vault backup: 2026-01-05 13:03:55

03_Resources/Writing/Create suspense.md

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+How do you create suspense? I'm asked that question often, and it seems that every writers' symposium has a class with that title. It's an important technical issue, and not just for so-called suspense novels. Every novel needs a narrative engine, a reason for people to keep reading to the end, whatever the subject, style, genre or approach. But it's a bad question. Its very form misleads writers and pushes them onto an unhelpful and overcomplicated track.
+
+Because "How do you create suspense?" has the same interrogatory shape as "How do you bake a cake?" And we all know --- in theory or practice --- how to bake a cake. We need ingredients, and we infer that the better quality those ingredients are, the better quality the cake will be. We know that we have to mix and stir those ingredients, and we're led to believe that the more thoroughly and conscientiously we combine them, the better the cake will taste. We know we have to cook the cake in an oven, and we figure that the more exact the temperature and timing, the better the cake will look.
+
+So writers are taught to focus on ingredients and their combination. They're told they should create attractive, sympathetic characters, so that readers will care about them deeply, and then to plunge those characters into situations of continuing peril, the descent into which is the mixing and stirring, and the duration and horrors of which are the timing and temperature.
+
+But it's really much simpler than that. "How do you bake a cake?" has the wrong structure. It's too indirect. The right structure and the right question is: "How do you make your family hungry?"
+
+And the answer is: You make them wait four hours for dinner.
+
+As novelists, we should ask or imply a question at the beginning of the story, and then we should delay the answer. (Which is what I did here, and you're still reading, right?)

03_Resources/Writing/James clear on writing.md

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+A few tips on how to be a better writer:
+- write about what fascinates you
+- make one point per sentence
+- use stories to make your point
+- cut extra words like “really” and “very”
+- read the whole thing out loud
+- post publicly (you’ll try harder when you know others will read it)
+
+And finally, be more thoughtful about what you consume. The quality of ideas you put in determines the quality of ideas you put out.

03_Resources/Writing/Opinion How Not to Be Alone by Jonathan Safran Foer.md

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+Tags: [[Article]] [[Writing]] - [[Writing Swipe]] [[Writing intro]]
+Author: [[Jonathan Safran]] 
+From: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/opinion/sunday/how-not-to-be-alone.html
+
+## Highlights:
+
+Mainly the intro as a swipe file: 
+
+A COUPLE of weeks ago, I saw a stranger crying in public. I was in Brooklyn's Fort Greene neighborhood, waiting to meet a friend for breakfast. I arrived at the restaurant a few minutes early and was sitting on the bench outside, scrolling through my contact list. A girl, maybe 15 years old, was sitting on the bench opposite me, crying into her phone. I heard her say, "I know, I know, I know" over and over.
+
+What did she know? Had she done something wrong? Was she being comforted? And then she said, "Mama, I know," and the tears came harder.
+
+What was her mother telling her? Never to stay out all night again? That everybody fails? Is it possible that no one was on the other end of the call, and that the girl was merely rehearsing a difficult conversation?
+
+"Mama, I know," she said, and hung up, placing her phone on her lap.
+
+I was faced with a choice: I could interject myself into her life, or I could respect the boundaries between us. Intervening might make her feel worse, or be inappropriate. But then, it might ease her pain, or be helpful in some straightforward logistical way. An affluent neighborhood at the beginning of the day is not the same as a dangerous one as night is falling. And I was me, and not someone else. There was a lot of human computing to be done.
+
+It is harder to intervene than not to, but it is vastly harder to choose to do either than to retreat into the scrolling names of one's contact list, or whatever one's favorite distraction happens to be.

03_Resources/Writing/Writing.md

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+### Notes
+```dataview
+table file.ctime as Date from "300-resources/Writing"
+sort file.name
+```