In Defense of Repression

Last week I talked about the difference between sentiment and sentimentality in our stories and, in particular, I invoked the cut-away technique used so much by films. Bring your readers/viewers right to the brink of the kind of powerful moment they already know as inevitable, then leave them to play the details out in their own minds. But stepping back from such moments isn’t the only way to play them or the only point to consider about effectively drawing feelings from our readers.

How do we...