When the Going Gets Tough, Go All In

Young man summons up the courage to stand up to a bully.

They had his hat, having just snatched it from his head. He wasn't saying anything, but he was trying to get it back. He kept reaching up for it. As he approached one attacker, not hurriedly, but with purpose, the thief would toss it to his sidekick. The boy followed the hat back and forth between the two fourth-grade thugs.

It was November in Illinois and there was a bite in the air. The ground wasn't frozen yet, but it was cold. It was midwest football weather.  

Joey was walking home from the Air Force base elementary school. It was about a mile and a half hike. He was almost halfway home when the two older boys surprised him from behind. He had just turned off the sidewalk to take the well-worn path by the ditch that ran behind the four-plex housing units. The two assailants overtook him, grabbing his hat as they ran past him. 

After tossing the hat back and forth several times, Chuck, the larger and meaner of the two, suddenly tackled Joey to the ground. Joey struggled. Chuck bore his weight down on third-grader. He put his knees on Joey's arms, pinning him against the grass. Joey was smaller than Chuck, and he thrashed around trying to get up. Chuck called for the hat from his buddy and further taunted Joey with it.  

Joey's eyes welled up with tears. He shouted at the bully, "stop it!" After a few more seconds of tormenting Joey, Chuck got off and tossed the hat into the narrow drainage ditch a few yards away. There it rested on top of weeds sticking up through scummy-looking water. "There, go get your hat, cry-baby."

Eddie, Chuck's sidekick, was laughing. Joey jumped to his feet, red-faced, clenching his fists and considering his next move. Chuck and Eddie were a foot taller than the 3rd grader. Chuck paused, waiting for the boy to make his decision, then turned and said to Eddie, "let's go, he's chicken."

After walking for a bit, Chuck and Eddie turned around to see Joey wading ankle-deep in the weeds and muck to retrieve his hat.  

He walked home in squishy socks and shoes. It wasn't far, maybe 10 more minutes; Joey lived in one of the four-plex apartments. The back of his apartment faced a small recreational lake off in the distance. The lake fed the ditch that ran directly behind his four-plex. 

For a third-grade boy, it was a fantastic place to live. The lake was small, maybe a half-mile across with a gravel road running around it. There were well-defined paths that ran through the woods surrounding the lake.  Joey knew the lake, the woods, and the trails like the back of his hand. He was a year-round explorer and fort builder.

Joey's preferred route to school was out the back door of the apartment complex, through the playground behind the four-plex, along the path running beside the ditch, and eventually to the sidewalk that led to the elementary school on the edge of the base.

When Joey got home in his wet socks and shoes, his Mother called out a pleasant greeting from the kitchen. When she got no response, she came out to see Joey taking off his wet shoes and socks at the front door. "What happened?" He told her how two fourth-graders grabbed his hat from behind on the path coming home from school, and how they played keep-away with it until they finally tossed it in the scummy ditch.

In repeating the events to his Mom, he got worked up again to the point of tears. Then Dad came home. Joey was embarrassed, and of course, he had to repeat the entire story again. This time he worked hard to keep his emotions in check. Dad simply said, "Well, you'll have to stand up to those boys if you want them to stop. Bullies are really cowards. They don't mess with guys that stand up to them."  

Joey got the message. He knew it was coming before his Dad even said it. Joey had heard the stories. His Dad had been a rough-neck in his youth. He would never back down from a fight. His Mom looked worried. 

But Chuck was never without Eddie, his wingman. Eddie wasn't as intimidating as Chuck. Nonetheless, if Joey was going to stand up to Chuck, it would sure help if Eddie would stay out of it. Joey needed his own lieutenant.

Joey's options were limited to a few of his friends. Bennie, a neighbor and good friend who was very good at sports, but a real goody-two-shoes. Bennie was fit for the task but would never risk getting into trouble. 

Then there were the two boys who lived across the hall: Billy and Bobby. Bobby was perfect. Always in trouble and tough as nails. But Bobby was a year younger than Joey, too young to ask to take on a fourth-grader. Billy was the right age, same as Joey, but not nearly as tough as Bobby. Billy would have to do.

The look on Billy's face made it clear that he was skeptical of the plan. He was wise enough to ask about Joey's nemesis, and upon finding out it was Chuck, he just shook his head no. However, when Joey mentioned Bobby, Billy quickly signed up. No way would he allow his little brother to pass him over for the job.

Billy and Joey began stalking Chuck and Eddie after school. They waited for them to veer off the sidewalk for the path along the ditch. Three days in a row, Chuck and Eddie kept to the sidewalk in front of the apartments, harassing other unsuspecting victims. Their favored tactic was the surprise attack from behind.

It finally happened on day four, Thursday. Chuck and Eddie turned off the sidewalk to take the path along the ditch behind the apartments.

Joey, with Billy right behind him, also took the path.  They were about twenty yards behind Chuck and Eddie. They picked up their pace as planned, and once they had closed to within ten yards of the targets, Joey gave the command, "charge!" He sprinted all out, head down for Chuck. Billy went for Eddie.

Chuck turned around just in time to be plowed over by the charging third-grader. Chuck most likely thought that's all there would be to it, but oh no, Joey was on him quickly, raging, wailing on him with both fists, the whole time screaming like a wild man.

Chuck's full attention was on covering up to avoid being hit in the face. After what seemed like an eternity to Chuck, Joey slowed the attack to check on Billy.

Billy had not done so well. He collided with Eddie but was able to knock him to the ground. Instead, Eddie had thrown Billy to the ground and held him there by sitting on him. Joey got off the stunned Chuck and went to Billy's rescue.

This would be a flank attack. Joey threw all his weight against Eddie, knocking him off Billy. Eddie rolled once on the ground and leaped to his feet. Joey jumped up too, glowering fiercely at Eddie, growling like a mad dog. Eddie retreated two steps.

Having witnessed the rabid third-grader's charge on Eddie and still smarting from his own pounding, Chuck yelled to Eddie, "let the sissies go, let's get out of here." And with that, they walked away cautiously, looking back over a shoulder every so often.

Still buzzing with adrenaline, it took a few seconds for Joey to recognize victory.  The bullies were retreating from the battlefield. The whole attack took less than a minute. When it became clear it was over, Joey threw an arm over Billy's shoulders, smiling ear-to-ear. He looked at Billy, who was smiling too, and simply said, "Thanks buddy. They lost, and they know it."

Joey never did say anything to his Dad about that afternoon. Maybe his Dad knew.  The boy had summoned up the courage to take on a bully. He went all in on a formidable foe and won. It had changed him.

Reviews

[JayG]

There are some thing getting in your way that most hopeful writers won’t notice. And since they’re fixable, and not a matter of how well you write, or talent, I thought you might want to know.

The problem you face began way back in your schooldays, with the skill they had you practice via unending assignments to write reports and essays—then, a lifetime of using and improving those skills. And because it’s a skill we spent so much time perfecting, we make the logical assumption that writing is writing, and that the word "writing," that appears within the name of the profession we call, Fiction-Writing points to that skill. But it doesn’t. They offer degree programs in Commercial Fiction-Writing, remember, and surely some of what’s taught there is necessary. Right?

The thing that gets in the way of our noticing the problem is that our own writing always works when we read it. We, uniquely, can hear all the emotion in the voice of the narrator. But while you can say: Joe snarled as he said, “You are a b*****d,” We CAN’T tell the reader how to read YOUR lines. And you, uniquely, know the intent of how a given phrase is to be taken, have the context you don’t give the reader, and every character’s mind-state and backstory. That's why we need to read our work from the sear of a reader, not our own.

The kind of writing we’re taught explains and reports, as does all nonfiction. But the goal of fiction isn’t to make the reader know. As e. L. Doctorow put it: “Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

Not knowing that, and using the report writing skills we’re all taught, you're playing the part of the verbal storyteller, explaining and reporting, mostly in synopsis and overview. But in fiction, we don’t tell the reader that Sam cried at his father’s funeral, we make the READER weep. And THAT takes an entirely different approach to writing, one they never mentioned as existing during our school-days.

Look at the opening, bearing in mind that the reader must have context as they read, if the words are to have meaning:

• They had his hat, having just snatched it from his head.

So…and unknown “they,” had pulled someone unknown’s hat, for unknown reasons. Who are they? Unknown. Where are we? Unknown. What made them do that? Unknown. Whose skin do we wear? You know. The hat snatchers know, but the one you wrote this for has not a clue, and therefore, as they read the line, it has no context.

And thought you clarify, there is no second first-impression. Had you known the three things the reader needs clarified quickly on entering any scene, though, you would have provided context as the line is read.

You need data on simple things that need to be taken into account, like: how can a reader feel sympathy—or better yet, empathy—for a character who has no name, and whose age is unknown?

Throughout, though it’s not your fault, because you’re using the tools you were given, in the way you were taught to use them, this is a report. But because you begin reading with a mental picture of the scene, and knowledge of what happens before it happens, it works perfectly.

And true to the methodology, you tell the reader, “It was about a mile and a half hike.” That may be true. But would the story change in the smallest way had the walk been a single block, or, had his mother dropped him there? No. So reading about it serves no story purpose, and only slows the narrative.

At the moment, you’re thinking in terms of events, and visual images. But ours is not a medium that supports image or sound. And unlike film, where the entire background, setting, and ambiance is taken in by the viewer in a an eye-blink's time, in print everything must be spelled out serially, one word at a time. That means that every unnecessary line, or word you remove speeds up the act of reading the story, for more impact.

That’s why, when writing fiction, any line that doesn't either move the plot, meaningfully set the scene, or develop character, needs to be chopped.

Instead of explaining, as a dispassionate outside observer, we make the reader live the story in real-time. And to do that, we need to calibrate the reader’s perception of the events to that of the protagonist.

Why? Until it's pointed out, we forget something critical: The reader reads/learns everything that happens before-the-protagonist does. So we REACT before the protagonist does. Given that, doesn’t it make more sense for the reader to react to what happens as-the-protagonist-will, as against reacting, and then reading about the protagonist’s response? The joy of reading isn’t learning what happens, it’s feeling that it’s happening to US, as-we-read. And to do that, we need to know the scene as the protagonist does, which takes a very different approach.

We tend to think we learn the tricks of fiction by reading it. But…can we see the points where the author decided to use “this” instead of “that?” No, because we don’t see the tools in use, only the result of using them. And we do expect to see that in what we read. More to the point, your reader expects to see the result of you using them, which is the best argument I know of for digging into the tricks the pros take for granted.

There are lots of ways of doing that that don’t involve four years at the university. There are workshops, conferences, retreats, and even writers cruises. There are critique groups, but they tend to be the blind leading the blind. The easiest method, as I see it, is the public library’s fiction-writing section. You work when you have time, at your own pace, with no pressure, and, no tests.

Personally? I’d suggest Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer, which recently came out of copyright protection. It's the best I've found to date at imparting and clarifying the "nuts-and-bolts" issues of creating a scene that will sing to the reader. The address of an archive site where you can read or download it free is just below. Copy/paste the address into the URL window of any Internet page and hit Return to get there.

https://archive.org/details/TechniquesOfTheSellingWriterCUsersvenkatmGoogleDrive4FilmMakingBsc_ChennaiFilmSchoolPractice_Others

Like chicken soup for a cold, it might not help, but it sure can’t hurt. And for an overview of the major differences between fiction and nonfiction, you might check a few of the articles in my WordPress writing blog.

So…I know this was anything but what you hoped for. And given all the work, the emotional commitment you’ve made to the work, and the hopes you had, something like this is a tough blow, given that for all practical purposes I just called a favorite child ugly. But…every successful writer has stood right there, and faced the same situation. I don’t see myself as a successful author. But still, that book got me my first contract offer from a publisher. Maybe it can do that for you.

So dig in. If you enjoy writing fiction you’ll enjoy the learning. And if not? Well, you’ll learn something important. So it’s win/win. Right?

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/