Techniques of the Selling Writer

by Swain, Dwight V.

  Clippings offer an added hazard. For a clip is useless unless you can find it, and to find it you have to file it, and to file it takes time, and what do you want to be anyhow, a writer or a file clerk?

  Well, every man to his own compromises!

  (2) You and experts.

  Fifteen years ago I took a job writing factual films.

  The scripting of each such film, I soon discovered, is expedited if you insist that the sponsor assign a technical adviser to assist you.

  The expert steps in where book research ends. He corrects your mistakes and calls your attention to developments too new to have reached the reference-shelf stage. Without him, you grope, flounder, and waste vast quantities of time.

  To work with such an expert is simple. You need primarily a willingness to be thought a fool.

  How do you achieve this happy end?

  You take nothing for granted. You describe precisely what you propose to show in your film, step by step, so that error lurches out into the open. You ask every stupid question you can dredge up from the sub-depths of your brain, no matter how withering your expert’s glances; no matter how biting his replies.

  If you follow this principle, the expert goes his way convinced that you’re a blithering idiot. You, in your turn, carry off the neatly-catalogued contents of the expert’s head. A fair exchange.

  There are worse tricks than to apply this same fact-film technique to fiction research.

  To that end, dig out all the data you can from printed matter. Do this first! Any competent interview presupposes that the interviewer knows enough about the subject to ask at least a modicum of intelligent questions.

  Then, background filled in, hunt around till you find someone—historian, homicide detective, marriage counselor, army colonel, zoologist—who has a strong track record in the area you’re researching.

  Make contact with this expert. Tell him your problem. Ask his aid. More often than not, he’ll be flattered and happy to give it to you.

  It also will help if you remember that an expert doesn’t always look like one. Maybe, at first glance, your man appears to be only a sleazy beatnik type, unshaven and overdue for a haircut, playing guitar in a cockroach-infested coffeehouse. But if the data you seek concerns beatniks or coffeehouses or modern minstrels, he very well may prove an ideal source.

  Further, an interviewee needn’t know he’s being interviewed. He may talk more freely if he thinks you’re just an amiable screwball who likes to chase fire engines or noodle for catfish or gab about mining.

  Charm radiated by the interviewer is no handicap. Neither is willingness to spring for an occasional drink or cup of coffee.

  Quite often, your best leads come from people who themselves lack the facts you need, but are in a position to suggest someone who does have them. Chambers of Commerce, trade associations, local newspaper offices, public-relations men, county agents, motel managers—all are worth investigation.

  You can even interview by mail, with luck, specific questions, brief checklists, and stamped, self-addressed return envelopes. However, it’s my own feeling that such should be pretty much a last resort, for most people are reluctant to take pen in hand and their answers tend to be brief to the point of uselessness.

  (3) You and the wide, wide world.

  Field research is based on a simple premise: An ivory tower is a poor place to learn the facts about anything.

  In many cases, the best way to find out the things you need to know is to go forth and poke around at first hand.

  Thus, books and talk will tell you a lot about oil wells. But you add extra color and authentic detail if you walk a drilling floor yourself.

  Similarly, what’s wrong with working as a waiter for a week or two or three? Why shouldn’t you ride a few nights in a police prowl car, if you can arrange it? Nurses’ aides learn things. So do typists and dime-store clerks and door-to-door salesmen.

  If such is too rich for your blood, that still shouldn’t stop you from attending trials and loafing in bus stations and scraping acquaintances with jewelers and gunsmiths and carhops and rodeo riders, if these maneuvers suit your ends.

  Get in the habit of handling the props you plan to use in a story. It sparks ideas and prevents idiotic errors. You discover that the barrels of two Mauser automatics can be switched in seconds . . . that a modern vinyl phonograph record can’t easily be snapped in half . . . that most watches today don’t carry Arabic numerals.

  Finally, remember that every story comes alive in terms of sensory perception—the things some character sees or hears or smells or tastes or touches.

  To describe such phenomena vividly, you need to experience them yourself, wherever possible.

  Providing this sensory background is the function of field research.

  The best-laid plans

  By all means, plan your story.

  But don’t plan too completely, or the story may die before it’s born.

  Why?

  Because a basic fallacy lies at the heart of all attempts to blue-print creative activity: Planning, you’re one person. But by the time you sit down to write, you’ve become another.

  You probably can see this most clearly if you’re one of those methodical souls who goes in for journals, sketches of stories you hope some day to write, file cards listing plot ideas, and the like.

  These efforts are laudable. But by now, if you’ve carried on such projects for any length of time, you’ve discovered that only on rare occasions do the notes develop into finished copy.

  The reason is precisely as stated above: You yourself change, in the interim between the time when inspiration first becomes apparent and the later date when you attempt to reclaim the concept from your file.

  In consequence, yesterday’s idea strikes no spark today. Fervor has dulled to disenchantment.

  Multiply this response by ten, and you get some small picture of what happens when you outline a story in too great detail.

  For when you plan rigidly, in effect you nail down the road a story must take. You commit yourself to a mood and state of mind that no longer exist when you and your typewriter finally get together.

  In so doing, you deny yourself the pleasure and privilege of following the impulse and inspiration of the moment.

  Result: Writing flips from fun to drudgery. The idea lies dead as a skinned and gutted rabbit in a freezer, its only pulse that which you pump into it with sweat and dogged perseverance.

  That’s not what I’d call successful planning.

  Let’s try again, then, on a different tack. This time, we’ll let things hang a little looser.

  What elements do you really need in a story outline?

  You should have:

  a. A focal character.

  b. A situation in which this character is involved.

  c. An objective Character seeks to attain.

  d. An opponent who strives against Character.

  e. A potential climactic disaster on which to hinge the resolution.

  In other words, you require a starting line-up, such as was described in Chapter 6.

  And that’s all you need. For the line-up is a tool . . . its function, to pinpoint essential dynamic factors that drive a story forward, from page one to The End. Minor characters, tags, settings, incidents, bits of business—by comparison, these are trivial and unimportant. You can pick them up as you go along, if need be.

  Next question: How do you acquire the elements it takes to build a line-up?

  As with everything else in writing, each man must sooner or later develop his own tricks, his private system.

  Right now, however, your problem is to find a starting point. So, try this one:

  (1) Spend an hour in focused free association.

  This period is to be spent in hitting the keys as fast as possible, describing the story you want to write.—Not actually writing it, you understand; not even organizing it, or attempting to go in a straight line; just doodling about anything that
comes to mind related to your idea, from mood to characters, from moral to plot to incidents.

  (2) Later, devote another hour to annotating the above material.

  That is, take a pencil and go over your free-association typescript. Elaborate on your first thoughts. Cross out bits that have lost their charm. Change. Combine. Develop. Shape up. Flesh out.

  (3) Still later, retype this annotated free association.

  Again, switch and change and delete and elaborate as you go.

  A few days spent with this routine will give you an amazing mass of formless yet promising material. You’ll begin to see strong points, and weak; bad judgment, and flashes that excite you.

  Included will be assorted fragments that hint of a potential starting line-up.

  Don’t force the process, though. Let “Hang loose!” be your motto.

  Eventually, all this rambling will begin to bore you. Take advantage of it to draw up a list of incidents that strike you as essential to your story.

  Some of these bits will loom larger and more important in your mind than others.

  These may prove to be your story’s crises: the big moments. Jot them down, each on a separate sheet.

  Again, don’t yet try to turn them into actual fiction. Just describe each in a paragraph or two or three of copy.

  Shuffle these scene sheets as you go along. Put them into some kind of order. When holes appear, rough in additional scenes to fill them. Or, if scenes as first conceptualized don’t seem to fit, reshape or consolidate or delete them.

  Apply the same technique to characters. As each takes form, give him a separate sheet of his own. Then, use said sheet to doodle and hypothesize about him.

  By now, count on it, restlessness will be upon you. You’re ready to go; eager to start producing actual copy.

  Fine. That’s as it should be. But don’t start writing. Not quite yet.

  For this is the moment when you put an end to free association and loose thinking.—And I do mean, in terms of your starting line-up.

  What you must have is a statement and a question, two sentences, nailed down tight precisely as described in Chapter 6:

  Situation: Pursued by his boss’s amoral wife, Linda,

  Character: Steve Grannis

  Objective: decides to seek a transfer, so that his home and career won’t be destroyed.

  But can he escape, when

  Opponent: Linda

  Disaster: swears that she’ll have him fired and ruined if he tries to leave?

  Situation: Reporting for her very first day’s work, fresh out of college and the lone Negro teacher in a white high school,

  Character: Loretta Kloman

  Objective: stands determined to prove her competence.

  But can she succeed, when

  Opponent: Bucko Wilding, the Mississippi-born coach,

  Disaster: urges her pupils to walk out on her?

  Situation: Expelled from a Central American republic at the request of his Latin sweetheart’s politically powerful father,

  Character: Tom Reynolds

  Objective: hitchhikes back to persuade the girl to run away with him.

  But will he survive, let alone win her, when it turns out that

  Opponent: Miguel Ortiz, the man who picks him up,

  Disaster: is en route to assassinate El Presidente?

  There are the elements. Thus succinctly do you formulate your story framework.

  And then—?

  Then, you’re ready to start writing. Play it by ear, spontaneously, changing and adapting as you go along, to fit the ideas that pop forth moment by moment. Plan each scene as you reach it, and then only to the degree of pinpointing goal and conflict and disaster. Between scenes, free-wheel, so long as your focal character somehow ends up with a logical new goal toward which to strive. When you hit a snag—and you will—just pace the floor awhile, or resort to the list system: “Since Joe needs to show up as a selfish brute at this point, what are some of the typically selfish and brutish things selfish brutes do?” “How can Stella keep Len from investing in Papa’s blue-sky goldmine, without revealing that Papa is a swindler?”

  Stay with such long enough, and eventually you’ll end up with a story . . . a solid story, because you worked within the framework of a starting line-up; yet a story that’s free and spontaneous also, in that you didn’t tie yourself to any rigid outline.

  Is this the ideal way to plan, then?

  Not at all. The ideal way is the one that gets the job done; and no two stories and no two writers are the same.

  But at least, as stated earlier, this procedure offers you a springboard.

  What comes after will and must be of your own making.

  The organization of production

  The beginner has a fond illusion: Once he learns to write a story, he thinks, everything will go swimmingly.

  Professionals know otherwise. Writing fiction is like playing in vaudeville, except that you have to devise a new act for each performance. It’s the only craft that gets harder as you go along instead of easier. Skill brings awareness of deficiencies. You grow more critical and strive—involuntarily, often—to do a better job; achieve a higher standard.

  Thus, the difference between the beginner and the pro is less one of talent or knowledge than of endurance. The pro, having been over the road many, many times before, accepts the agony that goes with the journey in stoical silence, because he knows that if he perseveres long enough, eventually the way will clear and he’ll get his story.

  Consistent production starts with the presumption that you already have an effective grasp of story structure and fiction technique.

  Beyond these, you must also work out methods to deal with routine problems of:

  a. Procedure.

  b. Revision.

  c. Polishing.

  d. Cutting.

  e. Production breakdown.

  Each of these constitutes a subject in itself. Let’s start with procedure.

  a. Getting out the work.

  It has been truly said that, too often, writers hate to write, but love to have written.

  Why should this be so?

  Because writing demands that you put forth effort, and inertia is a hard foe to overcome. To muster initiative, to exert self-discipline—these are difficult assignments.

  “There are basically two kinds of people in the world,” says Jean Monnet, French founder of the European Common Market, “those who want to be and those who want to do. In the second category there is almost no competition.”

  How do you go about qualifying for Category 2?

  Herewith, eight hints:

  (1) Work.

  Loss of a boss can be a dangerous thing.

  Down through the years, you’ve grown accustomed to having someone tell you what to do and when to do it.

  Now, abruptly, all that’s changed. You’ve entered a field in which you not only do the work, but serve as your own supervisor.

  On a job, you can dream through a spring day without penalty.

  Dream as a writer, and your income stops. Physical presence or good intentions mean nothing. “Get the story written!” is the only thing that counts. You’ve got to drive yourself to work—and that means push as hard to turn out fiction as if a boss were breathing down your neck.

  (2) Work regular hours.

  Freedom is heady stuff. With it comes the temptation to postpone what must, upon occasion, be the drudgery of writing.—After all, you rationalize, you can always make up for it tomorrow, or tomorrow, or tomorrow.

  But, as you soon learn, tomorrow never comes.

  The answer, of course, is to set up a schedule of regular hours, and stick to it.

  The hard part here is that friends and family very well may prove your worst enemies. The idea that writing must be dealt with as a job is alien to their thinking. They can’t conceive that you must have uninterrupted hours. It never dawns on them that time is the only thing you have to sell, or that two minu
tes’ conversation may, upon occasion, shatter your train of thought for half a day.

  Further, you may not fully realize these things yourself. When it’s a gorgeous morning and the kids plead for a picnic, you want to go along. Or old George comes by, and he’s upset about this problem . . .

  In consequence, you never give habit a chance to help you with your efforts. Always, there are errands to run or people to see or polite amenities to break up your time.

  Then you wonder why you don’t get out more copy.

  If you’re really serious about your work, you’ll stop all this nonsense before it starts.

  To that end, certain hours will be yours to write. You’ll hold them for it, inviolate, complete with locked door and blunt refusal to be disturbed.

  Does this mean you have to act as if you were a shoe clerk?

  Of course not. If you really have good reason to break away and want to do so, go to it. But do it with your eyes open, in full knowledge that you must pay for that lost time later, in extra effort or lost income.

  (3) Set up a quota.

  A writer’s unconscious is a sneaky thing. Give it half a chance, and it will devise a way to evade the grinding work of writing.

  Thus, if hours spent in front of the typewriter are your only criterion of effort, you’ll soon train yourself to sit, but not produce.

  What’s the remedy?

  Make your standard the completion of a task—ordinarily, production of a certain amount of copy.

  Here, the hazard is that you may set your sights too high.

  That can be disastrous. Too stiff a quota freezes you before you even start. Pledge yourself to turn out three thousand words each and every day, and you very well may produce none at all.

  A better way is to take smaller steps. Five hundred words may be enough, at first. Even seasoned professionals seldom complete more than a thousand words of finished copy, day in and day out.