[Electric Speed] Most useful question | Fun editing game

A note from Jane

This is the most useful question I’ve come across when trying to make a challenging decision:

Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?

Lately I’ve been grappling with whether and how to get involved in TikTok or its knock-off, Instagram Reels. Like any other writer, I have fear of missing out or being left behind—fear of irrelevance.

I’m not my best on short-form video, talking into a phone camera. If I’m driven to do it out of obligation and fear, rather than a sense of purpose or curiosity, that feels like a path that would diminish me.

And that answer is highly personal to me. Others may choose it and flourish. Or find a compromise that works for them.

"Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial," says George Saunders.

I like this as a rule of thumb because it avoids unanswerable questions (will this lead to a desirable outcome? will this lead to happiness? will this have a payoff?) and looks at how I best grow. I can think of many ways I want to grow, and none of them involve more video in my life.

Spreadsheet software has never been a strong part of my skillset. These days I typically use Numbers (but still get frustrated), or sometimes Google Sheets.

Rows is a new competitor, cloud-based, that can pull data from other apps you use, such as Gmail, Mailchimp, Facebook, Twitter, Google Analytics, and much more. It is super friendly and makes me feel like I could be … creative with my data? If you use spreadsheets for any type of marketing or collaborative work effort, I’d take a look.

Suspense and tension are among the most important elements of readable stories that hook your readers and keep them turning the page, in every single genre. The terms are often used interchangeably, and they’re intimately related, but suspense is more an element of story and tension an element of scene.

In a detailed exploration into these concepts, career editor Tiffany Yates Martin will show why a lack of tension and suspense may be what’s keeping you from a publishing contract or bestseller list—or simply costing you reader investment. We’ll examine how to determine whether you have enough suspense and tension in your story, along with tips for how to develop these elements to heighten your story’s impact and effectiveness and keep readers hooked.

In the last issue, I asked you to tell me about any serializations you read through Vella, Wattpad, Webtoon, or other platforms. Here’s what you said:

I’ve been reading a few serialized novels on Substack. There’s a growing cohort of authors publishing their fiction work on the platform, including established (e.g., Chuck Palahniuk) and unknowns. —Amran Gowani

There is one gas lamp fantasy that I love, "Agatha Heterodyne: Girl Genius!" But, like a barbarian, I just follow it on the Studio Foglio website. Comixology was the cool app for a while there, then it broke somehow. I did read a couple of indie comics on Comixology for a few months, including "Aberrant" by Rylend Grant. —Nic Nelson

I read three series, all of which can be found and read for free on Webtoon currently: "Wayne Family Adventures" by StarBite, CRC Payne, and Kielamel Sibal (focused on the civilian and home lives of Batman and his bevy of children, family members, teammates, and friends); "Tower of God" by SIU (an adventure story with a huge cast of characters, world building on a pretty huge scale so far, and an intriguing, mysterious, tangly storyline); and "Loving Reaper" (meant to draw attention to the plights of pets and wildlife) by Jenny Jinya. —AJ

Next question: What is your go-to emoji and why? (My go-to is 🤓 because I’ll never stop seeing myself as nerdy.) Hit reply to this message, or share on the Discord server for Electric Speed subscribers.

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