Techniques of the Selling Writer (31 page)

Thus, in (
b
)’s example, Hero stands to lose not just Mother, but Girl too.

Partly, this is because it’s too easy on a hero to center the climax on his saving
or sacrificing someone else’s interests. All of us do wonders with rationalization
in that area. If Mother is old, already dying, and I can make a show of virtue by
refusing whisky money—well, maybe it won’t be so hard to stand on principle, at that.

When my own neck’s in the noose, on the other hand; when I’m set to lose not just
a dying mother but the girl I love so desperately as well, I perhaps tend to think
a bit more realistically. The temptation to take the easy road is stronger.

But over and beyond this, you build tension higher if, to stick with principle, your
hero must throw himself completely and utterly into the teeth of fate. Then, a “right”
decision sacrifices everything; gains nothing. All common sense, all logic, all self-interest,
bar his way.

A man seeks a goal—something he yearns to attain or retain. His pursuit of it brings
him face to face with a situation that reeks of potential calamity, disaster. One
step more, and he’ll plunge over the brink.

What does he do then?

He backs off. Fast.

That is, he does so unless the something he seeks is ever so important to him, subjectively.
The casual, the trivial, the transient—as motivations, they just aren’t strong enough.

What constitutes a good goal?

It’s one which, in the character’s eyes, stands as his key to future happiness.

Consider the child who doubts his mother’s love. If only the basket he makes can be
the best in all the kindergarten crafts class, perhaps she’ll take him in her arms.

Life without those arms is too terrible a thought to bear. It colors the child’s whole
picture of world and future.

Therefore, construction of a superior basket is a good goal. Q.E.D.

An old man sits writing his memoirs. He has no hope that the scrawl will bring him
fame or money. But if he can only explain the things he’s done and why he’s done them,
perhaps his son will some day read, draw insight from the words, and cease to sneer.

There can be happiness even in the dream that someone dear may understand you after
you’re long gone.

So, what constitutes a good goal?

Any objective that your focal character envisions as shaping his future, his chances
for happiness.

What doesn’t?

Anything he
doesn’t
see as affecting, and affecting substantially, the life he’ll lead and the way he’ll
feel in days and years ahead.

The climax is the biggest moment of a story; its peak of peaks. To dismiss it casually
is to throw all your other work away.

So much for climactic situation. Now, let’s move on to our second point:

To make a choice between self-interest and principle is difficult for any of us, in
any situation, at any time.

Especially if catastrophe hangs over us like the sword of Damocles.

Part of your job in climax, therefore, is to show precisely how hard such decision-making
is.

How do you do this?

You prolong the agony for your hero.

Sometimes, that means breast-beating and hair-pulling. Others, merely a moment of
aching tension, with flashes of significant detail against the silence.

In any case, your focal character must sweat and suffer, whether we watch the scene
from inside his skin or out.

And then, at last, he decides.

Decision itself involves two problems:

Where (
a
)’s concerned, urgency is of course the answer. The girl turns to leave. The villain
raises his gun. The friend cries out for help.

Whereupon, your character must decide . . .
right now
.

In (
b
), however, the question itself tends to be misleading. For there’s no trick to making
your character go the way you want. You just hit the right keys on your typewriter!

More critical is an unstated, implied issue: How do you make your reader
believe
that Hero would choose emotion over logic?

Phrase it that way, and once again the answer is simple: You use a gimmick.

Understand, a gimmick is by no means the
only
way to get your character to react as you wish. But it’s certainly one of the most
practical and useful devices for so doing. By all means, master it.

Actually, a gimmick utilizes the principle of conditioned reaction, much as the Russian
physiologist-psychologist Pavlov used a bell to train dogs to salivate on demand.
In fact, we may define a gimmick as some material object or sensory phenomenon made
to serve as an emotional bell.

Your first step in developing a gimmick is to choose such an object or phenomenon—one
that evokes a strong emotional reaction in your hero.

You also demonstrate that this emotional reaction is linked to adherence to principle
where said character is concerned.

You do this early in the story. Preferably, you do it several times.

Then, at the critical moment in your climax, when the focal character hangs on the
verge of taking the easy way, you reintroduce the gimmick once more.

Promptly, your character reacts, precisely as he did before—with emotion; with a sudden
upsurge of passion for principle.

On the crest of that upsurge, he makes his “right” decision; and it’s instantly logical
and believable to your reader that he should do so.

Why?

Because he, the reader, has been conditioned to expect an emotion-based reaction from
the character whenever the gimmick comes on stage.

Thus, let’s say that, early, you make your reader aware that Hero wears a silver St.
Christopher’s medal on a chain about his neck. In some passing incident, it’s brought
out that Hero’s mother gave it to him, and that he wears it not only because it was
her last gift, but because it makes him feel closer to her . . . reminds him to live
up to the standard of rectitude that she set.

Other such incidents follow, at intervals through the story. Each time, Hero responds
similarly, with deep feeling for his mother and her virtue; with quickened pulse and
heightened conscience.

Now comes the climax. Hero stands at the fork in his private road, torn between right
and wrong, good and evil, principle and self-interest.

Which way will he go? What course will he follow?

The villain buffets him. Hero’s shirt tears open. The chain breaks. The medal sails
across the floor.

The medal. Symbol of all Hero’s mother meant to him.

For an instant, Hero stares at it; and in that moment lies decision, surging up on
the tide of emotional response and past conditioning a simple silver trinket brings.

Do you see how gimmick operates? You can use it in almost any story, crudely or subtly
according to your tastes and skill. Here, it takes the form of a wedding ring . . .
there, a strain of music . . . a battered bullet . . . a broken doll . . . a wisp
of fragrance that reminds someone of a half-forgotten girl’s perfume.

So small a detail, the gimmick.

And so big.

Because it holds the power to explode climax into decision.

So: Hero’s mind now is made up. We’re ready for the third step in our climax pattern.

There’s a saying very pertinent to climax: “Don’t just stand there. Do something!”

Doing something, in climax, means translating decision into an irrevocable climactic
act.

Next to decision itself, it’s the most important facet of your climax.

Why?

Because decision remains meaningless till you act upon it. The road to hell is paved
with good intentions. All of us are quick to come forth with well-meaning resolutions.
We promise to be kinder, to stop smoking, to put our dirty clothes in the laundry
hamper, to mow the grass each and every week.

A day or a month later, we’re back yelling at the wife, making like a chimney, leaving
the bedroom a litter of soiled underwear and smelly socks, and blithely ignoring the
shaggy yard.

So it is in climax also. Decision alone won’t do the job. What you seek is a road
to resolution of your story—one that will pave the way for release of your reader’s
tension.

That demands a change in the situation set up by the climax. Further, said change
must be wrought by your focal character, not luck or blind fate.

To that end, the peak of climax is a pivot. It flips the situation over. The rest
of the story, the resolution, hangs on it.

Such a flip demands motive force. The climactic act provides it.

So, let’s lay down an axiom: A climax is always an act.

That act is performed by the focal character. Until he moves, nothing happens. And
virtuous thoughts are not enough.

The earlier portions of the climax are merely build-up to this moment. The climactic
act itself stands as a pinnacle, like a burning glass that brings the rays of the
sun into sharp focus in order
to start an all-consuming fire to follow. For in the instant that he makes his play,
your character changes the whole balance of the story situation.

As an added bonus, such an act saves you all sorts of explanation. Your character’s
decision, as such, may never be verbalized. Hero probably won’t even be aware of his
mental processes. He just does the thing that conscience and feeling tell him he must
do, and the act itself says more than words.

What, particularly, characterizes the climactic act?

Its irrevocability.

Caesar, crossing the Rubicon, burned his bridges behind him. Once the knife is thrust
or the trigger pulled, the murderer never can return life to his victim.

A climactic act should be like that: an ultimate commitment. When your hero signs
the paper or throws the switch or spits in the villain’s eye, it should close the
door forever on the possibility of his turning back.

Consciously or otherwise, your focal character knows this. Acting, he waives the privilege
of changing his mind later.

Such a move sends tension soaring. Before, your man had a choice. He could abandon
principle and take the easy road to his objective. He didn’t have to lay out his hopes
and dreams as a burnt offering.

Now, however, all chance to choose is thrust aside. There remains only the hard road,
the road of sacrifice and suffering, with its apparently inevitable disaster.

Acting, Character challenges fate and the villain to do their worst. In so doing,
he distills the story question down to essence: Will the course he’s chosen crucify
him?

Tension hangs at a peak while Reader awaits answer.

Why?

Because Reader’s own heart is in it. Whether he can put it into words or not, he knows
that in the climactic act he has seen man rise above self-interest. And that, to most
of us, comes out as heroism.

So, at long last, your focal character has demonstrated that he deserves to win. What
now?

Specifically, what does the focal character get?

How to resolve story issues

The resolution of a story is the payoff. It rewards or punishes your focal character
for his decision in crisis, as epitomized in the climactic act.

In the process, it releases tension and leaves focal character and/or reader with
a feeling of fulfillment.

The steps by which you trigger this release and create this feeling are three in number—the
fourth, fifth and sixth points listed when we began our discussion of how to end a
story:

Now, let’s consider each of these items in detail.

Given a correct decision, what the focal character wants determines what he gets.

Thus, his desire to attain or retain something launches the story. It’s his goal.
In his eyes, at least, his future happiness depends on said attaining or retaining.

Because this is so, he fights whatever forces threaten this objective. Increasing
jeopardy and tension only increase his efforts.

This conflict between desire and danger finally focuses into a climax, in which the
focal character must choose between principle and self-interest.

If, in that moment, the character stands on principle despite all hazard, and thus
demonstrates that he deserves to win, you reward him with attainment or retention
of the thing he wants, the goal he seeks.