will happen to all three when the two men discover each other’s relationship to Dagny. I have let him in on what to expect. I have planted that Rearden is anxious to discover the name of Dagny’s past lover, and that Francisco still loves her and hopes she has waited for him. The reader therefore knows that when these three find out the truth, some strong reactions will occur, the nature of which he cannot predict for certain. This is what makes him read the scene with interest.
Suppose, however, that Rearden knew everything about Dagny’s past, and Francisco suspected that Dagny would fall for Rearden; then, the day after the beginning of the Dagny-Rearden romance, Francisco comes to visit her and learns the truth. Would this be interesting or suspenseful? No. Since the reader has been given no reason to attach any importance to the characters’ learning the truth, there is no conflict, no drama, nothing to wonder about.
If you want to hold your readers, give them something to wonder about. I once knew a Hollywood scenario writer who had a graphic expression of her own for this point. When she started work on a story, she said, she always established a “worry line”—a line of problems for the audience to worry about.
To do that, you have to know not only how to build your suspense—how to feed the reader information step by step—but also how to establish the kind of conflict that in reason will interest a reader. Suppose Dagny dyed her hair blond and worried how her brother , James would react. If they were the kind of characters who could worry about such an issue, neither they nor the issue would be interesting. When you set up a line of suspense, ask yourself: Is there any reason why anyone should be interested in this conflict? Are these values important enough to worry about?
To illustrate why plot is important and how it relates to a story’s theme and suspense, I want to project what would happen to some of the issues in Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead if they were treated plotlessly.
For instance, the meaning of the Dagny-Rearden romance in Atlas Shrugged is that their shared ideas, values, and struggle is the root of their love. Consider what a non-plot writer would have done with this material. Dagny would come to Rearden’s office, they would start talking, and suddenly he would draw her into his arms and they would kiss. This is realistic, it can happen—but it does not have much dramatic value. The same scene could have happened between any two people, including villains such as James Taggart and Betty Pope.
By contrast, in Atlas Shrugged I bring about Dagny and Rearden’s love scene at the height of their mutual triumph, in connection with the achievement which unites their careers: the opening of the John Galt Line. I make them admit their love during an event which presents in action the ideas and values they have in common. This is an example of presenting an issue in plot terms.
Or take the quarry scene in The Fountainhead, where Dominique meets Roark. She is an extreme hero-worshiper; she has declared that she will never fall in love except with someone great; and she does not want to find a great man because she thinks he would be doomed. If, while researching one of her newspaper columns, she had met Roark as a rising architect, that would not have been dramatic. But it is dramatic for her to meet the ideal man at the bottom, as nothing but a quarry worker. She had feared that the world would crush a hero—and the scene brings her face-to-face with the fact that no matter what the world does to him, a hero is a value, and one she cannot resist.
Now take the scene in Atlas Shrugged where Rearden quits. Throughout the story, a man’s going on strike had involved two elements: the victim’s realization that he is and should stop being a victim, and his conviction that he cannot continue his work under the present setup. Therefore, when I have Rearden quit, two elements are necessary: Rearden’s final realization that he should go on strike, and the final atrocity of the looters which makes him decide that the situation is hopeless. The demand that he work at a loss in order to support his worst enemies, plus the government-engineered assault on his mills, dramatizes the whole issue of the strike, specifically as it