by Jack Bickham
In such a scene —an outdoorsman maneuvering around a mountainside with the intent of blocking the escape of another man, for example—a sense of conflict is created by lengthening the internalizations and making the viewpoint character consider alternatives and possible disasters as he continually reevaluates the situation and second-guesses himself. Thus the viewpoint character might decide that his first step toward his goal of blocking his foe is to climb to a high vantage point where he can see everything. But on the way it occurs to him that, if he can see, he can also be seen — and possibly his invisible opponent is lying low at this moment, waiting for him to make just this predictable mistake. So the viewpoint character decides to change his momentary goal, and imagines where his opponent would most likely hide. As he imagines, it is almost as if we really could see the other character. And so our hero climbs a tree, but thinks he might have heard something down near the stream, sees how the opponent might logically have decided that the best way out was to wade the stream, so . . . and so on, and so on.
Such a scene is difficult to handle. It puts all the imagined stimuli inside the viewpoint character's thinking process, which is essentially a contradiction in terms of everything said up till now about stimulus and response. The contradiction can only be saved by showing physical stimuli like trees and the sound of the stream which trigger speculative thinking on the part of the viewpoint character, which he then analyzes in internalization, and acts upon^'w5/ as if he had really seen his opposition instead of merely trying to anticipate his movements and outguess him.
MULTIPLE-AGENDA SCENES
When we turn to the matter of the multiple-agenda scene, we are about as far as we can get from the isolated scene of maneuver just described. Such multiple-agenda scenes should be avoided, as has been urged before. When you the author try to deal with two characters arguing about six or eight different issues all at once, the reader almost certainly is going to be confused about what is the bottom-line issue here, and what he is supposed to be worrying about. To put this another way, the multiple-agenda scene raises confusing lists of scene questions in the reader's mind.
There are, however, rare occasions when the hero simply must confront the entire board of directors, town council, or whatever. In such situations, you the author must maintain some kind of control by making the viewpoint character cling to his goal despite a variety of confusing countermaneuvers by all the other characters in opposition.
You must also, to keep things on track, make one of the antagonists stronger and more vocal than the others. By doing this, you will keep the main focus on the fight between him and the viewpoint character, even as others on the stage jump up and try to follow their individual, differing agendas.
Your plan for such a scene should first establish the viewpoint character's goal, then establish the opposition agenda of the major adversary you have selected, get that fight started, and then let the other secondary antagonists break in to interrupt the main fight at regular intervals. Throughout the interruptions, make sure that you keep the hero repeating his main goal and experiencing all the side-conflict primarily as impediment to fighting out the main conflict. You cannot allow him to get totally involved on some side issue. Both he and the major antagonist can in effect bang their gavels and demand to get back to the main point.
When you end such complicated scenes, it's all right for the viewpoint character evidently to win some of the minor side-skirmishes. The reader will worry if he does win some of them, because such developments will be seen as further motivation for more enemies to circle. The main scene conflict should be closed with a clear-cut disaster for the viewpoint character, as is usually the case.
In closing any discussion of scene-sequel structure variations or specialized situations calling for special handling techniques, I always feel compelled to point out yet again that stories are still imagined and planned in classic form. A writer could not handle any of the special devices mentioned in this chapter if she did not first clearly understand what structural norm it was that she was departing from. Don't, please, try any of these devices just because they sound neat. When a plot problem arises that demands one of them, you should be aware of it as a potential weapon in your arsenal. Until then, however, you are well advised to keep hands off and go on planning in the classic pattern and deviating as little as possible.
Review Appendix 5.
See Appendix 6.
CHAPTER IB
THE STRUCTURE OF CHAPTERS
Although The General Problem can be dealt with rather quickly, questions about chapter length and construction occur so often at writers' conferences that brief attention should be given to the matter.
The first question usually asked is, "How long should a chapter be?" There is no single answer to this, unless you happen to be writing for a publisher whose tip sheet or editorial policy stipulates a standard chapter length. (A few romance publishers do.) Otherwise, the best answer one might give is "somewhere between ten and thirty manuscript pages — probably leaning toward the shorter end of this spectrum." But don't hold me to that answer.
I have written chapters as long as fifty manuscript pages —on my printer, close to 15,000 words. I have also written some as short as the following, which is all of chapter 25 of my novel Dropshot.
The orchestra was still playing in the ballroom, but the crowd had begun to thin sharply. It was 1 A.M. Sylvester strolled across the periphery of the large room, but kept going into the adjacent club where he had already noted L.K. Able perched on a stool at the far end of the bar.
Sylvester took the stool beside him and ordered Pernod.
"All is well," he told Able. "The transfer is completed."
"When will you hand it over to me?"
"There has been a change in instructions," Sylvester replied. He explained.
Able nodded. "I will verify the new orders."
"Of course. Now. About our friend."
"I watched Smith leave the villa after a very long interview. He proceeded to his car and from here to his cabin at a place called the Mary Mary. The lights were out. A power failure. They have them frequently in that section due to use of a gasoline generator for the few beach properties abutting the airport property on that side. It appeared he was turning in for the night, and I wanted to be sure to be back to meet you. Therefore I discontinued the surveillance and returned here."
"Was the woman with him tonight?"
"No."
"Strange. Is she here?"
"She was at the dance for a while with some of her new friends. Then she retired for the night. I saw her enter her room." "Now. What about Hesser?"
"He retired for the night after Smith left him. The lights went out in his room almost at once. I feel sure he is sleeping." "Excellent. You have done well."
Able paused, then asked, "Do you have further instructions for me at this point in time?"
"Your normal routine, I think. You will verify that, also, when you make your telephone call."
"Yes."
Sylvester downed the last of his Pernod. "I bid you goodnight." He slipped off the stool and walked out.
Clearly, unless your publisher has specified a desired length for his company's chapters, the length of a chapter is what you make it.
There simply is no ideal, model length for a chapter. The very division of novels into chapters is a wholly artificial convention that owes its existence in part to the needs of British publishers in the earliest days of the form: They published their stories in serials, like tabloid newspapers that came out once a week; so there had to be some kind of a breakingoff point every so often to signal an end to this week's installment—and hook the reader into buying next week's edition.
Still, you're writing a novel and you need some straight answers here. Much of what follows may not seem very "straight" to you, but the overriding principle can be made clearly enough.
The greatest danger to success of your story is that the reader will put it dow
n during the reading and then not pick it up again. Where is the best place to put a book down? At the end of a chapter. Therefore the guiding philosophy about chapter construction must be this: Regardless of how long or short your chapters may be, always end them at a point where the reader can't put the book down.
You should try to have some general norm for chapter length in any given manuscript—an average chapter being fourteen typewritten pages, for example. But if dramaturgy suggests a chapter of only one page here and there as the best way to keep your reader hooked, don't be afraid to do it.
Why would a chapter of a page or even less sometimes be all right? Because the amount of information presented in some viewpoint, for example, might require no more than a page, but might be mandatory at a certain point in the novel. Or because some small (in physical size) scene ends with such a jarring disaster that you the author want to end the chapter with it even though you just ended the previous chapter a page earlier.
The best place to end a chapter is at the same place suggested as best for changing viewpoint: at the moment of disaster ending a scene.
The reasons are nearly the same as suggested for changing viewpoint at the disaster. The reader will turn the page eagerly to see what happens next —which makes the disaster the strongest reader-motivator there is. So you contrive your chapter plans so that a good disaster falls somewhere around the page number that you want (arbitrarily) to end a chapter. The reader is hit with the disaster —and you end the chapter. Your reader can't quit there — he has to start the next chapter to see what happens next.
The next-best place to end a chapter probably is right in the middle of the conflict. The goal is set, the fight starts, the reader is positively salivating with excitement—and you break the chapter. Your reader is mildly shocked by this break in the conflict, and turns the page, where he sees a new chapter heading and the conflict continuing immediately as if there had been no chapter break. Your reader can't quit under these circumstances!
Other good places to end chapters are obvious to you, I hope, after thinking about it a bit. You will lure your reader forward, more mildly than you would using one of the breaks mentioned above, but still strongly, if you end a chapter with your character stuck in his thought process of the sequel, thinking there is no way out. In a similar way, you can end the chapter at the decision point or the beginning of the new action (before conflict again starts) as the character resumes goal orientation and the reader can see what's next—and anticipate it with huge delight.
A chapter is not necessarily—and usually is not — composed of a single scene. If you analyze published novels, you will find three, four or more scenes linked inside the arbitrary fencings of chapter headings. You will also notice that the chapter endings are almost always at the point that will most strongly hook the reader into keeping on with the book and not putting it down at the end of the given chapter.
If a negative injunction might help, please note this well: You end chapters at places which will hook readers. You do not devise your chapters to provide convenient blank spaces in between them for purposes of transition.
This is such a common mistake in new writers that I wish there were a way to give it more emphasis. Time and time again, good novels are wrecked by poor chaptering —the author ending a chapter with a character going to sleep, for example, or putting in a chapter ending so that the next chapter can start some time later, the awkward transition having taken place between chapters. Chapters should always link forward in some way, and ending at nighty-night time, or using the space between chapters for author convenience in handling transitions, will turn the book into a series of clunky separate chapter units that stop so abruptly they practically scream at the reader to "Stop here and put it down!"
Examine your own chaptering practices carefully. As you near the place where something (usually the number of pages) tells you it's about time to end a chapter and start another, be sure that you ignore this niggling thought and keep going until you reach a point where you know the reader will not be able to stop. Then end the chapter, and don't worry if some chapters are short and others long, and the whole design doesn't seem "symmetrical" or something.
Readers don't care about symmetry, any more than they care about "smoothness of transitions." Readers want to be lured and hooked and dazzled and fascinated, and scene structure gives you all the weapons you need. End your chapters with the strongest hooks you can devise—usually scene-ending disasters —and the length of the chapters will take care of itself.
CHAPTER 14
THE SCENIC MASTER PLOT AND HOW TO WRITE ONE
In Putting It All Together in a finished novel, a writer uses every device at her disposal to capture the reader's attention, keep him intrigued without letup during the course of the story, and provide him with a smashing climax that will fully satisfy. As has been shown, understanding of scene and sequel structure, with their smaller component parts, gives the writer all the structural building blocks she needs to accomplish these tasks for the reader.
By varying the intensity of scenes now and then —having an occasional scene proceed from a very quiet goal to an extremely subtle disaster, for example —or using one of the other variations discussed earlier in this book, you can completely conceal the fact that you are working with the same basic building blocks over and over. At the same time, these components provide you with all the weaponry you need to keep the reader constantly moving forward with the story in a mounting tightness of suspense.
Knowing this, it's now time for us to take a look at how a writer might put everything together in a key pattern—a master plot, if you will—a plan for the content she will put in each part of her novel. The sample to be used is for a short suspense novel.
Every writer has in her mind some vague and generally unexamined idea of what a novel is for her. This mental prototype is different for every writer. Obviously, the prototype in the mind of a Jackie Collins is not very similar to the prototype in the mind of a Norman Mailer. Even two romance novelists selling to the same publishing house will have different master patterns in mind when they start to write; one may open with an immediate meeting of the heroine and her lover-to-be, for example, while the other novelist may tend to start by establishing the heroine and her career before having her meet a friend who will in turn lead her to the hero of the tale.
The more clear you can become about what you almost unconsciously assume as a model for your novel, the better you can manipulate scene structure to work in that very general pattern.
Now, my mental model for a novel is not yours —and my mental picture of how a novel should be organized may change when I start planning my next book if it's a different type of story, a romantic tale as opposed to a suspense story, for example. Therefore it's supremely important for you to remember that a master plot is not a fill-in-the-blanks proposition, and it's not set in stone. It's nothing more than a very general description of the way one writer might write one novel —the kinds of events he would hope to have happen, and generally in what sequence.
How can this help you? By giving you some further insights into the kind of strategic planning that goes into one kind of book, I may help you find your way more clearly to ideas about how you should best use scenes and sequels to achieve certain effects and produce the kind of book that exists in your mind somewhere as an ideal, whether you previously realized it or not.
To use an analogy that won't hold up if you examine it too closely, let's say that your knowledge and practice of stimulus and response and the internal structure of scenes and sequels are a bit like knowledge of the fundamentals—blocking, tackling, how to hand the ball off, or how to catch it—for a football player. Your understanding of how to plan and present scenes for maximum effect, and how to link them with sequels, is like the skilled player's knowledge of the playbook. But one thing more needs to be added: In the case of the football player, it's a game plan — what plays will be selected in what circumstance
s, the general strategy to be employed during the course of the game under changing conditions, how field position will have an effect on the planned sequence of offensive plays, etc.
Your master plot is your game plan, your general idea of how you're going to put it all together for maximum effectiveness. It is completely flexible, and never requires you to have a certain kind of scene or sequel at any certain point. Further —I repeat this because it is so often misunderstood—it is not a fill-in-the-blanks that you should actually try to use. (Although some of my published novels can be seen to have many of the dramatic developments in them very closely patterned after the sample I'm to give you, even I have never produced a book that exactly follows this ideal sample, nor do I intend to.)
So if you study this brief master plot and try to do exactly what it describes, you'll be missing the whole point. All I'm trying to do is show you how one writer visualizes a short novel's dramatic development —give you a look into his mind as he puts scenes and sequels together in a long narrative.
Virtually everything in the first thirteen chapters of this book were based on the premise that good fiction is characterized by movement— meaning linear development from A through B to C in some kind of cause-and-effect relationship; such stories get somewhere, starting in one place, dramatically speaking, and ending up somewhere quite different. The master plot that follows may provide some insights into tactical planning intended to achieve this kind of linear story development and rising action.
In building a master plot or planning a blueprint for any novel, the writer's primary concern should be to keep the reader hooked and reading. The reader who abandons a novel at some point has not necessarily failed the novel; the novel probably has failed him. So a novelist works to keep the suspense high, whatever kind of book she is at work on.