There’s a point in every story where you grab someone… or you lose them.
But the moment that decides it isn’t where you think.

That’s what we’re uncovering today.

Issue #010 ​
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Last February, I stood in exactly the same spot as the Wright Brothers did before their first flight.

My husband and I have made a new tradition of taking the RV to the Outer Banks every year. But we don't go in the summer or spring when it's buzzing with people.

We go in the winter.

The air is sharp. Sometimes pouring rain.

Puffy jackets zipped up all the way.

Hand tucked into gloves, and hats covering our heads.

Last year was our first trip there, and one of the things on our list was visit the Wright Brothers Memorial in Kill Devil Hills. You'll find a museum and the full memorial, but there's also a runway with markers that show exactly how far they got with each flight they took.

You can literally stand exactly where they stood. Where they watched. Where they celebrated.

Every time we travel in our RV, we look for a piece of history to stand in.

There's something about it that transports me.

Standing in the exact spot where something happened.

And for a moment, just a moment, you're not reading about it.

You're in it.

But standing there, I noticed something.

The markers don't explain what happened. There's no sign right there that tells you what to feel. No paragraph describing the significance of the moment. (That is in the museum, where you expect it.)

It was just the ground. The grass covered runway. The wind kicking up. The exact distance between where they started and where they stopped.

And somehow, that was enough. More than enough.

I kept thinking about it on the drive back.

Why did that work so well? What is it about a moment that doesn't explain itself...that makes it land harder than one that does?

🔎 Under the Magnifying Glass

In 1993, I sat in a movie theater and watched something I'd never seen before.

Not the dinosaurs.

The moment before the dinosaurs.

If you've seen Jurassic Park (the original, not the gazillion sequels), you know the scene. Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler are driving with the the founder, John Hammond and everyone's favorite Jeff Goldblum character, Ian Malcom, driving through the park for the first time.

And then...you see it on their faces first.

Alan slowly pulls off his sunglasses. His mouth opens. He can't speak. He reaches over and physically turns Ellie's head because words fail. She has to see it for herself.

And we still haven't seen it.

Spielberg held it. He stayed on their faces, their bodies, their reactions. Their feelings. He made us live inside the gap between "Something is there" and "here it is."

By the time the camera finally turns, by the time we see the brachiosaurus moving through the trees, we were already convinced. We already felt it.

The reveal didn't create the wonder.

The tension did.

Here's another Spielberg moment that takes us back to 1975. Spielberg was filming a movie that would change his career, but at the time, he only knew it was a disaster.

That disaster changed everything.

He never intended to withhold the shark so long in Jaws. The original script revealed him much sooner.

But the mechanical shark (hi, Bruce - we met in Universal Studios) kept sinking in the water. It malfunctioned constantly, because of the salt water. It was a production disaster that meant that every scene intended to show the shark... couldn't.

So Spielberg held the shark. Not by choice. Because he had to.

You never fully see the shark until deep into the film. Every attack happens just under the surface. Every near miss lives in the gap between what you know is there and what you never quite see.

And Jaws became one of the most terrifying films ever made. People stopped going in the water because of it.

Not because of the shark.

Because of the gap.

Same director. Two different constraints.

Same instinct, whether forced or chosen:

Trust the gap.

Here's what both of these moments have in common with my moment of standing where history stood, and what it has to do with anything you write or create:

The audience already knows something is coming.

They can feel it.

And the moment you step in to talk them through it — to explain, to clarify, to step by step it, to make sure they got it — you collapse the very thing that was working.

You pull them out of the scene.

Right before it lands.

There's a story mechanic underneath all of these moments:

Spielberg didn't show you the thing. He showed you the space where the thing should be.

And your brain detected a gap between what it knew and what it needed to go, and it couldn't look away.

We had to see. We had to close the loop.

That's not a film trick. That's how attention actually works.

When a moment is incomplete, the brain leans in. When a moment is explained, the brain relaxes. And a relaxed brain isn't compelled to keep reading.

This is happening in your content or work right now. Not in the big obvious places. Not in the weak hook or buried leads. It's happening where you jump in to explain something you should let land. Or when you bypass creating that gap at all.

Here's a few examples:

The presentation that opens with the answer.

"Today I'm going to show you the three things holding your business back."
Slide one: the three things

No gap. No build. You handed them the destination before they felt the need to get there. And now they're evaluating your list instead of leaning into the story of what this could mean for them.

The post that opens a question and immediately answers it.

(I've been so guilty of this myself).

"Why does your content feel invisible? Because you're posting without a clear story."

Well, thanks. I don't need to read your post now, because you told me everything right there. You maybe felt that for half a millisecond and then it was gone.

The question created the gap. The answer collapsed it before you had a chance to live inside the question.

Last example: paragraphs of explaining a moment instead of letting you feel it

(For the fiction writers in my audience, this is key for you.)

"Standing at the Wright Brothers Memorial, I felt a deep sense of connection to history and the significance of what happened there. It was moving and meaningful in a way I didn't expect."

I yawned writing that. Now compare it to the moment details:

Grass-covered run way. Markers. The wind kicking up. Chilly February. The exact distance between where they started and where the flights ended.

One tells you what to feel.

One puts you you there.

But you don't create the gap just by withholding information. You build it by trusting the moment enough to let it breathe.

The question isn't how to write better stories. It's how do you recognize the moment that's already enough, before you collapse it?

🏛️ The “Rule” This World Runs On

Every moment we've looked at works the same way.

The Wright Brothers markers don't explain the flight. They mark the distance.

Spielberg didn't show you dinosaurs first. He made you need to see them.

Jaws wasn't scary because you saw the shark everywhere. It was because you couldn't see him at all.

It was always the space in between. That space is where your reader lives. Where they lean in. Where they stay.

Rule #1: Tension lives in the gap. The moment you fill it, you end it.

How do you find that gap in your own work?

You're looking for one thing:
the moment where something is true but not yet explained.

In a story, it's the detail that raises a question you haven't answered yet.

The little girl who woke up the way she'd been trained: quickly and quietly. (Remember this one?)

We don't know why. We need to.

In a post or piece of content, it's the sentence that makes a claim your reader can feel before they can explain.

In a presentation, it's the problem you name before you show the solution. The moment the audience feels the weight of that thing, before you hand them the answer.

The gap always lives in the same place:

Right after something lands.

Right before you explain it.

That's the space.

And the signal you've found it? It feels uncomfortable, and you feel the urge to add one more sentence.

If you don't feel uncomfortable with it, do you think your audience will? That urge to solve it isn't telling you something is missing. It's telling you something is working.

You just have to feel the difference, so you know exactly where to stop.

🧠 Why Your Brain Calls This Magic

When Spielberg held the camera on Alan and Ellie's faces, your brain didn't just notice something was missing.

It began running the scene. It began filling in the gaps.

Researchers call this mental simulation. When the brain picks up on concrete, specific details, it doesn't just process as words. It activates many of the same neural systems it would if you were actually there.

You weren't in that jeep. But for a moment, your brain was.

The moment the narrator steps in to explain, the brain switches modes. It stops simulating and starts analyzing.

You can't feel and analyze at the same time. The tension doesn't fade, it just ...stops.

(If you want the other half of this, why the brain can't look away from an open gap, that's information gap theory and we talked about that in issue 008.)

🕳️ Watch Out for The Trap Door

Here's the thing about gaps.

You have to actually leave them.

That sounds obvious. It isn't.

The moment you write something that lands, something true and sharp and ooh, so good, a reflex will fire.

Is this enough? Will they get it? Let me just...

And you add one more sentence. You explain what you meant. You list what's included. You make sure it feels complete.

It feels like you're building value. You're actually filling the gap your reader was just about to lean into.

I know this move so well I gave it a name: the Fix Reflex. I do it often.

In fact, I was building a lead magnet around this exact idea -- how to spot the moment you collapse tension in your own writing, and I wrote a clean example. Short. Clear. Done.

And immediately thought... I should explain that.

So I added a framework. A definition. A "here's why this works." At one point, I was three steps away from turning a two-minute exercise into a 27-page guide with tabs and a table of contents.

About collapsing tension. The irony was not lost on me.

(If you want to see that lead magnet in it's currently unfinished, slightly chaotic state -- the Google Doc where the Fix Reflex almost won -- you can grab it here.

And yes, the desire to go fix that thing before this goes out is strong. I will resist. But here's what I know:

This is not a one-time problem you solve. It's a muscle you build. We can practice reps together, because I'm still building it. I'm making myself learn to live in the gap without offering up a color-coded spreadsheet to fix it.

If that's your novel: the gap might need to breathe for pages before you release it

If that's your LinkedIn post: you've got three seconds.

If that's your presentation: your audience needs that problem thrown at them to sit with in their seats a little uncomfortable from the word go.

Same reflex. But completely different moments, stakes and timing.

🧡 One Thing To Do Differently

One thing to note: If there are no gaps at all, if every question gets answered the moment it's raised, there's nothing for your brain to pause on. Nothing to lean into.

You haven't written something safe. You've written something forgettable.

So here's a tiny step you can take right now, to spot it:

Take one thing you've written... and maybe felt 'eh" about. It was smart, but didn't connect. It could be a post, a caption, a whole chapter (Yup, I've done this, too.)

Paste it into your favorite AI chat with this prompt:

Tension is what's built in the gap. And you need to let the gap breath.

📌 Put This on the Post-It

The second you explain the moment, you break the tension.

Until next time,

The dogs LOVE the beach every time we go. This was that same trip to the Outer Banks. I'll grab a chair, a mug of coffee, a blanket and them, and we will sit there for hours. 🧡

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7283 Veterans Pkwy Ste 102-318, Raleigh, NC 27603
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