Consequences

Johnny stole a pencil. Johnny is a third-grade student at Central Elementary. The pencil he stole had pictures of rocket ships on it, and a big eraser on the top. It belonged to his classmate Susie, who was upset. When the teacher discovered the pencil in Jonny’s desk, she referred the matter to the principal, Ms. Kindly.

Ms. Kindly brought Johnny to her office and non-judgmentally explained to Johnny that he had made a choice. The Central Elementary rule was no stealing, which Johnny knew, so the choice he had made was inappropriate. Choices have consequences too, and so Ms. Kindly said that Johnny would miss recess that morning. He would stay inside, apart from the other students, and reflect on his choice and its consequences.

Ms. Kindly asked Johnny to think about how his choice had affected Susie, who wanted to be an astronaut and who received the pencil on her birthday. Susie, who was a nice girl, now doubted whether she could trust Johnny. Johnny sat and reflected. When the recess was over, Johnny apologized to Susie and returned the pencil to her, freshly sharpened.

Good outcome. Caring principal. Johnny’s choice had a negative consequence, but he learned from it and became a better decision maker, an important life skill. Now, let me ask you a question: Is the story of Johnny and the stolen pencil a good story?

Never mind. Answer: no.

Why not? As I’m sure you can see, Johnny’s story is complete. It has a beginning, middle, an end and a sharp point—literally. However, it is low in drama. The transgression is mild. The conflict and characters are simple. Johnny has no inner struggle. The outcome is easily achieved. There is a lesson to be learned, sure, but it’s obvious and inarguable.

To put it succinctly, Johnny’s story isn’t heightened. It only mildly moves us. It doesn’t cause us to think anything we couldn’t have thought on our own. What would it mean to heighten Johnny’s story? To find out, let’s look at the handling of choices and consequences in a couple of novels.

Specifically, let’s look at novels that touch upon the topic of voyeurism. No, not that kind. If you want erotic fiction of that flavor there’s plenty of it out there, knock yourself out. What I’m talking about are stories about seeing and hearing what you shouldn’t: choices, consequences, and how they become big.

The Warning

Hannah Morrissey’s Hello, Transcriber (2021), is set in Wisconsin’s most crime-ridden city, Black Harbor. Hazel Greelee takes a job as a police transcriber. Her job is to sit in a dark room at night, remotely transcribing detectives’ interviews of suspects. The sessions begin with a detective saying from the other room, “Hello, Transcriber” (hence the title). Naturally, Hazel hears disturbing things. Her life lacks purpose, and she thinks that what she’s overhearing in the dark could turn into a good novel. Can you see what’s coming? Hazel ‘s curiosity gets her mixed up with detective Nikolai Kole who involves her in the case of the Candy Man, a drug dealer to children.

All is not as it seems, of course, and the consequences of Hazel’s choices are harrowing. Should Hazel have known better? As she is recruited in the novel’s opening, Hazel is clearly told what could happen (condensed for speed):

“Where is home?” the man asked.

Home was, “Three hours north.”

They looked impressed, as though I’d walked the 160 miles to get here. “What brings you to Black Harbor?” 

“The lake,” I said, and explained that my husband is an aquatic ecologist. 

The two ladies shared a smile, and I reminded myself that they had no idea what it was like up north, where jobs are scarcer than striking oil.

The man spoke again. “If you choose to accept this position, Mrs. Greelee, everything you type must be treated with utmost confidentiality. You can’t tell your best friends, you family, even your husband.”

“I’m good at keeping secrets,” I said.

“Your social life will suffer.” Another warning.

“What social life?”

They laughed like I was being ironic. The man leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over this stomach. His tie scrunched to the side, revealing a coffee stain he’s no doubt tried to hide 

“This job is violent and graphic in nature. You’ll have to listen to things that are…traumatic…to say the least. It’s not for everyone.”

“Is anything?”

He grinned, his lips peeling away from his teeth. “You’re a clever one, Mrs. Greenlee.”

Too clever for her own good? No doubt! There’s a reason that Morrissey opens her novel with this interview: It’s to deliver The Warning. Which, put differently, lays out the rules. Boundaries not to cross. The danger if you do. The consequences which are waiting for you if you are foolish enough to make a poor choice. In this case The Warning is clear: Young women who wish to remain safe and sane do not take this job.

When The Warning is delivered first, the choices that follow are all-the-more deliberate, fateful and loaded. You knew! You knew what could happen! You went ahead anyway! Already the story is more dramatic. Already it is heightened.

The Transgression & The Turn

In order for consequences to later occur, there first must be a transgressive act. Patricia Highsmith’s eighth novel The Cry of the Owl (1962) concerns a recently divorced man, Robert Forester, who works a humdrum job at an aeronautics factory in Pennsylvania. As the novel opens, he works late one evening and begs off an invitation to have drinks with a tedious co-worker, Jack, and Jack’s wife. Robert then gets into his car, and…

Night was falling quickly, with visible speed, like a black sea creeping over the earth. As Robert drove past the motels, the roadside hamburger stands on the edge of Langley, he felt a physical revulsion against entering the town and driving to his street. He pulled into a filling station and turned his car around and drove back the way he had come…Robert drove to a small town called Humbert Corners, about nine miles from Langley, and took a narrow macadam road out of it, into the country.

He wanted to see the girl again. Maybe for the last time, he thought. But he had thought that before, and no time before had been the last time. He wondered if the girl was why he had worked late today, when he had not needed to work late; if he had stayed late just to be sure it would be dark when he left the plant?

Robert left his car in a lane in the woods near the girl’s house, and walked. When he reached her driveway, he walked slowly, kept going past the basketball goal at the end of the driveway, and entered the grassy field beyond.

The girl was in the kitchen again. Its two squares of light showed at the back of the house, and now and again her figure crossed one of the squares, but stayed mostly in the left square, where the table was…He moved closer to the house.

It was the fourth or fifth time he had come.

Are you creeped out? Just wait. Robert’s voyeurism is wrong. He knows that. He tells himself that this is the “last time” but of course it won’t be. He sneaks up to spy on 23-year-old Jenny Thierolf for the thinnest of reasons: he enjoys her easy contentment. Oh, really? In a contemporary dark thriller, that tension-filled dissonance would be abandoned. Robert would more likely be a self-satisfied voyeur, gleefully enjoying himself, a dark protagonist. Highsmith, however, heightens the situation by making Robert aware that he is transgressing.

Highsmith knows something else about heightening, too. Fate isn’t passive. Fate won’t let a Transgression rest. There’s something the transgressor doesn’t know. Something that will make the transgressor sorry—and make us think. We can call that The Turn. In The Cry of the Owl, The Turn comes when Jennie discovers Robert’s spying; instead of calling the police, she invites him in

Uh-oh. This can’t possibly go well for Robert, can it? [Spoilers ahead.]  It doesn’t. Jennie believes in Fate. She turns stalkerish, contacting Robert at his home and job. Robert takes a promotion that involves relocation to another town, but it gets worse. Jenny has broken off an engagement to a hot-headed man, Greg, who teams up with Robert’s vengeful ex-wife, Nickie, to teach Robert a lesson. One night on a road Greg starts a fight with Robert which ends with Greg lying unconscious on a river bank. When later a decomposed body is found in the river, Robert is suspected of murder.

The Consequences

In The Cry of the Owl, Highsmith doesn’t stop there. The novel wasn’t one of her favorites, but her storytelling instincts told her that transgression shouldn’t pass with little effect. No, no. If a wrong is committed, a great storyteller knows this: Magnify the payback.

[More spoilers.] In The Cry of the Owl, recall that the young woman, Jenny, believes in Fate. Specifically, she believes in harbingers of death—such as owls, hence the title—and that Robert is a harbinger of her own death. And so, she commits suicide. Whoa. Didn’t see that coming! Before The Cry of the Owl is done, Highsmith hammers Robert with more death and suspicion. A skilled storyteller, she knew that a Transgression would not sit well with readers without Consequences. Not little ones. Big ones.

Armistead Maupin in his novel The Night Listener (2000) also works with Warning, Transgression, Turn and Consequences, but his case the voyeuristic act and it’s turn and Consequences have a psychological root and, ultimately, a positive outcome. The story concerns a gay San Francisco radio storyteller, Gabriel Noone, whose NPR late-night show Noone at Night has been highly popular.

However, Gabe has hit a creative wall. His longtime partner, Jess, has recently moved out. As he goes on hiatus, he receives a galley proof of a memoir for a possible blurb. The memoir is by a Wisconsin boy, Pete Lomax, whose story is horrific: childhood abuse from an early age, pornographic tapes, escape, and his treatment and adoption by a therapist, Donna. The galley proof was sent to Gabe because Pete is a listener of Gabe’s late-night show (hence the title).

The Transgression in this case is Gabe’s over-involvement with Pete. They begin to telephone. Gabe at first thinks he might be helpful to Pete, but as the calls continue it is Gabe who discloses to Pete far more than is appropriate. Gabe and Pete grow close—by phone—so much so that Gabe begins to think of himself as Pete’s substitute father, even though Gabe and Pete have never met.

[Spoilers ahead.] The Turn arrives later in the story when Gabe’s bookkeeper and friend, Anna, begins to question whether Pete can be real. Gabe dismisses the doubts, believing instead Donna’s accounts of Pete’s struggles, including the cancelled publication of Pete’s book for lack of “background information”, meaning credibility. For the reader, The Turn fully occurs when Anna finally hears a recording of Pete’s voice:

Anna peered into her coffee cup intently, as if there were vital clues swimming just below the surface. “You know who he reminded me of on the machine?”

“Who?”

“Bart Simpson.”

I smiled. “That actually occurred to me, too.”

She took a sip of her coffee as she considered something for a while. Then she looked back at me and widened those Olivia Hussey eyes for greater dramatic effect. “Bart Simpson is a woman, you know.”

“Pardon me?” 

“On the cartoon. That’s actually a woman’s voice.”

Wait…Pete maybe isn’t real? The whole thing, including the memoir, was made up? The actual “night listener” is Donna? In a psychological thriller that would devolve into danger, but The Night Listener isn’t that kind of novel. Maupin keeps us guessing about whether Pete is genuine or not. When Gabe finally arrives in Wisconsin to meet Pete in person, he is too late. Donna tells him that Pete died a week earlier.  Gabe must then find a way to reconcile to his foolishness. That is the Consequence.

Gabe talks it over with Jess, who suggests that Gabe needs mystery like he needs oxygen; also, that Donna perhaps isn’t a bad person, and that Gabe needed “Pete”. Good things for Gabe came out of the hoax, and besides it will be fodder for Gabe’s writing. A postcard later arrives from “Pete”, posted from Tacoma. At that point the truth of whether Pete is real or not no longer matters. Gabe has found himself again and returns to his NPR show.

Heightening

Back to the story of Johnny and the stolen pencil. How might his story be heightened? There are plenty of elements to work with. The challenge is not to think small, but rather to blow up Warning, Transgression, Turn, Consequences or any or all of them. Choices. Consequences. Let’s go bigger.

In this case, The Turn is particularly promising. What do we, and Johnny, not know? What if…

The pencil is no plain old pencil. It’s got rocket ships on it not because Susie wants to go to outer space, but to return to outer space. Susie is an alien child. In fact, all the other kids in Central Elementary are. They are space farers stranded on Earth, hunted when they landed, contained on an alien reservation, like Indians, barely tolerated and only if they remain in their zone.

Johnny is a human child, a baby born to two ferocious alien hunters, both now dead, but raised by the aliens in the hope that he will absorb their peaceful ways—yet even so distrusted because humans are by nature violent. Johnny is “rescued” from the reservation and learns that his birth parents are not dead, but alive—and more hateful and vengeful than ever. He misses Susie, though, and Ms. Kindly, the school and home that he knew. As years pass, Johnny becomes reacquainted with human history and culture as well as his own violent legacy—and skill.

What only Susie knows is that Johnny still has the pencil. It is no ordinary pencil: It writes the words and draws the pictures that are in its owner’s mind. The pencil begins to scrawl messages to Johnny from Susie, who tells him that he can send messages back. Through his birth parents, Johnny learns that an unsanctioned assault on the alien reservation is planned, one that will wipe out the aliens entirely. Johnny warns Susie but there is little that Susie or the aliens can do to defend themselves.

It is up to Johnny to save his friends, but how? To do so, he must become the opposite of what Ms. Kindly wanted. He must become the greatest thief—and traitor—in human history.

What do you think? I just now made that up, but does that sound like a story? It has higher stakes, certainly, but it also has a bigger Turn and greater Consequences than the tame version at the top of this post. It also has several ironic reversals, perhaps a topic for a future post? In any event, this impromptu version of Johnny’s story begins with a simple choice—to steal a pencil—and proceeds to magnify its Consequences.

What about you? Whatever the style or of your WIP, I will bet that it involves characters who perform actions. Every action is a choice. Every choice has consequences. The only question for you is, how big?

In your WIP, are there choices which could have more fateful consequences?