Manual For Fiction Writers by Block, Lawrence (classic books to read .TXT) 📗

forms. Both Pal Joey and You Know Me, Al were published as magazine stories before being collected in book form. Back in the forties the Saturday Evening Post had a continuing series of stories about one Alexander Botts, a traveling salesman for Earthworm Tractors, the stories consisting of Botts's letters reporting on his progress. (Have to check author.)

Sue Kaufman liked novels in document form, and was particularly deft at writing them. Cf. Diary of a Mad Housewife. She did a piece for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, an article in the form of a fictional diary, on her reunion at Vassar or her memories of Vassar or something like that. What was the title?Confessions of a Vassar Gel? Diary of a Vassar Gel? Something like that.

There was another story called Address Unknown which I read at least twenty-five years ago. Published in Reader's Digest, I recall, and I believe there was some question as to whether it was fiction or not. (I read it years after its original publication, in some long-lost anthology.)

Premise of story: American Jew is corresponding with German business associate during Nazi period. The exchange of letters reveals that the German is acquiescing in the Nazi treatment of the Jews, and fails to aid a relative of the American letter-writer, who seeks revenge in an unusual manner. Knowing his letters are read by the Nazi censors, he writes in such a manner as to cast suspicion upon his German correspondent. His last letter concludes with the line, May the God of Moses stand by your right hand, and it's returned stamped Address Unknown, and we infer that the intended recipient has been arrested as an enemy of the state.

Wish I could find that story. Be useful to cite it when writing column. Goal for Tomorrow's Run: Simple survival. Five easy miles is plenty.

New York City

12 September 79

Ms. Rose Adkins

Writer's Digest

Dear Rose,

I enclose herewith (1) the galleys of the December column and (2) Documentary Evidence, the January offering. As you can see, it's itself masquerading as a collection of documents, and this letter to your estimable self is part of it. Wheels within wheels, Rose. If The Lord High Everything Else objects to the grammar and syntax and such, tell him it's all in the interests of verisimilitude. (You might want to check my spelling of verisimilitude, Rose.)

Keep those cards and letters coming, love. And try to keep Brady away from the prepubescent schoolgirls. One of these days he'll find himself in real trouble.

Larry

CHAPTER 35

Surprise!

IN THE past several chapters we've taken a good look at the towering importance of Story. The great majority of readers occupy themselves with fiction for any number of reasons?to identify with the characters, to learn about different backgrounds or epochs or ways of living, to deepen their understanding of their own lives, or to kill a few minutes between the soup and the salad course. But the one factor that keeps them turning pages is the over-riding urge to learn what happens next.

The element of surprise is one way writers add excitement to the resolution of the question of what happens next. The surprise ending is a classic component of fiction, particularly in the short story. Indeed, that abbreviated form known as the short-short is rarely anything more than twelve or fifteen hundred words of build-up to a snapper of a surprise ending.

Endings don't have to surprise the reader in order to satisfy him. Whole categories of fiction are as predictable in their plot resolutions as the stars in their courses; while I would not go so far as to say, for example, that if you've read one gothic novel you've read them all, I doubt many of us could read too many of them and find ourselves bug-eyed with astonishment at their endings.

On a more exalted level, few works of great literature hold extraordinary surprises for the reader. They are rather more likely to have plots which move inexorably to conclusions which seem in retrospect to have been inevitable from the beginning. This does not render their hold on us any less compelling, any more than our attention wanders at a performance of Macbeth because we recall the ending from tenth-grade English. We're no less caught up in the question of What Happens Next for being able to recite the speeches along with the actors.

The surprise ending is very much with us, however, in both published and unpublished stories. Most mystery shorts, a good deal of science fiction, and a substantial number of general magazine short stories have surprise endings, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that the production of unestablished writers hews to this pattern. In one WD short-story contest, for example, it would seem in retrospect that perhaps a third of the entries had surprise endings. (Another third had come-to-realize endings, of the sort in which a woman on her way to commit suicide sees two sparrows courting in a birdbath and decides the world's not such a bad place after all. And another third of the entries had no discernible ending whatsoever?the woman sees the sparrows in the birdbath, say, so instead of committing suicide she goes to the hardware store and buys two pounds of nails and a shiny new hammer.)

Perhaps a look at some of the different kinds of surprise endings will give us an idea of what works and what doesn't?and why.

1. WITHHELD INFORMATION. Probably the most common amateur