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.