Is it weakness of intellect, Birdie, I cried...

The fact of you agreeing to be one of the two judges in a fiction contest--short stories and stand-alone segments of novels--reminds you once again of the notional climate inherent in any contest and/or submissions landscape. There is, for instance, the fact of you with a work of your own in submission for two months with a publisher whose books you have published two reviews. Speaking of which, there is the persistent campaign being waged by the author of a self-published book to have you review his project, despite your assurances that anything you might think to say about the work would hardly encourage anyone to read it, much less to buy it. There is also the incest of you living in a city with a larger-than-median percentage of writers, both published and aspiring, and, speaking of the nooks and crannies of interconnectedness, the other judge in this latest writing contest is not only a friend but someone who became a friend as a direct consequence of a published review of his last major novel.

There were also times when the writers' conference with which you are associated, in concert with the local daily newspaper, had a yearly contest, the awards being full and partial scholarships to the conference. As a judge in this contest, you frequently gave the highest marks to those submissions you thought had the least to recommend them, your theory being that they most richly needed the writers' conference.

Let us take a number, say one hundred, representing the number of times you have served as a judge in a contest. This is separate from the approximately one thousand book reviews you have written and at least ten thousand full manuscripts or manuscript proposals you have had a say on in your capacity at various editorial venues. Is there some terse, cogent philosophy you can articulate to describe the process by which you cast your lot for or against? If such terse, cogent philosophy existed, it might be this: If something aroused the adrenaline of your interest to the point where you felt invested in the outcome, you stood for it. If not, not.

What causes the adrenaline to flow in a genre you think you hate or at least have no interest in? What causes the adrenaline not to flow when the work is in a landscape you admire, written by an author whose work you admire? You would think a man with your experience would be able to give Power Point answers, the slides already on the screen of your mind, but the added fact is that you are vastly impatient with Power Point presentations, thinking them a gross sham.

The simplest answer--pace William of Occam--is that you like what you like on the basis of external chemistry. Same is so with individual persons; you like something in their manner or stature or posture or tone of voice or a combination of these and no doubt reflecting sexual, intellectual, and artistic considerations in the summary. You do not, accordingly, apply a cookie-cutter set of standards so much as you apply a chemical response which you then begin to break down into more component parts such as potential readership, artistic and intellectual challenges inherent.

Do you, in effect, say or think to another person, Thanks for letting us see you, but unfortunately...you are not right for us? No doubt you do.

How many manuscripts have you accepted without any thought of editorial suggestion?

How many friends and acquaintances have you accepted without any thought at all of wishing to tweak some large or small mischief?

Added to this calculus, how many novels or short stories, even by your own reckoning, even novels or short stories by Louise Erdrich, are perfect?

Is Conrad perfect? Wolfe? Fagan? Cook?

You know from intimate association and those tumultuous teen years when intimate association was put on hold that you least of all are in any way perfect and you are well able to live with that, just as you are able to live with the utter anarchy of unfinished business and clangorous coincidence in fiction.

Accordingly, even though you are hired, or in this recent case enlisted to judge, you do so by the one reliable standard you have encountered so far, the utter anarchy of chemistry.

Do you get along with your characters?

If we were to spend any time with our characters in social activities, we'd make an interesting discovery. We are linked to each of them by a personal chemistry, just as we engage without thinking about it in chemistry relationships with our real-time friends and associates.

One individual I know and would hesitate to call a friend has the same effect on people as the famed individual from the Li'l Abner comic strip who was accompanied wherever he went by a black cloud. This person from real life has the ability to transform the most casual greeting into a litany of illnesses, aches, pains, and past tragedies, including deaths, divorce, rejected manuscripts. There are others whose company I am not swift to invite, because each in his or her own way produces a tingle of reaction I prefer to spend my time distanced from.

Friends and associates are more likely to be individuals who produce a single or combined sense involving such ingredients as trust, curiosity, intimacy, the comfort of shared experiences, support, humor, overlap of interest. While scarcely thinking about the process, I realize I more or less interview friends and associates just as they have in their own way interviewed me. Getting acquainted with students provides and provokes validation or surprise, I am frequently told, "I thought I knew all the quirks and variations among writers, but you stand all that on its end and bring out plain crazy."

It is worth the effort to make a few lists, starting with family members, then with individuals we see as associates or in professional circumstances, then as individuals whose company we seek for the mere chemistry involved. Each of these individuals is assessed in terms of our own perception of the degree and sophistication of the chemistry.

But now, you have a kind of lexicon or template for assigning feelings to the new characters who are after us for the literary equivalent of a green card by means of which they are able to remove themselves from the shadow land of imagination, then into a story, perhaps even a novel, citizenship in an entirely different landscape with entirely different possibilities for a decent life.

It seemed like a good idea at the time

There are times when writing a story is on the same level with falling in love.  There is a rush of extended awareness of the entire world about you.  Details, mere details such as the color of flowers or the presence of buds on the arms of plants or the territorial calls of birds transmogrify into "things," not just things but "things," and you are somehow as sensitive and aware of the phenomenology about you as you were back in your days of popping LSD tabs as though they were penny candy.  

As is often the case, it is difficult to define the qualities that caused the falling in love, making it easier to think of the process as some subliminal chemistry by which you are drawn into awareness.  You should also own up to the risk factor involved, because the person with whom you may feel this chemistry may in her turn feel no such thing.  Alas for unrequited love.
Nearly as much as possible, you see the word discovery in place of chemistry when the rush of awareness comes over you in relationship to writing.  

You were drawn into the writing by some enigma you wished to solve.  You may be well on your way to solving the enigma when, suddenly, shimmering before you, there is a phrase or a clause or a sentence, sometimes even as much as a paragraph in which an awareness is granted you that you had not previously recognized. 

Here, too, you own up to the risk factor.  The discovery you believe yourself to have discovered may not reciprocate, whereupon your revisits to it will not produce anything more than a tinge of regret on your part for what might have been.

For some time now, perhaps twenty years, you've been aware of what you call the unwritten law of revision, the one that urges you to keep revising, rewriting, continue to look from a different perspective or even a different point of view until the moment arises when you discover something you had not previously known or had not had the wit nor grace to articulate.  Even a book review.  Even those confounded, maddening shorts, where you have limited word length and can barely accommodate a skeleton outline of the plot.  Discovery in such cases still emerges, coming in Morse code or haiku or some smaller format.

Because of the enormous evolution taking place inside and outside of publishing, there are extensive opportunities to access stories and essays, places previously unthought of.  With all the material available for readers every bit as eager for transformation as you, it becomes unthinkable not to write as though a discovery were waiting for you in some unanticipated corridor.  The equation for you continues:  it is unthinkable not to write as though you might fall in love, your own calculus equating discovery with love.

You are no stranger to times when you have awakened in a strange bed, aware of another presence, whereupon you understand the literary equivalent of buyer's remorse in all its painful ramifications.  This person actually inspired you to visualize chemistry.  This individual caused you to think in terms of discovery of one sort when in fact you were discovering awareness within you of quite other sorts.  All of which leads you to then become aware from a metallic taste and a pounding head that yes, you may have been drinking, and so, quite possibly, was she, and that she saw in you some chemistry. 

 Moments of embarrassed politeness over burned toast, barely warm coffee,and Welch's goddamned grape jelly.  Not quite the same effect as returning to a story you thought you'd learned from, but close enough.  Your only escape hatch is the realization that in either case, you were with a person or a story, drawn by a need for connection that reminds you again that you are of a species that is often a predator but which has the capacity for compassion and understanding.

Another fine mess...

combustion--the point in a short story or novel where dramatic elements collide with sufficient force to provoke action leading to a conclusion; the aggregation of forces prior to denouement; the literal and figurative boiling over of story.

A useful metaphor: story is a crucible into which such elements as characters and their agendas, opposing forces, surprise, reversal, and shifts of power have been added and the heat of plot inertia is applied. The pressure becomes so great that the story combusts, explodes, boils over, leaving the characters to clean up the mess, which is to say effect some kind of resolution, however permanent or temporary.

Most stories, longform or short, have combustion points; those that do not can profit from them. An excellent example of the combustion point in a short story occurs in Tobias Wolff's "Bullet in the Brain," where Anders has already been introduced as the point of view through whom the story is told, the bank robber is introduced, and the animosity between Anders and the bank robber set in motion. One combustion point comes when the bank robber fires a gun. A combustion point in a longer work occurs in the film, The Third Man, written by Graham Greene. The combustion point is viewable on You Tube (Third Man/Ferris wheel scene). Holly Martens, the protagonist, meets his old friend Harry Lime in a gondola car of a large Ferris wheel in the Vienna amusement park and Lime delivers his now iconic disquisition on the Swiss and the cuckoo clock. As a result of this cynical observation from Lime, a line is drawn in the moral sand between the two friends.

Each combustion introduces the element of change into the respective stories cited here, nudging each to its unique conclusion. The chemistry becomes: combustion causes change which forces outcome.

Hint: Aggravate, drive, tease, torment the characters to a point where one or more of them moves beyond what he or she appears able to take, causing the behavior that will make some things irrevocable, sweeping safer options off the table. Characters who are always in control ultimately tire the reader. Characters who appear to have breaking points concern the reader. Characters who either discover or are driven to an interior place they did not know they had become permanent residents in the readers' mind.

Chemical Reactions

chemistry--the tangible result occurring when two or more characters interact; an effect that seems to emerge and transfer into action when characters notably get along or develop an enmity; a palpable aura of reality emerging from the manner in which characters respond to one another; non-verbal signals which draw characters into friendships, alliances, or mutual distrust.

Chemistry is the unspoken glue in fiction, producing its own inexorable logic and the resulting consequences of that logic. Often coming as a surprise to the writer, particularly when it threatens to shift the predetermined direction of the story, chemistry is a jump-start to motivation and action. Sometimes the chemistry between characters is accepted by the writer and the reader on a non-verbal level, "just because it is." This very quality helps project a greater sense of reality and believability because of the way it overrides logic. Readers will probably have some sense in their own life of disliking or liking someone on sight, without any good reason; they probably make judgements as a direct result of such non-verbal signals, picked up by the sensory receptors of the social animal humans have become.

One of the many great chemistries in American fiction emerges in the characters of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, each drawn to the other in ways that make sense only after they are considered in light of the activities shared by the two. To Tom, Huck represents the freedom and anti-convention that runs rampant in a young boy, the ability to come and go as he pleases and the "worldly" knowledge such freedom brings. Huck on the other hand has come to accept Tom's views of conventional behavior, a slap-dash view of chivalry as seen by Walter Scott, and the classroom view of the way the world worked at that time. Tom was social, Huck wasn't. In this primordial ooze came their boyish desires for adventure, and from this came the chemistry that bound them.

In real life, Harry Longabaugh and Robert Leroy Parker met while in prison, each jailed separately on horse theft charges. The chemistry between them brings the Tom Sawyer-Huck Finn chemistry to mind. Longabaugh morphed into the Sundance Kid, an appellation doubtless hung on him by Parker since the name of the prison in Wyoming Territory where they met was the Sundance Prison. Parker, of course, was known as Butch Cassidy.

Yet another version of chemistry between characters emerged in the lengthy series of mysteries featuring Robert Parker's investigator, Spenser, and the unorthodox operative, Hawk, often retained by Spenser as a consultant (for which trope, read "backup gun hand").

Not to forget Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

The important fact for writers to consider takes in the reaches of partnering (say Dashiel Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles in the Thin Man series, and Dionysus and his slave, Xanthias, in Aristophanes' play, The Frogs) and leaving one character alone on stage for too long. When two characters appear to get on well or, as in Louise Erdrich's remarkable short story, "St.Marie," plucked from her novel, Love Medicine, a young Native American girl in a convent school forms a totally explosive relationship with a nun, run with the energy. Follow the trail. Exploit the chemistry.

See also fun

Your Novel: Wax Museum or Dramatic Hoop-la

reaction--an answer or response made by one character to other characters and/or a stimulus.

The reaction of one character to another, to groups of characters, and to stimuli ratifies the presence of reality and importance necessary to cause the reader to accept the fiction as being plausible. Characters who do not react or, indeed, respond, help to impart a dream-like state to the narrative, making it more like an oratorio in which the principals are seated together in a pew than opera in which the characters interact on a stage, complete with blocking and mise en scene. In successful story of any length, one or more characters are working actively to change the status quo. Even if it is the lone, nameless protagonist of Jack London's "To Build a Fire," the reader is made to see the goal. The reader already knows the consequences of this character's failure to succeed--this is literally a life in the balance. Whatever else the reader may think of this character--how, for instance could he have allowed himself to get into this predicament?--the consequences of failure to achieve the goal are apparent.

Longer, more complex stories, such as Jim Harrison's Returning to Earth, pretty much illustrate the way reaction among characters works. The first of a menu of narrators is Donald, mid forties, a superb athlete when younger and now a man whose profession still keeps his relatively physical. Early on, Donald is diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS. Donald's reactions alone are worth the investment of time to read the novel. "...it seems I am to leave the earth early but these things happen to people." He begins to dictate his family history to his wife, Cynthia, so that their children will have a record of who he was and whence he came. Subsequent chapters are narrated by Cynthia, by her brother, and by the children of Donald and Cynthia, all of whom are reacting to the feelings set loose by Donald's impending death and his own wishes for how and where his life shall end and where his remains shall be interred.

Characters are neither required to flail about the story arc in an operatic manner nor be tight-fisted about demonstrating how they are responding to the circumstances that pester and plague them. Whether the story at hand is a Raymond Carver short story as intended by him or as edited by Gordon Lish, there is no mistaking that his characters are being affected by inner griefs and conflicts, possibly even being assisted by such add-ons as severe drink-related problems. Similarly, characters in short stories and novels by the Irish writer, William Trevor, present the reader with situations that impinge upon them like tight suits.

A story where one or more of the characters appear to move through the complexities of a torturous plot without reacting is suspect, surely not as memorable as stories in which characters demonstrate their feelings by some form of behavior as they pursue their goals, avoid reversals or frustrations, and continue their efforts.

On occasion in stage, motion picture,or television performances, actors will be seen to produce a "chemistry" that adds to the entire story. One such combination was Paul Newman and Robert Redford, respectively portraying the outlaws Butch Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh, aka The Sundance Kid. Another dramatic coupling, Neil Simon's play, The Sunshine Boys, produced yet another type of chemistry, the long-time vaudeville association of two characters who refused to speak to one another when off stage, a chemistry found in real life with the paring of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan.

Successful characters have been stoics, cowards, hypochondriacs, taciturn, and overly emotional; they have been afflicted with Tourette's Syndrome (Lionel Esrog in Motherless Brooklyn), and severe autism (Christopher John Francis Boone in The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time); they have been as self-absorbed and difficult to like as Sherlock Holmes and his contemporary counterpart, Gregory House, M.D. They have in chemical common the fact that they react to the persons, places, and things about them. The reader may not, need not, like them, but the reader knows a character when he sees one.

A Little Fear, a Little Plot, a Good Deal of Chemistry

fear--an essential presence needed to effect the needed vision in writing, acting, music, and visual renditions. Fear comes after the idea begins to emerge, precisely when the executor is poised and ready to execute the words or performance or visions; it is the fear of having overreached this time, not having suitable technique to accomplish the vision. Without fear, the resulting performance would be variously rote, boring, and deadly safe. Without fear there can be no discovery. Without discovery, writing becomes reportage, acting becomes mimicry, music becomes mechanical, visual renditions become parody.

In Pat Conroy's remarkable novel, The Great Santini, the young protagonist asks his Marine Corps fighter pilot father,"Are you ever afraid of anything when you fly?" The father, Lt. Col. Bull Meecham, replies, "Yeah. I'm always a little afraid when I fly. That's what makes me so damn good. I've seen pilots who weren't afraid of anything, who would forget about checking their instruments, who flew by instinct as though they were immortal. I've pissed on the graves of those poor bastards too. The pilot who isn't afraid always screws up..."

Be afraid. Fear is a good thing; it encourages writing about unsafe things.

plot--a design or floor plan for the placement of dramatic furniture; a feng shui of emotional obstacles, arranged to produce stress, action, and either some degree of solution or recovery. In order to qualify as story, the most opaque and elliptical of narrative arcs requires some plot design to give the reader the sense of having entered at one point and being transported to another. Equally, the narrative arc must draw two or more characters into a situation where such events as choice, humiliation, understanding, exultation, frustration, or successful achievement are within sight. Plot means someone is vulnerable to something, whether the ticking clock of time elapsing, romantic or artistic rejection, or the awareness of failure looming like the marine layers of mist and fog off the California and Oregon coastlines. For a writer to use plot as a verb means to arrange a plausible set of obstacles for one or more characters, then track them as they attempt to work themselves free. For characters to feel that others are plotting against them, they must be aware of an intent to frustrate their stated goals. Not all antagonistic plotting has malicious intent; it may be merely a doctrinal or philosophical placement of obstacle. When a character senses that the plotting against him is malicious, the reader senses an enhanced dramatic presence.

Most memorable plots are wound about the armature of a single basic emotion such as revenge, fear, love, ambition,and jealousy. These emotions are widely recognized across cultures and time, powerful enough, each in its way, to hold the most determined character in a stubborn grip.

plot-driven story--a narrative experience in which the intricacy and persistence of plot appears to take charge of the behavior exhibited by characters; a story in which the domino theory of scene and event holds priority over behavior by individuals. In plot-driven stories, characters are more likely to respond to the placement and removal of obstacles than they are to respond to their feelings about another character or their reactions to events. Some plot-driven stories approach high levels of character revelation and investigation; yet other plot-driven stories are so artful as to make the reader overlook the plot-driven nature of events. One such example is Richard Powers' unsettling novel, The Echo Maker. On close examination, Richard Price's novel, Lush Life, fits the definition of plot-driven, both examples being offered as refutation of the belief that plot-driven stories and longer works are necessarily inferior to stories in which characters and their responses seem to dictate behavior.

The plot-driven story serves as a challenge to the mature writer who is able to moderate between the mechanics of goals and obstacles and the inventive discovery of dimensional characters.

chemistry--a symbiotic, often unplanned relationship between characters in a story; a force or attraction that draws a writer to a dramatic situation or concept. By allowing characters full rein to interact and respond to one another, unintended relationships may flourish as the story progresses. To be open to such thunderstorms of chemistry, the writer must scrupulously avoid cliche or any other convenient shorthand, allow characters to respond with honesty to one another, whether they act on that honesty or not. If a writer is attracted to a dramatic situation where the conclusion appears already forgone, rather than rely on plot, the writer needs to investigate the characters involved, looking for the chemistry that provokes the creative energy necessary for closure.