Techniques of the Selling Writer

by Swain, Dwight V.

  Thus, his desire to attain or retain something launches the story. It’s his goal. In his eyes, at least, his future happiness depends on said attaining or retaining.

  Because this is so, he fights whatever forces threaten this objective. Increasing jeopardy and tension only increase his efforts.

  This conflict between desire and danger finally focuses into a climax, in which the focal character must choose between principle and self-interest.

  If, in that moment, the character stands on principle despite all hazard, and thus demonstrates that he deserves to win, you reward him with attainment or retention of the thing he wants, the goal he seeks.

  In other words, cause leads directly to effect. Deed brings reward. As soon as you know your hero’s goal, you also know how your story is going to end.

  But knowing a destination and working out the route to reach it are two very different things. Practical problems have to be faced along the way . . . problems which you, the writer, must solve.

  So, how do you move your focal character from decision to reward?

  Again, three steps are involved:

  (a) Let your focal character suffer through a black moment of anguish after climax.

  (b) Reverse his situation with an unanticipated development.

  (c) Give him his reward.

  Each of these three items is important. Slight any one of them and you’re in trouble.

  Further, none of these issues are quite as simple as appears at first glance. To handle them effectively, you need to understand them in terms both of dynamics and mechanics.

  Take (a):

  (a) Let your focal character suffer through a black moment of anguish after climax.

  The reason your reader reads, we’ve said, is so that he can worry.

  In the moment immediately after climax, that worry comes to its sharpest focus.

  Why?

  Because the focal character, acting, stands convinced that he’s lost; that the seemingly inevitable doom the course of principle threatened is about to destroy him. It’s a moment when, to him, all hope is gone.

  Experiencing with the focal character, your reader shares this feeling. It brings his fear to its highest pitch.

  Therefore, you don’t dare hurry or slight that moment. Let your reader chill to—and thus enjoy—it to the full! The blacker things look, the longer the moment hangs. In consequence whereof, the higher your reader’s pitch of tension rises, and the greater will be his sense of release and relief when the flip finally comes.

  (b) Reverse the focal character’s situation with an unanticipated development.

  The story is a western. Or science fiction, or mystery, or adventure. Now, in the climax scene, while minor characters stand by in aching silence, Villain gives Hero an unpleasant choice: Let Hero betray the cause for which he fights, and Villain will let him live. Let him refuse, and he’ll die. Messily.

  Hero chooses: He’ll die. In the process, he’ll try to take Villain with him.

  Not that he has a chance. The odds are far too long for that. But at least he’ll go down fighting.

  He starts forward. Villain tightens a finger on the trigger of his weapon.

  It’s a moment that lasts an eternity. The chill breath of death seems to freeze the scene.

  Only then, as Hero makes his play, and Villain bares teeth in a sadistic grin, a voice cries, “No!”

  Whose voice it is, and why the cry is uttered, are unimportant here. The vital thing is, something happens. Something unanticipated. Something that upsets the balance of the situation.

  So, here, someone cries, “No!”

  In the brief moment that the Villain hangs distracted, Hero drives in hard. Villain’s shot goes wild. And Hero is on his way to victory.

  There, in its crudest and bloodiest form, stands the secret of story resolution: An unanticipated development has reversed the focal character’s situation.

  Not that triumph follows automatically or without effort, you understand. Hero still may have to bleed and battle. But his sacrifice of self in climax opens the way to a reversal.

  “The art of life,” Justice Holmes once said, “consists in making correct decisions on insufficient evidence.”

  How better can you describe the focal character’s plight at a story’s climax? Seeing only part of the picture, he still must make his choice—his sacrificial decision—and act upon it.

  Whereupon, you the writer reveal the rest of the picture: the things which have a bearing that your character didn’t know. The variables, the unperceived factors. Like what’s going on inside the villain, or how another character will react, or the fact that somebody’s gun is loaded or empty, or that there’s water instead of poison in the hypodermic needle.

  Nor is this any falsification of reality, even remotely. Life is full of shocks and twists and flips. Every man Jack of us has ever so often feared, but still plowed straight ahead; and, plowing, found our fears were groundless. Not a day passes but someone startles us with his reaction. A hundred times we face disaster, only to find that the blackest cloud can indeed have a silver lining.

  A good reversal demands three things:

  /1/ It must be desired.

  If your reader doesn’t want—want desperately—to see the focal character saved, even the best of twists is unlikely to impress him. You must make Reader care what happens to your hero.

  /2/ It must be unanticipated.

  You lose half the impact, at least, if your reader guesses in advance what’s going to happen. The obvious just won’t do.

  /3/ It must be logical.

  Believability is the payoff for proper preparation: planning and planting. An effect without a legitimate cause spells disaster every time.

  Given these three elements, however, reversal will prove effective in a story on any level. Don’t allow the fact that we here use an action-type example to prejudice you. No matter what kind of fiction you prefer to write, once a sacrifice is made, the climactic situation changes: Father revises his estimate of Son’s potential. Girl recognizes Suitor’s worth. Monster backs down before raw courage. Executive takes new cognizance of Subordinate’s sense of duty. Wife sees that Husband really loves her.

  Desired yet unanticipated yet logical developments, one and all.

  Such a development, in turn, is what starts release of reader tension. It begins the answer to the story question: Will this focal character survive the hazard that threatens attainment of his goal, or won’t he?

  Specifically, the reversal demonstrates that the course of principle your hero chose in crisis isn’t really going to crush him.

  In so doing, it cuts fear sharply.

  Result: a matching drop in tension . . . a drop that relieves and satisfies your reader.

  How do you lay the groundwork for a reversal?

  Herewith, five hints:

  /1/ Know every detail of your climax situation.

  —And that means, know them precisely! Even go so far as to draw a map or plan of the setting if it’s not completely clear to you. The general is your worst enemy. In terms of pure mechanics, Hero may need a window that isn’t there, or an electric cord, or a text on astrophysics.

  /2/ Know your characters.

  List them, every one. Then, ask yourself what each is doing at this particular moment, and how each will react to the fact of your character’s decision.

  /3/ Remember that audacity often carries the day.

  Tonight’s paper carried a story about a householder who saw a thief stealing the tires from Householder’s pickup truck. So, Householder went out with a shotgun to stop the theft. Thief promptly pulled a “small pistol,” ordered Householder back into dwelling, and then drove off with tires and shotgun!

  /4/ Bear in mind that people react favorably to unselfishness.

  If the man I detest displays moral courage, I may conclude that he’s more worthy than I thought him. Whereupon, I may act upon that belief to help him.

  Further, an
act of principle and courage can sometimes free your hero himself from the bondage of his own fears. Once he’s taken the first step, inertia’s paralysis breaks. Committed, he has nothing left to lose. So, like a berserker, a Moro run amok, he rises above what he always imagined were his limitations.

  /5/ Above all, remember that your role of writer makes you god within the boundaries of your story.

  In time of need, a change in circumstance—anything from weather to locale to the villain’s attitude—will always solve your problem.

  (c) Give him his reward.

  How do you reward a character?

  You let him attain his goal, in letter or in spirit.

  Beginning writers seldom pay enough attention to the nature of reward.

  Because this is so, too often they also talk cynically about the “hypocrisy” of fiction and the eternal need for a “happy” ending.

  Actually, the happy ending is infinitely less important than the satisfying ending. Given reader fulfillment, you don’t necessarily have to close with a clinch, the Marines landing, or the villain snarling, “Foiled again!”

  Forget the phony, therefore. Distortion of reality will get you nowhere. What your reader seeks is less nirvana than the feeling, “This is as it should be.”

  How do you create this feeling?

  The first step is to release tension.

  Source 1 for tension, already discussed in detail, is danger. It culminates in the climactic moment, with its threat of disaster for your hero.

  To release tension stemming from this source, you eliminate the hazard. In so doing, you dissipate character’s—and reader’s—fear that some specific something will or won’t happen. Where-upon, tension ebbs.

  Source 2 is desire.

  Desire, you’ll recall, is the ground-swell from which all danger springs. It precedes peril. For what trouble can you give a focal character who doesn’t care what happens to him? Implicitly, desire to live must exist before there can be a fear of death. How can you worry about what a woman does, if she means nothing to you? Does money matter, when you’ve already taken a vow of poverty?

  Whether we’re consciously aware of it or not, desire is in all of us, every moment. Somewhere deep inside, we ache; we yearn; we hunger.

  Out of such desire, in your focal character, springs goal . . . a goal so vital to him, subjectively, that early in your story he commits himself to fight to achieve it against all odds.

  Specifically, he wants to attain or retain some particular something.

  When you want anything badly enough, the wanting creates tension in you. A continuing tension that gnaws and churns and burns.

  Until your focal character gets the thing he wants, therefore, this desire-born tension roils inside him—and, vicariously, inside your reader.

  To release that tension, you give Character what he wants. You allow him to attain his goal.

  It’s at this point that a host of writers go astray.

  Why?

  Because they assume that the thing the focal character gets must match to the letter the goal he seeks. If he wants a million dollars, a million dollars he must have. Does the heroine yearn for a red dress? Then give it to her! And so on down the line, all the way to the ruby from the idol’s eye, the banker’s house, violent vengeance against a hated rival, and Cleopatra reclining on a tiger skin.

  This isn’t reward or poetic justice. It’s nonsense.

  The reason is that often there’s a vast difference between stated goal and true goal. Though they may be the same, frequently the gap between them is as wide as that between sentimental and intrinsic value, where the kerchief or tintype or lock of hair an old man treasures may be thrown out by his heirs as trash.

  In the same way, physical goal is primarily a symbol.

  As a symbol, it represents an emotional need. And it’s this need which the symbol represents that reward must satisfy.

  Such a need is like a hunger, an inner thirst. It makes its host a driven man.

  Often, however, the man doesn’t even realize the need is there. He only feels an unrest, a dissatisfaction.

  Whereupon, consciously or unconsciously, he picks a goal to strive for, in the belief that once he attains it he’ll be happy.

  Frequently, he’s mistaken. What he really needs is to satisfy his inner hunger. Such satisfaction is more vital by far than acquisition of fame or girl or gold.

  Take the man above who claims he wants a million dollars.

  Actually, his need—the thing the million dollars represents to him, on an unconscious level—may be to feel an inner sense of his own worth and, with it, the self-confidence to tell his arrogant boss to go to hell.

  Give him that confidence, and he’s happy even though he still stays broke.

  Likewise, the girl who longs for a red dress may not truly care about the dress at all. It’s love she’s seeking, actually. But deep inside, she sees herself as far too drab and unattractive ever to win the man she wants. So, the dress is only a means to her emotional end. Let her once find love, and she’ll blissfully forego the garment.

  The ruby from the idol’s eye, in turn, may be the verbalized target of someone who seeks a sense of power; for who but a brave and dangerous person would ever dare to try to steal it? The banker’s house, likely as not, stands as a status symbol, and the man who wants it really seeks proof that he’s as good as anyone in town, despite the fact that his father was the local drunk and his mother took in washing. A drive to violent vengeance can grow from a need to impress a girl who disdains you as weak and ineffectual. The fantasy of wooing Cleopatra on a tiger skin speaks of loneliness and deep-seated yearning for affection. Quite possibly it’s less sexual craving than it is hunger for tenderness and warmth, embodied in a living woman.

  So much for the distinction between stated goals and true goals. Now, how do you use that variance to help resolve your story problem and reward your hero?

  /1/ You determine the emotional need behind your focal character’s stated goal.

  Here, the issue is one of character dynamics. We’ll discuss it at length in the next chapter.

  /2/ You devise a way to satisfy that emotional need.

  How do you satisfy an emotional need?

  You so change your character’s outlook that he achieves fulfillment.

  Fulfillment is a feeling, a state of mind. State of affairs runs a poor, poor second.

  To change a character’s outlook means that you let him see what he really wants.

  That is, you allow him to perceive and achieve the true goal that lies behind his stated goal. You help him to understand that work or adventure is more important to him than girl or money, or that success isn’t always suburbia and Brooks Brothers’ suits. Facing up to the fact that you don’t have the talent to be a concert star can free you. Some marriages are better broken than mended. There can be happiness through the tears when a son or daughter finally finds the strength to leave home.

  Even death can upon occasion be a triumph. If you don’t believe me, take time out some day to read Talbot Mundy’s fine story, “The Soul of a Regiment.”

  How do you change a character’s outlook?

  You show him the negative side of his stated goal and the positive side of his true goal.

  Let’s say the issue is vengeance. All through your story, Character has lived for the moment when he could plunge his knife into the villain.

  Now, that moment’s here. Evil, arrogant Villain lies at Hero’s mercy.

  To slay an evil, arrogant man can be a triumph. It gives you a sense of power and virtue.

  But suppose this proud figure now breaks and cringes . . . crawls in the dirt and begs for mercy. What does that do to your stated goal?

  Before, you saw Villain as strength and menace incarnate. As such, he was a challenge to you.

  Now, his mask is torn away, his façade shattered. What lies revealed is fear and weakness.

  With that change in Villain comes an end to c
hallenge. You’re really the strong man; he, the weak. To kill him now would serve only to degrade you. His humiliation is enough.

  That’s the negative side of your stated goal.

  Simultaneously comes realization that the fear and self-doubt that earlier drove you on have vanished, and it dawns on you that those flaws in your own self-image, not Villain, were your true opponents.

  Because this is so, from here on out you can face the world serene and unafraid. Never again will you need to question your own stature.

  That’s the positive side of your true goal.

  Add positive and negative together, and you have tension released, desire attained . . . fulfillment; resolution.

  Or suppose your fondest dream has been to marry a girl with a million dollars.—Not just any such girl, you understand; one particular one.

  To that end, you’ve gone through hell in terms of the rising action of your story. But the climax turns the trick. At last Girl stands ready to accept you. You’re about to attain your stated goal.

  Now, however, you discover that her idea of marriage is to keep you as a sort of house pet—and that’s certainly a negative aspect of your stated goal.

  Nor is this totally her fault. She’s the product of her background, her upbringing. Her view of the world is something that she takes for granted.

  Seeing this, you reconsider your own motives . . . realize at last that what you’ve felt for Girl isn’t love, in fact, so much as it is a drive for status, which you’ve misinterpreted as the quickest road to independence.

  Independence: That’s what you really want; that’s your true goal.

  And you can achieve it better without Girl than with her . . . besides which, she deserves more than a parasitic husband who doesn’t really love her.

  A positive angle on true goal, right?

  Girl faces the facts, when you explain it. She can’t change; neither can you. Your differences are too great to resolve.

  The parting scene is tender, touching. And you go off fulfilled, even though sans girl.