“My savings. I bought a train ticket, then got a hotel room down the street. The last of it I used on, um, your drinks.”
“You want my advice, Benny?”
“Oh, yes!”
I took a fin out of my pocket and slapped it on the table. “Buy yourself a train ticket home. Go back and get a job and marry the girl next door. Run for mayor or dog catcher. Join the Elks. Do anything but write.”
Benny’s face fell harder than Max Schmeling in the second Louis fight. He said nothing, trembled a little, and tears starting pooling in his eyes.
I looked at him for a long time. Fresh-faced kid, right off a turnip truck, but with a dream. Sort of like a kid I once knew a long time ago. Born in Cleveland, dropped out of college to ride the rails and see life, hoping to gather enough material to make himself a real writer, going off to war and coming home and writing for years without a sale, but never stopping because of the hunger for it, the love of it. I could see just a spark of that in the kid’s misty lamps.
“Okay,” I said. “You’ll need a job to keep a roof over your head. Go on over to Al’s Market on Sunset, tell him Bill Armbrewster sent you. Only don’t embarrass me.”
“I won’t, sir!”
“Then you agree to meet with me once a week, and write what I tell you to write, for a year. You willing to do that, Benny?”
“Yes, sir!”
“All right then. Now you can call yourself a writer. Take the fin. Go tell Joe we want a couple of egg-salad sandwiches and some soup. And between here and the bar make sure you grow a thick skin.”
“Yes, sir!”
I liked it that the kid’s enthusiasm was back, but enthusiasm only gets you so far in life. The ones who make it are the ones who can get kicked in the teeth, have all the stuffing knocked out of them, and still get up and come back typing.
If this Benny Wannabe could do that, he’d maybe make a real writer yet.
Use Your Noggin to Get Lots of Ideas
The kid came in all freshly scrubbed and smelling of Brylcreem. He had a big stupid smile on his face, like he’d just kissed a cheerleader.
“Well, I’m here, Mr. Armbrewster,” he said.
“Don’t state the obvious,” I said. “You want to be a writer, don’t state the obvious. Let the reader figure out things for himself.”
I was typing at my usual table at Musso & Frank on Hollywood Boulevard. This was the first “official” meeting between Benny Wannabe, kid writer, and yours truly, William “Wild Bill” Armbrewster, professional scribe.
“Go get me a usual, and a Coke for yourself,” I said, handing Benny a fin. I took that time to type out a line for my tough guy, Cliff Hanlon, to say to an embezzling bank president. “Money may not grow on trees, but it certainly sprouts on your girlfriend’s ring finger.”
When Benny got back with the liquid, I said, “Where’s your notebook?”
“Notebook?”
“You know, that thing? With pages? To take notes?”
“I don’t have one.”
I slapped my forehead. “You want to be a writer, don’t you?”
“More than anything.”
“Then you have to write things down. You’ve got to observe, and record what you see. Look around the room. Tell me what you observe.”
He turned his head like Charlie McCarthy and gave Musso’s a quick gander. “People eating,” he said.
“Wrong,” I said.
He frowned.
“You’ve got to see more than you see, see?”
He shook his head.
I sighed. “Look over there. See that couple?”
He looked.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Why, I don’t know. I never met them.”
“I’ll tell you who they are. She’s a cigarette girl from the Trocadero. He’s a bigshot lawyer from downtown. He’s also married. And not to the cigarette girl.”
“You know them?” Benny said.
“Never saw ’em before in my life, but that’s what I see. And in an hour, I can type a story that’ll sell to Dime Detective.”
“But how?”
I tapped my noggin. “Up here, boy. You’ve got a muscle between those big pink ears of yours. A brain, with an imagination already included. But you’ve got to work your imagination, like it was training for a distance race. You’ve got to run it around the track, every day. Do that, and it’ll get stronger.”
“Gee.”
“Now look at the corner over there. What do you see?”
He looked at the big man with a napkin stuffed in his shirt, giving the business to a steak.
“A big man eating a steak,” Benny said.
“Try again.”
“But—”
“Try, Benny, try. Look at him. What do you see?”
Little furrows appeared on Benny’s forehead. He kept looking. That gave me time to give the business to my martini.
Finally, he said, “Maybe he’s a policeman.”
“Good, Benny, good! Keep going.”
“Going?”
“What kind of cop?”
“A … big one?”
“Think! Why is here?”
“Because he’s hungry?”
“I’m going to need another drink.”
“Wait … let me see … he’s off duty.”
“That would explain the suit. But why here, at Musso’s?”
“He likes the food?”
“Come on, kid, don’t make me despair of life! What’s strange about a cop, on a cop’s salary, eating a steak at Musso & Frank?”
“It’s expensive!”
“Ah ha! And what kind of cop can afford an expensive steak?”
“A cop who …”
“Come on, you can do it.”
“A cop who is …”
“Yes?”
“Getting money on the side?”
I slapped the table. “That’s it! Benny, my lad, you’ve done it! Now keep that imagination whirling. Where would side money come from?”
“Why, from … bribes.”
“Yes! What else?”
“Um … gambling?”
“Benny, I think I’m gonna cry. You see what you’re doing? You’re starting from absolute scratch, and you’re thinking up a character and several possible story situations. You know what that’s called?”
“What?”
“Making stuff up! And that’s all this writing game is, boy. We make stuff up, and we jot down the ideas, and then we pick the best ideas and make a story out of ’em. And we do that over and over and over again, until we die.”
“Really?”
“In fact, I take half an hour every week just to let my imagination run free. I make up opening lines without knowing anything else. I write down as many ways as I can think of for people to get murdered. I can look at the front page of a newspaper and come up with five or ten great plot ideas on the spot.”
“Wow.”
“I write ’em all down, without judging any of them. Only later do I look at the ideas and pick out the most promising ones. I put these in a file for further development. In short, my lad, I am never without something to write.”
“Man!”
“Benny, you’ve become positively monosyllabic. So here’s what you do. Run over to Newberry’s and get a notebook and some pencils. I want you to spend half an hour every day writing down ideas. I want you to go down to Pershing Square and watch people. Make up situations on a dozen people you see there. Go to Echo Park and the Santa Monica Pier. Look at the people in your rooming house. Each one of ’em is a story waiting to be told. You fill up that notebook and come back here in a week.”
“Okay, Mr. Armbrewster!” He stood up. “What are you going to do?”
“Me?” I took the page I was working on out of the typer and set it aside. Then I rolled in a fresh sheet. “I’m going to write about a crooked cop tailing a shyster lawyer who’s making time with a cigarette girl.”
Benny just stood there, smili
ng.
“Who deep sixes a kid without a notebook. Now get going!”
Write as If It Were Impossible to Fail
I was killing a dame when Benny walked in.
The dame was Gilda Hathaway and she was an icy blonde in the story I was pounding out for Black Mask. The killer was her husband, an action Jackson named Mickey Hathaway. He was about to use an ice pick on his wife when Benny said, “Hello, Mr. Armbrewster.”
“What? Huh?” I looked up from my Underwood, which was sitting on my usual table at Musso’s in Hollywood. “Don’t you know better than to interrupt a writer when he’s typing?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I thought we had—”
“I don’t care what we had! Go get yourself a Coke and let me finish my murder!”
Benny put his head down, but he did what I told him. I liked that about the kid.
Mickey dispatched Gilda, then wiped his fingerprints off the ice pick. He was out of the apartment by the time Benny got back to the table.
“Say, kid,” I said, “you’ve got the hangdog look of a mortician without a stiff. What gives?”
“I do have a stiff,” Benny said. “It’s that story you told me to write. I just couldn’t. I don’t know, I froze. I just sat there staring at the paper.”
“Welcome to the world of the professional writer, son.”
“This is what it’s like?”
“A blank page is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God.”
He stared at me like I was the blank page.
“Before you try to write anything,” I said, “you’ve got to get your head right. You’ve got to get your mind running like Seabiscuit at Pimlico.”
Benny took a sip of his Coke, looking more concerned than ever.
I took out a White Owl, bit off the end, fired it up. A matronly woman at the adjoining table gave me a hard look. I made a mental note to put her in my story as another victim of the ice pick killer.
“You’ve got a will to fail,” I said.
“I do not!” Benny said. Good. He had a fighting spirit. He was going to need that if he wanted to make it in this game.
“Cool your radiator, Benny. We all have a will to fail. It’s subconscious. It’s deep in the memory banks. All of the things we tried to do in our past, and failed at, collect there. All the embarrassments we’ve suffered, all the people who made fun of us, those experiences pepper our brains. It’s human nature. We almost always act in order to avoid pain. So rather than try something and possibly fail, we freeze up. Or we choose something easy because we know there’s no risk of failure. We don’t act boldly.”
Benny was silent, but I could tell I was getting through.
“Our job is to fight that will to fail, to give it the boot. You were afraid I’d rip apart your story, so you didn’t write it.”
Benny paused, frowned, then said, “You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. This is Armbrewster you’re talking to.”
“So what do I do?”
“You really want to know?”
“More than anything!”
“More than a new Packard?”
“Yes!”
“More than a sweet gal to smother you with kisses?”
“I kind of want that,” he said. “But only after I’m a successful writer!”
“Just what I wanted to hear, kid. So here’s what you must do from now on––write as if it were impossible to fail.”
“That’s it?”
“It? Why, boy, I’m giving you the Promethean fire here! If the gods find out I’ve told you, I could get lashed to a rock and have my liver pecked out by a predatory bird! Which, by the way, isn’t all that different from working with an editor.”
“But I can’t just write that way, can I?”
“You’re not a Presbyterian, are you?”
“Methodist.”
“Then you’re a free-will being! And as such you are in control of your thoughts. And if you don’t control them, they will certainly control you. It takes effort, sure, but so does anything worthwhile. Now, have you ever done anything successfully?”
“Sure.”
“Like what?”
“I ran the anchor leg on our state championship relay team in high school.”
“Aces! Think about that moment.”
“Now?”
“No, in the late spring of 1954. Of course now! Close your eyes and keep ’em closed.”
He did as I asked.
“You remember taking the baton?” I said.
“I sure do.”
“Remember your adrenal glands firing on all cylinders?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How about the roar of the crowd, the feel of the track, the exhilaration of crossing the finish line?”
“Yes!”
“Drink it in!”
“I’m drinking!”
“Keep those eyes closed. Your teammates are around you, slapping you on the back.”
“Yes.”
“And your best girl is in the stands, watching.”
“Judy Parrish! How did you know?”
“This is Armbrewster. Now, you’re feeling good, right?”
“Yes.”
“You see? You’re in control of your thoughts and your thoughts feed your feelings. Now, I want you to see yourself standing in Stanley Rose’s bookstore, holding your novel from Scribner’s in your hands, as a crowd starts to gather for your reading.”
Behind those closed lids, Benny’s brain was starting to run. When he smiled, I knew he was ready.
“Open your eyes! Next time you freeze up, remember those good feelings and imagine yourself with the book. Then write as if it were impossible to fail.”
“Does it really work?”
“A sweet kid named Dorothea Brande wrote a book called Wake Up and Live! and it sold a million copies. It’s the only way to stomp that will to fail and write your best stuff.”
“Gee. I feel better already.”
“Swell! Now get back to your room and start typing.”
Springing up, he almost knocked over the table. He did a 50-yard dash out the door.
I sat back, remembering when I felt the way Benny did right now––ready to write like the wind. To write as if I couldn’t fail. That got me through a lot of cold nights and dismal days. And now here I was, making a living with the written word, but also realizing I’d been skating on the story I was working on. The encounter with Benny left me with the uneasy feeling I was playing it safe, mailing it in, avoiding risks. That old will to fail can sneak up on you like a jungle viper.
“Phooey!” I said.
I tore out the page I’d just typed, crumpled it, tossed it on the small pile at my feet. Then rolled in a fresh piece of paper.
This time, Gilda had an ice pick of her own.
Trouble Is Your Business
Benny Wannabe charged up to my table at Musso’s and said, “I did it!”
I took my fingers off the Underwood keys. My normally productive digits weren’t doing me any good at the moment. I was stuck on a scene. The smiling mug of my young pupil was good for a break.
“Sit down.” I leaned back and reached for a cigar. “Now, what is it you did?”
“Started my story! And it felt great. I told myself I was gonna write great today, just like you told me to. And I did!”
“Nice going, kid. Getting words on paper every day is the golden rule. You have a plot?”
“I sure do!”
“Tell it to me.”
“Well, it’s about a young man who wants to become a writer and uses all his money to buy a train ticket to Los Angeles.”
“And?” I said.
“And what?”
“What happens to him?”
“Um, he gets to Los Angeles, where he meets a famous writer.”
“Uh-huh. That famous writer better be handsome, brilliant, and witty.”
“Of course!”
“Problem is,” I said, “that
’s not a plot.”
“It’s not?”
“You’re just telling your own story, right?”
“How’d you know?”
“Wild guess,” I said. “Listen, all new writers think they have an autobiographical story inside them, and that’s a great place to keep it. You, you need a plot.”
“But I felt great. You told me I have to write like I couldn’t fail.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t have to learn how to write. Write as if it were impossible to fail, then clear your decks and look at what you’ve done and figure out how to make it better. Or find somebody who knows his stuff to help you along.”
“Like you, Mr. Armbrewster?”
“You lucky kid. Now let’s get down to basics. What’s a plot?”
“It’s what the story’s about.”
I shook my head. “Your Aunt Mabel’s flowers is ‘about something.’ Or some kid coming west. For you to have a plot you’ve got to have trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“Write this down. Trouble is your business. A plot without a trouble is like a Duesenberg without gas. Pretty to look at but going nowhere. Readers read in order to have an extended experience of worrying about what happens to somebody. So make ’em worry.”
“How?”
“Get your character up a tree. Throw rocks at him. Have lightning hit the tree and set it on fire. Then get your character down. That’s a plot.”
“Gee.”
“So let’s take your young writer. Make him so he’s not you.”
“How?”
“Make him older or younger. Make him from a town without pity, or a runaway.”
Benny took out a little notebook and a pencil and started scribbling. “This is good stuff!”
“You’re talking to Armbrewster! Here’s another one. Make the character not a man, but a woman.”
Benny looked at me, pie-eyed. “But I can’t. I’m not one.”
“Dammit, boy, you’re a writer! There’s no can’t in your vocabulary.”
“But somebody told me once you have to write what you know.”
“Hooey! Write what you burn with, and then find out what you need to know to write it.”
“But I’ve never been a woman.”
“And I’ve never been a gangster or a gumshoe! Is that going to stop me? No! Do some research! Go see a Bette Davis movie. There’s one playing at the Chinese called The Great Lie. Mary Astor’s in it, too. Earn the trust of a waitress and ask her questions. And then learn to listen. Half the problems in this world are because men don’t know how to listen to women.”
How to Write Pulp Fiction Page 7