Techniques of the Selling Writer (29 page)

Then, you copy them, word for word and line for line . . . study them in typescript
. . . experiment with word substitutions and with sentence changes until you uncover
the way he turns his tricks.

After which, with his tools buried deep in your unconscious, you’re ready to go on
again and write more effective climaxes of your own.

So much for peaks.

Now, in the period immediately following each climax, each disaster, you
reduce
tension.

These five techniques will prove useful to this end:

How? By reversing everything said in (5), above.

That is, lengthen sentences a little, perhaps. Paragraphs, too.
Consider euphony when you choose words. Work more for flow; less for the staccato
and the punch.

Again, the other man’s copy is your best guidebook. And the reason I recommend no
models to you is because your taste is your own, and private . . . a subjective thing;
so what seems good and/or well done to me might very well prove completely wrong where
you’re concerned.

One warning, though: Please don’t go to extremes. Because I talk about short words
and short sentences to create a sense of tension doesn’t mean that anyone, ever, should
forget the need to balance short with long. And to confuse polysyllabics and convoluted
sentence structure with tension reduction is even worse.

Again, it helps to have horse sense if you want to be a writer!

The situation that demands action, it was pointed out above, is a useful tool in building
tension and climax.

To relax tension, in turn, focus less on such immediate striving . . . more on search.

Thus, when I lose my girl or my job or my status, I have to draw back and regroup
. . . rally my inner resources and try to figure out what to do now; which way to
go. Do I hunt another girl or job or point of prestige, or do I slash my wrists or
join the army?

In other words, I must make some decisions.

How I go about making them will depend on my own personality and background; my emotional
patterns. Maybe I walk the streets. Maybe I get drunk. Maybe I try to find a priest
to tell my troubles to.

Be that as it may. In all cases, passage of time will be involved: time to react,
time to think, time to work things out. Eventually, I’ll choose a new goal to strive
for, a new course of action to pursue. But in the interim between the moment when
Dame Fortune knocks me down and the one when I finally get back up to fight again,
seconds and minutes and hours and days—or maybe even weeks or months—will tick by.

In your copy, you use that time lapse to reduce tension . . . give your reader a chance
to rest from his excitement. And it’s
probably your most useful tool in this regard, since you can telescope it or expand
it to fit your needs.

How?

Let the disaster put your character in a situation in which he can take no action
until tomorrow or next week or what have you. Maybe the man he needs to contact is
out of town, or the lodge is snowbound, or there’s nothing to be done at the legislature
till the bill comes out of committee.

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

But no matter how threatening the situation, between moments of crisis life goes on.
You eat. You sleep. You shop, change a tire, make polite conversation, take in a movie.

Ignore such routine, trivial though it may seem, and your story takes on a somehow
shadowy, unsubstantial air. Include it, inserted between climaxes, and you increase
the feeling that you’re dealing with actual people, real events.

In the process, you also give your reader a chance to catch his breath.

In the same way, side issues come up in the lives of all of us. There’s a boy you
like, and so you take time out from your own concerns to help him find a job. A stuffed
shirt irritates you; you pause a moment to deflate him. You’ve promised to spend a
weekend with friends in Dallas. Even though it holds no satisfaction for you, you
feel obliged to keep the date.

Similarly, your reader knows the people in your story only to the degree that you
develop them on paper. Yet their reactions are important. He needs to understand them
as people and not puppets. That calls for exploration of attitudes, philosophies.
Is this man’s morality that of the Honest Brakeman, so called because he never stole
a boxcar? Does this woman’s outspoken belief in equality, in practice, make Christians
just a bit more equal than Jews, or vice versa? Is sympathy an emotion a character
feels for alcoholics, but not for the girls in the home for unwed mothers?

The moments that you take to give such dimension to your people also help you to slow
pace a fraction, as needed.

A setting can be as flat as a canvas backdrop. Or you can add details that make it
come to life.

And the best place to insert them is in the lull that follows disaster . . . in the
pause between climaxes, where emphasis is more strongly on decision than on the striving
and urgency and danger out of which you build your story peaks.

When you change viewpoint, tension drops.

Why?

Because instantly, your reader is faced with a totally new and different situation.
He must adjust not only to a change in time and place and circumstance; he must also
get inside somebody else’s skin.

That somebody sees the story issues through private eyes. His background and attitudes
and problems aren’t the same as those of the character your reader was living and
experiencing with before. Hero, heroine, villain, bystander—each has his separate
outlook.

That new outlook, those unique attitudes, must be made clear to your reader each time
you change viewpoint.

Which takes time, and space. Friend Reader can’t just do a flip and automatically
be somebody new. He has to readjust; learn his new role.

Result: tension reduction . . . an opportunity to pause and rest awhile.

From valley you build to peak . . . then drop back down again and start anew. And
thus do you create a sense of balance and of pacing in your story.

The middle of your story is a time of building.

It’s also a time of tapering off.

If a story is of any length, a number of issues are likely to develop as adjuncts
to the story question.

Thus, the central character seeks to clear himself of a murder
charge. One of the factors that helps to increase pressure on him is the reaction
of family and of friends. Not to mention associates and enemies and casual acquaintances.

Specific friends. Specific members of his family. Specific associates and enemies
and acquaintances.

Take his girl’s father. Upset by certain past history of the hero, he swears that
such a man never will be allowed to marry his daughter.

An opportunist associate, in turn, snags Hero’s job.

And a tough cop, angered over an embarrassing incident, stands determined to force
Hero to leave town, no matter how the case comes out.

Now all these angles are necessary, if the story is to build to a proper peak. But
if they ride clear through past the climax to the moment of resolution, they’ll be
difficult to wind up in any reasonable wordage. Consequently, the end of the story
will dribble off unsatisfyingly in a series of anticlimaxes.

To avoid this, the wise writer cuts things down to size
before
the climax, by snipping off subordinate threads as middle begins to merge with end.

Thus, Hero perhaps discovers that Girl’s father was, in his day, a bit of a dog himself.
The old man feels guilty about it. That’s why he’s so rabid over any hint that Hero
has been less than perfect.

When Hero faces him with these facts, Father sees the error of his ways and flips
over to Hero’s side. It’s a thread snipped off, and it’s out of the way
before
the climax.

Similarly, Hero may decide he doesn’t want the job, or he may come up with a better
offer, or receive recompense from his contrite employer. The cop, in his anger, may
attempt to frame Hero, be caught at it, and himself be forced to leave town.

In each case, elimination of minor issues simplifies and shortens resolution. Even
more important, it clears the stage for the climax, so that the reader can devote
his full and undivided attention to the big “Will-he-or-won’t-he?” issue posed by
the story question.

You know how it sounds when a phonograph needle gets stuck, and the same strain of
music repeats endlessly.

Middle-area copy too often follows the same route. The story stops moving forward
. . . bogs down on reiteration of one theme.

When you write a story, in effect you present a sequence like the alphabet: A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L,
and so on.

It should
not
read, A-B-C-D-D-D-E-F. One D—or F, or H, or X—is enough. You need to establish the
necessary information and move on. To have your character go through the same routine
undeviatingly, again and again, is sure to bring boredom. Same for reiterated threats,
all essentially the same, mouthed by the villain.

What’s the cure for repetitiousness?

Change. The unanticipated. New elements and twists continually injected. A story that
doesn’t stand still—one with soundly structured sequels and scenes, searchings and
strivings.

Given such, everything else will work out.

Let’s end this section on the same note we struck at the beginning: The middle consists
of a series of scenes and sequels linked together.

If you frame each solidly; if you incorporate all component elements; if you force
yourself to keep each individual fragment fresh, then your story will move and build
and hold your reader, in fit preparation for what’s to follow: that climactic moment
of decision that marks, in good fiction, the beginning of the end.