Stein on Writing Part 16

If you like your version better than the author's original, I have a surprise for you. You have just revised the opening of one of the biggest bestsellers of our time, Airport by Arthur Hailey.

I tried my hand at a more particularized version of Arthur Hailey's opening based on the author's own facts, scattered in the first three pages of the book. Note how particularizing and introducing a character help increase the tension of that opening paragraph: Runway three zero at Lincoln International was out of service, blocked by an Aereo-Mexican 707, its wheels mired in waterlogged ground near the runway's edge. Incoming traffic from Minneapolis, Cleveland, Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Denver was stacked up overhead, some low on gas. On the ground, the wings of forty planes chafing to take off were icing up.

At the Snow Control Desk high in the gla.s.s-walled control tower, Mel Bakersfield, the airport's general manager, drummed his fingers on the gla.s.s and peered into the darkness, as if he could will United's Flight 111 from Los Angeles to appear. The plane was due at half-past four. It was now half-past six.

Similes and metaphors are the wonders of writing, and like all wonderful things carry a price. If figures of speech are overdone, they backfire. For instance, here's Martin Cruz Smith in his bestseller Polar Star straining to get a metaphor and a simile into two successive sentences: In the glare of the lamp, Volovoi's crew cut was a crown of radiant spikes. Of course, Karp, who was doing all the heavy labor, perspired like Vulcan at the forge.

What we see is not Volovoi's crew cut or Karp's perspiration but the author laboring to provide comparisons unsuccessfully. At one point, he stages a fight, and hero Arkady gets shoved into a bookcase, which inspires this simile: Paperbacks fluttered out like birds.

I'll bet. The simile is imprecise. Smith can't restrain himself. Here he goes again: Her black eyes balanced anxiously on enormous cheekbones.

When read aloud, the vision of black eyes balancing on cheekbones always draws a laugh. That's not a simile or metaphor, just plain overwriting. Which leads me to the princ.i.p.al advice I have for writers striving for color. Try, fly, experiment, but if it shows strain, if it isn't accurate, cut it.

Inaccurate similes and metaphors have the effect of deflecting the reader's attention from the story to the words on the page. Yet when carried off, especially when a simile is original and a metaphor sings, there is no greater glory in the practice of words.

In school we learned that a simile is a comparison of two unlike things, usually joined by the words "like" or "as." Perhaps the "unlike" throws off writers. What is meant is that the writer shows by simile the similarity of two things that were previously not connected: Simile: She sprang up like a jack-in-the-box when the doorbell rang.

We identify a jack-in-the-box popping up with suddenness, but if it said "She sprang up suddenly," we'd lose the savor of the comparison.

In a metaphor, a word or phrase is applied to something that is figuratively rather than literally similar. This figure of speech results when words or phrases are brought together that do not ordinarily belong together, yet by their proximity convey a fresh meaning: Metaphor: His bicycle had wings.

The bicycle was going so fast it seemed like a bird in flight or it was pedaled with elan as if it were airborne.

As we've seen earlier, some of the best novel t.i.tles are metaphors. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. We easily recognize the truth of such a.n.a.logies.

In commercial fiction, the author often uses top-of-the-head similes and metaphors: Simile: He felt like a million dollars. Metaphor: It was food for thought.

Those examples are cliches, tired from overuse. Most good writing is characterized by a careful use of precise and sometimes original similes and metaphors: Simile: He felt as if he were a teenager for whom illness and death were abstractions.

Metaphor: The thought hovered over him, waiting for his permission to descend.

One of the hazards is, of course, the mixed metaphor, in which two or more unrelated metaphors are unsuccessfully combined: He was dog tired but still feeling his oats.

Nanci Kincaid knows how to pick the right metaphor for her barefoot youngsters: "Melvina's wild boys were all just barefoot as the day is long. Not wearing shirts, most of them. Just raggedy shorts and bulletproof feet ... "

"Bulletproof feet" is a striking metaphor, the boys walking around in bare feet as if nothing on the ground could harm them.

My students know that I am fond of quoting similes and metaphors from one of John Cheever's best stories, "The Country Husband." The first is an extravagant simile: The living room was s.p.a.cious and divided like Gaul into three parts.

The next simile is both accurate and original: Francis limited herself to two week-night parties, putting a flexible interpretation on Friday, and rode through the weekend like a dory in a gale.

Cheever uses metaphor to set a mood: The sky was overcast, and poured down onto the dirt crossroads a very discouraging light.

Metaphors can enhance nonfiction also. Witness: In some cases, generally around public buildings like the White House and State Department, the protective cordon was Saran-Wrap tight.

One of my favorite metaphors was spoken by Clive James in his television series Fame. Hirohito was a 15 watt bulb.

That metaphor is worth examining. It's a long stretch from the Emperor of j.a.pan to a light bulb, but it sure makes its point instantly.

I've suggested that you check your ma.n.u.script for similes and metaphors that strain too much. I'll add to that. In examining your work, can you find spots of "bare bones" writing that could be improved by a simile or metaphor that you hadn't thought of when you were getting your early draft onto paper?

Resonance is a term borrowed from the world of music, where it means a prolonged response attributable to vibration. In writing it has come to mean an aura of significance beyond the components of a story. Resonance can come from biblical a.s.sociations. "Call me Ishmael" instantly reverberates at the opening of Moby d.i.c.k. In this chapter I show the many ways in which resonance can be produced-by names, by reference to religious sources, by invoking life and death, by a bold conclusion, by hyperbole, by naming the parts of a book, by the use of aphorisms and epigraphs, and ideally from the writing itself, by the writer's skillful use of similes and metaphors. Examples are drawn from important twentieth-century writers of both nonfiction and fiction.

Writers who recognize resonance when they encounter it sometimes still have difficulty in providing reverberations in their own work. Help is on the way. Let's examine the ways of producing resonance through their sources.

We have seen how the opening words of Moby d.i.c.k, "Call me Ishmael," have instant resonance because of the biblical a.s.sociations of Ishmael. The same would be true of other memorable names from the Bible, whether used for characters or in appropriate phrases.

Some commercial fiction has derived resonance from the use of public or historical characters. Put an Eisenhower or a Kennedy into a story, and it resonates, especially if he appears fleetingly. I say "fleetingly" because most writers who try to reproduce historical characters at length, including their dialogue, usually fail. It's an area where a near miss is like taking just one misstep off a cliff's edge. Jack Higgins's career zoomed when he began using historical characters briefly in his thrillers.

By Referring to other religious sources. Evan Hunter, who writes also under the name of Ed McBain, is a superb craftsman. His novel Vespers draws some resonance from its t.i.tle, but I would urge you to read at least the first four and a half pages of that book to see how liturgy lends stunning resonance to a scene that involves a killing.

By Invoking death. In T. Correghessan Boyle's 1987 novel World's End the author lends importance to a day by the use of a metaphor drawing on the possibility of the death of the earth: The day was typical of April in the vale of the Hudson-raw and drizzling, the earth exhaling vapor as if it were breathing its last.

In the last of his Rabbit Angstrom books, Rabbit at Rest, John Updike invokes his protagonist's death at the outset: Standing amid the tan, excited post-Christmas crowd at the Southwest Florida Regional Airport, Rabbit Angstrom has a funny sudden feeling that what he has come to meet, what's floating in unseen about to land, is not his son Nelson and daughter-in-law Pru and their two children but something more ominous and intimately his: his own death, shaped vaguely like an airplane.

By a bold conclusion. To see how V. S. Naipaul, one of the outstanding writers in the English language in our time, uses a bold philosophical statement to lend resonance to the opening of his novel A Bend in the River, let us look at the second sentence first: Nazruddin, who had sold me the shop cheap, didn't think I would have it easy when I took over. No resonance. But that sentence is preceded by this one: The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

That first sentence lends resonance to the sentence and paragraphs that follow, perhaps to the book as a whole.

By Invoking a setting that has greatly influenced the life of a person. Some writers of biography will describe the subject's birthplace in detail, but miss an opportunity for resonance. Bertram Wolfe begins his biography The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera with a setting that goes a long way toward explaining a source of Rivera's work: Guanajuato is flooded with light. The sun beats down with brilliant intensity upon its flat-roofed houses, fills with purple darkness their windows and doorways, gives bulk to solid forms, draws clean the line that separates surrounding hills from light-drenched sky. The valley in which the city dozes is seven thousand feet above the sea. Narrow cobblestone streets circle through the old center, then begin to climb into the hills. At the outskirts trees become discouraged; ridges rise bare and brown into a sky deep, remote, free from haze, standing out sharp against the light-filled emptiness of s.p.a.ce.

He whose eyes have been nourished on these clear forms, solid volumes, and light-filled s.p.a.ce will never be altogether at home in the pale yellow sunlight and soft outlines of Paris treetops and towers, where the light is diffused by haze that forever hints of rain. A boy born here may get lost for a while in the Paris fashions of his day and experiment inadequately with fugitive flecks of light and blurring washes of haze in which outlines waver, planes merge, and objects lose their volume; but he can never really find himself as a painter until he has rediscovered the strongly defined forms, pure colors, clear atmosphere, and omnipresent flood of light that gives solidity to all the objects it illumines without seeming itself to appear upon the scene at all.

You can imagine how I felt editing line by line a writer who used resonance to give the reader pleasure and instruction simultaneously the way Wolfe does.

By Hyperbole. A hyperbole is, of course, an exaggeration that is not meant to be taken literally. For the novelist, it presents an opportunity to lend resonance to what might otherwise seem ordinary. Here is Rebecca West's opening of The Fountain Overflows: There was such a long pause that I wondered whether my Mamma and my Papa were ever going to speak to each other again.

By the end of the first paragraph, Papa is apologizing to Mamma, but the perception by the child narrator of a pause that seems terminal has magnified the importance of the moment of silence. For children, a pin drop of tension between parents can resonate like a thunderstorm.

By Naming the parts of a book. Omens are important in seeding suspense. The prolific British novelist Francis King lists five parts for his novel Act of Darkness. The first is t.i.tled simply "Omens." It lends a touch of resonance even before the reader encounters the first sentence.

A greater value can be derived from naming chapters in nonfiction. Orville Sch.e.l.l's 1994 book on China, Mandate of Heaven, has some chapter t.i.tles that invoke resonance twice, in the table of contents, and at the heads of chapters: "A Hundred Flowers Fade" evokes its familiar opposite, A Hundred Flowers Bloom. "The Graying of Chinese Culture" derives its effect through a metaphor that resonates. "Shanghai on Commercial Fire" also uses metaphor to resonate.

By the thoughts and speech of a character. In The Blue Afternoon, a remarkable and highly praised novel by William Boyd, an early section is narrated by a character named Kay Fischer, an architect. She speaks in the first person. At one point, she says: In architecture, as in art, the more you reduce, the more exacting your standards must be. The more you strip down and eliminate, the greater the pressure, the import, on what remains. If a room is only to have one door and one window, then those two openings must conform exactly to the volume of s.p.a.ce contained between the four walls, the floor and the ceiling.

My aesthetic mentor, my inspiration, in all this was the German architect Oscar Kranewitter (1891-1929). He was a friend of Gropius and like him was heavily influenced by the austere ideologies of Johannes Itten.

The reader absolutely believes that this narrator, Kay Fischer, is an architect. She is, of course, an invention of the author. Her thoughts about architecture provide the resonance that confirms her reality.

Many years ago I invented a character called Dr. Gunther Koch, a foreign-born psychiatrist. In The Magician I had him a.s.sert his theory of the three categories of people, those who set their own goals, those who are followers content to obey instructions, and those who burn with frustration because they refuse to follow, can't lead, and don't know what they want. When the book first appeared, I heard from psychiatrists who asked to be referred to the professional literature in which I had found that theory. I hadn't found it. I invented Dr. Koch's theory as resonance to authenticate Dr. Koch and his profession. In commercial fiction today, techn.o.babble is used in a similar way. One of my students, a noted inventor, confirms that what writers do in these instances is the same as what inventors do, though the writer's inventions only need to seem to work.

By the use of Aphorisms. I can't recommend aphorisms as a technique for everyone, though my penchant for their creation has given me much pleasure. I use aphorisms in my characters' dialogue. Here are a few examples from The Best Revenge as spoken by Louie, a character who is dead when the book begins, which hasn't stopped him from rendering advice: "Of course the Bible was written by sinners. How else would they know?"

"Experience is what enables you to have a guilty conscience when you do something you know is wrong because you've done it before."

"If you think something is a coincidence you don't know how G.o.d works. Pay attention, He doesn't have time to give you private lessons."

"The best way to move is like a duck, calm on the surface, paddling like h.e.l.l underneath." "Save your breath. It's the Devil who negotiates. G.o.d never made a deal with n.o.body."

There are two points to remember about the use of aphorisms: If they are in the author's voice, the point of view has to be either the third-person or the omniscient author's point of view, not the first-person point of view of a character. If they are in a character's dialogue, as in the case of Louie, you had better be sure the character you've created is the kind who could and would spout aphorisms on occasion.

By the use of Epigraphs. While aphorisms are your own, epigraphs can be other people's aphorisms and thoughts that lend a touch of resonance to your work. An appropriate epigraph can convey the larger import of a novel, without the novel itself becoming didactic. For instance, in The Magician I used two epigraphs, one short, one long, both about the true subject matter of the novelist, human nature, and designed to lend resonance to the story even before it begins.

The sources for epigraphs are many. There are quite a few collections of quotations on the market, with Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett, now updated by Justin Kaplan, the best known. There are also quotation collections available in software. If you haven't used the collections in book form previously, I would suggest a trip to your local library. Browse through Bartlett and any others they might have on hand. If you take to the experience, you might invest in buying a book of quotations. I've found that browsing for possible epigraphs can sometimes provide additional reward in the paths it opens in a work-in-progress.

Occasionally a book will seem to be buying resonance insurance. William Styron, an admirable novelist, prefaces The Confessions of Nat Turner with: 1. An "Author's Note" in which Styron briefly relates the historical background for his novel.

2. A three-page preface to a public doc.u.ment, a pamphlet published in Richmond in 1832, with the same t.i.tle as Styron's novel.

3. A part t.i.tle, "Judgment Day."

4. A five-line epigraph.

An excess of preliminaries might be interpreted as defensive. Don't overdo it.

The ideal resonance comes from the writing itself. Brooklyn-born Bertram D. Wolfe, whose biography of Diego Rivera was quoted from earlier, was a master of language who never wrote a word of fiction, but I have on occasion shown exemplary pa.s.sages of his work to novelists for their instructive value. Here is how Wolfe began his masterpiece, Three Who Made a Revolution: The great Eurasian Plain opposes few obstacles to frost and wind and drought, to migrant hordes and marching armies. In earlier centuries the plain was dominated by vast Asiatic empires, Iranian, Turkish, Mongolian. As the last of these melted away, Moscovy expanded to take their place, expanded steadily through several centuries until it became the largest continuous land empire in the world. Like the tide over limitless flats, it spread with elemental force over an endless stretch of forest and steppe, spa.r.s.ely settled by backward and nomadic peoples. Wherever it met resistance, it would pause as the tide does to gather head, then resume its inexorable advance. Only at the distant margins does the plateau end in great mountain barriers: the snowy summits of the Caucasus; the Pamirs, roof of the world-where two of our three protagonists have peaks named in their honor, thrusting up over four miles each into the sky; the Altai, Sayan and Stanovoi mountains forming China's natural wall. How could a people not be great and not aspire to greatness, whose horizon was an unlimited as this Eurasian Plain?

The visual sweep introduces a work of history with resonance that stems from the skill of the writing. Perhaps that is too much for a beginner to hope for, though I have read the work of relative beginners whose work already embodies the magic of resonance.

The biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer is their att.i.tude toward rewriting. The writer, professional or not, looks forward to the opportunity of excising words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters that do not work and to improving those that do. Many a would-be writer thinks whatever he puts down on paper is by that act somehow indelible.

Hemingway said it succinctly: "First drafts are s.h.i.t." Judith Applebaum quotes Hemingway as saying to an interviewer, "I rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times before I was satisfied." Asked what stumped him, Hemingway said, "Getting the words right."

Of the most successful authors I have worked with, I can think of only one who fiercely resisted revising-for the first thirty minutes of each day that we worked together. Unwillingness to revise usually signals an amateur.

A. B. Guthrie, Jr., tells the story of a beginner at writing who asked him to criticize his ma.n.u.script. The work showed so much promise, was so close to being publishable, that Guthrie prepared a long list of suggested improvements. Three months later, he happened to meet the writer and asked how the ma.n.u.script was coming. "Oh that," the man said. "I haven't had time for it. I'm almost finished with a new novel." Guthrie reported that none of the man's work has ever seen print.

It is natural to resist rewriting. Every writer wants to be done with it, to cry, "Finished!" If you set a limit on how much rewriting you will do, you are merely devising an artificial barrier between your work and success. I have never encountered a writer who achieved a fully perfected ma.n.u.script in a first draft. In fact, the majority of published writers I have known write first drafts that are riddled with craft errors and embarra.s.singly bad writing compared to the version that finally sees print. They know that writing is truly rewriting.

Even some of the most experienced authors are not aware of a better way of revising than repeatedly starting at page one and going through to the end. That front-to-back process means the writer is rereading his book as he looks for places in need of revision, a word or two here, a paragraph there, a section that needs relocation, an unmotivated action, dialogue that isn't quite in character, a section that sags. After this process, the writer, having gone through his entire book, is likely to grow "cold" on his ma.n.u.script, particularly if he soon has to read it all again. He will have disabled himself from viewing the ma.n.u.script again objectively.

I call my method of revision "triage" after the system for treating battlefield casualties to provide maximum benefit with limited facilities. Doctors and nurses sort incoming casualties quickly to give priority to those whose lives can be saved by prompt medical treatment as against those who are likely to die in any case and those who will get better even if not treated. In the conventional method of revision, going from first page to last, the writer is dealing with trivial corrections one moment, the next moment coming up against a major problem, then more small matters, in a random process. The problem with that kind of tunnel revision is that the fixing of important problems may necessitate changes earlier in the ma.n.u.script, which requires clumsy backtracking; if new material is written, it will be in first draft and have to be looked at again, which means revising the rewriting on yet another front-to-back go-through. That procedure is like treating casualties on a first-come, first-served basis without regard to priorities.

What follows is a guide to the triage method of revision, which gives priority to those matters that are the princ.i.p.al causes of rejection by editors.

The steps I am about to propose are not written in stone. Their order can be changed, as long as the principle is maintained: major matters are attended to first.

Even if you use a computer, I recommend that you have a hard copy of your ma.n.u.script to consult for the simple reason that seeing what you wrote on paper will give you a fresh impression of your work. If you follow the steps I am about to suggest, reprint the appropriate section after making any major changes so that you are working with clean copy when you finally go through the ma.n.u.script from beginning to end. It is easy to be distracted by your own editorial changes.

* 6 *

The first step is to make a judgment about your main characters. Do you find yourself thinking about them in situations that are not in your book? If so, good! That means your characters are alive in your mind and should come alive in the minds of your audience. If you can't think of an important character in situations away from the story, that character may need more work. Character problems should be dealt with before beginning a general revision. I am about to ask you some questions about your protagonist that will help you decide whether or not that character needs work.

This method of revision makes certain that you have humanized your characters by giving them the kind of thoughts-not always "nice" thoughts-that people have in life. The danger is portraying a person that n.o.body wants to spend time with.

I have a confession to make. When I finished the first draft of The Magician, a highly regarded editor I showed it to said the sixteen-year-old protagonist was such a nice, dull, uninteresting kid that he almost didn't exist.

After all that work? My confidence shattered like a broken teacup. However, I pulled myself together and went back to work. I ended up giving Ed j.a.phet a more rounded personality at the outset by his denying his father a chance to see him perform at the high school dance. The reader's sympathies are with the father. He wants to see his son perform. The son denies that to him. Not nice, but it helped to make the son credible. Later in the book, Ed refuses to cooperate with the district attorney when Ed's a.s.sailant is being prosecuted; he doesn't want to have anything to do with the justice system. He had views, convictions, and was no longer a dull sixteen-year-old. I owe the long-lasting success of The Magician in many languages to the revision of its central character. Do take a look at yours.

Does your main character change in the course of your novel? In the climactic scene of The Magician, Ed gives evidence of a change in himself, a change so shocking that one editor, reading the ma.n.u.script for the first time, actually screamed, causing others to rush to her office thinking there had been an accident. In a story the length of a novel, it is essential that the protagonist undergo change. If yours at present does not, it isn't too late.

The next step in revision is to take a hard look at your villain or antagonist. Note that I use the singular-"villain" or "antagonist." If you have more than one, you may be diffusing the impact of the character's villainy by spreading it. Is your antagonist morally bad, not just badly behaved? Does your antagonist enjoy doing wrong to people? Is your character not just mischievous but malicious? What I'm getting at is the degree of villainy. Is your character just badly behaved or a truly evil person? The choice, of course, is yours. But readers find morally villainous characters more interesting.

Now let's swing the other way. Does your villain have something that charms or entices people? The mustachioed antagonists of yesteryear only provoke laughs today. If the villain isn't intriguing, interesting, lifelike, and believable, he may not be a worthy villain. No villain can attract victims unless he has charm, charisma, position, or wealth.

When I really like a villain of mine, I find that critics and readers like him, too. I liked one of my villains so much, he overshadowed the protagonist, and I spent a long time rewriting the hero to bring him up to the stature of the villain!

If you're having difficulty making your villain charming or interesting, try seeing him through the eyes of someone who loves him. Or at least cares a lot about him. The villain will be a more effective adversary if he has been humanized.

The trap I spoke of earlier applies to villains, too. It is an easy temptation for the writer, consciously or not, to use an enemy as a model for a villain in a story. The writer may lack sufficient distance from the character to write a villain who is both truly bad and at the same time interesting and perhaps even charismatic and charming. Novels are not a place to get even. Think of yourself as in the business of creating characters who are more interesting than the nasties you know in person.

The next step is to give some thought to your minor characters, who are often not minor if the credibility of a scene depends on believing their verisimilitude (lifelikeness). Just one special characteristic can make a difference. An easy way to help characterize minor players is to use one of the senses you may have neglected.

The next step is to be sure you have a credible conflict between your protagonist and the antagonist. Stories from time immemorial have consisted of people overcoming obstacles against high odds and strong adversaries. If you've followed a different course, your plot may not be strong enough to sustain the reader's interest. If your plot needs strengthening at any point, the guidance in Chapters 6, 7, and 8 will help.

The next step is to evaluate the scenes. What is the most memorable scene in your book? Don't go to your ma.n.u.script for clues. If you can't remember the scene, it isn't memorable! Then ask yourself what is the least memorable scene? You may have to browse through your ma.n.u.script until you find it. That's okay, just don't start reading word for word. That's what makes you grow cold on your book.

What in the scene you selected as most memorable made it work so well? What does that suggest about the least memorable scene? This comparison in itself may spark an idea for revision. Don't be disappointed if you can't think of a radical revision of your least memorable scene. The usual remedy is to cut it! If cutting it removes some piece of information the reader needs, find some other way of conveying that information in an existing scene.

Once you've revised or done away with your least memorable scene, you now have a new least memorable scene! You need to subject it to the same tough scrutiny. Would the book be stronger without it?

In dealing with many authors over the years, I found it desirable to set a standard. If any scene falls below that standard, out it goes. The process stops when the remaining scenes all seem to contribute strongly to the work as a whole.

Is it painful to cut a whole scene? Yes indeed. Why, then, should you do it? Because like a surgeon you are interested in preserving the body of the work by cutting out a part that's not working properly or that's causing harm to the body as a whole. What if you are blind to its faults and can't find a weak scene? Put the ma.n.u.script aside for a week, a month, or longer (the longer the better), then look again. The weakest scene will jump out at you, staring you straight in the eye until you decide whether to let it live or die.

Once you've dealt with scenes that weaken your ma.n.u.script, the next step is to test motivation. First, from memory, jot down what you believe to be the three most important actions in your novel. Is each action motivated in a way that you would accept if this story were told by somebody else? The credibility of your work depends on the three main actions being motivated to your satisfaction. If you find it difficult and need help, remember that motivation has to be either provoked by circ.u.mstance or planted ahead of time. Motivation can usually be established by planting it ahead of the scene in which the action takes place.

Chekhov said that if someone has a gun in the first act, the audience knows that the gun must go off in the third act. Among playwrights that's known as the obligatory scene. If a gun is seen in the hands of someone who is not known to carry a gun and then almost immediately fired, it will seem as if the author's heavy hand is at work. If the gun is planted much earlier, the use of it becomes almost inevitable. In fact much suspense can be derived from its not being used when the audience thinks it will be.

The news too often brings us cases of serial or ma.s.s killings that seem to have no reason behind them. Then follow-up stories deal with the investigation of the backgrounds of killer and killed because we want reasons for actions, not just to prosecute the killer but to understand human behavior, especially when it is not like ours.

The motivation of important deeds is not an option but a necessity. Writers of so-called commercial fiction often rely on coincidence. They a.s.sume their readers suspend disbelief more readily than the readers of literary fiction. Motivating actions takes work, and using coincidence is much easier. But coincidence is the mark of transient works, and I have met few novelists who are satisfied to think of their work as merely temporary entertainment.

After you've dealt with the three main actions of the book, the next step is to review any other significant actions, ferreting out poor motivation and anything that might seem to happen just because the author wants it to. Is there any action in your ma.n.u.script that is not in keeping with the character? Is there any action that under examination sounds farfetched? It might be fixed by planting a motive in a prior scene. Do this before undertaking a general revision so that you can judge the success of your revision as you read through from beginning to end.

Until testing motivation comes easily, I suggest rereading Chapter 15. That will help anchor in your mind the means of establishing credibility. The examples in that chapter will help remind you that motivation can often be derived from something simple.

You are almost ready to undertake a general revision of the entire ma.n.u.script. Take the first page and put the rest aside out of sight. Next do something else. Anything else. Take a walk. Take a drive. Play tennis or golf. Visit a neighbor. Make a cup of coffee. Whatever you do, try not to think about your ma.n.u.script. Then come back and make a new t.i.tle page that looks like this: Your Present t.i.tle by [Insert the Name of a Contemporary Author You Admire]

Now read the first page as if it were the other author's ma.n.u.script. After reading the first page, would you go on to the next page?

If there isn't a compelling reason to go to page two, it usually means that you haven't sparked the reader's curiosity. If that's the case, you need to go back to Chapter 2 of this book and see if you can use its guidelines to improve your opening.

Of course, if your first page as presently written compels you to read on, congratulations! You are ready to begin the general revision of your ma.n.u.script that I've kept you from by suggesting all of these other steps first.

Embarking on a general revision calls for starting on page one and working through the ma.n.u.script to the end, reading as a reader and an editor, not as a writer. If you're not used to the process, and if the fun we had with the t.i.tle page didn't give you enough distance, try to think of the ma.n.u.script this way: It was recommended to you by a friend, but you doubt the friend's judgment. He or she has previously recommended books you found wanting. Maybe this ma.n.u.script will turn out to be the same. You are going to read it critically, like a tough editor.