Problem Plots

CERTAIN STORIES rated this section on either or both of two
counts. First, some stories seemed to be genuinely out of
place in the slicks. It was not so much that they did not fit
into the categories fashioned here, but that they, for one
reason or another, seemed to have nothing much in common
with any of the other stories. Second, certain of the
stories were one or two of a kind. Rather than generalize
some plot-heading into meaninglessness, a sort of catch-all
here at the end of the book, seemed more satisfactory.
Most of the stories discussed in this book relied heavily
on some kind of mystery. Whether it was a mystery of identity,
situation, method, or whatever, the story would end
precisely when the mystery was solved. Throughout the
book I have tried to emphasize that a slick story holds a
reader's attention with suspense, with a mystery of one sort
or another, and then finally satisfies the reader by satisfying
his curiosity, by explaining the mystery. Well, there is a
very cute and not uncommon reversal of this seemingly
basic trick which sells more manuscripts than might be
supposed. The reversal consists of posing a problem,
creating the mystery, and then leaving the darn thing up
in the air.
"My" husband tells me that he has been having a recurrent,
continuing dream which has been seriously troubling
him. I press him for details, and reluctantly he tells me that
every night he imagines he is a certain Wall Street broker. He
seemingly lives through all the broker's waking experiences.
He goes to the office, attends to his business, and then goes
home to a sumptuous apartment and a beautiful, sophisticated
wife, etc.
Immediately I am jealous of this other life my husband is
leading, and every morning I ask if the dream recurred during
his previous night's sleep. Every morning, I find that it
has. I explain to my husband that all the contents of his
dream-the job, the wealth, the wife-are compensations for
his waking frustrations. Then I suggest a cure. I recommend
that he take powerful sleeping pills for a while, so that he
will sleep too deeply to dream. He tries it, and wakes the
next morning with good news. The dream was gone. He goes
on taking the pills for a week. It appears that he is rid
of the thing for good, when, one day, while my husband is at
work, I pick up a newspaper and see on the obituary page a
picture of a man who exactly resembles my husband. He is a
Wall Street broker, and his name is the same that my husband
told me was his in the dreams. To my horror I realize
that I have committed murder with my sleeping pills.-The
story ends with a rather corny appeal to the reader for help.
These wide-open stories are very popular in some markets.
Esquire uses them quite a bit, and The New Yorker
did for a time, but seems to be off them at present. Once
such a story has been read through, the structure is ap
parent. The writer, instead of stating the problem and then
solving it, actually has spent his entire wordage developing
the mystery and to hell with what happens after
that. Against the norm of a story which has a beginning,
middle, and end, these question-mark pieces have only a
beginning. The slick usage of the type is for the most part
restricted to terror tales like the one described.
Background, local color, family chit-chat, and such constitute,
of course, common incidental music to more prominent
themes. Occasionally, though, there will be no one
prominent theme. The total effect of such a piece is that
of the familiar stage play which is full of amusing and interesting
characters who spend three hours doing and
saying all sorts of unrelated things. Every character, to be
sure, has his own trifling problem peculiar to his personality
which at the close is certain to be resolved. You Can't
Take It with You was such a play. And, taking into consideration
that a philosophical and social theme ran
through them, The Iceman Cometh and The Lower
Depths were this kind of omnium gatherum. There is no
denying that fine creative writing can be done within such
a format, even in lengths and looks that resemble short
stories. But the chances are the editors will send such
efforts back charging "not a story."
There is a snappy switch possible of the popular "biterbit"
story which might well be called "bitten-bites." One
example concerned a real-estate agent who was having
business troubles.
Either his clients refused to pay him his commissions on
the grounds that they did the selling themselves after the
agent had merely introduced the customer, or clients demanded
ridiculous, unobtainable prices for their properties,
or perhaps clients would refuse to sell to customers they considered
unworthy of the privilege. At any rate, he was having
a difficult time of it, when, one day, he is visited by a distinguished-
looking gentleman and his wife who announce
that they are interested in purchasing something moderate-
something for about $100,000, the gentleman says.
Excitedly, the agent warns his biggest client to make ready,
he is about to bring over a customer for the property he
never thought he would be able to sell. The party arrives, and
the gentleman customer, who has introduced himself as a
colonel and the president of a well-known manufacturing
firm, makes himself right at home. He expresses pleasure with
the grounds and the building and even with the present occupants
(since he does not wish to buy from any new-rich, he
says). But he claims he must stay over a day or two in order
to be sure of the "feel" of the estate. The host agrees to accommodate
the colonel and his wife, and the agent retires
from the scene, certain that he will soon be pulling down a
fat commission. In two days, though, the owner calls to say
that the colonel decided against buying and that now he, the
owner, is turning his property over to another agent, since
he feels that the sale was lost by this agent's mismanagement.
The same morning, the colonel and his wife show up again
at the agent's office ready to look at another estate-something
a trifle better, they say. The agent directs them to his
second largest account, and much the same thing happens.
The colonel and his wife hang around for a few days, eating,
drinking, and acting like royalty, and finally decide not to
buy. The agent loses still another property.
This kind of thing goes on for a couple of weeks when suddenly
the colonel announces that he has been unable to find
anything in which he and his wife could live comfortably, and
says that he is returning to his home and business in another
city. A few days after the departure, the agent makes a call
to the colonel's company in order to talk with him about another
property he recently acquired. When he gives the colonel's
name, the party answering at first does not recognize it.
But suddenly the name is remembered and the "colonel" is
paged from the drafting department where he works as
a draftsman.-The story closes with a "cute" announcement
from the agent that he is taking a vacation himself,
that he plans to go to Saratoga where he intends to spend
some time with the best families in the East-for free.
Switches on standard plot-lines like this are highly desirable
commodities, if they manage to perform the same
functions that the more common plots do. Indiscriminate
"switching" for the sake of originality is foolish. The
writer must remember that some very ingenious and inventive
writing brains are applied full time to the problems
of selling the slicks. I dare say that attempts have been
made to sell diametric reversals of every basic plot described
in this book-probably without much success. Generally,
the wiser course is to leave the trail-blazing to the
ultra-experts with the very well-known names. They have
the confidence of the editors to back up their experiments.
category:plot lines