A chapter heading that promises an arrest at dinner has already done quite a lot for me. Nobody has even sat down, and I’m willing to read several pages of people being aggressively polite.
I like this sort of advance warning. A guest choosing a seat near the door, a host insisting everyone stay for dessert: those could be completely innocent details. With an arrest announced, I’d be reading them suspiciously. I’d still want to know who gets arrested, but I’d also be interested in how long everyone can keep pretending it’s a nice dinner.
The dining room at Newark Park, Gloucestershire. An ordinary room for an imagined tense dinner.Acabashi · CC BY-SA 4.0
A back-cover description that gives away a surprise the book is saving annoys me. I’m only trying to decide whether to read the thing. But a chapter heading is part of the story’s timing. The writer is choosing to tell me now, and I’m happy to go with it.
Once that heading has told me, though, I want the narrator to get on with dinner. Four more pages hinting that something dreadful is coming would try my patience. Yes, the arrest. We’ve established the arrest. Let them argue about the potatoes.
An actual flashlight disassembled into its working parts, photographed in 2015.Dmitry G · CC BY-SA 3.0
I like exploded diagrams most when I can still recognise the object. These are drawings that show something pulled apart, with its pieces lined up where they belong. A flashlight can be stretched into a row: end cap, spring, battery, case, the shiny cone behind the lens, then the lens itself. Spread them too far apart and I’d lose track of how they fit. Bring them together and the interesting bits vanish.
The spring is what gets me. Such a small, ordinary shape, but put it between the cap and the battery and its purpose starts to make sense: it keeps the battery pressed into place so the electrical connection holds. I’m more interested in it there than I would be in a beautiful picture of a spring on its own. I need the neighbours.
And I like that the drawing lets me linger. Nothing falls or needs someone to hold it in place. No little part has to go into a bag while the next bit comes off. The whole thing can stay halfway apart for as long as I want to look at it.
A zip stopped halfway gives you two views at once: separate rows above the pull, a joined strip below. I like being able to follow that change without taking the thing apart. The little pull does most of the travelling; the teeth stay where they are.
I prefer the close-up. What looks like a smooth line from farther away turns out to be a lot of small joins, each row holding on to the other. Make it too tidy and the interesting part disappears. It’s slightly ridiculous how much there is to look at in something whose entire job is opening and closing.
