In her New Yorker article about suspense, Kathryn Schulz uses a clever image to describe how suspense exists at many scales.

Suspense does not derive only from the machinations of plot. Instead, it is what you might call fractal: it can be fostered at every level, from a seven-season TV series all the way down to a chapter, a paragraph, a scene, or even a silence.

Her choice of the word fractal conjures, for me at least, the kaleidoscopic image of triangles within triangles within triangles, ad infinitum. She then applies the image onto her subject, suspense in storytelling, which is a neat way to depict it as occuring at scales spanning from large to minute.

There is one wrinkle, though. The word fostered. It’s not the right word. How does one foster a fractal? I suppose one can foster suspense, but that’s not a particularly strong match either. Regardless, we are in the middle of likening suspense to fractals, so whatever word we choose should coordinate with the image of fractals, or at least not clash with it.

Some alternatives to fostered that come to mind are replicated, recreated, reproduced, repeated. But a simple applied will serve as well:

Suspense does not derive only from the machinations of plot. Instead, it is what you might call fractal: it can be applied at every level, from a seven-season TV series all the way down to a chapter, a paragraph, a scene, or even a silence.

Not as fancy as fostered, but more precise, I think.