In the delightful and essential HOW FICTION WORKS, James Wood writes about the concept of “getting in.” (Wood is quoting someone else, but I lent out my copy so the real credit will have to wait.)
The idea is that not only must we draw our characters well, but also quickly.
Over the course of the story, a character may take us on the emotional/psychological/literary equivalent of climbing K2, but we can’t go anywhere with them without that first firm foothold.
I was thinking about this concept the other day while watching In a Lonely Place, a 1950 film noir drama directed by Nicolas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart. Check out how screenwriter Andrew Solt gets Bogart’s character in.
SCENE:
A warm night in Los Angeles. A convertible (driven by BOGART) stops at a light next another convertible (driven by a BIG LUG). In the passenger seat is a LOVELY BETTY.
LOVELY BETTY
Dick Steele! How are you?
BOGART
[Reaction shot as he draws a blank.]
LOVELY BETTY
Don’t you remember me?
BOGART
Sorry. I can’t say that I do.
LOVELY BETTY
Well, you wrote the last picture I did. At Columbia.
BOGART
Well, I make it a point to never see pictures I write.
BIG LUG
You! Stop bothering my wife.
BOGART
Oh . . . you shouldna done it, honey. No matter how much money that pig’s got.
BIG LUG
You pull over to the curb!
BOGART
What’s wrong with right here?!?
BOGART gets out of his car in the middle of the street ready to THROW DOWN, but the BIG LUG drives off.
Now isn’t that just lovely?
The “you wrote my last picture” bit is a tad clunky, but it’s immediately redeemed by the next line, which not only establishes Bogart as a self-hating screenwriter, but also a misanthropic self-hating screenwriter who has zero interest in playing the game. (He could have easily recovered with a lie or some Hollywood-style ass kissing.)
But the real treat is that final exchange. A lesser (or at least a modern) writer would have padded the scene. We’d have our post-modern tentativeness and our blustery one-liners. Instead we get a character who is so spoiling for a fight he can barely get his car in park.
All that in nine lines. In a novel you could get all that done in fewer than two pages.
My challenge to you:
Take a look at the key people in your current project. Are you getting them in fast enough? Are you getting them in hard enough?
Good luck.
I really believe in this, and what slim skill I have comes from writing short fiction. You just don’t have the real estate to show your characters to great extent. You have to pick the one or two things that really count.
I think writers get into trouble because we must be able to describe our characters to ourselves in so many words. That’s our job. The reader just needs a general, often wordless feeling.
Here’s one of my favorite opening paragraphs, from one of my favorite pieces of writing (a travel story called “Forty Years in Acapulco” by Devin Friedman):
“You wake in your dim hotel room to a day just like yesterday and exactly like tomorrow. That’s the idea, anyway: that every day down here be identical. Namely, sunny, with low humidity and temperatures hovering in the low nineties. This is what people work their whole lives for, and it’s more than you could have expected. You, a schnook from Poland who came over on the boat in 1920. But these are the facts of life if you’re Mort Friedman, known to some as Mort the Sport, to others as the Window King of Cleveland, my eighty-nine-year-old grandfather. One full month in Acapulco, Mexico, every February for the last forty years. You tell everyone: This is the life, baby.”
It’s not a short paragraph, but by the end, we know exactly where we are (and what it’s like there), the voice and cadence of the grandfather, and enough biographical markers that we can fill in some of the gaps on our own.
Love the dialogue from the flick, love the paragraph by Friedman. Now I’m inspired to get out some Raymond Chandler and see some Howard Hawkes.
Hey D. Cass–So explain why “you wrote my last picture” in this context is clunky. Anyone? Thanks.
@Doug: Love that paragraph. Mixing the second person and the third person creates a very nice effect.
@Dennis: “You wrote my last picture” isn’t bad, but it would be punchier to if she said the title of the movie:
Don’t you remember me?
I’m sorry but I don’t.
Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen?
I make it a point to never see pictures I write.