Stein on Writing Part 11

A scene can also be enriched if either of the partic.i.p.ants gains an insight about the other person.

What are some of the things a writer can do to enhance a love scene?

You can place an object in the room that is meaningful to one or both lovers. If possible, plant the object before the love scene. Don't let either of the lovers notice it until an important juncture in that scene, when one of them sees the object, turns off, and the other lover has to rekindle the relationship. This is really a modified version of what happens in most stories, with obstacles in the way of the protagonist getting what he wants.

Another obstacle can be the weather. If the lovers are preparing for an outing in the countryside, a sudden storm will interfere with their plans. They seek refuge in what looks like an unoccupied building. But is it unoccupied? Or will a sudden snowstorm keep illicit lovers housebound in a house to which the spouse of one of them will be returning soon? These suggestions, and those that follow, are not meant to be specific plot points for you to pursue. They are examples of the kinds of obstacle one might use to prolong a love scene that can become a love sequence.

A tack you might consider is to have something unexpected happen that causes a misunderstanding. The more one of the lovers tries to clear up the misunderstanding, the deeper it gets. Make it seem that the impa.s.se is unsurmountable. Then introduce a third character, who can make the impa.s.se worse, or who can provide a way of clearing up the mi sunderstanding.

Another tack would be to have the third character not know that the two are lovers, and the lovers have a reason for not wanting the third character to find out about their relationship. That involves unrehea.r.s.ed play-acting by the lovers, ripe for mischief.

Conversely, a couple can pretend they are together, when in fact they are not. Then if a third character were to say or do something that makes it absolutely necessary for both the lovers to continue the pretense, you have an interesting development. The moment the third character leaves is a moment of high tension. Will the couple drop their pretense? Or will the pretense have started something they didn't expect?

The intrusion in a love scene doesn't have to be from a third person related to either or both parties. It doesn't even need to be a person that is intruding. We've just discussed the weather intruding. An earthquake, a firestorm, or any other catastrophe can be a mighty intrusion provided it is handled realistically rather than as melodrama. But note this. Though an action is the ideal interruption, a thought can also interrupt, particularly a significant thought or memory, and it can be a lot more effective than the local volcano blowing its top.

A love scene and a s.e.x scene are not the same. A poignant love scene can be written with the lovers not coming close enough to touch. As an instance, consider the prisoner, unjustly tried and accused, who has to communicate with his beloved on visitors' day through a gla.s.s shield, speaking on phones, though they are only inches apart physically.

Conversely, a s.e.x scene need have nothing to do with love, as in a scene of casual s.e.x between strangers, or a rape.

If it is your plan to make your love scene erotic, a few points are worth considering. As I noted earlier, the most important erogenous zone is in the head, which means that if a man's head isn't turned on, he won't be able to function. If a woman's head isn't turned on, her failure to experience may lead to faking.

The "rabbit" approach to s.e.x has little to do with the relations between the s.e.xes that can be experienced by readers. The same is true for mechanical recitations of s.e.xual play without regard to what is happening to the emotions of the people involved.

Many years ago I met Maurice Girodias, the French publisher who became notorious as the publisher of s.e.xually explicit novels in English. Those green-covered paperbacks infiltrated into America in the luggage of tourists long before the liberation of s.e.xuality in literature in the late fifties and early sixties. Quite a few of Girodias's pseudonymous authors later made their reputations under their real names.

Girodias was a master at teaching his authors how to handle erotic material. One Girodias-sponsored t.i.tle had what I remember as the ultimate seduction scene: it held the reader for about a hundred pages before the relationship was consummated. This is not something to strive to imitate. It demonstrates a principle. The point to grasp is that the mere description of multiple s.e.xual acts does little or nothing for the reader. A single act, kept at bay, warmed to, stretched out, can have a marked erotic effect.

In preparing to write an erotic scene, the writer has to be clear about the relationship between the couple, and has to know what he is trying to accomplish in his story through the s.e.xual intimacy. The most common possibilities include an a.s.signation, colloquially a "quickie." Though it has nothing to do with love, this kind of scene can be erotic. But even a so-called quickie can't be quick on the page and have an effect on the reader. It must move the story forward by having an effect on one or the other character. Even a meaningless a.s.signation has to have a meaning for at least one of the characters or it doesn't belong in the story.

More common in fiction is the one-night stand. A brief, not-to-be-repeated encounter has greater potential for a story than a meaningless copulation, but to have an important effect on the reader it, too, has to convey something about each character. Why is each of the partic.i.p.ants doing this, and how does each of them react to the experience while it's happening and afterward?

More interesting is the s.e.xual encounter that is the budding of a love affair. Because it is a beginning, the scene can be full of nuances, problems, thoughts, actions. Think of it as a back-and-forth experience and not a straight line. Each digression-if it doesn't take the reader away from the fundamental goal of the scene-can heighten and extend the experience.

My novel Other People contains a number of scenes between George Thoma.s.sy, a forty-four-year-old lawyer, and Francine Widmer, a twenty-seven-year-old client who becomes his lover. The scene I will refer to runs about six pages. It's not about continuous lovemaking. Other things happen. The interruptions-planned by the author-stretch the tension between the beginning and its consummation. But the interruptions are all part of the story.

Thoma.s.sy and Francine were brought together as a result of Francine being raped. Her father, a corporate lawyer, persuaded Thoma.s.sy, a criminal lawyer, to help his daughter, who was seeking to get the rapist put in jail. Francine had not had s.e.x since the rape until the scene I am about to describe. An important choice was to write the scene from the woman's point of view.

The scene starts with a detailed description of a meal that Thoma.s.sy is preparing for both himself and Francine in his home. The fact that she is in his house in itself sets the stage for the possibility of an erotic scene. That possibility hangs in the air, as it were, over the scene that follows, when they talk and think about other things. Note that what they talk about is specific, for instance a painting that is prominent on Thorna.s.sy's wall. From a few words about the artist, Francine's thoughts wander to the idea that good art lingers into posterity, while the work of most people in the professions is forgotten, except perhaps for the rare work of an innovating genius. Francine is surprised that artists aren't hated more by those whose work is by its nature transient. Thoma.s.sy, a successful criminal lawyer, responds: "I'm a salesman. I sell cases to juries. Or to punk D.A.'s."

When Thoma.s.sy puts himself down, he is actually raising himself in the reader's eyes. The reader knows how tough and successful he is as a lawyer. The reader's emotional reaction to Thoma.s.sy's self-description is something like, "Hey, Thoma.s.sy, don't knock yourself. I've seen what you can do."

This technique of elevating by seeming to do its opposite sets Thoma.s.sy up as a potentially interesting lover because he has insight into himself, an that usually means insight into others. In the scene, the conversation momentarily turns back to the dinner they are finishing. As to s.e.x, nothing is happening, except in the reader's head. In fact, by this time the reader is liking them as a couple and wants one of them to make a move. The author is not quite ready to oblige.

Thoma.s.sy snaps on the TV set for the ten o'clock news, which tells us the evening is getting late. Francine runs water to do the dishes. Thoma.s.sy says he'll do them, and comes up behind her at the sink. The entire scene is from her point of view: The front of his body was touching the back of mine. I felt his lips on the lobe of my right ear, just for a second.

"It's all right," I said. "A woman doesn't want to be admired just for her mind."

He put his arms around me and took the dish I was rinsing carefully out of my hands and put it aside.

"I'll do those later," he said.

"I should be going soon."

He turned me toward him.

"My hands are wet," I said.

He took my head in both his hands and touched his lips to mine, a skim for a split second.

I kept my wet hands wide apart as he kissed me again, this time mouth to mouth.

I broke away. "My hands are wet," I said, breathless.

"I don't care."

And then I put my wet hands around him as our mouths met. I could feel his body's warmth and my own heart pound. And suddenly he was kissing the side of my neck, then below and behind my ear, I could feel his tongue flicker, and then our mouths were together again until, to breathe, I pulled away, feeling the blood in my face, and I was quickly drying my hands on the dish towel when he pulled me into his arms again and I knew we both knew it was no use fighting it any more and we were holding each other tightly and desperately, and then we were moving each other to the couch, not wanting to let go, but we had to, to open the couch, and then it was kissing again and clothes coming off, his and mine, and we were lying clasped, kissing lips, faces, shoulders, then holding on, sealed against each other, until he raised his head and realized there were tears in my eyes and his bewildered look was begging for an explanation.

I could hear the thud of my heart.

"What's the matter?" he whispered.

I couldn't find my voice.

"Tell me," he said.

It was like the anxiety attacks I would get in the middle of the night when insomnia stole my sleeping hours, a fear that my heart would burst from the thudding.

"It's like driving the first time after an accident," I said.

We lay side by side for a while.

At this point, Francine lies there thinking about an incident in high school. The reader is feeling Get on with it. Then: He got up, naked and unashamed, and went somewhere, returning with two elegant gla.s.ses filled halfway with something I didn't recognize.

"Madeira," he said. "Rainwater." He took a sip. "Magic," he said, and handed me my gla.s.s. "It's a one-drink drink. Safe."

I looked at the gla.s.s skeptically.

"It's okay," he said. "Try it."

I took a sip.

"Lovely," I said, licking it from my lips.

"Don't do that," he said.

"What?" I took another sip. He leaned over and licked my lower lip. No one had ever done that. He slid onto the bed, holding his gla.s.s upright as if it were a gyroscope. Then he tipped it slightly and let a few drops splash onto my breast.

"Don't move," he said, and gave me his gla.s.s to hold. There I was, helplessly holding one gla.s.s in each hand, unable to move, and he licked the Madeira from each breast and from the valley between.

He borrowed his gla.s.s back, tipped it lower down, then handed it back, my handcuff. I looked at the two gla.s.ses, at the ceiling, then at the soft hair of his head as he licked the drops of Madeira. ...

I'll stop the scene a couple of pages before the end because I'm certain that by this time you will see how I've stretched the scene, concerned with the reader's wanting Thoma.s.sy and Francine to get together, and knowing that my job was to keep them apart. The scene is a literary form of foreplay.

Note that the scene consists of many short sentences. Then, the paragraph in which they move to the couch is long, almost all of it one extended sentence. The tension of arousal is handled with snippets. The breakthrough is written as breathless continuum.

At that point, the specter of Francine's rape arises. The s.e.x is stalled, but not the scene. Thoma.s.sy brings her a special drink, to intoxicate her not with alcohol but with what he precedes to do with the drink. The s.e.x act itself is handled the same way. This is a love story, and their first s.e.xual encounter is related to the things that bring them together. We experience love blooming, not just pa.s.sing fornication.

Lovemaking between a couple that has made love before can be a more difficult task for the writer. Art imitates life. If the likely outcome is known to the partic.i.p.ants, it removes an element of suspense. For the experienced writer it may mean creating a delay, or even an event or action that stops the inevitable. A scene between lovers experienced with each other can be helped by a surprise, the opposite of the expected, or an intrusion.

In writing a particular scene in The Magician, my design was to portray the sixteen-year-old villain Urek's vulnerability, to create a touch of sympathy for him, and at the same time to give the reader some clues as to the possible origins of his violent nature. His involvement is with a girl called the Kraut, who has been having s.e.x with Urek's gang, usually serially in full view of the others. This time Urek, in trouble, has come to the Kraut's home by himself. The Kraut is surprised when Urek shows up at her place. Urek has committed a crime that has excited him, but he is not an articulate boy and tries to shrug off her questions. She says, "What are you so worked up about?" and he exclaims, "Jesus, I gotta talk to somebody." She puts him down by saying, "How about your mother." Finally, she agrees to listen to him and locks the door of her room. She sits down at her vanity mirror and starts combing her hair. You may recall that in the chapter on characterization I referred to the supposition of some psychologists that a woman's hair conveys a strong s.e.xual force (most men find it disquieting or repulsive to imagine a woman bald or losing her hair). Recall that after World War II, when the French wanted to dehumanize women who collaborated by having s.e.x with the enemy, they shaved their heads.

Urek wants the Kraut to turn around to face him. She says she can't comb her hair if she turns around. That's when he touches her hair. She is sarcastic. "Well, you're getting real romantic." She doesn't expect romance from him.

The author provides a delaying action. The Kraut asks Urek if he's ever talked to a priest. And Urek rants about why that doesn't work for him in a way that draws a touch of sympathy from her. She says, "Come here."

In that context, those two words start the erotic engine. She, still sitting, puts her hands around Urek's waist, then lays her cheek against him and listens to his heartbeat: "Hey, you're alive," she said, letting her hand drop and just brush the front of his pants. "Whadya do that for?" She laughed.

"Say," he said, "are you really a nympho? Some of the guys say ..."

He thought she was going to make him get out. Instead she said, "Your mother and father, they don't like it when they do it, do they?" "I never thought about it."

"You had to. Everybody does. You think any of the old people like to do it?" "How would I know?" "You ever watch them?" "What do you think I am?"

"I do. I got a way. It's what gave me the idea before." "Before what?"

"Before I ever did anything with anybody." Urek wants her to stop talking. She goes on talking, but unhooks her bra, and says: "You never once kissed me." He says, "You mean on them?" "On the mouth, stupid."

We learn that Urek has never kissed any girl on the mouth. She teaches him: His head was in a roar. He could feel the needling in his groin, the signal, but couldn't connect the idea of kissing lips and a feeling half his body away. "Do it to me," she said. He looked blank. "What I'm doing to you."

Their mouths met, and despite the slaver and terrified thoughts in his head, he felt himself stiffening with an urgency, the need to rush.

She slipped off her shoes, unwrapped her skirt, let it drop, and stepped out of it. She took her half-slip off.

"You don't have to take everything off," said Urek.

She took her socks off, and then stepped out of her white panties; the hair where her legs met was dark, not blonde like her long hair.

"Arencha going to turn the light off?" he said.

"She shrugged her shoulders and turned the switch. It merely dimmed the light, one of those three-way bulbs now at its lowest setting. Then, completely naked, she sat down in front of her dressing table again, and again combed her hair. He could have killed her. "You afraid of catching cold?" she said turning. "Take your clothes off." He got down to his shorts and socks, then stood adamant. "Take your socks off." He took off first one, then the other. "The rest, too," she said. "Want some help?"

He wasn't going to have any girl undressing him. He let his shorts drop to the floor, the hairiness of his body now wholly exposed to her view. "Well," she said at his preparedness. He gestured toward the bed. "What's your hurry?"

She came closer to him, and he gestured toward the bed again.

Her hands were on him, stroking, and he tried now with force at her shoulders, to push her to the bed, but it was suddenly too late, and like an idiot he stood there, coming in spasms.

The Kraut was frightened at his anger. He didn't say anything. She put her arms around him, it seemed to him tenderly, and sat him down on the edge of the bed. She kissed the side of his neck, then his cheek, and then his closed mouth.

He motioned for her to turn the light completely off, which she did, so that she wouldn't see him, but when he lay down, his face in the pillow, she could hear him smothering the shame of his sobs.

In some ways that scene is akin to the cla.s.sic scene of a boy being initiated by a prost.i.tute. However, this boy has had s.e.x with this girl before in the company of his cronies. This time a special circ.u.mstance has arisen, he has come to her after trying to kill the protagonist. The intent of the scene is to enlarge the characterization of both Urek and the girl by showing his vulnerability as well as his anger. Though the girl disdains him, when he fails she shows compa.s.sion.

Note how the action in the scene is delayed time and again. For the reader, this continues the tension.

In writing any s.e.xual episode, you have to guard against fashioning a scene of continuous lovemaking. It needs to be broken up by thoughts, actions, digressions, delays that are pertinent to the story. Toward that end, you may find it useful to make a list of each character's concerns during the scene. To maximize tension, those concerns should be different. Keep the Actors Studio technique in mind by giving each of your characters a different script for their love scene. When you revise, test each part of the scene for what you believe the reader is feeling at that moment.

You need to remind yourself until it becomes second nature that you are playing the emotions of an audience. In writing love scenes, you need to let the reader's imagination do a lot of the work.

I want to conclude with a caution. The violence that accompanies s.e.x in some novels, film, and TV is not only offensive in principle but also counterproductive. Small actions, or a few well-chosen words, can move the reader much more than an act of violence. While you are learning to master love scenes, I urge you to find subtleties that will enable readers to fill the envelope you have created, which is the subject of the next chapter.

This chapter is short, which is only appropriate to its point: less is more.

Writing fiction is a delicate balance. On the one hand, so much inexperienced writing suffers from generalities. The writer is urged to be specific, particular, concrete. At the same time, when the inexperienced writer gives the reader detail on character, clothing, settings, and actions, he tends to give us a surfeit, robbing the reader of one of the great pleasures of reading, exercising the imagination. My advice on achieving a balance is to choose the most effective detail and to err on the side of too little rather than too much. For the reader's imagination, less is more.

You can't have come this far without knowing that my most urgent message to writers is that you are providing stimuli for the reader's experience. I remember Sh.e.l.ly Lowenkopf, a remarkable teacher of writers, admonishing the author of what was intended as a love scene that her mention of every article of clothing that was being removed read like a laundry list rather than a scene between two people. A more common error is detailing the clothing worn by a character as if preparing a missing persons bulletin, when one distinguishing item would suffice and allow the reader to imagine the rest.

Examine the following sentence from Nanci Kincaid's novel Crossing Blood, a trove of good writing. In this scene, children are playing in the yard: Their old grandmother looks out the window all the time, her face pressed against the gla.s.s.

Does the author tell us what the grandmother is thinking? Or seeing? Not a bit. The reader, given the context, can imagine whatever he likes that fits the story. The more the reader's imagination can be subst.i.tuted for detail from the writer, the greater the reader's experience will be. The mistake we make frequently is telling the reader what the old grandmother is seeing. The point is that's where the grandmother is spending her time. At the window. Looking.

You can give the reader's imagination room with a few common words in context: Most grandmothers prattled on about their grandchildren, but when Bettina was asked about hers she would pause as if reflecting on each of them in turn and then state for the record, "They are fine."

I have sometimes described the reader's experience to students as an "envelope." It is a mistake to fill the envelope with so much detail that little or nothing is left to the reader's imagination. The writer's job is to fill the envelope with just enough to trigger the reader's imagination. For a nonfiction example, let's look at George Orwell's first paragraph in The Road to Wigan Pier.

The first sound in the mornings was the clumping of the mill-girls' clogs down the cobbled street. Earlier than that, I suppose, there were factory whistles which I was never awake to hear. There were generally four of us in the bedroom. ...

Orwell creates an envelope for an industrial town in two sentences, the sound of clogs on the cobbled street and the factory whistles he didn't hear. The reader's imagination fills in the rest. That taken care of, Orwell immediately takes the reader inside one of the houses.

Let's look at some examples of the use of an envelope in contemporary fiction. First, the beginning of Canadian author Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient: She stands up in the garden where she has been working and looks into the distance. She has sensed a shift in the weather. There is another gust of wind, a buckle of noise in the air, and the tall cypresses sway. She turns and moves uphill towards the house, climbing over a low wall, feeling the first drops of rain on her bare arms. She crosses the loggia and quickly enters the house.

The woman, nameless, is looking into the distance. The reader, who is not told what she is looking at, has to imagine what she might be seeing. Her first impression that it might rain comes from a sixth sense, then wind, noise, and, finally, raindrops. The author supplies only a minimum amount of information. Inside, the nameless woman enters a room: The man lies on the bed, his body exposed to the breeze, and he turns his head slowly toward her as she enters.

We don't know who the man is, but we find out quickly that he is badly burned. How did he get burned? We learn she has been nursing him for months. Who is she? Ondaatje's writing is full of particularities that the reader can see and at the same time allows ample room for the play of the reader's imagination.

The grand master of giving the reader's imagination room to play is Franz Kafka. Here's how The Trial begins: Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. His landlady's cook, who always brought him his breakfast at eight o'clock, failed to appear on this occasion. That had never happened before. K. waited for a little while longer, watching from his pillow the old lady opposite, who seemed to be peering at him with a curiosity unusual even for her, but then, feeling both put out and hungry, he rang the bell. At once there was a knock at the door and a man entered whom he had never seen before in the house.

Even at the beginning of the first paragraph we begin to feel Joseph K's anxiety. As you read The Trial there is no letup. The reader's anxiety can verge on terror, not the make-believe kind but a terror that the reader a.s.sociates with things in his own experience. Kafka, master of the envelope, creates the atmosphere of a nightmare that seems real, in which his character is beset by the impersonal forces of authority, the police, and the bureaucracy that will not tell him what he is guilty of.

Less is more when it comes to stimulating strong emotions in the reader. One of the mistakes made by some of the popular thriller writers is that they describe the terror of characters instead of letting the reader feel the terror as Kafka does.

I have been visited a number of times by Joe Vitarelli, a successful motion picture actor who is writing his first novel. The little I've read of it shows a remarkable talent. Some of the things he learned about writing may have come from instruction he received from his father. When he was young, Vitarelli's father said to him, "n.o.body can terrorize you as effectively as you can terrorize yourself."

Vitarelli had a character saying, "You have two choices, I can kill you or something else can happen. Why don't you wait and see." End of chapter. The envelope is made. The reader can terrorize himself by waiting, or he can go on reading.

The success of a book is measured by the satisfaction of readers. The measure of a reading experience is often expressed as "This really moves fast" or "This book is slow going." Each describes the pace, or tempo, of a book in which fast is good and slow is bad.

I've heard editors, authors, and readers describe books as "a cannon-ball" or "a zipper," a.s.suming speed to be a virtue. Yet the best of good books have purposeful slowdowns in pace from time to time because the authors know that readers, like athletes, must catch their breath.