Next to checks, the most intangible thing in this business of writing is that quantity “Suspense.”
It is quite as elusive as editorial praise, as hard to corner and recognize as a contract writer.
But without any fear of being contradicted, I can state that suspense, or rather, the lack of it, is probably responsible for more rejects than telling an editor he is wrong.
You grab the morning mail, find a long brown envelope. You read a slip which curtly says, “Lacks suspense.”
Your wife starts cooking beans, you start swearing at the most enigmatic, unexplanatory, hopeless phrase in all that legion of reject phrases.
If the editor had said, “I don’t think your hero had a tough enough time killing Joe Blinker,” you could promptly sit down and kill Joe Blinker in a most thorough mann
