Stein on Writing (30 page)

The evening of May 9, 1940, was one of these nights. At 11 p.m., as Roosevelt sat in his comfortable study on the second floor of the White House, the long-apprehended phone call had come ...

That paragraph, like much of the book, is filled with visual particularity and action. Goodwin’s book is worth studying for its technique in using research, all of it documented, not only to characterize historical persons but to provide the reader with a rich experience.

Here is a checklist of questions you can ask yourself when characterizing:

• Would the reader be able to identify the person you’re writing about if he was seen in a group of ten people?
  
• Have you done anything with the person’s eyes, the way they are used, to look at a person or to look away?
  
• Have you given the reader a sense of how that person feels through describing an action rather than by stating the person’s feelings?
  
• Does your person have a habit like tapping a finger, pointing eyeglasses, laughing too loud, waving his hands in a particular way that would make him more visible?
  
• Is there anything individual about the gait or posture of the person?
  
• Can you lend resonance to your characterization by invoking other matters in which your person was involved?
  
• Has your person changed much? In a longer work, can you use that change?
  

Setting a scene goes hand in hand with characterization. Suppose someone described a scene from history this way:

Mary Stuart came into the great hall, followed by her retinue. She climbed the steps to her chair, faced her audience, and smiled.

The reader gets the information, the facts, but not the essence of the occasion, and it is the essence that conveys truth. There is no reason why nonfiction writers cannot do as well as novelists in conveying a scene.
Witness what historian Garrett Mattingly did in introducing Mary Stuart in
The Armada:

She entered through a little door at the side, and before they saw her was already in the great hall, walking towards the dais, six of her own people, two by two, behind her, oblivious of the stir and rustle as her audience craned forward, oblivious, apparently, of the officer on whose sleeve her hand rested, walking as quietly, thought one pious soul, as if she were going to her prayers. Only for a moment, as she mounted the steps and before she sank back into the black-draped chair, did she seem to need the supporting arm, and if her hands trembled before she locked them in her lap, no one saw. Then, as if acknowledging the plaudits of a multitude, though the hall was very still, she turned for the first time to face her audience and, some thought, she smiled.

How much Mattingly gets into part of one paragraph, all of it designed to make a scene
he never saw
real to the reader.

The difference between ordinary nonfiction and extraordinary writing, as in Mattingly, is often in the resonance:

Against the black velvet of the chair and dais her figure, clad in black velvet, was almost lost. The gray winter daylight dulled the gleam of white hands, the glint of yellow gold in her kerchief and of red gold in the piled masses of auburn hair beneath. But the audience could see clearly enough the delicate frill of white lace at her throat and above it, a white, heart-shaped petal against the blackness, the face with its great dark eyes and tiny, wistful mouth. This was she for whom Rizzio had died, and Darnley, the young fool, and Huntly, and Norfolk, and Babington and a thousand nameless men on the moors and gallows of the north. This was she whose legend had hung over England like a sword ever since she had galloped across its borders with her subjects in pursuit. This was the last captive princess of romance, the dowager queen of France, the exiled queen of Scotland, the heir to the English throne and (there must have been some among the silent witnesses who thought so, at this very moment, if she had rights) England’s lawful queen. This was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. For a moment she held all their eyes, then she sank back into the darkness of her chair and turned her grave inattention to her judges. She was satisfied that her audience would look at no one else.

Note how Mattingly conveys the strength of her presence in the last lines of that paragraph. He is characterizing a strong queen for whom many had died. Is he making things up? The writing—quite apart from Mattingly’s considerable reputation as a historian—convinces us that the author has feasted on every scrap of eyewitness testimony and on paintings to convey that scene.

Lest you conclude that resonance is available only to the writer of history, here is a paragraph from James Baldwin’s essay about his father from his first published nonfiction book,
Notes of a Native Son.
Note how the drive to the graveyard blossoms into so much more:

A few hours after my father’s funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker’s chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the third of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass.

The day of my father’s funeral had also been my nineteenth birthday. As we drove him to the graveyard, the spoils of injustice, anarchy, discontent, and hatred were all around us. It seemed to me that God himself had devised, to mark my father’s end, the most sustained and brutally dissonant of codas. And it seemed to me, too, that the violence which rose all about us as my father left the world had been devised as a corrective for the pride of his eldest son. I had declined to believe in that apocalypse which had been central to my father’s vision; very well, life seemed to be saying, here is something that will certainly pass for an apocalypse until the real thing comes along. I had inclined to be contemptuous of my father for the conditions of his life, for the conditions of our lives. When his life had ended I began to wonder about that life and also, in a new way, to be apprehensive about my own.

Conflict, Suspense, and Tension in Nonfiction

A
re the techniques of plotting any use to the nonfiction writer?

All storytelling from the beginning of recorded time is based on somebody wanting something, facing obstacles, not getting it, trying to get it, trying to overcome obstacles, and finally getting or not getting what he wanted. What has interested listeners, readers, and viewers for centuries is available in the conscious use of desire in nonfiction.

In life we prefer an absence of conflict. In what we read, an absence of conflict means an absence of stimulation. Few things are as boring as listening to uncontested testimony in a courtroom. Few things are as interesting as a courtroom clash. If Marjorie and Richard lived happily ever after, the reader’s response is “So what?” In articles, newspaper stories, and books, the reader’s interest often flags because the writer did not keep in mind that dramatic conflict has been the basis of stories from the beginning of time.

Conflict does not have to involve violence. Conflict can be low key. It can exist by innuendo. What it takes is a mind-set when examining the cast of a prospective piece, whether it is to be an article or a scene in a book. Are there two people, two parties, two organizations, or two entities of any kind that are in conflict? If the conflict might not be immediately apparent to the reader, can the writer provide some help by bringing the conflicting elements closer to each other and by highlighting the conflict, actual or potential?

Conflict can arise from a thwarted desire, but the desire must be planted. Here’s a simple before-and-after example:

Terence McNiece, 14, was arraigned yesterday in Town Court for allegedly stealing a bicycle belonging to a neighbor.

Watch what happens when desire is added:

According to the testimony of his mother, Terence McNiece wanted a bicycle more than anything in the world, but she couldn’t afford to buy him one. Terence, age 14, was arraigned yesterday in Town Court for allegedly stealing a bicycle belonging to a neighbor.

In the first part of the example, the information that a boy has been arrested for stealing a bicycle comes across as dispassionate fact. It’s rather blah. The revised version, in which we learn that the boy wanted a bicycle more than anything else in the world and that his mother couldn’t afford to buy him one, tugs at the reader’s emotions. What has been activated is the boy’s desire for the bike, which is more powerful than the act of stealing. A news story or a nonfiction piece can move a reader more if the writer remembers that desire, wanting something important badly, can be a force.

The more important the objective, the bigger the conflict will seem to the reader if there are obstacles in the way of gratifying the want. The thing that’s wanted may not be possible. Nevertheless, the reader can have his emotions stimulated by that unrealistic and unattainable want.

When the writer has his material and is ready to begin writing, that’s the time to determine whether any of the people in the story he is about to write want something badly. Bringing that material up to the beginning could help touch a match to the reader’s emotions.

One of the best guides for planning nonfiction is the Actors Studio method for developing drama in plots that I described in Chapter 7. It involves giving each character in a scene a different tack. That technique can be adapted to nonfiction. In preparing to write any passage or scene involving two people, if the writer focuses on their differing intentions (or “scripts”), he will immediately see the dramatic advantages of positioning their conflict in many kinds of adversarial situations in which conflict is inherent in the circumstances.

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s remarkable book
No Ordinary Time
focuses on the home front in World War II and on Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. All couples in a relationship have differing scripts, but the Roosevelts are a dramatic example of the point. Eleanor was motivated by humanitarian causes, Franklin by politics. Their intentions clashed frequently, made more complex by their extramarital friendships. Yet as a public couple, especially as Franklin became governor and president, they were trapped
in a crucible. (You will recall from Chapter 8 that crucible is an emotional or physical environment that bonds two people and that characters caught in a crucible won’t declare a truce. They’re in it till the end. Their motivation to continue opposing each other is greater than their motivation to run away.) The story of the Roosevelts, in expert hands, is as moving as the exemplary novels whose characters are trapped in a crucible.

Though the crucible is as applicable to confrontations of people as it is to fictional characters, I have never known a nonfiction writer who employed the idea consciously. Yet it has been used in countless histories and biographies, both of which invite scenes in which two adversaries are locked in a situation that holds them together more than anything that would drive them apart. Nonfiction writing would be more dramatic and tap the reader’s emotions more if the crucible were considered more often in the planning stage.

Suspense is a valuable technique for the writer who wants to make his reader keep turning pages. It occurs when the reader expects something to happen and it isn’t happening yet because the author is holding off. For instance, if a person has been characterized in an interesting way and the reader learns that the character is in danger, the reader wants to know how the person gets out of danger. If that information is withheld for a while, the reader will be left in suspense. If trouble is in the offing, the reader hopes that the person will find out in time to prevent the bad event from occurring. A variant occurs when the reader wants something to happen to a character and it isn’t happening yet.

Nonfiction writers do not think of suspense as a conscious method for enhancing reader interest in their work, though some writers use suspense instinctively. Let’s look at a simple example, from a newspaper story, of how suspense can be implanted:

A bus carrying thirteen passengers to Mount St. Vincent yesterday evening careened off the road into a gully. One of the passengers, Henry Pazitocki, died before the ambulance reached the scene. Six other persons were hospitalized, two critically.

There is no element of suspense in that first paragraph. The story continues:

Three of the passengers with minor injuries told patrolman George Francese investigating the accident that the driver may have been
drinking. A spokesperson for the Tri-State Bus Company denied those allegations.

Accusation and denial rendered, no suspense. Here’s how a writer conscious of the benefit of suspense might have written the same story:

A bus carrying thirteen passengers to Mount St. Vincent yesterday evening careened off the road into a gully. One of those passengers never made it to Mount St. Vincent.

A spokesperson for the Tri-State Bus Company said, “The driver is a teetotaler. There is no evidence that he was drinking despite what some of the passengers said. It was an accident.”

The first sentence tells what happened to the bus. The second sentence arouses curiosity as to who was the passenger who didn’t make it. The purposeful repetition of “Mount St. Vincent” helps set up the suspense. The second paragraph doesn’t tell us who the person is. The switch to a different part of the story (the spokesperson for the bus company) heightens the suspense. The reader wants to know more. Another element of suspense is introduced: was the driver drunk or not? The last paragraph of the story reads:

Patrolman George Francese, investigating the accident, said, “Three other passengers with minor injuries complained that the driver appeared to have been drinking. Rosella Carew, who was sitting just behind Henry Pazitocki, the man who was killed, said, ‘I had doubts about getting on the bus when I saw the driver’s eyeglasses in his lap and he didn’t even seem to know it.’ ”

This method of handling the story not only provides conflict for reader interest, at the end it lets the reader draw his own conclusion.

The following true story demonstrates how suspense can be built and maintained in nonfiction through a consistent point of view in which the reader learns only what the narrator knows, and learns it when the narrator learns it:

A friend of ours let us have the use of her condo in Florida during a period of icy weather in the east. It was a cozy place, fully
equipped, with only one problem. The dishwasher disgorged water all over the kitchen floor.

My wife went down to the superintendent’s apartment—his name is Roger—and knocked on the door. He didn’t answer. This was Friday, could it be his day off?

I met Roger the first day we were there. He helped us with our luggage. I tried to tip him for helping us with the bags, but he waved the bills away. I guessed Roger to be in his late thirties, maybe a couple of years older. Later, from the window I watched him washing the cars of residents, which seemed to give him a lot of pleasure. No car wash in the world could do the job as meticulously as Roger did. I saw him doing small repairs around the place. Whenever I passed him, I stopped to exchange a sentence or two. I think Roger was slightly retarded, a nice man with a personality a lot more pleasant than most of the people around him who had all their marbles.

Come Saturday morning, my wife went down to Roger’s apartment again. Still no answer. I thumbed through the Yellow Pages, and after four tries got a plumber who was working on Saturdays and who promised to show up in an hour. He showed up three hours later, did a quick fix on the dishwasher, but cautioned us that a pipe leading to the dishwasher needed replacing and urged us to tell the superintendent.

I didn’t see Roger around at all on Saturday.

On Sunday I looked out of our second-story window and saw several policemen clustered around the door of Roger’s apartment. I hurried down and was intercepted by a neighbor.

“Roger’s dead,” he said.

“Where?”

“In his apartment.”

All I could think was, “He’s so young!” He seemed strong and healthy the way he hoisted our bags.

The policemen weren’t saying anything except that the body was still in the apartment and they were waiting for the coroner.

Hours later, from my window I saw the body bag being carried out. By the time I got downstairs, the police were gone.

Two days later I was about to drive out of the underground garage, when I saw Roger and a young girl moving stuff out of his apartment. I thought he was dead! Who was in the body bag?

I stopped the car and got out to tell Roger how glad I was he was alive and to find out what happened. The man had a stammer. I didn’t remember Roger stammering.

It turned out that the man was Roger’s twin brother, who’d come a distance, and with his daughter’s help was piling Roger’s belongings onto a pickup truck.

“Not the bed,” the brother said, shaking his head.

From him I learned that Roger had suffered a silent heart attack, probably on Thursday night since he didn’t respond to my wife’s knock Friday morning. Because he must have felt very cold, Roger put one electric blanket under himself and another on top. He burned all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

“The funeral,” the twin brother said, “will be closed casket.”

If I had started to recount what had happened by saying, “The superintendent of the building I was staying in burned to death last weekend,” I would have spoiled the story by telegraphing the outcome. That’s what we do in life. Our instinct is to give the conclusion first. As storytellers, we have to hold back by telling the story from a consistent point of view—in this case, mine—and showing what happened as I learned about it. I didn’t refer to Roger as “the superintendent.” I called him by his name. I said a couple of things to humanize him. I particularized as often as possible. But most important, I stuck to one point of view. I didn’t say more than I found out at any time. I conveyed what I learned in the same order that I learned it, thus giving the entire story a consistent point of view.

In considering suspense, you might want to refer to the following checklist:

• Can your first paragraph arouse curiosity by withholding a piece of information till a bit later?
  
• Does your story set up a question or controversy and not answer or resolve it immediately?
  
• Are you loading in facts that unnecessarily diminish suspense early?
  
• Have you described an action that may arouse curiosity but that isn’t explained in the same paragraph?
  
• Can you convert any sentence to a question that will arouse curiosity rather than satisfy it?
  

In considering the creation of tension in nonfiction, let’s keep the difference between tension and suspense in mind. Suspense arouses a feeling of anxious uncertainty in the reader about what might happen, or a hope that something bad won’t happen. Tension usually involves the sudden onset of a feeling of stress, strain, or pressure. As I’ve pointed out earlier, we deplore suspense and tension in life and enjoy them in writing.

Tension can be created by the simple mention of a time or date.
“It was four o’clock in the morning”
creates tension because it’s an hour when most people are asleep. Therefore, anything that happens at four in the morning is in itself tension producing or could be. It’s the “could be” factor that creates tension in the reader because he expects tension as part of his experience.