PROMISES AND THEIR KEEPING
Bob Arter

My editor, the delightful Miz Berry, was wondering what, if anything, had become of this editorial, which I had promised to write for the last issue, PROMISES TO KEEP.

"Promises to keep, indeed!" she growled, sounding rather like Popeye. "Where's that copy you promised me?"

Ah, I thought. I've dithered another deadline away and there will be hell to pay. While standing in line at the payment counter, it occurred to me that the missed issue's theme constituted one of the Commandments in the Writer's Big Ten: Thou Shalt Keep Thy Promises. And I'm not referring to deadlines.

Mystery writers, in particular, are excellent promise-keepers. Whodunits exact their own peculiar demands: the story must contain all hints necessary for the reader to figure out the conclusion; red herrings may abound as at the Sermon on the Mount, but must make sense within the story; the plot should twist, turn and writhe like a basket of cobras.

Likewise, science fiction is only as genuine as the science it contains; indeed, all good fantasy is rooted in thoroughly credible reality—you may populate your plot with carnivorous grackles, but give them trees to roost in; do not attempt to convince me that they dwell in palaces.

Literary fiction—whatever that is—imposes less particular constraints, but they are no less essential. We are all of us familiar with the unfired gun: if your protagonist somehow acquires a Glock 9-mm automatic, then before the story ends he ought to shoot it. In fact, the so-called Rule of Three strongly recommends that the weapon surface a second time after being introduced, and a third when the trigger is (or conspicuously isn't) pulled.

An unshot Glock is similar to a red herring off on a random walk; if Jacques didn't intend to discharge the weapon, why in hell did the writer mention it in the first place? It's rather like a badly made movie, wherein the director ends a scene by letting the camera linger overlong on, say, an airplane's rudder flapping about unsteadily in an easy breeze. We think, "Aha! That plane will come to some bad end!" If it doesn't—if that wretched aircraft sets records winging from Florida to Pluto and back with an utterly unprotesting rudder—we feel cheated and irritable and stop at a fast food stand on the way home, muttering imprecations at the director and ingesting too many carbs.

You are all familiar with the tactic of foreshadowing—I prefer to think of it as planting seeds—and know that an action takes on greater emphasis if arrived at by following a trail of crumbs. But there are few authorial sins more exasperating than a trail of crumbs that simply ends, or worse, a single, standout crumb that is never mentioned again.

When you foreshadow an event, you are making a promise to the reader. And harking back to that theme again, you have promises to keep.

Many writers, myself included, don't bother overmuch, or at all, with plotting. So, lacking a schematic for my plot, I've no idea what will happen as I approach a story's ending. How am I to plant seeds for hydrangeas and crepe myrtles as yet unknown? In my case, I simply do my seed sowing in ensuing drafts. If I feel that Ed ought to have shot Mimi dead as dead gets, I simply let him do so, perhaps with a hideous cackle. In the revision, I supply Ed with a gun—after researching that gun thoroughly enough so that Ed, forgetting that Glock provides no external safety latch, doesn't embarrass himself by thumbing the non-existent safety to the felony position. Having introduced the sidearm, I'm likely to reinforce it, in keeping with the Rule of Threes.

Which, of course, is not a Rule at all. Where writing is concerned, I don't like Rules, nor trust them. But tools, such as foreshadowing, tools are useful. And promises ought to be kept—eventually. I have mentioned a Glock; I have reinforced that pistol till hell won't have it. I have only to keep my promise.

And gun Miz Berry down.

© Bob Arter 2005

Bob Arter writes mad fiction and verse in Southern California, where he is often forced to resort to evasive maneuvers to find respite from his countless female fans.

on to page 5   

back to THE GSG VAULT