Stein on Writing (25 page)

“I’m a salesman. I sell cases to juries. Or to punk D.A.’s.”

When Thomassy 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 Thomassy’s self-description is something like, “Hey, Thomassy, don’t knock yourself. I’ve seen what you can do.”

This technique of elevating by seeming to do its opposite sets Thomassy 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 sex, 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.

Thomassy 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. Thomassy 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 glasses filled halfway with something I didn’t recognize.

“Madeira,” he said. “Rainwater.” He took a sip. “Magic,” he said, and handed me my glass. “It’s a one-drink drink. Safe.”

I looked at the glass 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 glass 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 glass to hold. There I was, helplessly holding one glass in each hand, unable to move, and he licked the Madeira from each breast and from the valley between.

He borrowed his glass back, tipped it lower down, then handed it back, my handcuff. I looked at the two glasses, 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 Thomassy 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 sex is stalled, but not the scene. Thomassy brings her a special drink, to intoxicate her not with alcohol but with what he precedes to do with the drink. The sex act itself is handled the same way. This is a love story, and their first sexual encounter is related to the things that bring them together. We experience love blooming, not just passing 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 participants, 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 sex 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 sexual 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 sex 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 classic scene of a boy being initiated by a prostitute. However, this boy has had sex with this girl before in the company of his cronies. This time a special circumstance 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 compassion.

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

In writing any sexual 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 sex 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.

Creating the Envelope

T
his 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 Shelly 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 glass.

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 substituted 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 associates 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, “Nobody 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.