Always be escalating. That’s all a story is, really: a continual system of escalation. A swath of prose earns its place in the story to the extent that it contributes to our sense that the story is (still) escalating.
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That’s really all a story is: a limited set of elements that we read against one another.
A story is a frank, intimate conversation between equals. We keep reading because we continue to feel respected by the writer. We feel her, over there on the production end of the process, imagining that we are as intelligent and worldly and curious as she is. Because she’s paying attention to where we are (to where she’s put us), she knows when we are “expecting a change” or “feeling skeptical of this new development” or “getting tired of this episode.” (She also knows when she’s delighted us and that, in that state, we’re slightly more open to whatever she’ll do next.)
The exciting part of all of this, to me, is that we always have a basis on which to proceed. The reader is out there, and she’s real. She’s interested in life and, by picking up our work, has given us the benet of the doubt.
All we have to do is engage her.
To engage her, all we have to do is value her.
But that’s really all a story is: a series of things that happen in sequence, in which we can discern a pattern of causality.
Always be escalating,” then, can be understood as “Be alert, always, to the possibilities you have created for variation.” If an element recurs, the second appearance is an opportunity for variation and, potentially, escalation.