We take a step forward in crime novels whereupon success or failure may hinge the smooth functioning of justice; or in spy novels whereupon success or failure may hinge the survival of the nation; or in science fiction whereupon success or failure may hinge the survival of the Earth itself, or even of the universe.
If we consider Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Space, which I read as a teenager with the same emotions that I viewed the movie serials half a decade earlier, we find the same unending danger about to destroy our beloved heroes an d the security of Earth along with them. That gives more meaning and more tension to the story.
Moving still farther up, then, we come to tales of unending danger that involve the great battle between good and evil, almost in the abstract. Surely the best example of this is J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, in which the forces of good, crystallized in the end into the person of brave, suffering little Frodo, must somehow defeat the all-but-omnipotent Satan-figure of Sauron.
Mind you, suspense is not all that is required to make a piece of writing totally effective. In most cases, it suffices only for one reading. Once you have seen The Perils of Pauline once, there is no need ever to see it again, because you know how she overcomes all her perils. That removes the suspense, and once the suspense is gone, nothing else remains.
Yet there are suspense-filled items you read over and over again long after the suspense has been knocked out of them. I suppose that it is possible for a person who is reading (or seeing) Hamlet for the first time to be caught up most of all in whether Hamlet will defeat his wicked uncle or not. But I have read and seen Hamlet dozens of times and I know every word of the play and yet I always enjoy it, because the beauty of the language is sufficient in itself, and the texture of the plot is so thick that one never runs out of different methods of producing the play.
In the same way, I have read The Lord of the Rings five times and enjoyed it more each time, because getting the suspense out of the way actually allows me to enjoy the writing and the texture of the book all the more.
Now I come to my own writing, but I can only discuss it if you who are reading it understand that I never did anything of what I am about to describe purposely. It all got done, every bit of it, instinctively, and I only understand it now after the fact.
I was interested, apparently, in going beyond the rather simplistic balance between good and evil; I didn’t want the hero adventuring with the reader always certain that he ought to win over the nasty villains, so that the nation or the society or the Earth or the universe could be saved.
I wanted a situation in which the reader could not be certain which side was good and which evil, or in which he might wonder if perhaps both sides contained mixtures of good and evil. I wanted a situation where the problem and the danger was itself uncertain, and where the resolution was not necessarily a true resolution because it might conceivably make things worse in the long run.
In short, I wanted to write fictional history in which there are no true endings, no true “they lived happily ever after,” but in which, even when a problem is apparently solved, a new one arises to take its place.
To this end, I sacrificed everything else. I made no attempt to indulge in anything but necessary description, so that I worked always on a “bare stage.” I forced the dialog to serve nothing more than as an indication of the progress of the problem (if there was one) toward the resolution (if there was one). I wasted no time on action for its own sake, or on characterization or on poetic writing. I made everything just as clear and as straightforward as I could, so that the reader could concentrate on (and drive himself mad over) all the ambiguities I would introduce.
(As you see, then, critics who complain that my books are too talky, and that they contain little or no action, miss the point completely.)
I do my best to present a number of characters, each of whom has a different world view and each of whom argues his case as cogently as possible. Each of them thinks he is doing the sensible thing, working for the good of humanity, or his part of it. There is no general agreement on what the problem might be, or even, sometimes, whether there is one at all, and when the story ends even the hero himself may not be satisfied with what he has done.
I worked this out little by little in my stories and novels, and it reached its peak in the Foundation series.
There is indeed suspense in the series on a simple scale. Will the small world of the First Foundation hold its own against the surrounding mightier kingdoms and, if so, how? Will it survive the onslaught of the Empire and of a mutant emotion-controller, and of the Second Foundation?
But that is not the prime suspense. Should the First Foundation survive? Should there be a Second Empire? Will the Second Empire just be a repetition of the miseries of the First? Are the Traders or the Mayors correct in their view of what the First Foundation ought to do?
In the two later volumes, the hero Golan Trevize spends the first in coming to an agonized decision, and the second in an agonized wonder as to whether his decision was right. In short, I try to introduce all the uncertainties of history, instead of the implausible certainties of an unrealistic fictional world.
And apparently it works, and my novels are “page-turners.”
But I have more to say and I will continue my discussion of suspense in next month ‘s editorial.
Serials
When is a writer not a writer?
When he is asked to write outside his specialty.
Writing is not a unitary matter. A person who is a skilled science writer, or who can turn out fascinating popular histories, may be hopeless when it comes to writing fiction. The reverse is also true.
Even a person like myself who is adept at both fiction and nonfiction and ranges over considerable variety in both subdivisions is not a universal writer. I can’t and won’t write plays, whether for the theater, motion pictures, or television. I don’t have the talent for it.
It is surprising, in fact, how thinly talent can be subdivided. The functions, advantages, and disadvantages of fiction differ so with subject matter that every writer is more at home in one kind of fiction than in another. I can do science fiction and mysteries, but I would be madly misjudging myself if I tried to do “mainstream “ fiction or even “new-wave” science fiction.
Oddly enough, even length counts. You might think that if someone is writing a story, it can be any length. If it finishes itself quickly, it is a short story; if it goes on for a long time, it is a novel; if it is something in between, it is a novelette or a novella.
That’s just not so. Length is not the sole difference. A novel is not a lengthy short story. A short story is not a brief novel. They are two different species of writing.
A novel has space in which to develop a plot leisurely, with ample room for subplots, for detailed background, for description, for character development, for comic relief.
A short story must make its point directly and without side issues. Every sentence must contribute directly to the plot development.
A novel is a plane; a short story is a line.
A novel which is too short and thus abbreviates the richness of its development would be perceived by the reader as skimpy and therefore unsatisfactory. A short story which is too long and allows the reader’s attention to wander from the plot is diffuse and therefore unsatisfactory.
There are writers who are at home with the broad swing of the novel and are not comfortable within the confinement of the short story. There are writers who are clever at driving home points in short stories and who are lost in the echoing chambers of the novel. And of course there are writers who can do both.