act.

SUSPENSE

The term suspense is often misused to characterize a quality of
narration supposed to result from the employment of some technical
device. What is meant, of course, is that a good story, involving real
people, justly related, will hold its reader's interest until the
denouement is reached. Suspense means continued interest, and can result
only from sound conception, careful elaboration, and adequate narration
of a story. The reader who is shown real people in an interesting
situation will be in a state of suspense through his curiosity and
desire to learn what happened next. There is no technical device to
create suspense, for suspense can result only from the worth of the
whole story. I mention the matter thus briefly on account of the misuse
of the term. If there is any technique to create suspense, it is the
technique to order a story's events in a climactic ascension, and is not
an executive device.

EMPHASIS AND SUPPRESSION

A story is made up of a succession of happenings, some of major and many
of minor importance, and in telling it the writer must emphasize the
most important events to impress their significance upon a reader. It
will not do to relate the whole, indiscriminately, with as much
vividness as the writer can command, for the fictional value of the
whole necessarily resides in the relation between its chief events, and
that relation can be made apparent only by showing them in high relief.
The most important events of a story must be emphasized; events of some
but not of controlling importance must not be stressed too much; and the
very trivial events, which are usually matter of transition, necessary
only to the mechanical progress of the story, should be suppressed by
narrating without detail and in general terms.

Fundamentally, emphasis and suppression are matters of weight, while
proportion is a matter of space. There is a real relation between
preserving proportion and laying emphasis, but it is accidental. When an
important event is somewhat complicated, as a love scene, proportion
requires that it be narrated in detail, for it would take some time to
happen in reality; and due emphasis will be secured by detailed
narration. But when an important event is inherently simple in character
and brief in the time it would take to happen, proportion requires that
it be given not too much space, while emphasis requires that it be
stressed. To stress such an event, the writer's