You’ll see this type of thumbnail introduction used less in fiction, perhaps because it’s so vague and trivializes events. Used well, it can be a good tease, hooking the reader with the promise of things to come. A great example is Spanbauer’s The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, which opens with a boy doing morning chores while the upcoming plot is summarized in brief references. Another example comes from my book Rant, in the opening where a character summarizes the entire plot in a ridiculous explanation for how to qualify for a reduced-rate “bereavement fare” airline ticket.
A good clock limits time, thus heightening tension. And it tells us what to expect, thus freeing our minds to indulge in the emotion of the story.
A gun is a different matter. While a clock is set to run for a specified time period, a gun can be pulled out at any moment to bring the story to a climax. It’s called a gun because of Chekhov’s directive that if a character puts a gun in a drawer in act 1 he or she must pull it out in the final act.
A classic example is the faulty furnace in The Shining. We’re told early on that it will explode. The story might stagger on until springtime, but for the fact that…the furnace explodes.
In Fight Club and Choke the gun is the lie told to gain the sympathy of a peer group. The disease support groups or the would-be Heimlich maneuver-ers. When I wanted the story to collapse, I merely had to reveal the main character as a liar, and allow his community to redeem or destroy him.
Whereas a clock is something obvious and constantly brought to mind, a gun is something you introduce and hide, early, and hope your audience will forget. When you finally reveal it, you want the gun to feel both surprising and inevitable. Like death, or the orgasm at the end of sex.
Another perfect American gun…In Breakfast at Tiffany’s the gun is Sally Tomato, the gangster in prison whom we meet early and soon forget about. Pages and pages go by without a mention of him. Finally the story is forced to chaos when the female lead is arrested and charged with aiding this organized crime kingpin. To a lesser extent, the story includes the two requisite deaths. First, Golightly’s brother, Fred, who’s killed in a Jeep accident. Second, the miscarriage of her unborn child as a result of the runaway horse incident in Central Park.
Also consider that the Second Act Sacrifice is a form of gun. It’s the inevitable death of a lesser character that signals the move from comedy to drama. It’s the death of Big Bob in Fight Club. It’s the abortion in Cabaret or the best friend, Hutch, in Rosemary’s Baby.
In They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? the clock is the ever-dwindling number of contestants in the dance marathon. The gun is Red Buttons’s heart attack—it triggers Susannah York’s mental breakdown and the story quickly devolves to chaos. Just for the record, Buttons is the classic good boy character, career military, still wearing his navy uniform, and his death is more or less self-induced. Suicide, in a way. While Jane Fonda is the rebel who must be executed. As in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the witness is also the executioner, and he tells the story in unusual flash-forwards that make little sense until the story’s end.
But hold up. Don’t let me get ahead of myself, here. We’ll revisit the concept of the good boy, the rebel, and the witness.
For now if you came to me and said your novel was approaching eight hundred pages with no sign of ending, I’d ask, “What’s your clock?” I’d ask, “Did you plant a gun?”
I’d tell you to kill your Red Buttons or Big Bob and to bring your fictional world to a messy, noisy, chaotic climax. Tension: Use Unconventional Conjunctions
Consider how an excited child tells a story. The sentences just cascade, one after another with few clear breaks. Such momentum! Almost like music, very much like music, like a song.
You can mimic this enthusiasm by using unconventional conjunctions to link together run-on sentences. Yes, you could use “and” repeatedly; I do so in my story “Romance.” But there are infinite pseudo-conjunctions waiting to be invented.
In my story “The Facts of Life” I chose to use the two-word phrases “even if,” “even when,” “even so,” and “even then” to mimic the sound of a drum machine in 1980s New Wave music. Specifically the Psychedelic Furs’ song “Heartbreak Beat.” As the endless sentences tumble forward, there’s the constant regular beat of “even something” to keep time.
Similarly, in the story “Dad All Over” I insert the word “Dad” just to interrupt sentences. I force the word to become a form of onomatopoeia like “bang!” or “pow.” The word becomes the drumbeat within the song, increasing in frequency to simulate how songs increase pace, also suggesting—I hope—the way a child will call out again and again for an absent parent.
Every story is an experiment.
In the story “Let’s See What Happens” I create run-on sentences with increasing momentum by using the words “now,” “next,” and “always” to link verb-driven clauses. The effect is exhausting so I’m careful to alternate these relentless run-on passages with more conventionally written scenes.
In the story “Loser” I wanted to rely on sentences that seemed to contradict themselves midway. For example, “The box looks red, only it’s blue.” Or, “Sally reaches for a stick, except it’s a dead snake.” By repeatedly using the words “but,” “only,” and “except” I can create a sense of rhythm and the absurd, constantly stating and contradicting my statements
