Techniques of the Selling Writer (15 page)

May I plead guilty to oversimplification?

What I offer here is merely a beginning. It’s a basic approach; a springboard to help
launch you into fiction.

Once you’ve mastered the elements of the form, experience and study of published copy
will teach you how to vary it in terms of your own taste and judgment.

Remember just one thing: As a tool, the scene is designed to make the most of conflict.
To that end, it organizes conflict elements. It telescopes them. It intensifies them.

Without such a tool, even your best material may come forth diffuse and devoid of
impact.

True enough. What’s left is sequel.—But more of that later.

Where is scene planning most likely to break down?

Some thousands of student manuscripts convince me that key errors are relatively few
in number:

Your reader’s got to know where he stands. That means he needs a character to serve
as compass.

Therefore, even if your
story’s
focal character isn’t on stage in a given scene, that
scene
still must have a focal character.

Pick this character by whatever standard you choose; but
do
pick him! Then, hold him in the spotlight. See that motivating stimuli motivate and
stimulate
him
. Make
him
react to them.

Whereupon, your reader can use him as a yardstick with which to measure and evaluate
what happens.

That is, it’s not sufficiently specific, concrete, and explicit.

The remedy?

Make it something that the focal character can logically strive to achieve in a relatively
limited, time-unified, face-to-face encounter.

A goal, remember, is the target your character shoots for in order to unify a particular
scene. Therefore, keep it dominant—the center of attention, like the duck at which
you aim as the flock passes overhead.

Other targets may present themselves to your character in the course of a scene; granted.—Here’s
a girl to flirt with him. There, a chance to pick up a sorely-needed dollar.

Temporarily, such may attract him. But you
must
hold them to a subordinate level or your scene will veer off like a car in a skid.

“Why doesn’t he quit?” is the key phrase here. If enough is at stake for him, he’ll
fight!

What is urgency?

Time pressure.

That means, there must be some reason for John to act to attain his goal
right now
. Always, force him to take
immediate
action. If he can postpone his efforts without loss; if he can date Suzy as well
next week or next month or next year, then urgency will vanish.

On the other hand, suppose that John learns that the day after the prom Suzy leaves
on a European tour. It’s a graduation present from her Aunt Hephzibah. George, a favored
suitor, will accompany the party. John envisions a jet-speed romance between the two,
complete with marriage at the nearest American consulate.

Result: time pressure on John to line up Suzy
now
.—Plus a feeling of urgency that won’t stop, for your reader.

A swarm of anopheles mosquitoes can very well prove more dangerous than a Bengal tiger.
But the big cat offers unified and obvious menace, and that’s why a good many more
people come down with malaria than are eaten by tigers.

It’s also the reason why
unified
opposition is more useful in building reader interest than is fragmented opposition.
Small,
annoying oppositions wear out your focal character rather than overwhelming him. Like
guerrilla fighters, they hack away at him without giving him a chance to join battle.

But heroism ordinarily lies in striking back. Your character needs some one central
figure he can defeat and thus resolve his problem.

This is where a villain comes in handy. Broad social forces may, in the last analysis,
be at the root of your hero’s troubles. But it helps if you bring them to life in
the person of one individual, if only so that John has someone to punch in the nose
at the climax!

The strength of your villain is the strength of your story.

Writers who lack confidence in their focal characters sometimes try to solve the problem
by making villains weak. Result: weak scenes. Remedy: stronger villains. Under stress,
your hero may prove doughtier than you think!

Another name for this headache is
lack of adequate external development
. The fact that someone spills a drink on your hero’s freshly-pressed pants doesn’t
offer meat enough to build a scene, unless further complications ensue.

Same problem; same solution.

The key symptom here is a tendency on the part of your characters to go over and over
the same ground, haggling and rehashing the same issues endlessly.

What to do about it?

Especially, throw in more unanticipated twists. If the wife insists on calling the
telephone number she found in her husband’s wallet, and which he insists he knows
nothing about, let one of the wife’s old flames answer. Then the happy couple at least
will have something fresh to argue over!

Extra facets and modifying traits will keep them from growing so dull and predictable.

Again, don’t be afraid to give your hero trouble. The future should always hinge on
each scene’s outcome—that is, its disaster. It should have potentially disastrous
consequences for your character.

If it lacks such, who cares about it?

A disaster should be unanticipated yet logical. That means, it should grow out of
your materials. Every writer uses Acts of God now and then, in order to get his hero
deeper into trouble. But as a general rule, it’s wise to maintain some sort of relationship
between your key story people and a scene’s disaster.

Thus, rival George Garvey provides John’s disaster in our sample scene. A belligerently
drunken bum might have caused trouble just as well. But he’d have had little relationship
to the story beyond mere complication; and readers draw more satisfaction from
motivated
action.

Does all this sound ever so complicated to you? It isn’t; not really. Once you get
the knack of manipulating your goal-conflict-disaster pattern deftly, you can lay
out a scene on a three-by-five card and still have plenty of room left over to set
down . . .

The sequel in skeleton

A sequel is a unit of transition that links two scenes, like the coupler between two
railroad cars. It sets forth your focal character’s reaction to the scene just completed,
and provides him with motivation for the scene next to come.

What are the functions of sequel?

How does sequel translate disaster into goal?

It provides a bridge that gives your character—and your reader—a plausible reason
for striking out in a particular direction that will bring Character into further
conflict.

Exhibit A: The prize fight.

Recovering from his k.o., Hero faces the future. He’s been licked. So, should he now
retire from boxing . . . seek a rematch . . . attack his opponent again—this time,
outside the ring? His possible courses of action are virtually infinite.

Yet only when he reaches a decision as to which road to take can your story logically
proceed.

Why?

Because each road sets up a different goal. A decision to retire establishes one objective
for our boxer: to find a job. Let him seek a rematch, and he’s faced with a different
problem: to persuade various powers that be that he’s not a has-been. And so on.

Enter
sequel:
the decision-making area; the bridge from one scene to another.

A scene, remember, is a unit of conflict. Your reader reads it because he likes to
live through a struggle with your character . . . battle opposition . . . find an
answer to the implied question of who wins and who loses.

But sooner or later, every battle ends: on a hook, a question, a disaster.

Eagerly, then, your reader reads on. He seeks that happy moment when your story-forces
once again come into conflict.

Here, you must be very, very wary. For conflict for conflict’s sake isn’t enough.

Why not?

Because it’s meaningless.

That is, it bears no clear-cut cause-effect relationship to what’s gone before. It’s
not the result of, or reaction to, preceding struggles. When a stranger “just happens”
to slug your character in a barroom brawl, it’s conflict without cause within the
limits of your story. As such, it’s also an evasion of the long-range issues.

This your reader won’t accept. He demands that your character’s efforts have meaning.
They must be the consequence of
prior development and the product of intelligence and direction. So, unless you’ve
planted proper motivation, he’ll resent it if your boxer, for no apparent reason,
slugs a cop or stomps the arena doorman. Nor will he be satisfied, for that matter,
if a gang of young hoodlums chooses this particular moment to pelt your vanquished
warrior with rotten eggs, not even knowing who he is.

In other words, your reader must have
logic
as well as interest . . .
plausibility
in addition to excitement.

Without such, the very tension Reader seeks is likely to be lost. Fiction is built
on a suspension of disbelief. If your story people behave irrationally or without
cause, normal discernment rises to shatter the illusion you’re trying to create. Your
reader insists that there be a
reason
for each new battle; that conflict be
motivated;
that it
make sense
for your character to strive toward a particular new goal.

This is where sequel comes in. Implicitly and/or explicitly, it reveals how your focal
character chooses his new course of action. It reassures your reader that this is
a sensible person, worthy of acceptance.

To that end, sequel traces Character’s chain of logic; his pattern of rationalization.

Thus, sequel is
aftermath
—the state of affairs and state of mind that shapes your character’s behavior
after
disaster has knocked him down.

How does sequel telescope reality?

Making a decision may take time.

It may demand movement.

Often, it calls for introduction of new material . . . undramatic material, even . . .
to help your character decide.

Again, consider our boxer. Hours or days or weeks may pass before he can make up his
mind as to precisely what he wants to do about his lost fight.

Presented in detail, such a time lapse will bog down your story.

Finally, Character decides to meet his opponent in Minneapolis: a transition in space.
Yet the trip itself is unimportant. It’s a mere means to the end of a return match.

Travel with Character mile by mile, and again your story will bog down.

Before Character can fight, he must attend to a host of undramatic details. There’ll
be meals to eat, nights to sleep, people to meet . . . plus endless hours of routine
training.