetic justice.

  Thus, the beginning of a story hypothesizes:

  (1) A state of affairs, present or projected, that symbolizes happiness to your hero.

  (2) A danger that threatens his chances of achieving or maintaining that state of affairs.

  It’s helpful, at this point, to cast these two elements into the form of a story question: “Will Joe win Ellen despite the crippling of his arm?” “Will the Things from Space wipe out the human race and Our Hero with it?” “Can Suzy prevent her too-loving mother from spoiling the children?”

  The answer to this question constitutes the resolution of your story, and grows out of your hero’s demonstration of whether he deserves to win or lose.

  How do you arrange for your hero to demonstrate this, in terms that make for reader satisfaction?

  You focus his fight with danger down to a moral issue. At the climax, he acts on this issue; chooses which of two conflicting roads to take . . . which of two antithetical courses of action to pursue.

  In what sense is the climactic issue moral?

  One road’s right; the other, wrong.

  What constitutes “right”?

  Unselfishness. Adherence to principle despite the temptation of self-interest.

  And “wrong”?

  Selfishness. Abandonment of conviction for the sake of personal advantage.

  What’s the deciding factor in your character’s choice between these roads?

  Emotion. His own subjective feelings. The kind of person he intrinsically is.

  Isn’t selfishness often more logical than unselfishness? Mightn’t it be more sensible, more intelligent, for him to follow the wrong road?

  Of course. But our object here is to test your character’s character, not his intelligence; his instinctive reactions, not his logic.

  Does this mean your hero should be unintelligent?

  On the contrary. Further, he should use to the full every ounce of brain-power he possesses.

  But moments come to all of us when thinking-through isn’t enough. If a thick-headed clerk gives you too much change, you can accept it; or, you can call his attention to the error and give the money back. Crumpling someone’s fender in a darkened parking lot, you can leave a note; or, you can merely drive away. Welcomed too well far from home by the wife of a good friend, you can take advantage of the opportunity; or, you can bow out.

  When such times come, we must act—spontaneously, instinctively, on the basis of the things we believe, the way we feel, the kind of men we are. Principle and character are the issues.

  How does all this bear on your reader? How does it help him to achieve the sense of security he seeks?

  Because your reader lives through the story with the focal character, he shares the testing of that character. Instinctively, he knows that he himself isn’t necessarily strong enough or intelligent enough or lucky enough always to be able to defeat danger. But no matter how weak or dull or ill-omened he may be, he tells himself that he can act on principle . . . do the thing he knows emotionally to be right, even though such a course seems destined to lead to sure disaster.

  So?

  So, you then resolve the story problem. If the character does right, you give him victory. You let him defeat his private danger.

  In brief, you reward your character for his display of virtue.

  Whereupon, fear dissipates. Tension ebbs. The character relaxes, safe and satisfied and happy . . . and, with him, your reader.

  Even granting the validity of all this . . . isn’t it a childish pattern, ill-suited to mature readers?

  That depends on you: your skill as a writer. The pattern can be presented childishly, of a certain. Thousands of times it’s been done crudely, on a comic-book level.

  But it’s also the configuration in Oedipus and Crime and Punishment; in Of Human Bondage and the Holy Bible. Skill and subtlety are the only issues.

  But doesn’t a writer falsify reality when he uses such a pattern? Isn’t it pure hypocrisy to pretend that a cause-effect relationship exists between deed and reward, even in the confines of a story?

  The answer here falls into two parts:

  (1) To prove satisfying to a given reader, a story must necessarily reaffirm that reader’s own philosophy of life.

  (2) Historically, sociologically, and philosophically, a strong case can be made for the cause-effect pattern as it exists in life as well as fiction.

  Where Point 1 is concerned, most American readers believe in the pattern here outlined; the cause-effect relationship set forth. It therefore is the most effective approach to a mass audience.

  On the other hand, it obviously will offer no satisfaction whatever to the writer who wants to present a different philosophy of life.

  All that means is that said writer should work out a pattern more in keeping with his beliefs and write his stories to i
t. It’s done every day: witness some of the material occasionally published as novels or in magazines.

  However, because any book has limitations as to length, I’ve chosen here to pass such by, in order to focus more fully on the form dominant in commercial fiction: the approach taken by most selling writers.

  Point 2 warrants further immediate consideration. For most of us have an unfortunate habit of ignoring the doughnut in favor of the hole; of becoming so enamored of the exception as to overlook the rule.

  A story shouldn’t do so.

  Actually, in this life, exceptions notwithstanding, most of us get about what we deserve.

  This isn’t any accident. All society is based on the principle of mutual aid. Precisely because he’s so helpless and alone, man limits his selfishness, his pursuit of and preoccupation with self-interest, in order to enjoy the benefits to be gained from living at peace with his fellows. “Free enterprise” is held in check by fraud laws. Speed limits and stop signs restrict freedom of movement. Safety regulations control conditions of work. Police protection reduces the need for arming of the individual.

  Nor are our controls merely external. Honesty, truthfulness, kindness, integrity, chastity, piety, courage, dignity, humility, sensitivity, honor—these are more than just words. They’re inner standards, restrictions on self-interest and self-indulgence. People live by them.

  Often, there’s disagreement on just how far such limits—internal or external—should extend. The rules vary from time to time and place to place and culture to culture; and individual circumstances alter cases. But most men, most of the time, abide by them.

  When they don’t, the result is anarchy.

  Because man acts on principle, sacrifices self-interest to the larger cause of his own standards, ordinarily he benefits.

  The main reason, of course, is that our fellow men continually sit in judgment on us. Courage, moral or physical, attracts attention. The fact of known honesty opens avenues before us. Opportunity knocks on the door of the man devoted to duty. Kindness and hard work and loyalty are noted.

  Contrariwise, the schemer, the sharp operator, the malcontent and the philanderer soon are labeled and appropriately dealt with.

  Rewards of the spirit loom even larger than rewards of the letter. Though public ignominy may crucify the conscientious objector, he still can stand tall and proud if he’s doing what he believes is right. Court-martialed, a Billy Mitchell remains a better man than his accusers, and he knows it.

  What about the exceptions—those individuals who refuse to play by the rules?

  (a) Relatively speaking, they’re isolated and few in number.

  The day they grow so numerous as to dominate the picture, the rules change—witness America’s repeal of Prohibition. Or, the society itself collapses, as in the case of the Roman Empire.

  (b) They do get caught.

  Cheat in school, your ignorance later loses you a job. Cheat on the traffic laws, a tank truck becomes your funeral pyre. Cheat in a crap game, a perceptive soul with a switchblade perforates more than your ego.

  (c) They live with guilt.

  Hypertension and insomnia and ulcers are constant occupational hazards for them. Often they make psychotherapists wealthy. But even if they escape such, conscience still travels with them in most cases, and their triumphs all taste of bitter ashes.

  In essence, life and fiction alike assume that ruthless self-interest takes the short view of any issue. The man without principle is in effect blood brother to the alcoholic whose perspective on life has narrowed to the problem of how to get just one more bottle, or the armed bandit so preoccupied with the seventy dollars in a cash register that he never stops to figure out what his hourly wage will be if he pays for the caper with a five-year prison sentence.

  The implicit truth of all this is the bedrock upon which our society is erected. Fiction merely epitomizes it . . . telescopes and condenses the broad picture into capsule form so that it may more easily be digested by the average reader. As Raymond Chandler once observed in commenting on the fantastic aspects of the hard-boiled mystery, “Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost.”

  A good story provides your reader with Pleasurable Tension plus Ultimate Satisfaction. These are the fundamentals. This is what constitutes the double-barreled attack.

  The carrying out of that attack, however, demands a bit more detail: detail about the most effective tricks for developing the beginning of your story, and also its middle and its end.

  For a look at such, turn to the next chapter.

  CHAPTER 6

  Beginning, Middle, End

  A story is movement through the eternal now, from past to future.

  All stories are “about” the same thing: desire versus danger. Each concerns a focal character’s attempt to attain or retain something in the face of trouble.

  To translate this general principle into a specific piece of fiction, you need a grasp of five broad subjects:

  1. How to line up story elements.

  2. How to get a story started.

  3. How to develop middle segments.

  4. How to build a climax.

  5. How to resolve story issues.

  The first step in this direction is to get the basic outlines of your story clear in your own mind. A certain amount of organization is essential. Lack of direction and form can send you off into a trackless maze of false starts and blind alleys.

  To avoid such confusion, there are worse tricks than to lay out your material in a starting line-up.

  How to line up story elements

  Five key elements go into every solid commercial story. The line-up arranges them in dynamic form, so that you can check their strength or weakness.

  These are the five elements:

  a. Character.

  Without a focal character, you have no story. He brings it into being when, affected by and reacting to external events, he fights back against the danger that threatens him.

  b. Situation.

  No focal character exists in a vacuum. He operates against a backdrop of trouble that forces him to act. That backdrop, that external state of affairs, is your story situation.

  c. Objective.

  A focal character who has nothing he wants to attain or retain can’t be endangered, and so has no place in any story. Whether he succeeds or fails is immaterial. He still must strive.

  d. Opponent.

  Dig a ditch, and you find that even the earth resists you. But obstacles personified in an opponent—who not only resists but fights back—make for more exciting reading.

  e. Disaster.

  Every story needs to build to a climax. So, you threaten your focal character with Something Unutterably Awful which he must face close to the end, just before you let him off the hook.

  —And do try to make each item as specific and concrete as possible!

  Next, these five elements are cast into two sentences.

  —No more than two, either. Here we want black versus white, forces in conflict. The starker and sharper, the better. Extra words only blur the issue. Every writer needs the self-discipline of forcing himself to slash away verbiage and get down to essentials. Slickness and subtlety can come later.

  So, we need two sentences, and two only.

  Sentence 1 is a statement. It establishes character, situation, and objective.

  Sentence 2 is a question. It nails down opponent and disaster.

  How you put together this olla-podrida is unimportant. The big thing is to force yourself to do so! Any effective story must incorporate the materials of conflict if it’s to prove effective. If you don’t go through this ritual, or one similar, over and over again you’ll kid yourself into thinking you have a story where none actually exists.

  So, now, let’s try out the pattern.

 
; On a science-fiction story, for example:

  The issue in a story always is “Will this focal character defeat his opponent, overcome his private danger, and win happiness?” Your reader gets maximum tension release from the resolution if Sentence 2, the story question, is so framed that it can be answered with a clear-cut “yes” or “no.”

  A broader or less rigid approach (“How can Sam win Esmerelda back from Jacob?” “Why did old Mansford fire the swamp?”) takes emphasis off the basic conflict and moves it over to a puzzle element. Such a curiosity angle is valuable as a component of your story—a twist, a complication, a sub-plot. But avoid it as a dominant, over-all story question. Though intellectually intriguing, perhaps, in most instances it proves less suspenseful to a mass audience than does the simpler, more obvious, “Will he win or won’t he?” pattern.

  This is because your reader reads first and foremost for emotional stimulation. He has no great desire to think. A story that hinges on analysis or logic—no matter how elementary—holds little appeal for him. He prefers to keep the cerebral factor subordinate. As a sub-plot or the like, it’s there, pleasantly present if he happens to feel in the mood for it. But it’s not so important that he can’t skim over it without damaging the story’s total impact if he wants, tonight, to read just for what he describes as “relaxation.”

  Use of the starting line-up approach in no wise limits your range. Here, for example, it’s applied to a confession yarn:

  Or, here’s the kind of story that might be developed on almost any level, from the lower-bracket men’s magazines to a literary novel:

  And there you have the starting lineup . . . as useful a tool as you’ll ever find.

  One warning: This sort of device is an aid only. A semi-mechanical procedure, its purpose is to help keep you reminded of the dynamic elements in your story. And that’s all.

  Like any mechanical or semi-mechanical approach, it’s anything but foolproof. In no sense will it substitute for thinking. Unless you adapt it to your own temperament—your own ideas and tastes and readers—it very well may do you far more harm than good.