Biter-Bit

BITER-BIT is a technical editorial term used to describe a
story about aggression, in which the aggressor becomes
the victim.
A college boy receives a letter from the sister of one of his
fraternity brothers. In it, the sister tells about a $20 bill which
her mother hid in her brother's Bible, thinking the boy would
be nicely rewarded if he ever were to read his Bible as she
wants him to. With this information, the boy rushes down to
the Bible-owner's room and starts bargaining to buy the Bible
from him. After considerable dickering, the Bible is sold
for ten dollars. Rushing back to his own room, the boy who
purchased the book madly searches through the pages for
the $20. When he finds nothing, he returns to the seller's
room. His frat brother is out, but has left on the desk a halffinished
letter to his sister in which he explains that their
ruse has worked again, and that he is enclosing the ill-gotten
$10, $5 of which she is to put in the church collection basket
the following Sunday.
A biter-bit story is usually told from the point of view
of the eventual victim, who throughout the major part of
the story seems to be the perpetrator of the joke, swindle,
etc. At the close of the story described above, another biter-
bit might begin. It would deal with the attempt of the sister
and brother to cheat still another college student. At
the story's close, they would find themselves undone by
another party even shrewder than they. The biter-bit has
two component parts: first, a fairly original situation in
which one man is doing another dirt; second, an ingenious
reversal whereby the dirt is done the doer.
Think over four or five jokes you've heard recently.
Probably two or three of them are really biter-bit stories.
In a sense, that is all the writer need know about the form.
Essentially, the biter-bit is an extended joke or anecdote.
Just as in so many jokes, there is the non-malicious aggression
and then the sudden setback for that aggressor. As in
the joke, too, the story first sets up a taut situation and then
explosively loosens it with an unexpected reversal. As with
a successful joke, also, the good biter-bit must have a spark.
It is an exceedingly common story-form, not difficult to
write. Consequently, what the editor pays for is the idea,
the gimmick, the switch.
Really original biter-bit ideas are not easy to come by,
either for writer or editor. Therefore, a good one will
probably sell, even if it has been manhandled in the exec
ution. That is how popular the type is with readers! An
Inadequately written biter-bit which contains a sound,
new, amusing gimmick will often elicit a request for a rewrite
from an editor.
Here's a neat example of a biter-bit idea which received
quite plain, breadlike handling. The idea was the one valuable
component of the story.
Two truck drivers are told by their boss to drive a load of
dynamite to a certain destination. En route, their brakes go
bad while coasting down a long hill which leads into a small
but densely populated town. In order not to endanger the
townspeople, they risk their own lives in bringing the truck
to a safe stop on the edge of a cliff. They call the boss to tell
him of their heroic action and close escape. The boss is
amused and confesses that the truck actually contained eggs.
He had said the load was dynamite to assure careful driving.
The drivers tip the truck over the cliff and then call to say
they're sorry, but they couldn't save the truck. It slipped off
the cliff.
There is a very cute and appealing type of biter-bit
which achieves a nice circular effect.
A recruit, taking basic training, goes to a camp dance and
finds himself the object of the attentions of a lovely WAC.
The pair wander out behind the Service Club where the
WAC becomes amazingly friendly. The recruit's training
sergeant discovers them and is coldly dismissed by the WAC.
The sergeant has it in for the recruit all through his training.
And for the sake of sheer survival, the recruit turns himself
into an A-1 soldier. When at last basic is over, the recruit
has done so well, he is made corporal by the company com-
mander and becomes a training officer himself. That evening,
when he goes to look up his WAC friend at the service club,
he locates her exactly where the sergeant had originally discovered
him. She is with a new recruit, saying the same things
to the recruit she had said to him... .
Closing with the re-occurrence of an initial situation is
an ancient, time-honored gimmick, used and abused many
times over. But done with a certain amount of verve, it
always seems to tickle both editor and reader.
Editors are quick to locate flaws in the logic of stories.
"Why would so-and-so do this?" "I don't think your heroine
would have married the boy in the first place."
"Couldn't he have sold his car and gotten the money that
way?" "We don't feel that such and such a character was
clever enough to pick a safe deposit lock."... Questions like
these are inevitable. Sometimes the apparent fault that the
editor points to does not trouble him as much as some
other failing he senses but cannot sufficiently isolate to
describe. But, at any rate, if all stories containing peccadilloes
in logic were rejected, magazines would have to hit
the stands much thinner than they currently do. And with
the biter-bit, it's almost impossible to develop a tricky situation
which will stand close scrutiny for motive. When
there are these basic inescapable flaws in the story-idea,
they must be camouflaged. When the editor asks that you
make your characters act more reasonably, all he wants is
that you have them seem to act more reasonably.
As an example of a really one-legged plot beautifully
propped up, take this.
A newspaper man narrates the tale. He informs us that
there was a terrible fuss in the newsroom the other day. It
seems that the sports editor who had been losing money to
the local bookie for years developed a scheme whereby he
could regain all he had lost and then some. The local bookie
hangs out in a restaurant across the street from the newspaper
office. He gets his race results there by phone, but two minutes
after the race the results come over the newspaper's ticker
machine. The editor worked out a system with another em.
ployee whereby the editor would stack soda bottles on a
window sill and his confederate across the street, seeing the
bottles, would bet the winner before the bookie knew the
race was over. For two days, the system works. The editor
plans to make his killing the third day. When the news of
the key race comes through, the editor finds he does not have
enough soda bottles to complete the code sign. A copyboy
had cashed half the bottles for the deposit. And that, the
narrator explains, was the cause of the mayhem in the office
the other day.
The story as recounted here shows its flaw immediately.
Actually there was no reason for the editor to get so excited.
His scheme was not made useless by the want of
enough bottles that one day. He could very well have won
back his money the following day; in fact, gotten rich from
the bookie, if he had worked the thing slowly enough. This
implausibility no doubt was apparent to the author, for
he is a frequent contributor to the slicks who takes special
pains with his plotting. But it was an integral, indispen -
sable part of the story. Since it could not be changed, it had
to be hidden. What the author did was cover the blemish
with speed, wisecracks, and the synthetic suspense he created
by starting his story with the mention of mayhem and
closing it as soon as the cause of the mayhem was explained.
"Yes," the reader says, chuckles, and turns to the
next story.
category:plot lines