Why You Must Have a Rat in Your Story

What’s the secret to writing a scene that works? You may not know how to name it, but you certainly know when you read something that’s just meh, so-so. What’s missing? And what would it take to fix it? You might think good writing requires a mysterious balance of action, dialogue, setting, symbolism, and so on, and those things are all important. But there’s one fundamental ingredient that trumps all the craft in the world.

I was reminded of it when I read this passage in Immediate Fiction, written by my mentor Jerry Cleaver. Jerry illustrates it beautifully here, through a story:

The Irresistible Force
Lessons from the gutter

The following scene was shown on the nightly news: a rat was trapped in the middle of a busy intersection in the heart of Manhattan. Cars were whizzing by on both sides. The rat tried to run to the gutter. A car shot in front of it and the rat ran back to the center. The rat tried again and another whizzed by, just missing him. A crowd began to form on the sidewalk. The rat ran in the other direction. Another car shot in front of him. He stood shaking and quivering in the middle of traffic. The camera panned the crowd. A big, tough-looking guy said, “Should we help him?” The camera turned back to the rat, running back and forth with cars cutting him off each time. Then a tire nicked the rat, it tumbled over, then stood twitching and cowering. The traffic stopped. A man raced out from the curb with a folded newspaper and scooped the rat toward the curb and into the gutter. The rat ran down the gutter, into the sewer and was gone.

The man jumped on his bike and started down the street. The camera crew ran after, calling, “Why did you do that?” The guy on the bike stopped. He looked a little sheepish and embarrassed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve been scared like that myself.”

Okay, what’s going on? Why did they care about a rat—a disease-carrying vermin, the symbol of filth and deceit, an enemy we poison, trap, and try to obliterate?

They cared, because as the guy who rescued him said, “I’ve been scared like that myself.”

“Like that myself” means “like myself“ which means “myself.” He, and they, became the rat. They identified. Why? Because they couldn’t stop themselves. An irresistible force was at work—identification.

Identification, fine, but is that a complete answer? Or can we take it further? We can and we should. As always, we need to take it to the deepest level possible. So, exactly what is it about this rat that made it irresistible? What made this rat so different, so real, and so human?

It was in a different state from which we normally see or think of a rat. That state, that irresistible state, was vulnerability. And we identify with vulnerability. We cannot stop ourselves. That connection to vulnerability runs as deep as our evolution, natural selection, our very survival as a species. It’s what holds the human race together. We can’t help but identify with vulnerability.

Identification. Vulnerability. It works every time. And if your character is not vulnerable in your story, you have a problem because if someone is threatened and may suffer a serious injury, he must be worried and afraid. If he’s not, he doesn’t care. If he doesn’t care, we won’t either. The reader can’t care more than the character.

So, always be sure the rat is in your story.