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Urgency: Good Writing Needs It

If I hadn't fallen off the mountain, I never would have believed it. Actually, I did believe it before I fell off the mountain, but the first sentence of this article is an example of what writers need to have in their fiction in order to have vibrant, intriguing, publishable fiction, non-fiction, creative non-fiction, or poetry: urgency.

 When a piece of writing has urgency, the reader can't wait to keep reading. He doesn't want to eat dinner or do the dishes or even go to sleep! All he wants to do is read! All writers can learn to put urgency in their work, improving it and making it more interesting, entertaining, and publishable.

Before the twentieth century, not many writers worried about maintaining their readers' attention - most literate people read - so urgency was not a question writers necessarily had to deal with. Now, however, writers are competing with television, videos, movies, and millions of other authors for their audiences, so writers have a more challenging task than did their predecessors.

Urgency should not be "pasted on" or simply attached to the piece of writing. It must be an integral part of it, inseparable from the plot or characters. It is this urgency which will keep the readers clamoring for more, so it must be honest urgency, that is, it must naturally evolve from the characters, the plot, the voice, or the circumstances of the piece you're writing.

Take, for example, the first paragraph of my first novel, The Kommandant's Mistress, the story of a Nazi Kommandant of a concentration camp who forces a Jewish inmate to be his mistress during the war. Not only does the opening sentence present urgency, but other sentences of that paragraph reinforce that initial urgency. I've italicized these sentences for emphasis.

Then I saw her. There she stood, in the village store, her hair in a long braid down the center of her back, her skin white in the sunlight, and my hand went to my hip, seeking the weight of my gun. As the girl spoke, I stumbled back against one of the shelves, my fingers tightening at the leather around my waist. While the shopkeeper arranged the food in the bag, the morning sun glinted on the storefront windows, illuminating the girl. The wooden shelves pressed into my shoulder and back. Sweat dampened my forehead and ribs. Another shopper spoke, frowned, pushed aside my arm to reach a jar on the shelf behind me, but I didn't move. My hand slid down over my hip and leg. No, I'd forgotten that I no longer wore my gun.

The reader now wonders: Who is this girl, and why is this man looking for her? Why did he have a gun, and why does he want to shoot her? What's happened between them that he seems afraid to confront her? And, finally, what's happened that he no longer wears his gun?

This urgency must be maintained throughout the piece of writing to be effective, however. It doesn't keep your reader's attention if you present him with urgency in the opening sentence and paragraph, but then lapse into long-winded, overblown scenic descriptions. If it takes the reader 50 pages before he comes to the next instance of urgency, you'll lose him before he gets to it.

For the urgency to be effectively maintained, it must be integral to the plot, the character development, or the "voice" of the writing. Other successful writers use it, too. Here are some sample opening lines which contain urgency. (Titles should also be used to effectively develop urgency.)

• I'm not trying to flatter myself, but I was the first colored woman he ever seriously considered loving. (Kathleen Collins' "Stepping Back") I am not a lucky traveler. (C. W. Guswelle's "Horst Wessel")

•  She had kept the bottle stuck down inside a basket of clothes that needed ironing, and throughout the course of the day whenever she had a chance to walk through the back room where the basket was kept, she would stop for the odd sip or two. (Gerald Duff's "Fire Ants")

The examples of urgency in quality writing are endless. Some writers call it by different names: intrigue, the hook, the attention-getter, the grabber. But the concept is the same. As you write, you should ask yourself questions such as these: "Where's the urgency in this chapter?" "Why does this character have to tell his story now?" or "When's the last time I put some urgency in here?"

Urgency is one of the most vital things many writers need to learn. Without urgency, your writing is liable to put your readers to sleep. Even worse, the reader may never even buy your book. Look around any bookstore and notice how many people pick up a book and read the opening before they decide to buy it. Notice how many of those books get put back on the shelves.

That's a good exercise for writers, too: go to the bookstore and spend an hour or so reading the opening lines. How many of them impart urgency? How many of them keep you turning pages, right there in the bookstore? How many of them do you buy so that you can finish reading? If a book can't pass the urgency test, it isn't very likely to have either a large or an enthusiastic audience.

These days writers have to fight to get their audience and fight to keep it interested. You should never assume you have a captive audience: you don't. That television or video or telephone is always beckoning. As a writer, you have to earn your audience. Whether you want to write bestsellers or masterpieces (or both), the best way to earn your audience and to keep it is through urgency.

Urgency can be in plot, where the story is so exciting the reader simply can't put the piece down. It can be in character development, such as this.

Annie walked into the cafeteria and saw Tim talking to a girl who looked like his previous girlfriend. Annie went up to Tim and slapped him. "What'd you do that for?" he said.
"Because she looks like your ex-girlfriend," said Annie. "The one you still keep sleeping with."

Now let's see that scene again with some character development that adds urgency.

Annie walked into the cafeteria and saw Tim. He was talking to that girl again. Annie went up and slapped him.
"What'd you do that for?" he said.
"You know," said Annie.

 Another place to develop urgency is in "voice," which means, simply, that the voice of the narrator is so interesting or intriguing that the reader feels compelled to continue. Here are some examples.

•  When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. (Kaye Gibbons, Ellen Foster)

• Well, sir, I should have been sitting pretty, just about as pretty as a man could sit. (Jim Thompson, POP. 1280)

•  When I was a young lad twenty or thirty or forty years ago I lived in a small town where they were all after me on account of what I done on Mrs. Nugent. (Patrick McCabe, The Butcher Boy)

The most important thing to remember in creating urgency is that any place you might lose the reader's attention is a place you need to have urgency. Here are my suggestions for urgency placement.

• The first sentence

• The last sentence of the first paragraph

• At the beginning and end of each chapter

• At the beginning and end of each section, if your novel is divided into sections

• Any time you change narrators or points of view (these could be considered informal section divisions, so you should have urgency at the beginning and end of each, even if the section division is not formal)

• Periodically throughout the novel

If you become conscious of urgency and put it into your work, then no matter what genre you write in, you'll keep your readers begging for more.

"Urgency: Good Writing Needs It", originally printed in The Writer (January 1996). article © 1996 Alexandria Szeman (formerly writing under the name Sherri Szeman).  reprinted in The Writer's Handbook 1997. article © 1996, 1997 Alexandria Szeman (formerly writing under the name Sherri Szeman). now incorporated into  The Writer's Way: Daily Meditations & Exercises for Writers, currently at publishers, © 1996, 1997, 2003 Alexandria Szeman.

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