Part 9 (1/2)

Its tires screeching, the taxi accelerated away in the streets below.

In the Times, she thought, her obituary would rate a picture. In the News it might even make the upfront pages, given her occasional notoriety and the scandalous nature of what she was determined to do.

Her father would think what? He'd say something like, Death can't teach you anything you can use! In her mind, she touched fingers to Philip Hartman's eyes, closing them so that he could not see.

Pulling herself up onto the ledge she scratched her right knee. She remembered the midtown traffic accident she had come upon and the badly injured woman lying in the street, her dress up, her pubic hair visible to the gaping onlookers; s.h.i.+rley was glad she was wearing pantyhose, as if it mattered. Why was she still holding her handbag? She dropped it to the roof behind her, heard the gla.s.s of her mirror break.

What if her hurtling self hit that pedestrian late-walking his dog, or another one unseen, she was not a murderer, the only crime she wanted to commit was against herself. If there were a crowd below yelling Jump! Jump! Jump! would she leap into their midst?

It seemed funny to be afraid to stand up on the ledge. She swung her legs around to let them dangle over the side.

Would her limbs flail?

Might her head turn down as she fell? The thought of it striking the pavement first was terrible.

She stood up on the parapet, swaying slightly.

Al said she looked better naked than she did with clothes on, as if that were the ultimate compliment. Al had nothing to do with her decision. It was her life. She wanted out. s.h.i.+rley held her breath.

Mingled in s.h.i.+rley's thoughts are the following flashback thoughts: 1. What she thought about the moon when she was a child.

2. The unwashed dish with the remains of her dinner.

3. The diary she should have burned.

4. Al, who loved her.

5. Her father.

6. A traffic accident with a badly injured woman.

7. Al's comments about how she looked naked.

Why the flashback thoughts? If in the first chapter the reader saw an unknown woman trying to commit suicide, the reader's emotions would not be engaged in any important way. You have to know the people in the car before you see the car crash. s.h.i.+rley's flashback thoughts, added to her thoughts in the present, are how the reader gets to know s.h.i.+rley and begins to want her not to jump.

Note that the flashback thoughts are part of a visual scene in the present, a young woman up on a parapet, ready to jump. If the flashback element is to consist of more than quick thoughts in an ongoing scene, the writer must be certain to create a flashback scene that stands on its own to avoid the flashback becoming a narrative of something that happened elsewhere. To move from what is happening in the present to a scene from the past without breaking the reader's experience requires segueing to a scene in the past as inconspicuously as possible.

The term segue is derived from music. It means to glide un.o.btrusively into something new. I prefer the segue into a flashback to the more direct method, moving from the present scene to a scene in the past inconspicuously.

Flashbacks normally decrease suspense, but they can be fas.h.i.+oned to increase suspense. For instance, in The Best Revenge there is a single scene that runs for three chapters. It is the fierce facing-off of the protagonist, Ben Riller, and the antagonist, Nick Manucci. To heighten the suspense of that confrontation, I inserted three flashbacks into the scene, remembered by Nick, designed to increase the suspense by postponing the outcome of the confrontation. Each of the flashbacks illuminates the long scene and adds to its meaning. And each is segued into and out of as surrept.i.tiously as possible.

In the course of the same novel one learns a great deal more about the antagonist in flashbacks from his wife's point of view. We find out what kind of lover Nick is, why she married him, and what happened to that marriage. An antagonist, characterized in depth, has come to life as a credible human being, a person who holds the reader's interest, however inhumane his methods. Saul Bellow said that Nick Manucci, the villain, was the best character in the book. I believe Nick's flashbacks and those of his wife contributed to that view.

If the ghost of Sinclair Lewis is within earshot, I say flashbacks done correctly can provide richness and depth to a novel as long as they don't read like flashbacks, if they are active scenes slipped into and out of simply and quickly.

If you have a flashback in your ma.n.u.script or are contemplating writing one, ask yourself, does the flashback reinforce the story in an important way? Is it absolutely essential? If it's not, you may not really need it.

Can the reader see what's happening in your flashback? Can you give it the immediacy of a scene that takes place before the eye? If your flashback is not a scene, can you make it into an active scene as if it were in the present?

Take a close look at the opening of your flashback. Is it immediately interesting or compelling?

Is the reader's experience of your story enhanced by the flashback or-however well written-does it still intrude?

Has the flashback helped characterize in depth, has it helped the reader feel what the character feels?

Is there any way of getting background information across without resorting to a flashback?

We now come to an ideal solution: moving flashback material into the foreground and eliminating the need for a flashback.

The example I'll use brings forward childhood material since that is the most common occasion for writing a flashback: ”You were a lousy kid, Tommy, a brat from the word go.” ”Hey, man, if you got punished as often as I got punished-” ”Your old man was teaching you discipline.” ”By yanking my plate away before I'd had a mouthful?” ”He got through to you, didn't he?”

”He starved me. What he got through to me was I was hungry and he wouldn't let me eat. I hated him. I wished he'd die.”

”You got your wish, didn't you?”

In this brief exchange in the present the reader gets the following information: 1. Tommy had a lousy childhood.

2. Whoever is talking to him thinks it was Tommy's fault.

3. Tommy's father withheld food from him as punishment.

4. The repeated punishments drove Tommy to hate his father and wish him dead.

5. The speaker is loading Tommy with guilt.

Note that all five points were conveyed in short order without a flashback. You've just seen how information can be conveyed in present dialogue in such a way that the reader is witnessing a dramatic scene that takes place in the present, thus eliminating the need for a flashback.

The example above is entirely in dialogue. Thoughts can accomplish the same purpose, as in the following example in which only one of the characters is speaking, yet all the points are made: ”What's bothering you?” Al asked. ”You're not eating.”

Tommy poked his fork at the pork chop. He cut pieces off. He raised one toward his mouth, then suddenly put the fork down and shoved his plate away from him. ”Hey, kid, tell me what's the matter,” Al said.

The matter, Tommy thought, was you didn't have my father, I did. You didn't have him yanking the plate away as punishment. You didn't go to bed with pain in your gut. ”Hey,” Al said, ”is it your old man's death? Is that what's bothering you?”

Tommy has said absolutely nothing. We've been privy to his thoughts. And we've got the background we need right in the foreground.

In conclusion, I don't want to minimize the skill that's needed to make flashbacks as involving for the reader's experience as everything that happens in the present, However, I've never seen essential background material that couldn't be made to work as scenes. And more of that background can become foreground than you may suspect. The time it takes to do it right is an investment in the reader's experience.

Credibility is central to much of what the writer does. He creates a world in which the invented characters must seem as real as the people who surround us in life. What happens to them, however extraordinary-and it should be extraordinary-must be believable. The motivations of the characters should be credible. And that provides the occasion for the writer to meet his biggest enemy, himself.

The writer has a natural tendency to act as we all do in life-that is, we question the motivations of others more often than we do our own. When creating fiction, those characters are our selves and we cover for them. This leads to a variety of problems.

I have watched as a bestselling action novelist once again has a character throwing another character over the railing of a s.h.i.+p. Think a moment, how many people do you know who would be capable of lifting a hundred and fifty pounds or more up from the ground high enough to toss that entire weight over a railing? In action fiction, the willing reader suspends disbelief. If one guy throws another over the railing, the reader goes with it. If a writer's concerned about the quality of his writing and needs to say that ”Tiny picked him up bodily and threw him over the railing,” he will have planted earlier that Tiny is six foot three and a weightlifter.

In fiction, plays, and film, planting means preparing the ground for something that comes later, usually to make the later action credible. Planting is necessary when a later action might seem unconvincing to the reader. Not all actions require planting. For instance, if Todd trips Andrew and Andrew then punches Todd, Todd's action does need planting, Andrew's punch does not.

In fiction that has a higher aim, the credibility of every important action in the story is at risk unless the writer is confident that the motivation or ability of the character makes the action credible.

Some inadequate motivation is easy enough to fix. For instance, if a character suddenly gets up to go shopping for the convenience of the author because something is going to happen in a shopping mall, the events in the mall may not be credible unless the motivation for the character going to the mall is planted ahead of time. The planting can be simple enough through a touch of humor: ”I'm not going to go on a shopping spree ever again. After today.”

Or you simply need to get a character out of the house. Instead of an unmotivated walk, he could say.