Techniques of the Selling Writer (26 page)

But what determines where the beginning of your story ends?

This is anything but an academic question. A beginning that drags on too long inevitably
costs you readers.

Not to mention sales.

Yet that drag, that fumbling, is totally unnecessary. One simple rule eliminates it.

So, again: What determines where the beginning of your story ends?

Decision.

As early as possible, make your focal character commit himself. Let him decide to
fight the danger that threatens his desire, instead of stalling or backing off or
running from it.

The moment he so decides, by word or deed, your beginning is over. Your story has
begun.

Why?

A story is the record of how somebody deals with danger.

Until your focal character makes up his mind to fight the danger, rather than to run
from it, you have no story.

The thing that hooks your reader, in the opening, is
curiosity.

The thing that holds him the rest of the way, straight through to the final paragraph,
is
suspense.

Curiosity is the element, on page one, that makes your reader wonder: What’s this
leading up to?

So, what
is
it leading up to?

The fact that there’s going to be a fight.

What’s the fight about?

It concerns your character’s efforts to achieve a goal—to attain or retain something
in the face of danger.

Enter the story question: Will your focal character win, or won’t he?

Enter suspense also.

Suspense is reaction. It’s a feeling your story develops in a reader. You compound
it of hope plus fear—the fear that something will or won’t happen.

To have suspense, you must have uncertainty of outcome.

That’s where your story question comes in. As noted earlier, it’s always the same:
Will St. George succeed in slaying the dragon—or won’t he?

Will Sam beat Ed’s time with Suzy—or won’t he?

Will Joe convince Mr. Rice he’s the man for the job—or won’t he?

Will the sergeant make it through the enemy lines—or won’t he?

Will Ellen get her husband off the bottle—or won’t she?

The key ingredient each time is doubt; uncertainty of outcome.

That doubt, that uncertainty, is what ties your reader to your story.

In other words, you open your story with curiosity-arousing devices, designed to establish
(1) that your focal character has a goal, and (2) that this goal is somehow threatened.

After which, suspense takes over: Does your focal character win or lose; achieve his
goal or miss it?

The issue is the moment of commitment. True suspense comes only when you establish
the story question. And the story question moves into focus only when your character,
desiring, looks danger full in the face and then takes up the challenge that the situation
offers.

Implicitly or explicitly, he must say, “I’ll fight!” before your story can begin.

As soon as he says it, the beginning automatically ends, and we move into the story
proper . . . the body of the central conflict.

This is the moment when your reader adds suspense-involvement to mere interest. Until
now, there’s always been the chance that Sam will let Ed have Suzy without a struggle;
that Joe will shuffle dully away to a job on the section gang when Mr. Rice turns
him down; that the sergeant will surrender; that Ellen, despairing, will join her
husband in alcohol’s embrace.

With commitment, however, your focal character takes his stand beside the feudist
who cries, “I’ll die before “I’ll run!” Talk’s done. Hesitation’s over. Now, his decision’s
made. And whether that decision is intelligent or foolish, he has no choice, in your
reader’s eyes, but to fish or cut bait.

Whereupon, instinctively, said reader grips book or magazine a little tighter and
frames his private version of the story question: “Will this guy win—or won’t he?”

I can’t overemphasize how important this matter of commitment is. An amazing number
of potentially good stories bog down just because the central character refuses to
come to grips with the issues. Consequently, Character himself seems passive, the
beginning gives an effect of dragging on forever, and the reader is denied all possibility
of the vital “Will-he-or-won’t-he?” involvement that glues him to the story.

So:
Do
let your hero decide to fight!

Closely related to this is the matter of peripheral versus mainline action in beginning
a story . . . starting with an immediately intriguing side issue instead of attacking
the central problem.

It should be obvious by now, I trust, that you have wide latitude in selecting the
curiosity-bait to hook your reader. But if you choose a side issue on which to open,
you need to bear in mind that you
must
establish a clear and perceptible relationship between this peripheral material and
your main story issue. Starting with an introductory scene in which your focal character
dallies with a seductive blonde will only prove infuriating to your reader, if said
blonde plays no vital role in the body of your story.

In the same way, your hero’s decision to commit himself
must
center squarely on the core of the story, rather than something extraneous.

Thus, in order to get a mystery off the ground fast, you might begin with the murder
of your focal character’s sister. He promptly commits himself to avenge her.

Later, however, it develops that his wife is suspect, and the rest of the story centers
on his efforts to clear her.

Result: a confused, diffuse, unsatisfactory story. If the vengeance
motif is to dominate, then it should dominate all the way. If wife-clearing is the
issue, then set up your situation so your hero commits himself to it at the start,
leaving vengeance subordinated or eliminated.

Finally, bear in mind that suspense is compounded of hope as well as fear.

In other words, your reader must care what happens. Otherwise he won’t worry; and
worry is the big product that a writer sells.

You can’t care if the character himself shows no signs of caring. Feeling, remember,
is largely a matter of shared reaction.

Neither can you care about something obviously trivial and unimportant.

What’s most important—for all of us?

Happiness.

Whatever your character desires and/or whatever endangers that desire must, potentially,
affect his future happiness. The transient or inconsequential just aren’t good enough.
They don’t provide sufficient motivation to make him commit himself to fight.

And that’s more than enough about desire and danger and decision. More than enough
about the beginning of your story, too. It’s time we moved on . . . on into consideration
of solutions to the problems you encounter as you write the middle scenes.

How to develop middle segments

“A middle,” says Aristotle, “is that which follows something, as some other thing
follows it.”

You already know how to write the middle segment of your story. You mastered the essential
techniques when, in
Chapter 4
, you learned to manipulate search and struggle, sequel and scene.

The middle consists of a series of sequels and scenes linked together; nothing more.
Your focal character searches till he finds a goal that suits him . . . then struggles
to attain it. When further difficulties assail him, the process is repeated.

Beginning starts a fight between desire and danger. End
brings a knockout punch to resolve the conflict, one way or the other.

Middle lies between the two. It’s the body of your story . . . that portion which
details the ebb and flow of battle. Starting with establishment of the story question,
it carries your focal character forward to that climactic moment of decision which
marks the beginning of your story’s end.

How do you develop the middle?

Life, it has been said, facetiously and otherwise, is a series of adjustments.

So is a story.

Change is what forces you to adjust.

Some changes wreak more havoc than do others. Some adjustments are easier to make
than others.

In all probability, I’ll regroup easily if the problem is merely that, for today,
okra has been crossed off the café menu.

Accepting the fact that my wife is dead may take considerably more doing.

Conviction for a murder I didn’t commit could very well push me past the breaking
point.

In each case, faced with a change, you try to figure out what to do next. That is,
you search for a goal—a substitute for okra . . . activities to help fill the lonely
hours a loved one’s departure leaves . . . revenge for the perjury that put you behind
bars.

Then, once you’ve decided, you do your best to follow the course you’ve chosen. You
strive to reach your destination.

Again, change intervenes. Again, you adjust via search and striving.

This routine is repeated as many times as space will allow.

And there you have the pattern and dynamics of the middle. There’s no point to belaboring
them further.

There are, however, a few specific rules-of-thumb that may help you . . . a don’t,
four do’s, and a don’t, chosen to pinpoint some of the errors that trap too many writers:

The difference between the end of your story and its beginning
lies in the amount of information reader and hero have at their disposal.

Thus, a love story might open as a girl first becomes aware that a particular boy
exists.

Sixteen—or 316—pages later, she pledges herself to be his.

Between page one and page sixteen, or what have you, Girl acquires certain data. In
consequence of certain events and drives and conflicts, she learns various things
about Boy: the kind of person he is; how he reacts; how she herself reacts to his
reactions.

Pleased with what she finds, she behaves in a manner appropriate to love-story resolution
in that particular market.

This lengthy process of story development represents change for Girl—change from one
state of affairs to another, and from one state of mind to another.

Which is as it should be. Change in a story must take place well-nigh continuously.

Why?

Because each change moves your story closer to its conclusion.

If it doesn’t, it’s the wrong change.

No story unit—not even a paragraph—ought to begin and end with the state of affairs
and state of mind of each person involved exactly the same. Even the falling of a
leaf should, implicitly or explicitly, bring into focus the subtle variation of feeling
tone that it engenders. Always, there must be some new fragment of fact or thought
implied or stated; some fresh development, some growth of insight, some hint of fluctuation
in relationship. Maybe Girl finds her rival’s earring in Boy’s pocket. Maybe Boy notes
irritably that Girl wears too much lipstick. Maybe there’s sullenness in a glance,
or tenderness, or precisely the right or wrong words spoken. Maybe the sun’s just
warm enough, or a rainstorm strands Boy and Girl in the mountains. But whatever the
time or place or circumstance—count on it, something happens. One way or another,
great or small, a change takes place to help or hinder.

Why must this be so?

Partly, because your story needs to drive ahead, straight toward its conclusion.

Even more so, because your reader needs these facts, these
insights, in order properly to share your focal character’s experience.

Most of all, because without such change your story grows static, and hence boring.

When that happens, your reader quits reading. And that’s a luxury you can’t afford.

A static scene or story may even bore you, its author. When that happens, it becomes
hard to write.

Why?

Because the only thing any writer really has to write about is change. When there
isn’t any change worth noting, your unconscious instinctively recognizes it and goes
on strike.—After all, how long can anyone sit staring fixedly at a still life?