Techniques of the Selling Writer (38 page)

No writer can ever know too much about people.

Much of this knowledge can be gained from thought and careful observation. However,
a little preliminary reading may help to orient you to the task.

Two simply written books that will add to your insight are
Understanding Other People
, by Stuart Palmer, and
The Importance of Feeling Inferior
, by Marie Beynon Ray. Both are available in paperback.

In addition, if your library has a copy, you should check out
Modern Clinical Psychiatry
, by Arthur P. Noyes. Since it’s a medical text, and fairly heavy going, I’d suggest
that you read just
Chapter 4
: “Mental Mechanisms and Their Functions.” It describes briefly the various ways in
which people try to adjust to problem situations, and the things you’ll learn are
well worth whatever effort you expend.

How do you make a character fascinate your reader?

When a character excites and fascinates a reader, said reader wants to read about
him . . . experience with him.

Or, as an editor would phrase it, the reader
identifies
with Jack or Susie.

If your characters don’t thus intrigue readers, your stories won’t sell. Therefore,
it’s worth your while to learn how to inject the
elements that excite and fascinate, just in case they fail to develop spontaneously
as you characterize by ear.

How do you persuade your reader to identify?

You shackle him to the character with chains of envy.

That is, you make the character someone who does what your reader would like to do,
yet can’t. You establish him as the kind of person Reader would
like to be like
. . . a figure to
envy
.

Further, and no matter what you may have heard to the contrary, Reader identifies
with
every
truly successful character, not just one per story.

Why?

Because envy knows no limits. You may envy one man his wealth, another his poise,
a third his success with women. In one way or another, in one degree or another, consciously
or unconsciously, and whether you admit it or not, you envy a host of other writers
their achievements. The fact that you focus on one in particular at a given moment
doesn’t mean that you can’t feel just as strongly about another, instants later.

What is envy?

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
speaking: “To envy is to be discontented at another’s possessing what one would like
for oneself.”

What do exciting, fascinating, successful story people possess that your reader would
like to have?

Courage.

Courage to do what?

Courage to attempt to control reality.

What is reality?

Reality is limitations. It’s law, natural or man-made . . . physical, statutory, psychological.

What opposes reality?

Imagination. Fantasy. All the things that man conceives of, yet cannot or dare not
do.

Specifically?

The impossible. The unattainable. The forbidden. The disastrous.

This isn’t to say your character must
achieve
such things, of course. The issue is courage, not victory. Conflict is what counts:
man’s struggle against the world and all the overwhelming odds it mounts against
him. The exciting character is the one who challenges fate and attempts to dominate
reality, despite all common sense and logic.

Now I know this doesn’t sound like what editors mean when they talk about identification.
The word is used so loosely that it’s become a sort of meaningless literary catchall,
into which people throw anything and everything for which they lack a proper pigeonhole.

Actually, identification is a specialized psychological term, variously defined: “A
method of tension reduction through the achievements of other persons or groups or
in some cases through the merit of inanimate objects.” “A process by which an individual
imagines himself behaving as if he were another person.” “A mental mechanism by which
an individual endeavors to pattern himself after another.”

When an editor uses the word, what he really means is—and here we complete the circle—that
a particular character excites and/or fascinates him to the point that he lives through
the story with that character, enthusiastically.

Because Editor fails to recognize the true issues, he develops a series of private
rationalizations as to what constitutes identification. These fall into three major
categories:

What makes a character recognizable?

The
familiar
. That is, the character chews tobacco or likes cucumbers or spends all his spare
time fishing or takes great pains with his dress.

All this is good. As pointed out earlier, when we dealt with techniques of character
presentation, it adds reality to your story people.

But it has little to do with identification as such.

What makes a character likable?

The
similar
. Or, to put it even more simply, the likable person is someone who agrees with us.
If you’re a Baptist deacon, you’ll
have difficulty
liking
a character who’s an outspoken atheist. If you’re a staunch Republican, you probably
won’t
like
a Communist character.

And while this has some small bearing on identification, it still isn’t the heart
of the matter.

What makes a character interesting?

The
contradictory
. In fiction as in life, we tend to take the totally predictable for granted. If you
know in advance that Good Old Joe always will react to trouble with a temper tantrum,
or to good news with an order for another beer, you quite possibly may find him pleasant
enough, but you’re unlikely to pay too much attention to him. Your interest and attention
are saved for the man who, while consistent in his inconsistencies, has elements of
the paradoxical in his personality that keep you guessing.

John D. MacDonald’s burly soldier of fortune, Travis McGee, is a good case in point.
He’s kind and sensitive. Yet when a girl is sufficiently upset, he may slap her face
instead of trying to console her. Why? Because he sees she’s drawn too tight to benefit
from solace. What she needs is an excuse to break loose, to cry. The time for gentleness
comes later.

Is this behavior consistent with McGee’s character? Yes. But it’s also unanticipated
and, at first glance, contradictory. Consequently, it sharpens interest.

But though close to the target, interest in a character won’t necessarily make you
identify with him.

Actually, the factor on which identification rests, and the thing too many editors
miss, is a concept called
wish-fulfillment
.

What is wish-fulfillment?

Break it down for yourself: A wish is a desire. To wish is to want, to yearn for,
to crave.

Fulfillment, in turn, is satisfaction. To fulfill a person is to gratify entirely
his desires in a particular area.

Put the two together, and you get wish-fulfillment: the satisfaction of a craving.

How does this tie in with fiction, and identification?

Let’s take it a step at a time, starting from reality itself.

Reality frustrates us. We cannot or dare not overstep the various laws laid down for
us by man, nature, and practicality.

Frustration, as pointed out earlier, is anything but pleasant. Therefore, emotionally,
we yearn for a world more to our liking. We crave to control our destinies. Yet by
and large, day to day, most of us are afraid even to try to do so.

A fictional character, on the other hand, knows no such limits. He’s free to acknowledge
forbidden impulses, gamble with disaster, challenge the impossible, reach for the
unattainable.

By living through a story with such a character, your reader shares these experiences.
Vicariously, his repressed desires come out into the open. Emotional needs find satisfaction.
Without endangering himself, he gets to expand his horizons . . . do things he’d never
dare attempt in life.

Thus, to a degree, he relieves tensions built up by life’s frustrations.

And there stands the real reason you find a character exciting and fascinating: His
story activities help to satisfy some aspect of your own emotional hunger.

Or, as we put it to begin with, you identify because, unconsciously, you envy the
courage of the character who challenges world and fate.

To create a character who’ll fascinate your reader, then, you must give said character
the opportunity to display such courage.

To that end, make him attempt:

The
impossible
is the stuff that dreams are made of . . . pure fantasy; man’s revolt against natural
law itself. When you visualize yourself walking through walls, or flying across the
sky without benefit of aircraft, or rising from the grave, you take this route.

The
unattainable
lies closer to hand. Here we confront The Clerk Who Aspires to Marry the Boss’s Daughter.
Close beside him stand The Detective Who Must Find the Murderer before His Beloved
Is Executed Tomorrow Morning . . . The Young Entrepreneur Who Must Translate $100,000
in Liabilities into $10,000,000 in Assets by the Time the Bank Opens . . . The Aging
Housewife Who Must Delight Daughter’s Rich Fiancé with Life as She Is Lived in Ye
Olde Family Hovel. Whatever the issue, somebody must reach for something that appears
to be beyond his grasp.

The
forbidden?
Deny me even a wormy green apple, and in my thoughts it will taste indescribably
sweet; for as any psychologist will tell you, no nice girl would dream of doing the
things that every nice girl dreams of doing. So, in fiction, your minister may read
delightedly of murder, your banker of theft. Adultery has a tantalizing flavor to
a host of suburban housewives who’d be truly horrified to learn that the girl next
door had kissed the milkman. Which explains, in large part, the success of
Lolita
as a novel,
Playboy
as a magazine.

Disaster
constitutes a challenge epitomized in our fascination with the human fly and the
airplane-wing walker of the 1920s. We thrill to the hideous threat of atomic war.
Our excitement feeds on cataclysm. The narcotics addict, the racing driver, the rebel,
the surgeon fighting death—all hold us spellbound because they flirt with calamity.

The impossible, the unattainable, the forbidden, the disastrous: These constitute
the raw materials with which you combine courage, in order to create story people
who excite and fascinate.

Conversely, you cut deep into your chances for any broad success if you choose your
major characters from the ranks of the weak and passive. Nothing is drearier than
the story that centers on dull, apathetic people borne down by trivial problems, without
the strength or imagination—the courage—to rally and fight back. As Howard Browne
once phrased it, “Readers want heroes, not victims.”

Even a minor character acquires allure when he steps out
of his rut and in some way defies fate. Here, you have the girl who’s sexually promiscuous.
There, the man who overextends himself financially in order to promote a new housing
project. Another man tries to maneuver political favors from an old enemy. A woman
dreams that her crippled child may somehow be made whole.

Because the girl toys with the forbidden, your reader reads about her eagerly. Man
Number 1 gambles with disaster—again, you have a fascinating character. Attempting
the unattainable, Man 2 grips your audience. Poignancy vibrates in the mother’s impossible
dream.