Don't Forget Stimulus and Response
Story logic goes deeper than providing good background motivation and avoiding coincidence. Even if you're an ace on these matters, your copy still may be flawed in terms of having things happen for no apparent reason. That's because fiction readers may need more background and good motive for what their characters do in a story.
Readers will also usually need to see a specific stimulus that causes a given response right here and now.
The law of stimulus and response dictates that your character must have an immediate, physical cause for what he does. The immediate stimulus cannot be merely a thought inside his head; for readers to believe many transactions, they have to be shown a stimulus to action that is outside of the character --some kind of specific prod that is onstage right now.
So for every response you desire in a character, you must provide an immediate stimulus.
Turning this around, it's equally true that if you start by showing a stimulus, then you can't simply ignore it; you must show a response.
The law of stimulus and response works at the nitty gritty level of fiction, line to line, and it also works in melding larger parts of the story. For every cause, an effect. For every effect, a cause. A domino does not fall for no immediate reason; it has to be nudged by the domino next to it.
The chapter before this one looked at character background and plot motivation before mentioning stimulus and response because it's important for you to clearly understand the difference. Background, as we have seen, goes to earlier actions affecting the characters life. Motivation has to do with the character's desires and plans, which grow out of that background, as well as out of what's been going on earlier in the story. Stimulus is much more immediate; it's what happens right now, outside the character, to make him do what he's going to do in the next few moments.
Stimulus-response writing is a bit like a game of baseball. The pitcher throws the ball; the batter swings at the ball. You wouldn't have the pitcher throwing the ball and nobody at the plate swinging at it, would you? And you couldn't have the batter swinging at the ball without a pitcher being out there to throw it, could you?
Strangely enough, novice fiction writers often mess up their copy by doing something almost as obviously wrong as the pitcher-batter mistakes just cited. What happens is that the writer either doesn't know about stimulus-response movement in fiction, or else he has forgotten it.
The latter error is more common. Almost anyone can see the innate logic of stimulus-response transactions once it is pointed out to them. But in writing, it's amazing how easy it is for some of these same fictioneers to let their imagination get ahead of their logic and see the whole transaction in their mind, but then forget to provide the reader all the steps.
My student Wally provided me with a classic example of such forgetfulness once. He wrote:
Max walked into the room. He ducked just in time.
And please let me emphasize a point that might otherwise be skimmed over or misunderstood. Stimulus-response transactions --the heart of logic in a story-- are external. They are played outside the characters, onstage now.
Background is not a stimulus.
Motivation is not a stimulus.
Character thought or feeling is not a stimulus.
The stimulus must come from outside, so if put on a stage the audience could see or hear it.
The response that completes the transaction must be outside, too, if the interaction is to continue. Only if the interaction of the characters is to end immediately can the response be wholly internal.
Consider: If you start having your character get random thoughts or feelings, and acting on them all the time, the logic of the character and your story will break down. In real life, you might get a random thought for no apparent reason, and as a consequence do or say something. But as we discussed in Chapter Ten, among other places, fiction has to be better than life, clearer and more logical. It is always possible to dream up something --some stimulus-- that can happen to cause the thought or feeling internally, and it is always possible to dream up somethig the responding character can then do in the physical sense as the visible, onstage response to the stimulus. Response always follows stimulus onstage now. Response is always caused by a stimulus, onstage now. The fact that there may be some thought or emotional process inside the character between the two evets does not mean they both don't always have to be there.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #1
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #2
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #3
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #4
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #5
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #6
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #7
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #8
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #9
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #10
Story logic goes deeper than providing good background motivation and avoiding coincidence. Even if you're an ace on these matters, your copy still may be flawed in terms of having things happen for no apparent reason. That's because fiction readers may need more background and good motive for what their characters do in a story.
Readers will also usually need to see a specific stimulus that causes a given response right here and now.
The law of stimulus and response dictates that your character must have an immediate, physical cause for what he does. The immediate stimulus cannot be merely a thought inside his head; for readers to believe many transactions, they have to be shown a stimulus to action that is outside of the character --some kind of specific prod that is onstage right now.
So for every response you desire in a character, you must provide an immediate stimulus.
Turning this around, it's equally true that if you start by showing a stimulus, then you can't simply ignore it; you must show a response.
The law of stimulus and response works at the nitty gritty level of fiction, line to line, and it also works in melding larger parts of the story. For every cause, an effect. For every effect, a cause. A domino does not fall for no immediate reason; it has to be nudged by the domino next to it.
The chapter before this one looked at character background and plot motivation before mentioning stimulus and response because it's important for you to clearly understand the difference. Background, as we have seen, goes to earlier actions affecting the characters life. Motivation has to do with the character's desires and plans, which grow out of that background, as well as out of what's been going on earlier in the story. Stimulus is much more immediate; it's what happens right now, outside the character, to make him do what he's going to do in the next few moments.
Stimulus-response writing is a bit like a game of baseball. The pitcher throws the ball; the batter swings at the ball. You wouldn't have the pitcher throwing the ball and nobody at the plate swinging at it, would you? And you couldn't have the batter swinging at the ball without a pitcher being out there to throw it, could you?
Strangely enough, novice fiction writers often mess up their copy by doing something almost as obviously wrong as the pitcher-batter mistakes just cited. What happens is that the writer either doesn't know about stimulus-response movement in fiction, or else he has forgotten it.
The latter error is more common. Almost anyone can see the innate logic of stimulus-response transactions once it is pointed out to them. But in writing, it's amazing how easy it is for some of these same fictioneers to let their imagination get ahead of their logic and see the whole transaction in their mind, but then forget to provide the reader all the steps.
My student Wally provided me with a classic example of such forgetfulness once. He wrote:
Max walked into the room. He ducked just in time.
And please let me emphasize a point that might otherwise be skimmed over or misunderstood. Stimulus-response transactions --the heart of logic in a story-- are external. They are played outside the characters, onstage now.
Background is not a stimulus.
Motivation is not a stimulus.
Character thought or feeling is not a stimulus.
The stimulus must come from outside, so if put on a stage the audience could see or hear it.
The response that completes the transaction must be outside, too, if the interaction is to continue. Only if the interaction of the characters is to end immediately can the response be wholly internal.
Consider: If you start having your character get random thoughts or feelings, and acting on them all the time, the logic of the character and your story will break down. In real life, you might get a random thought for no apparent reason, and as a consequence do or say something. But as we discussed in Chapter Ten, among other places, fiction has to be better than life, clearer and more logical. It is always possible to dream up something --some stimulus-- that can happen to cause the thought or feeling internally, and it is always possible to dream up somethig the responding character can then do in the physical sense as the visible, onstage response to the stimulus. Response always follows stimulus onstage now. Response is always caused by a stimulus, onstage now. The fact that there may be some thought or emotional process inside the character between the two evets does not mean they both don't always have to be there.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #1
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #2
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #3
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #4
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #5
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #6
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #7
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #8
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #9
Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, #10
