A Writer's Tale Page 12

  Naturally, the story has to be written in such a way that Susan appears to be a complete stranger to the criminal. She seems to be an innocent bystander, so the readers worry about what the awful robber might do to her. Things start looking very dicey for Susan when the Spike tries to shoot the store clerk. But the handgun doesn’t fire.

  We’ve already decided that it doesn’t fire because, for some reason, it isn’t loaded.

  At this point, the “natural structure” of-the story allows us another simple choice.

  Who unloaded the gun? Spike or Susan?

  Given the decisions we’ve already made, it has to be one or the other.

  Unless they have a kid.

  I don’t like the idea of their child unloading the gun. It seems too forced.

  But the notion of their child’s involvement in the situation triggers another idea.

  Even though Spike is a criminal, he’s a good parent. (Chortle chortle.) Far be it from Spike, an armed robber, to-leave a loaded firearm around the house where his child might play with it and have an accident!

  No, he always unloads his gun and keeps the ammo hidden safely away from the kid.

  Let’s make the gun a revolver, not an automatic. Spike would be less likely to notice empty cylinders than a big gap up the handle of his weapon.

  This morning, Spike ran off “to work” without remembering to retrieve his revolver’s cartridges from their usual hiding place. His adoring wife, Susan, noticed his oversight.

  By then, however, Spike was already out the door. So she went chasing him in her own car. Because of his head start, she is unable to overtake him until he is already inside the store and in the process of robbing it.

  Susan needs to enter the store after Spike has started robbing it.

  She enters just in time to see him try to shoot the clerk.

  But his gun doesn’t work.

  In the original concept, the idea was for Susan to say, “Let me see your gun. Maybe I can fix it for you.” Or something to that effect.

  As the story has developed to this point, however, that wouldn’t work.

  Susan has brought the ammo to Spike in much the same spirit that a wife might chase down a husband who left for work without his wallet or sack lunch. But this is more serious. She certainly doesn’t want him to get killed for lack of his ammunition.

  Just as she enters the store, however, she sees him try to shoot the clerk in cold blood.

  And she is shocked.

  Suddenly, she doesn’t want to give him the ammo.

  But Spike knows she has it. The moment his gun doesn’t fire, he realizes that he forgot to load it before leaving the house. There can be only one reason for Susan showing up: she followed him from home to bring him the ammunition.

  Now, he wants it.

  But she won’t hand it over.

  And the nature of the story has changed dramatically since we first started toying with it.

  I sort of hate to leave behind the nifty, tricky little tale that we seemed to be developing at the start of all this.

  If I’d stuck with it and pulled it off, it could’ve been a nice story of the kind that appear so often in mystery magazines.

  Light, superficial, amusing, not very realistic.

  But that story is gone.

  Suddenly, we’ve uncovered a potential for a crime story with some real depth. There might still be humor in the interchanges between Susan and Spike (with the clerk for an audience), but there is a heaviness, a grimness, an opportunity to get very realistic.

  Susan loves Spike, wants to help him, but doesn’t want him to murder the clerk and therefore doesn’t want to hand over the ammo. Spike must have the ammo. The clerk is a witness and has to die.

  “I’ve gotta have that ammo, Sue!”

  “So you can blow that poor man’s head off?”

  It might go beyond words. He might attack Sue in hopes of getting his hands on the ammo.

  As they try to resolve their problem, time is going by.

  More customers might enter the store.

  The clerk might try to make a break.

  Cops might show up.

  Anything might happen.

  They’ve got to resolve their conflicts and hit the road before something hits the fan.

  I suddenly see a possible wind-up. Remember their kid? Remember how they’re such good parents? Well, Susan wouldn’t rush off in the car and leave the kid home alone, would she?

  She brought him along.

  He’s out in the car, waiting.

  But maybe he gets tired of waiting, and comes in to see what’s taking so long.

  Maybe the clerk grabs the kid to use as a shield.

  Susan’s kid.

  You don’t screw with HER KID!

  She tosses a bullet to Spike. He catches it, feeds it into the revolver and strides toward the clerk, pulling the trigger until the round makes its way to the cylinder…

  And Spike puts a bullet through the clerk’s head.

  And we have ourselves a story.

  There is, however, one problem that should be dealt with.

  Why didn’t Spike load his gun before leaving the house?

  The answer to that question could change the entire story.

  For instance, maybe he forgot to grab the ammo because he’d had a serious fight with Susan, that morning. Or maybe he or Susan had set down something in front of the cartridges a gift so that he simply didn’t see them and left them behind. Or maybe somebody else took them out of his gun for whatever reason.

  The possibilities are almost endless.

  But dealing with any of them would change the story drastically.

  Let’s say that we don’t want to take the story into a completely new direction by dwelling on the story behind Spike walking out of the house without his ammo.

  Simple.

  It would be possible to ignore the issue. Just state it as a simple fact: he left his ammo home. Woops. These things happen. And these things do happen in real life. I enjoy allowing certain story elements to go unexplained sometimes.

  Makes for realism. Crap happens.

  However, some readers aren’t happy with that sort of thing.

  They want every aspect to be nicely explained. They’ve come to expect it from reading mediocre books and watching movies and TV shows written by the numbers.

  So, let’s give them a neat, logical explanation for Spike walking out of the house with his ammo.

  One that won’t intrude on the story.

  Last night, Spike and Susan celebrated their anniversary.

  Spike got looped. The next morning, when he staggers out of bed and goes to work, he’s suffering from a terrible hangover. He can hardly think straight, so he forgets his ammunition.

  The hangover not only provides a simple explanation for the ammo oversight, but also gives us some insight into Spike’s character and into his relationship with Susan. It might even give readers the idea that he doesn’t always go around trying to shoot store clerks.

  It’s just that today he has this horrible hangover. He’s not “himself.”

  And so it goes.

  “Stick Up” started out in one direction, and ended up somewhere unexpected.

  In the old days, when writing for magazines such as Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock and Mike Shayne, I would have kept the story simple and light. I probably would’ve ended it with a surprise such as Susan tossing ammo to Spike and saying, “I swear, you’d forget your head if it weren’t attached.” Period.

  But that was in the old days.

  Ever since I stopped writing for the mystery magazines, I’ve been “going for it.” I’ve felt completely free to do the stories my way.

  This is now exactly the sort of story I would write if asked to contribute a crime story to an anthology. If I should write it as I’ve described it here, I’m sure it would be purchased and published.

  Maybe I’ll give it a whirl.

  My 28 Favorite Short Stor
ies/Novellas

  1. “The Big Two-Hearted River” - Ernest Hemingway

  2. “The Black Cat” - Edgar Allan Poe

  3. “The Body” - Stephen King

  4. “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” - Ernest Hemingway

  5. “The Color Out of Space” - H.P. Lovecraft

  6. “The Deep End” - Robert R. McCammon

  7. “The Dunwich Horror” - H.P. Lovecraft

  8. “The Fall of the House of Usher” - Edgar Allan Poe

  9. “Iverson’s Pits” - Dan Simmons

  10. “Lamb to the Slaughter” - Roald Dahl

  11. “The Man from the South” - Roald Dahl

  12. “The Mist” - Stephen King

  13. “The Monkey’s Paw” - W.W. Jacobs

  14. “Night They Missed the Horror Show” - Joe Lansdale

  15. “One of the Missing” - Ambrose Bierce

  16. “The Open Window” - Saki

  17. “The Raft” - Stephen King

  18. “Skin” - Roald Dahl

  19. “The Squaw” - Bram Stoker

  20. “The Tell-Tale Heart” - Edgar Allan Poe

  21. “Ten Indians” - Ernest Hemingway

  22. “To Build a Fire” - Jack London

  23. “Traps” - F. Paul Wilson

  24. “The Ugly File” - Ed Gorman

  25. “Up in Michigan” - Ernest Hemingway

  26. “The Voice in the Night” - William Hope Hodgson

  27. “The Wendigo” - Algernon Blackwood

  28. “The Willows” - Algernon Blackwood

  On High Concepts

  HIGH CONCEPTS FOR NOVELS ARE HIGHLY OVERRATED.

  But what are they?

  A high concept is a brilliant, earth shaking story gimmick that’ll guarantee you a huge advance from your publisher, big publicity, a sure bestseller, and the sale of film rights to a major studio.

  A lot of writers beat their brains out looking for a high concept. I’ve done it myself.

  Generally, this results in little more than sore brains.

  I know of writers who “test” ideas. They’ll try out their concepts on friends, fellow writers, their agents or their editors, asking basically, “What about this one? Is this a high concept (alternately known as a ‘breakout idea’) or should I keep on looking?”

  Some agents and editors might even request a selection of concepts from you, so they can have the pleasure of picking out the topic for your next book.

  (If they do, you’re in trouble.)

  Now, I’m not a-gonna say there’s no point in looking for high concepts.

  They can’t hurt.

  You’re certainly better off writing a novel with a terrific gimmick than one that has a mediocre gimmick or no gimmick at all. That stands to reason.

  But a high concept is no guarantee of success.

  A lot will depend on how well and in what directions you develop the concept. If you take it in a direction that your editor doesn’t appreciate, you’re sunk.

  If you are serious about taking the “high concept” route, you really need to second-guess your editor and try to figure out how he would like see it developed. Try to read your editor’s mind. Ask questions. Write the book to order.

  If you do that, of course, you are a hack.

  If you’re going to be any good, you need to do it your way and take your chances that other people (including an editor) will appreciate what you’ve done with your story.

  I’ve written several novels that, at least in my opinion, have high concepts. The Stake, Savage, Quake and Body Rides, for instance. In my opinion, if treated properly by publishers, every one of them had the potential to be a bestseller. They pretty much did live up to my hopes for them in the U.K., but not here in the U.S.

  Why did none of them become bestsellers here in the States?

  Because the publishers decided, for whatever reasons, that they wouldn’t be.

  The decision is based on a lot of factors, such as your “track record” and the publisher’s notion of what sells.”

  It has nothing whatsoever to do with the intrinsic value of a book.

  Realize that.

  Know it in your heart.

  Know that book publishing is almost entirely a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of the publisher. A book cannot be a major seller, or even a decent contender, unless the publisher decides that it will be. And the decision is made early.

  It is usually made before the publisher has even offered you a contract.

  See how much they offer you, and you’ll immediately know whether they’ll be putting any effort into selling your book and whether they plan to print up more than a bare minimum number of copies.

  Since publishers are always on the lookout for a “high concept” novel, you might hit a homerun by giving them one.

  Provided you’re lucky or cunning enough to write it the way they think is appropriate.

  And provided you have no mediocre track record that’ll warn them off.

  My advice, however, is to avoid treasure hunting for a high concept.

  Instead of trying to come up with the greatest gimmick in the history of the world, just go for a story that you’d like to read. In other words, write something that is close to your own experiences. And write it truly.

  You can never go wrong that way.

  And you won’t have to worry about someone else beating you to the punch. Because if you do it right, you’re writing a book that nobody can write but you.

  You are the high concept.

  On Outlines

  WHEN I WAS IN SCHOOL, AN OUTLINE HAD A VERY SPECIFIC STRUCTURE. It looked something like this:

  I. Topic Heading

  A. a subdivision of the heading.

  1. a subdivision of A.

  2. and another.

  a. with a couple of subdivisions

  b. of its own.

  1) and then you can go here

  2) with further subdivisions

  a) and then here

  b) which gets a little crazy.

  B. But if you have an A, you must have at least a B. It can have a host of subdivisions, too.

  II. And you must have a II, or there was no point in having a I.

  III. And on and on it goes.

  This used to be what people meant by an “outline.” Among writers, agents and editors, however, an outline is something different.

  It is a synopsis a brief version of your story. An “outline,” or synopsis, might be written for your own use as a blueprint for your novel or as a selling device.

  I’ve got comments about both.

  When embarking on a novel, should you start by creating an outline so you’ll have your route mapped out before you start the actual writing?

  It’s debatable.

  I recommend against it. In my own opinion, doing an outline is risky business.

  1. There’s a good chance that you’ll “shoot your wad” on the outline. When you get around to writing the novel itself, you might find that you aren’t terribly excited about it. You feel as if you’ve already travelled this route and seen the sights before. So instead of writing the novel with a lot of creative energy, you may find yourself lukewarm about the thing. There’s not much excitement in following an outline, fleshing it out, padding it.

  Your lack of enthusiasm will almost certainly show in the finished product. Your novel will probably have a “painted by the numbers” quality.

  2. When writing an outline, you are building your novel on a superficial structure of logic. Tins leads to this leads to this leads to this, with all the causal elements carefully thought out.

  Which should make for a novel in which everything ties together very nicely. This might be a great way to operate if you’re building a house. But you’re not an architect you’re Dr. Frankenstein trying to create life. Your novel doesn’t need a blueprint, it needs lightning.

  3. Even if you are able to breathe life into your carefully outlined novel, its plot will almost cer
tainly be predictable. By the act of outlining, you have not allowed the story to grow naturally out of itself. Instead, you’ve developed it by imposing a step by step logic on the events. You think, “Well, this needs to happen next. And it should lead to this.”

  The problem is, most readers will already be familiar with the logical routine, so they’re not only with you, they’re one step ahead of you. Even a carefully calculated surprise, or “twist,” isn’t likely to come off very well if you’ve previously worked it all out, detail by detail, in your outline. If you want to surprise your readers, you need to surprise yourself.

  A character has to surprise you, the writer, by doing something you never expected.

  Or an incident needs to pop out of nowhere and screw things up.

  If you outline, you’re pretty much shooting down your chances of spontaneity.

  My advice is this. After you’ve come up with an idea for your novel, tinker around with it for an hour or two. Make some notes to yourself until you have a general idea about where you want to go with it.

  Then start writing.

  As Hemingway said, “Write one true sentence.” And then follow it with another.

  Build your book one sentence at a time, meet the characters, get to know them, and let them lead the way. See where they want to take you. Play along. Let one event lead logically to another, but if something wild wants to happen, let it.

  Learn by going.

  An editor once told me that my plots seem very “haphazard,” as if I never know what is supposed to happen next. He meant it as a criticism. But I think it’s a quality that has contributed to whatever success I’ve had.

  Readers often tell me, “I never know what’s going to happen next.”

  They mean it as a high compliment.

  And it means I’m achieving one of the desired effects. I want to keep them guessing and reading.

  I accomplish it by not outlining.

  Most of the really good writers I know do not work from outlines. They make up their novels as they go along, and hope for the best.

  It may seem like a dangerous route. Like setting off on a long driving trip without a map.

  No telling what might happen or where you might end up!