Techniques of the Selling Writer (40 page)

Why?

Because a villain is the personification of the danger that threatens your hero. If
the danger—that is, the villain—is weak, then your story’s bound to be weak also.

Why should danger be personified?

For two reasons:

The primary
characteristic
of the villain, in turn, is ruthlessness.

Which means?

The villain is determined to have his own way, without regard to other people’s needs;
and he’s uncompromising in this determination.

Must a villain be an unattractive person?

Far from it. A villain may very well be utterly charming. Given half a chance, he
may quite possibly steal your story. His villainy lies in the fact that, where one
specific issue is concerned, he also is utterly ruthless. A sweet and loving mother,
determined to prevent a daughter’s marriage to a man said mother deems unsuitable;
a brother set on forcing his aging sister to give up her apartment and come live with
him, so that he can look after her properly; a wife pushing her husband into ambition
and advancement even though he much prefers his present rut—these are villains, every
bit as much as the murderer, the traitor, the rapist, the thief.

It follows that the villain is unlikely to be ruthless in everything. His compulsion
to control often may be limited to a single area or situation.

The reason this is so is because the villain is a human being like any other. Consequently,
he’s the product of his own background and lacks and compensations. When his self-concept—as
conscientious mother, as solicitous brother, as adoring wife—is endangered, he acts
to protect it; and circumstance forces relentlessness upon him.

Nor does this necessarily make him evil. In his own eyes he’s completely justified
. . . as all of us justify ourselves in our own rigidities of behavior. Each of us,
in some area or other, is a villain.

How do you make sure your villain will prove
effective?

Beyond the obvious steps you’ll take to do this, the central factor is, in large measure,
timing. Ordinarily, danger has already confronted the villain before the story starts.
His goals, his self-concept, have been threatened. He’s made his decision as to how
to deal with that threat. Now, he carries out said decision. Ruthlessly.

How does that make him a villain?

The course of action he’s chosen endangers your hero; and this is the hero’s story.

Isn’t the hero ruthless also, in fighting back?

He may become so, as story pressures mount. But because we can see and feel those
pressures with him, he remains heroic in our eyes.

Further, when you finally reach your story’s climax, you make the hero demonstrate
that he deserves to win, in terms of adherence to principle, selflessness, and sacrificial
decision.—Which same also helps to convince Reader that any prior misdeeds on Hero’s
part are inconsequential and justified.

Isn’t it possible to have a satisfactory story without a personal villain?

Of course it is. Any number of such stories have been written, about heroes striving
against nature or social forces or a hostile universe. Your hero’s foe may be a mountain,
or time, or injustice, or the emptiness of outer space, or a machine that won’t work,
or life itself.

So?

Ordinarily, these stories are a good deal harder to write than are those in which
the villain is human. In fact, and because of this very problem, a writer frequently
personifies such an impersonal foe as if it were a human being. That is, he conceives
of or represents it as a person; gives it human attributes.

How do you give an impersonal object or force human attributes?

You write in such a manner as to give the impression that the object or force behaves
as if
it were a human being, with implied or explicit human feelings, human motivations.
It’s an easy trick,
and one that brings to life robots and ghosts, mountains and rivers, gods and animals,
houses and towns, torpedoes and Tiger tanks—all the thousands of inanimate and subhuman
and superhuman entities that have played roles in fiction down through the years.

But be your villain human or inanimate, his guiding principles remain the same: ruthlessness,
and uncompromising determination.

How do you create a heroine who comes alive?

A heroine’s prime characteristic is desirability. Her main function in a story is
to serve as part of the hero’s reward for being indomitable.

She’s
not
always essential. Many stories without female characters have been written. But most
of today’s fiction does include her.

The main problem arising where the heroine is concerned is to prevent her deteriorating
into a beautiful nonentity.

Solution: Give her direction in her own right. Make her just as much a dynamic character
as hero or villain.

To that end, let the heroine have her own ideas as to the sort of world in which she
wants to live . . . a self-concept which she seeks to maintain, compounded of lacks
and compensations and reactions to external pressures. Only as you permit her to choose
her own path and to fight to achieve or maintain her independence will she come alive.
Only as you develop her in conflict will she play an integral part in your story.
And though she’ll be harder to handle when developed thus, she’ll reward you for your
efforts by doing her part to help intrigue and hold your reader.

The particularly sensitive or perceptive character doesn’t appear in every story,
by any means. But when he does pop up, it helps if you have some notion of how best
to develop him.

Three tricks put you in free:

This means, let him observe his world in shades of gray, rather than just black and
white. He sees a smile or a frown as a thing of infinite subtle variations . . . draws
conclusions from it. Small deviations from the norm attract his notice. Perhaps he
exhibits a tendency to self-analysis. If a girl’s fingers tremble as she lights her
cigarette, he spots it and guesses the reason for her reaction. Is he a kindly person?
He compliments the old woman at the corner fruit stand on her hideous new hat, instead
of laughing. Or, if hatred drives him, he knows precisely where to sink the knife
in his adversary’s psyche.

The way he phrases his interpretations, in turn, reveals whether he’s illiterate,
intellectual, or poet.

This old favorite of too many novels of army life plunks down one gentle soul in a
barracks-ful of crude, crass, callous types. While the rest of the boys talk things
over in four-letter words and leap to profane conclusions with no heed to evidence,
he teases out nuances to half the diameter of a spider-thread.

Because the difference between him and his fellows is so marked, he sticks up like
a sore thumb.

Though this procedure can descend easily to the ridiculous, its principle is sound.
Contrast makes anything stand out more sharply.

Fast action and violent conflict give little opportunity for you to establish a character’s
sensitivity. The job needs to be taken care of earlier,
before
the explosion comes. Otherwise, your man is likely to register as foolish, inadequate,
or a coward, instead of discerning or insightful.

Therefore, plan a scene or two in which nuance is important, so that your reader will
see Ben or Horace as at least remotely understandable and justified in his habits
of intuition or perceptiveness or analysis. Give him excuses to appraise people or
behavior
. . . reasons to notice small, vital differences. Then, when the big scene comes,
our sensitive friend will be accepted for what he is, instead of appearing a mere
buffoon.

In other words, decide in advance on the
effect
you want your character to create, and devise ways to achieve it.

What factors help to round out a character and give him depth?

You don’t know a man in depth till you’ve seen him against diverse backdrops.

Thus, at home, he may be the soul of probity . . . in New York, a woman-chasing drunk
. . . at the office, a quiet and respectful worker . . . in the army, a rank-happy
martinet. His mother sees him as a dutiful son . . . his children as an erratic combination
of cruel disciplinarian and fawning sentimentalist . . . his poker friends as a sucker
for a bluff.

To round out a character in fiction you need, above all, space. That’s why you so
seldom find the character-in-depth in anything short of a novel. In the more compact
forms, you simply don’t have the room to display and integrate his conflicting images
and expose his assorted attitudes to view.

But depth is a matter of degree, and our heading states one device to help you approximate
it: Give your man as broad a range of situations as you can. Then, let him react,
so that your reader gains insight into assorted facets of Character’s personality.

Further, all this must be
shown
. . . not merely talked about. Long-winded statements of appraisal by an author accomplish
little.

A bit-player can act, and your reader will pretty much accept what’s done, even if
motivation and/or explanation leave a good deal to be desired.

Depth treatment imposes greater demands on you. Reader wants to know
why
your man does the things he does and feels
the way he feels. Attitudes, reasoning, background elements—all may need to be brought
out into the open.

To that end, it’s to your advantage to develop sequels in considerable detail when
you build a character in depth. For it’s in sequel that you reveal the factors that
influence your character in his choice of goals, his selection of direction.

Why, for example, should Leo put up with his alcoholic wife? Does he see her as the
cross he has to bear for earlier sins? As a social or financial mainstay that he doesn’t
dare abandon? An excuse for martyrdom and self-pity? A convenient scapegoat for his
own failures? Reaffirmation of his concept of himself as a man not to be swerved from
duty?

Well, sequel’s a good hunting-ground for answers to such questions.

To understand a man, break down his behavior to its root components.

Thus, how does Gil react to a sneer? With violence? With panic? With disdain? With
hurt? With logic?

Or, does he simply ignore it?

Further: Is the panic revealed in quivering voice, or stiffened face? The disdain,
in caustic words, or contemptuous glance, or turned back?

Whatever the answer, it helps to give your character depth.

So, this chapter ends; and with it, our analysis of the major elements that go into
fiction: words, motivation-reaction units, scenes, story patterns, and character.

But there still are a number of things you need to know about the actual preparation,
planning,, and production of a story.

You’ll find them in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 8

Preparation, Planning, Production

The best observation anyone can make on preparation, planning, and production is that
everyone has a God-given right to go to hell in his own way—and don’t let anyone kid
you out of yours.

The greatest talent in writing is nerve: You bet your ego that your unconscious has
something in it beside dinner.

Ignorance must be defeated in the process, and inertia also. The true recipe for writing
success is that laid down by dramatist Jerome Lawrence: “You’ve gotta get up very
early some morning five years ago.”

So, now, the alarm clock is ringing. What do you do about it?