Stein on Writing Part 9

Its tires screeching, the taxi accelerated away in the streets below.

In the Times, she thought, her obituary would rate a picture. In the News it might even make the upfront pages, given her occasional notoriety and the scandalous nature of what she was determined to do.

Her father would think what? He'd say something like, Death can't teach you anything you can use! In her mind, she touched fingers to Philip Hartman's eyes, closing them so that he could not see.

Pulling herself up onto the ledge she scratched her right knee. She remembered the midtown traffic accident she had come upon and the badly injured woman lying in the street, her dress up, her pubic hair visible to the gaping onlookers; s.h.i.+rley was glad she was wearing pantyhose, as if it mattered. Why was she still holding her handbag? She dropped it to the roof behind her, heard the gla.s.s of her mirror break.

What if her hurtling self hit that pedestrian late-walking his dog, or another one unseen, she was not a murderer, the only crime she wanted to commit was against herself. If there were a crowd below yelling Jump! Jump! Jump! would she leap into their midst?

It seemed funny to be afraid to stand up on the ledge. She swung her legs around to let them dangle over the side.

Would her limbs flail?

Might her head turn down as she fell? The thought of it striking the pavement first was terrible.

She stood up on the parapet, swaying slightly.

Al said she looked better naked than she did with clothes on, as if that were the ultimate compliment. Al had nothing to do with her decision. It was her life. She wanted out. s.h.i.+rley held her breath.

Mingled in s.h.i.+rley's thoughts are the following flashback thoughts: 1. What she thought about the moon when she was a child.

2. The unwashed dish with the remains of her dinner.

3. The diary she should have burned.

4. Al, who loved her.

5. Her father.

6. A traffic accident with a badly injured woman.

7. Al's comments about how she looked naked.

Why the flashback thoughts? If in the first chapter the reader saw an unknown woman trying to commit suicide, the reader's emotions would not be engaged in any important way. You have to know the people in the car before you see the car crash. s.h.i.+rley's flashback thoughts, added to her thoughts in the present, are how the reader gets to know s.h.i.+rley and begins to want her not to jump.

Note that the flashback thoughts are part of a visual scene in the present, a young woman up on a parapet, ready to jump. If the flashback element is to consist of more than quick thoughts in an ongoing scene, the writer must be certain to create a flashback scene that stands on its own to avoid the flashback becoming a narrative of something that happened elsewhere. To move from what is happening in the present to a scene from the past without breaking the reader's experience requires segueing to a scene in the past as inconspicuously as possible.

The term segue is derived from music. It means to glide un.o.btrusively into something new. I prefer the segue into a flashback to the more direct method, moving from the present scene to a scene in the past inconspicuously.

Flashbacks normally decrease suspense, but they can be fas.h.i.+oned to increase suspense. For instance, in The Best Revenge there is a single scene that runs for three chapters. It is the fierce facing-off of the protagonist, Ben Riller, and the antagonist, Nick Manucci. To heighten the suspense of that confrontation, I inserted three flashbacks into the scene, remembered by Nick, designed to increase the suspense by postponing the outcome of the confrontation. Each of the flashbacks illuminates the long scene and adds to its meaning. And each is segued into and out of as surrept.i.tiously as possible.

In the course of the same novel one learns a great deal more about the antagonist in flashbacks from his wife's point of view. We find out what kind of lover Nick is, why she married him, and what happened to that marriage. An antagonist, characterized in depth, has come to life as a credible human being, a person who holds the reader's interest, however inhumane his methods. Saul Bellow said that Nick Manucci, the villain, was the best character in the book. I believe Nick's flashbacks and those of his wife contributed to that view.

If the ghost of Sinclair Lewis is within earshot, I say flashbacks done correctly can provide richness and depth to a novel as long as they don't read like flashbacks, if they are active scenes slipped into and out of simply and quickly.

If you have a flashback in your ma.n.u.script or are contemplating writing one, ask yourself, does the flashback reinforce the story in an important way? Is it absolutely essential? If it's not, you may not really need it.

Can the reader see what's happening in your flashback? Can you give it the immediacy of a scene that takes place before the eye? If your flashback is not a scene, can you make it into an active scene as if it were in the present?

Take a close look at the opening of your flashback. Is it immediately interesting or compelling?

Is the reader's experience of your story enhanced by the flashback or-however well written-does it still intrude?

Has the flashback helped characterize in depth, has it helped the reader feel what the character feels?

Is there any way of getting background information across without resorting to a flashback?

We now come to an ideal solution: moving flashback material into the foreground and eliminating the need for a flashback.

The example I'll use brings forward childhood material since that is the most common occasion for writing a flashback: "You were a lousy kid, Tommy, a brat from the word go." "Hey, man, if you got punished as often as I got punished-" "Your old man was teaching you discipline." "By yanking my plate away before I'd had a mouthful?" "He got through to you, didn't he?"

"He starved me. What he got through to me was I was hungry and he wouldn't let me eat. I hated him. I wished he'd die."

"You got your wish, didn't you?"

In this brief exchange in the present the reader gets the following information: 1. Tommy had a lousy childhood.

2. Whoever is talking to him thinks it was Tommy's fault.

3. Tommy's father withheld food from him as punishment.

4. The repeated punishments drove Tommy to hate his father and wish him dead.

5. The speaker is loading Tommy with guilt.

Note that all five points were conveyed in short order without a flashback. You've just seen how information can be conveyed in present dialogue in such a way that the reader is witnessing a dramatic scene that takes place in the present, thus eliminating the need for a flashback.

The example above is entirely in dialogue. Thoughts can accomplish the same purpose, as in the following example in which only one of the characters is speaking, yet all the points are made: "What's bothering you?" Al asked. "You're not eating."

Tommy poked his fork at the pork chop. He cut pieces off. He raised one toward his mouth, then suddenly put the fork down and shoved his plate away from him. "Hey, kid, tell me what's the matter," Al said.

The matter, Tommy thought, was you didn't have my father, I did. You didn't have him yanking the plate away as punishment. You didn't go to bed with pain in your gut. "Hey," Al said, "is it your old man's death? Is that what's bothering you?"

Tommy has said absolutely nothing. We've been privy to his thoughts. And we've got the background we need right in the foreground.

In conclusion, I don't want to minimize the skill that's needed to make flashbacks as involving for the reader's experience as everything that happens in the present, However, I've never seen essential background material that couldn't be made to work as scenes. And more of that background can become foreground than you may suspect. The time it takes to do it right is an investment in the reader's experience.

Credibility is central to much of what the writer does. He creates a world in which the invented characters must seem as real as the people who surround us in life. What happens to them, however extraordinary-and it should be extraordinary-must be believable. The motivations of the characters should be credible. And that provides the occasion for the writer to meet his biggest enemy, himself.

The writer has a natural tendency to act as we all do in life-that is, we question the motivations of others more often than we do our own. When creating fiction, those characters are our selves and we cover for them. This leads to a variety of problems.

I have watched as a bestselling action novelist once again has a character throwing another character over the railing of a s.h.i.+p. Think a moment, how many people do you know who would be capable of lifting a hundred and fifty pounds or more up from the ground high enough to toss that entire weight over a railing? In action fiction, the willing reader suspends disbelief. If one guy throws another over the railing, the reader goes with it. If a writer's concerned about the quality of his writing and needs to say that "Tiny picked him up bodily and threw him over the railing," he will have planted earlier that Tiny is six foot three and a weightlifter.

In fiction, plays, and film, planting means preparing the ground for something that comes later, usually to make the later action credible. Planting is necessary when a later action might seem unconvincing to the reader. Not all actions require planting. For instance, if Todd trips Andrew and Andrew then punches Todd, Todd's action does need planting, Andrew's punch does not.

In fiction that has a higher aim, the credibility of every important action in the story is at risk unless the writer is confident that the motivation or ability of the character makes the action credible.

Some inadequate motivation is easy enough to fix. For instance, if a character suddenly gets up to go shopping for the convenience of the author because something is going to happen in a shopping mall, the events in the mall may not be credible unless the motivation for the character going to the mall is planted ahead of time. The planting can be simple enough through a touch of humor: "I'm not going to go on a shopping spree ever again. After today."

Or you simply need to get a character out of the house. Instead of an unmotivated walk, he could say.

"These new shoes are not going to get broken in if I sit around the house."

We had been married for three years when, one Sunday, Tom dressed, as usual, in a s.h.i.+rt and tie, slipped into his handsome jacket, put on his best cordovan shoes, and left the house without his pants.

What conclusion can the reader come to, that Tom suddenly went crazy? Or is this going to be a wacky comedy about an eccentric? Could Tom be so concerned abut something else that he forgot to put on his pants?

Readers are seldom interested in truly crazy people. It is hard to be moved by their actions because some seem so unmotivated. It is not credible that someone, otherwise all dressed up, would forget to put on pants before leaving the house. We are left with the possibility that this is going to be a farce in which actions are not required to meet any tests of credibility. If this were a story about an eccentric who behaves unpredictably, Tom's strange conduct would require planting. If Thomas's action is not to seem ludicrous, he would have had to have been characterized as someone who could do something as zany as going out dressed up without his pants. Readers will not readily accept the unlikely. Can this character's action in going out without his pants be made to seem credible? Can Thomas's aberrant act be prepared for so that it will seem credible when it happens?

Think of "planting" as preparing the ground in a garden: Tom and I had been married for three years when, one Sunday, he dressed, as usual, in a s.h.i.+rt and tie, put on a handsome suit and his best cordovan shoes, but forgot to put on his socks.

I decided not to say anything, but the next Sunday he dressed in the same handsome suit, put on his socks before he put on his cordovan shoes, then tied his tie over his unders.h.i.+rt and left the house before I could catch him.

I said nothing. But the third Sunday, he remembered to put on a s.h.i.+rt before putting on his tie, then put on a handsome jacket, and left the house without his pants. I thought I'd better speak to him.

This revision is funnier, and more credible despite the zaniness of the action. Thomas's forgetfulness was planted.

The worst mistake that a story writer can make is to have unconvincing motivation for actions that are central to the story. A married engineer with a well-paying job notices a momentarily unattended carriage in a supermarket and kidnaps the baby. What is the reader to think?

The reader has to guess. Is the engineer childless and desperate? Does his wife refuse to have a child? Still, kidnapping is a contemptible act for which the punishment is severe. What in the engineer's background would have made it possible for him to pick a stranger's child out of a carriage and take it away? How does the man's wife react when she learns of the kidnapping? When he is apprehended, what excuse does he give? There are too many unanswered questions, which makes the reader feel that this comes across as a "made-up" story that the events described didn't happen. Clearly, the kidnapping of a child is a major action that must seem motivated at the time that it takes place.

Coincidence is enchanting when it happens in life. A friend we haven't seen for years walks out of the same darkened movie house as we do, we go for a coffee together, and have a gabby reunion. If this happened in a story, the skeptical reader would say that the author is responsible for the coincidence and that it isn't believable.

Here is an example of how to diminish the appearance of coincidence: Problem: Sally and Howie are ex-lovers who have not entirely gotten over each other. The author has arranged for Sally to run into Howie in the shopping mall. The reader smells coincidence.

Solution: The reader learns that Sally has been avoiding a particular store she and Howie used to shop in because she's afraid of meeting Howie there. But Sally wants something at that store-and no other store in the neighborhood-carries. Before entering the store's revolving door, Sally peers through the window to make sure Howie isn't in there. She goes in, finds what she wants, and hurries to the revolving door, a smile on her face, only to see Howie in the other compartment of the revolving door on his way in. They both register surprise, then laugh.

A coincidence still? Yes, but the way the author arranged it with detail-the special store, Sally peering in to avoid Howie, the revolving door-all help to make their coincidental meeting a true surprise.

There are many other ways of diminis.h.i.+ng coincidence. For instance, a third character can arrange for Sally and Howie to meet "accidentally" at an event staged by the third character.

The most dangerous place for a coincidence to occur is at the climax of a story. The protagonist has his head on the chopping block. Suddenly the deus ex machina, the G.o.d in the machine, comes down for the rescue. Those devices fool no one. They exist for the author's convenience because he can't figure out a credible way of rescuing the protagonist.

It is so difficult for a writer to gain objectivity about his own work, and in no area more so than in judging coincidental matters. I'd like to offer a peculiar strategy that seems to work. You can sometimes get objectivity artificially by making a new t.i.tle page and replacing your name as author with the name of an author whose work you admire especially. Then read your ma.n.u.script with that author's eyes to see if you can catch any action that is insufficiently motivated or that smacks of coincidence.

If that doesn't work for you, try preparing a new t.i.tle page and replacing your name with the name of an author whose work you dislike. Go at the ma.n.u.script with a vengeance to root out unmotivated acts and coincidence. It's astonis.h.i.+ng what a change of perspective will do.

Above all, remember that the main actions of your work are like great flowering plants. Put the seed down well earlier and admire the harvest. Leave coincidence to the hacks and the G.o.d in his machine.

The secret snapshot technique is designed to help writers whose fiction doesn't touch the emotion of readers, who write from the outside looking in, whose stories are uninteresting to experience because they seem "made up."

The characters and themes that lie hidden within each author are the source of work that strikes readers as original and real. How do we jog the author to write from the inside, in touch with subject matter and feelings that will enable him to brush the reader's emotions?

I've used the secret snapshot method in individual conferences with writers and in seminars. In the latter, the author whose work is being discussed comes up front and sits in the "hot seat." The two of us talk. Everyone else is eavesdropping.

I ask the author to think of a snapshot of something so private he wouldn't carry it in his wallet because if he were in an accident, he wouldn't want a paramedic to find it. The snapshot we're looking for is one the writer wouldn't want his neighbor or closest friend to see. Not even a family member. Especially not a family member.

I call them snapshots because I prefer that the writer start with something visual. Some people jump to the conclusion that a secret snapshot is of something s.e.xual. Wrong. In practice many are not. In one that worked for its author, her snapshot was of a rose in a one-flower vase that was put on her office desk by someone whose ident.i.ty she never learned. In another, the author's snapshot was of an audience he addressed years ago. The image remained like grit in his memory because all the while he talked his undershorts kept slipping down. Later in this chapter I convey in detail how a writer of detective stories turned her book around successfully by a snapshot of her two-year-old sleeping in his bed.

Some writers squirm through the process, s.h.i.+fting uncomfortably in their seats. That's a good sign.

If your reaction to this exercise is "my secrets are n.o.body's business," that's understandable. But if you want to write something that will move other people, you have to come to terms with the fact that the writer is by profession a squealer. He learns by starting to squeal on himself.

If you're thinking that you may not have the courage to be a writer, I can tell you that's what most writers think when confronted with this a.s.signment for the first time. Few people have the natural ability to open themselves up to strangers. The writer learns how. One of the ways is to write down what you see in your most secret snapshot. If you're tempted to fudge, don't. If you've decided to give us a made-up snapshot, you'll serve your writing better by changing it to the snapshot you're hiding.

n.o.body's going to see it. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. What they will see is the result of your finding the right snapshot.

Is your snapshot such that any of your friends or neighbors might have one just like it? If so, change it to one that only you have. Your writing is going to be yours, not writing that could come out of anyone else's closet.

Do you think other people would want to see what's in your snapshot if they heard what's in it? If not, you'd better try another.

Please answer truthfully: would you carry that snapshot in your wallet or purse? If your answer is "yes," perhaps it's not so secret. The snapshots that work best are embarra.s.sing, revelatory, or involve a strong and continuing stimulus to memory.

If you're feeling, "Hey, I didn't bargain for this, all I wanted to do was write stories," I remind you that the best fiction reveals the hidden things we usually don't talk about.

The stories and novels that get turned down are full of the things we talk about freely- the snapshots in your photo alb.u.m that you show to friends, family, and neighbors. Readers don't want to see your photo alb.u.m. They have their own. They want to see what's in the picture you're reluctant to show.

You say, "Why can't I start with other people's secret snapshots?"

You can. It's a longer route to success, but it gives you a chance to build your courage. A writer needs the courage to say what other people sometimes think but don't say. Or don't allow themselves to think.

If you elect to conjure up someone else's secret snapshot, it has to be one that you wouldn't be allowed to see under any circ.u.mstance. Can you describe that snapshot? What interests you in that picture? Would your interest be shared by lots of other people if the person involved were a character in your novel? If not, you'd better change the snapshot. Or improve it.

If you're stuck, try this. Everyone except liars has at least one person he truly dislikes, maybe even hates. What kind of snapshot would he carry that he wouldn't want you to see? Don't tell me the first thing that comes to mind. Maybe the second.

Would your enemy pay to keep you from seeing that snapshot? If not, try another that's really private.

How much would you pay to see a snapshot from your actual enemy? Nothing? Not much? Then it's not a good snapshot. If you'd pay to see it, maybe people will pay to buy your book.

Here's a snapshot you probably know. It's your best friend's secret snapshot. He or she may have confided in you about it. Or you may have guessed what it might be from a bit of evidence here and there. Or because of your insight.

While you're collecting other people's snapshots, how about one of someone you knew who is now dead? Does it make you feel safer?

This method may seem a bit offputting or uncomfortable at first, but experienced writers will tell you they love this exercise because they know how rewarding it can be. Probing secrets is a key to writing memorable fiction.

A writer submitted for my consideration the early part of what she hoped would be a thriller about the hazardous work of a policewoman who works as a decoy, pretending to be a hooker in order to trap a killer.

The students in the seminar liked the plot, but the story had not involved them emotionally. The author moved into the hot seat at the head of the table. The others all listened while I asked questions and she talked.

It became evident that the writer had been on a police force but no longer was because of something that had happened in her line of work. Interesting. But not as interesting as her revelation of what she felt was the worst moment of each day. It wasn't her hazardous work. It was when she tiptoed into the bedroom of her sleeping two-year-old son to pat his hair before going off into the night to work. That was her secret snapshot.

Hazardous conditions frighten us all. The possibility of premature death haunts our lives. The thought of not seeing a loved one again causes pain. And what love is as binding to a woman as her child, asleep in his innocence, his mother going off to a night's work from which she might not return?

In that snapshot lay the emotional root of her book. After our session, the writer started her novel with a scene in which the decoy was patting the sleeping head of her child before going off to her hazardous work. As a result, the tone of the book changed from an ordinary though suspenseful story told from the outside, to one readers could feel strongly. From that first scene, the reader wanted to say to the woman, "Watch out! Be careful, come back to your child." With every danger the decoy faced, the reader thought of the sleeping child. The reader, full of emotion now, read the novel not as an interesting plot but as a moving experience.

Soldiers have to be brave. So do policemen, firemen, miners, and construction workers who walk on the skeletons of high-rise buildings. Test pilots have to be especially brave because they are flying equipment that hasn't been flown before. Perhaps the bravest test pilots are the men and women who fly into outer s.p.a.ce. They see the earth differently than we do, as if they were people from another planet.

Writers who do good work learn to see things with the innocence of visitors from outer s.p.a.ce. Their bravest journeys take place when they fly into inner s.p.a.ce, the unexplored recesses in which the secret snapshots of their friends and enemies-and their own-are stored.