Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies

by Sol Stein

Characters of different cultural classes caught in a crucible are, of course, ideal for fiction. The dramatic heat generated by cultural differences, inherited or nurtured, added to the differences of individual temperaments, can help writers create wonderful stories.

The process of identifying different worlds for the reader can be accomplished quickly through markers, easily identified signals that to the majority of readers will reveal a character’s cultural and social background.

the Actors Studio technique, giving your protagonist and antagonist different scripts and letting them tangle.

Author James Frey refers to a crucible as “the container that holds the characters together as things heat up.” Characters caught in a crucible won’t declare a truce and quit. They’re in it till the end. The key to the crucible is that the motivation of the characters to continue opposing each other is greater than their motivation to run away. Or they can’t run away because they are in a prison cell, a lifeboat, an army, or a family.

The writer’s duty is to set up something that cries for a resolution and then to act irresponsibly, to dance away from the reader’s problem, dealing with other things, prolonging and exacerbating the reader’s desperate need for resolution.

We’ve learned that what counts is not what is said but the effect of what is meant.

There are three areas in which the writer is particularly vulnerable to telling rather than showing: when he tells what happened before the story began; when he tells what a character looks like; and when he tells what a character senses, that is, what he sees, hears, smells, touches, and tastes. Those are all places where the author’s voice can intrude on the reader’s experience.

All seven of those titles are metaphors. They put two things together that don’t ordinarily go together. They are intriguing, resonant, and provide exercise for the reader’s imagination.

The best of nonfiction, however, often sets what it sees in a framework, what has happened elsewhere or in the past. As the recorded events march before the reader, a scrim lifts to convey other dimensions, sight becomes insight, reporting becomes art.

Like fiction, nonfiction accomplishes its purpose better when it evokes emotion in the reader.

Few things are as boring as listening to uncontested testimony in a courtroom. Few things are as interesting as a courtroom clash.

Conflict can be low key. It can exist by innuendo. What it takes is a mind-set when examining the cast of a prospective piece, whether it is to be an article or a scene in a book. Are there two people, two parties, two organizations, or two entities of any kind that are in conflict?

Until you are in the habit of making sure that there is something visual on every page, while reviewing the draft put a small V in the lower right corner of every page that has something visual on it.

This time, as you read, watch for anything that momentarily makes you see words on the page and takes you out of experiencing the story. You are aiming for the reader’s total immersion.