Techniques of the Selling Writer (11 page)

Are all motivating stimuli this lengthily or this tightly drawn?

Of course not; no more than all shots in a movie are close-ups.

Thus, the scene on the lake might begin:

Motivating stimulus:
The lake lay like a drop of icy rain, caught in a cleft of a thin green leaf.

Character reaction:

Feeling:
(
NOT STATED
)

Action:
Hunkering down in a clump of spruce high on the mountainside, Miller considered it
carefully.
*

Speech:
(
NOT STATED
)

Motivating stimulus:
The camping trailers stood at the lake’s south end, Godden’s tent beside them. . . .

. . . and so on.

Thing is, close-ups are
emphasis shots
, shots to make a point. They hit the hardest, count the most.

When you’re trying to make a point, it’s best if you don’t miss the target. Right?

To that end, don’t hesitate to frame tightly and move in close . . .
if
you feel it’s necessary.

Back to our lesson: If the focal character dislikes something, you bear down heavily
on its undesirable features in your description; and vice versa.

Thus, if he sees a girl through love’s haze, you never get around to mentioning her
harelip or off-color glass eye.

Or, you stress her positive points: her tenderness, her well-turned ankles, the glow
of affection that lights up her face.

Or, you do both.

If the focal character fears the villain, on the other hand, you focus on that gentleman’s
cruelty, his cunning, his viciousness, his lightning-fast reflexes, his heavy thews,
the knife-scars he bears as tokens of the night he crippled three Moros running amok
on Palawan.

So much for
significance
. It’s precisely as simple and as complex as that.

There remain two other vital characteristics of the effective motivating stimulus:
pertinence, and motivity.

The
pertinent
stimulus is one relevant to the matter at hand, the immediate issue.

But don’t stop there. Always, the matter at hand itself has a function: to move your
story forward . . . to develop the situation in the path you want it to take.

To that end:

Consider the scene at the mountain lake. Our purpose was to motivate our focal character
to proceed with his adventure. So, we presented an external stimulus thus:

Agnes’ face came into focus, then. The blonde hair was matted, the worn plaid dress
in rags,

and so on.

Whereupon, the focal character reacted:

Miller lay very still, his knuckles white on the glasses. . . .

Now suppose we changed the stimulus just a trifle:

The reaction?

Miller lay very still. Then, slowly, his hands relaxed and the color came back to
his whitened knuckles. . . .

Thus, Miller again is motivated; again reacts, showing feeling. But this feeling is
different from the one before. It points the scenes that follow in a potentially different
direction.

And that’s the test of pertinence. Not just, “Is this stimulus relevant to the immediate
issue?” but also, “Does it keep the story itself on target, moving toward the twin
goals of outcome and total effect I want it to achieve?”

So much for
pertinence
. It demands merely that you view each M-R unit in the perspective of the story as
a whole.

But it’s one thing for a story to move forward; another for it to seem to your reader
as if it were so moving. Those motivating stimuli which help to induce this feeling
that your story isn’t standing still may be said to have
motivity
.

To be motive, a stimulus must spur your focal character to action. Instead of letting
him rest on his laurels, it jerks him up and boots him in the pants.

To that end:

Too many variables are involved to warrant making these points more explicit. In general,
however, what you need is the stimulus that demands adjustment on the focal character’s
part. Fluffy white clouds aren’t enough; a thunderhead that makes him race for cover
may be. Beads of moisture forming on a cold glass don’t call for action; the glass
slopping red wine onto a snowy tablecloth does.

—Though of course fluffy clouds or beaded glass may do very well if they’re in such
context as to make imperative immediate, active response from your focal character.

Understand, please: This is
not
an appeal to eliminate all mood and color. The sense of movement isn’t the only,
or even
necessarily the most important, element in your story. Motivity is a matter of degree
and pacing, not an absolute. You’ll always have a host of stimuli that ignore it.

However, your story may sag if you forget about it altogether. Beware the habitual
or “file-and-forget” type of thing! Better that a girl’s eyes challenge your character,
or an alarm bell ring, or a man seize him by the wrist. For then he’ll have to decide
just what to do about it, and act; and that’s what makes for a sense of movement.

So much for
motivity
, and for the motivating stimulus itself.

Now, what’s on the other side of the fence? What, specifically, is involved when your
focal character reacts?

The character reaction

A character reaction is anything your focal character feels, thinks, does, or says
in consequence of a motivating stimulus that impinges on him.

To this end, it must be:

All our observations on the vital importance of careful selection and description
of motivating stimuli apply equally to character reaction.

In addition, we may say that a reaction is properly
significant
only when it reflects precisely the image you seek to create. It must capture the
exact shadings and nuances of mood. Tenderness can be a thing of infinite gradation,
and so can cruelty, or rejection, or lust. If you try to draw a picture of your character
as behaving in a kindly manner and, in addition, inadvertently leave the impression
that he’s somewhat of a fool for so behaving, the bit may do more harm than good.

Why does a reaction confuse? Most often, because you the writer haven’t made up your
mind as to precisely the effect you seek to achieve. You
must
decide, definitely and concretely: Is
your character stupid, or stuporous, or at loose ends? Is he defeated, or merely faking
defeat?

Then, your decision made, you must implement it with the right reaction—
demonstrate
your character’s character and state of mind in terms of the thing or combination
of things he feels or thinks or does or says.

Above all, make it your rule that if a reaction is in any way confusing, it must be
clarified or left out.

What about the
pertinent
reaction?

It’s the one which links the character to the story as you have conceived it. It moves
him down the road you want him to follow. If the situation and your concept demand
reckless courage, he’ll behave differently than he would if you’d planned the scene
for laughs or pathos.

The
motive
reaction? Insofar as practical, let your character respond
actively
to whatever happens to him.—It’s even possible to make a character quite actively
passive, you know: “Joe stood very, very still” . . . “Sam forced the tension from
his muscles; breathed deeply in one last grim, raw-nerved effort to relax” . . . “Limp,
silent, Helen let the sound wash over her in sleekly ululating waves.”

Equally important, the motive reaction often is designed to bring about further change
in the world outside your character: Hero’s fingers let go of the coin; his antagonist’s
eyes flicker as it falls. Heroine’s foot depresses accelerator pedal; car picks up
speed; traffic cop kicks motorcycle forward.

A
characteristic
reaction is one that’s in keeping with your character’s known character. The Milquetoast
doesn’t suddenly slug a gorilla. The strong silent type doesn’t burst forth with flowery
speeches. Is your character phlegmatic? Volatile? Sullen? Tender? Weak? Passionate?
Irritable? You pays your money and you takes your choice. But whatever he is, it will
have a bearing on each of his reactions.

Reasonable
means that your focal character’s reaction should make sense in terms of the motivating
stimulus he’s received. Unless he’s been established earlier as some sort of nut,
he doesn’t burst into tears over a fancied slight, or knife a friend for an inconsequential
five-minute delay, or accept unwarranted abuse from petty tyrants.

In other words, you should
not
show him overreacting, under-reacting,
reacting incongruously, or the like, within the frame of reference of situation, stimulus,
and character.

So, how would your character react? In view of his motivating stimulus, what will
he do?

There should be no problem if you lead your reader step by step. Link motivation and
reaction tightly enough, and he can’t help but understand how your character feels.

Which means only that
you
, first, must see each motivating stimulus as your focal character sees it . . . with
his
background,
his
attitudes,
his
dynamics and insights.

Then, you let him react
in character
.

If you’re a girl and like a boy, your reaction to a pass will be different than if
you loathe him.

Said reaction also will differ according to what specific kind of girl you are . . .
your habitual reaction to passes.

If you chance on a holdup, you’ll react one way if you’re an honest citizen; another,
perhaps, if you’re an ex-con on parole.

Well, it
sounds
easy, anyhow.

But it still doesn’t tell us just how far to go.

The problem of proportion

Life is an unending succession of motivation-reaction units. Your lungs lack air;
you draw a breath. Your stomach empties; you search for food. The sun grows hot; your
sweat glands ooze. Every minute, every hour, every day, your whole system works to
maintain that unique internal balance physiologists know as homeostasis.

Yet in any story, some parts are presented in greater detail than are others. Here,
whole chapters are devoted to action that takes place in fleeting minutes. There,
a lapse of years may be passed over in a sentence.

So, how do you decide how much attention to give each element, each segment? How long
should you write a given passage? Or how short?

Answer: You write to fit.

To fit what?

Feelings.

How do you measure feelings?

You check them with an emotional clock.

There are, you see, two kinds of time in this world: chronometrical, and emotional.
One, you measure with a watch; the other, with the human heart.

Chronometrical time is objective. It offers sixty seconds to every minute, sixty minutes
to every hour. And your minutes and my minutes and the Greenwich Observatory’s minutes
are pretty much the same.

Emotional time, by way of contrast, is relative, subjective, and based on feelings.
In no two of us is it precisely the same.

The late Albert Einstein summed up the situation where emotional time is concerned,
in a capsule comment on relativity: “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour,
it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute, and it’s longer
than an hour.”

What gives emotional time so wide a range?

Tension.

If you’re relaxed, time races by. If you’re tense, it stands still.

What’s behind tension?

Fear: the fear that something will or won’t happen.

Take a birthday picnic. The sky’s blue, the temperature perfect, the food superb,
your wife loving, your daughter doting; and all the while, in the back of your head,
you think small, pleasant thoughts of how well things have worked out for you through
this past year.

You’re relaxed, happy, unafraid. Time races by.

But suppose, instead, that this is another, not-so-happy day. You pace the floor in
a shabby hospital lounge that smells of fear and phenol, waiting for word to come
down as to whether your youngest child will live or die. Panic rides you; draws your
belly into a chill, rock-hard knot. The seconds drag by like hours; the minutes pile
up in eons. Each footstep, each distant whisper, makes your nerves jump. Your tongue
grows thick with too much smoking. Your eyes burn. Your clothes feel dirty, rumpled.
Even though you shaved less than an hour ago, your beard is stubble rasping on your
knuckles. . . .

Because tragedy is in you; because you live with the specter of a loved one’s death,
tension rides high and time stands still.

In writing, you translate tension into space: The more tense the situation as your
focal character experiences it, the more words you give it.