More cloudy days. Today (28th June) the rain and
sunshine alternate. The dark clouds that went west down the valley yesterday
are now travelling east again and we’ve just had some crashes of thunder. Luckily
Bill did a hedge-hacking stint early this morning and I did one after lunch. So
the work progresses in spite of the weather.
No sign of the farmers today. But Bill did find the tomato plant
– with one single tomato - that our friend planted in the garden way back in
March! I took a photo of it. Unfortunately we have no idea what a courgette
plant looks like, so we haven’t found it yet.
I got three chapters edited this morning. Sometimes I wonder
if they are too short, but hey – what is the optimum length for a chapter? I
think it all depends on the content and when the moment comes to pose the
question so the reader wonders what happens next.
Lee Child has an interesting
note at the end of Night School on How
to Create Suspense. My copy doesn’t have it, but the copy here does. He thinks it’s
a misleading question, as if one were to bake a cake and success depends on the
best ingredients. Authors then set about creating interesting characters with
dangers and peril etc whereas he thinks the author should try and make the
reader hungry and then make them wait
hours for dinner. ie Novelists should ask a question at the beginning of the story
and then not answer it. Page to page, line to line, imply a question and then
answer it later. That way, people get to the end of the book because they want
to know the answer.
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