WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?

by Steven Steinbock

I’m still basking in the glow of my first short story publication. It spurred me on to start another story. I’m off to what I feel is a really good start, but I have no idea where I’m going with it. That’s an awkward state for me.

Earlier this week, Rob gave some excellent advice about not talking about a story when you should be writing it. I agree with him that “If the bottle leaks the champagne gets flat.” In other words, put a cork in it. At the risk of violating this sage advice, I’m going to share a little bit about the process rather than the story itself. If anyone out there has any advice or suggestions, I’ll take them. If anyone can extract any lessons from what I have to say, more power to ‘em.

There are all kinds of people in this world: those who begin setting word on paper without a clue what the story will be about; those who have a general idea of beginning and end-point; and those who won’t commence writing until the entire story has been fully outlined. My colleagues here at Criminal Brief Central represent every color in the plotting spectrum.

You may have heard me here and elsewhere advocating the importance of plot. I’m a strong believer that plot is important, but is neglected in a lot of contemporary writing to the detriment of civilization in general. But in the spirit of full disclosure, I confess that I’m such a loud supporter of plotting largely because of my own insecurity about it.

My story has a plot, don’t get me wrong. But at this point it’s about as sketch a plot as plots go:

BEGINNING: Our hero gets himself into a bad situation
MIDDLE: The more our hero tries to get out of the situation, the deeper he gets into it.
END: Our hero manages to climb out of the situation and live happily ever after.

Someone once described plots this way: You put your character in a tree; you throw rocks at him; you get him out of the tree.

Without giving away any of the specifics, here’s the present state of my story:

I began with what I thought was a really comical situation. Although the protagonist is not a criminal, there are criminal activities going on. The protagonist reacts, and I’ve allowed the situation to get stickier, and the protagonist finds himself deep in the soup. Using the tree metaphor, I’ve been having fun throwing rocks at my hero. I still have a few more rocks in my artillery, but I know that eventually I have to get him out of the damn tree.

Donald Westlake handled this sort of plot well. I’m not sure he planned at all. But he could sure hurl rocks at his characters. In fact, the title of my column today (What’s the Worst That Could Happen?) was the title of one of his Dortmunder novels, and pretty much sums up this whole criminal-screwball subgenre. One of my favorite Ed McBain books is a nonseries novel, Downtown, in which a man in New York on a business trip finds himself in one predicament after another. While writing the book, McBain must have kept asking himself “what’s the worst thing that can happen to this guy?” and then finding something worse.

I enjoy this kind of story. But I despise a story that doesn’t resolve itself satisfactorily. Let me rephrase: a work of fiction that doesn’t provide resolution is not a story at all. And I don’t want to write one of those. I’m having fun writing this thing. But I’m feeling a little like Pip from Moby-Dick, floundering in a boundless ocean not sure which way I’ll find the shore or the Pequod. If any of you have a special mantra, or a magical rock I can rub, or any incantation that will bring me closer to shore, let me know.

Meanwhile, I’m still here swimming in the soup, and it’s not too bad in here.