by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
One thing that can trip up even experienced writers is giving everything away in the story too quickly.
It’s always a temptation for me. I tend to want to reveal things too quickly in my story. I want to explain everything as it happens so that readers won’t be confused.
But when I reveal too much, I end up halfway through the story without enough material to make a full-length novel.
Areas where it may help to raise questions:
Questions about character behavior. Sometimes character motivation isn’t clear. But as long as that character is behaving consistently, readers will want to learn why the character is acting that way.
Backstory is another important story element to release in bits and pieces. For one thing, no one likes a backstory dump–it’s boring and can seem irrelevant to readers who don’t know the story’s big picture like the author does. Backstory can be character motivation or history or anything else in the past that plays into the plot or character development.
Particularly in a mystery, we want characters with secrets. No one is going to want to be completely upfront with investigators. There’s information that suspects will want to withhold. They won’t want to immediately confess to the affair or the spotty criminal record in another town or the fact that the murder victim had been blackmailing them about some past indiscretion.
It’s also important in a mystery to keep little details/information out of the hands of the sleuths. Where were the suspects really when the crime was committed? Why doesn’t Annie like Jim? These details will vary, depending on genre.
Benefits of raising questions to be answered later:
These questions act as teasers for our readers and can prompt them to keep turning pages to find out more.
Raising questions instead of providing all the answers as we write can help with story pacing.
Unanswered questions, if the questions are big enough, can also serve as subplots through our main story. Will Mark be fired from his new job? Are Katie’s parents moving in with her? Is Tom going to be able to fight his addiction to alcohol or will he succumb to it?
An important note: when we’re raising questions, we need to keep track of all of them. That way we don’t leave any loose ends at the story’s end. We want to make sure that there is a payoff when the readers have been patient to wait for the answers.
Unanswered questions in our stories help with pace and keep reader interest: Click To TweetImage: MorgueFile: Seemann
Yeah, if you don’t keep track of all those secrets and lies, you’ll have a mess.
Alex–For sure! We’d have to do a special pass through the draft for unanswered questions (and, really, who has time for that?)
Wonderful post. Laser sharp.
The mission is “engaging storytelling.” Homer doesn’t tell us what Achilles had for breakfast before meeting Hector. He knew – but he doesn’t tell us.
I’ve done much better these past few months leaving things out. Western writers have done this for years : man on a horse.
We crime writers seem to want to put the backstory and motivational clues very close to the forefront. We like a logical story path.
Motivation and perspective work well in the most abbreviated of contributions to story but getting there as someone who has to work out all the bits of crime, relations, causations, and coincidences? Seems almost impossible at times.
A blog post I cannot quite remember talked about the “redaction” method of cleaning up the “too much” syndrome. Tearing an old story apart with a wide black marker really helped me get the point. Gutted the story but showed me how much tighter the thing was without the salting of all my clues to “why/how.”
Now, to keep all the balls int he air at once! Better stories through omission: ought to be a book.
Jack–Well put. It *does* seem very logical to put clues and backstory at the front of a mystery. And I *have* done that before with some of my earlier books…but on re-reading those books, I find those parts of the stories very confusing. Just so much info to take in as a reader. And then I had to stick more *stuff* in the books so that I had things happen…put my sleuth in more dangerous situations to keep things going. If we raise simple questions, the writing is *so* much easier and the plot isn’t as contrived.
I think you’re absolutely right, Elizabeth. For one thing, life isn’t neat and tidy, so to speak. So a story where all of the questions are answered quickly isn’t realistic. And, as you say, it doesn’t keep reader interest. I like the idea of giving away information a little at a time, just as you find out things about people in real life. And when characters do unexpected things, or people have secrets, etc., that invites the reader to stay engaged.
Margot–It does make the stories more realistic, I think. For mysteries, it makes them especially fun. So we have Jim behaving erratically. We don’t know why. Later, the sleuth has a conversation with snoopy Mrs. Canterbury and she gives an explanation for Jim’s behavior. Except that she’s *wrong*. So finally we get the truth about Jim’s behavior from another informant later on in the story, someone closer to Jim. Not only is this a fairly realistic scenario when we’re talking about gossip, it keeps the thread going farther. Something else to unravel.
There is so much to think about when writing a novel. Your posts always make those things crystal clear. Thanks, Elizabeth
Karen–Thanks! This is a good trick to have in our bag…especially if our story starts running out of juice halfway through.
This is a spot-on post. I think the most important question is the one we writers must ask ourselves: What if? What if somebody is lying, or mistaken? What if something that is personal, unrelated to the crime–really does have some connection to the crime? What if a “good guy” — or several — commits a crime for altruistic reasons, or cannot reveal it for altruistic reasons?
I ran into not enough story to fill out a novel with my WIP, until I asked myself, what if this conclusion, which seems true and perfectly logical, isn’t actually the whole story? What if the exciting ending I’ve come up with is only the beginning of the ending? Man, oh man did it get fun after that. Breathed new life into the plot!
Meg–So true. I think always of eye-witness accounts on TV of things like plane crashes. Sometimes witness accounts are so wildly varying that I wonder if they’ve all witnessed the same event! And that’s true in mystery novels, too. Our accounts and viewpoints are shaded by our personalities and life outlook. Fun to expose unreliable witnesses in crime fiction. And figuring out which are clues and which are red herrings.
That’s the *best* kind of story, Meg! I love taking books into new and unexpected directions. I’ve changed the killer on many occasions, thinking another suspect would make for more of a surprise.
Our brains dislike open loops, questions raised but not answered. And we can unconsciously track a huge number of open loops.
More open loops, as long as they’re relevant, equals a reader who can’t stop reading.
It’s what I’m working on in my writing: build in more loops, opening them as it helps the story move forward and closing them at the last possible storytelling moment.
Joel–People are curious like cats. Sometimes I’ve kept reading a book that I disliked…because there was *one* thread that I was interested in. :)
Yes, all those things are true. And, as a reader, I can get annoyed if I’m not grounded in the story. It can’t be too lose, or I’m lost. However, keeping some of those questions unanswered, does keep me turning the pages! Great writing tip today!
Mary–Good point…all the questions don’t need to be raised at the *start* of the book when readers aren’t immersed in the story world yet. Even better if they’re sprinkled into the middles and toward the end.
I had a friend once who said he didn’t lie because his memory wasn’t good enough to keep track of his lies. Since I have a bad memory, I really need to note my fictional lies. Otherwise, the story would make no sense.
Thanks for another awesome article.
Teresa–Ha! I bet it can be hard to juggle lies.
I’ve got an outline right now with a secret in it…and when I was outlining (months ago), I didn’t reveal the secret in my outline. As if I would remember months later what the secret was! Sometimes I think I’m losing it. Now trying to piece together my thought process. Note to self: include ALL the secrets in the outline.
Great post as always. I run through a first draft giving away details and explaining too much. My second draft is always done in hard copy and is specifically to move clues, erase hints, delete explanations, kill dead-end sub plots, etc.
Peace, Seeley
Seeley–It’s tough isn’t it? That’s always my instinct, too…lay everything out there. Mysteries are so complicated.
Great stuff. I am also frequently tempted to share too much too early. I think I’ve done the best job when I make post-its with all the information and then physically spread them out so I can trickle it.
Hart–That’s a great way to *see* what we’ve got left to trickle out. I’ll have to give that a go sometime!
Hi Elizabeth – so interesting this post – and having heard an intelligence officer this morning talk about how he got agents to trust him and vice versa … he was as normal as possible, while disclosing only what he felt he could at that time … the drip feeding came in as time went on: I guess the same way as in a story …
Cheers Hilary
Hilary–That makes a lot of sense. That must have been an interesting talk! Wish I could have heard it.
Excellent article. I believe you are the person who taught me to include the secrets in my outline, or to write two outlines: I have an index card taped to the wall above my computer which reminds me to make two outlines. My outline includes every major scene and clue. In the second outline, I include only the events that the reader sees or is privy to. I could have sworn I learned that from you, but if not from you, I need to find out where I learned it so I can credit that person. It has been an invaluable resource for me.
You mentioned eye witness accounts of events like plane crashes (in the comment section) and it reminded me of eye witness testimony in court. Often the eyewitness account of what occurred is drastically different from the person who stood just two feet from them and witnessed the same event.
I like unanswered questions in the novels I read. It adds suspense and keeps me turning the page. I realize that unpublished authors and newbies like myself often reference best selling novelist and ask why they can break this rule or that rule. I recognize that they can break all the rules if they close, but the one “rule,”I’ve noticed that multi-published authors tend to violate the most is the backstory info dump at the beginning of the story. Please don’t misunderstand me, I don’t mean all authors or even a lot of authors, I just mean that I’ve noticed that some well known authors tend to dump large chunks of backstory in the beginning. Obviously it hasn’t kept me from reading their books and I recognize that I have to play by the rules if I ever want to get to a place where I can bend some rules of my own.
Great article.
Melissa–Thanks! And…I know I’ve talked about the *huge* importance of including secrets in our outlines (because of a couple of spectacular failures on my part before in that area, ha!), but creating two outlines sounds too clever to be something I’ve recommended. I only have a second document where I track secrets and who knows them. Great advice!
Good observation on courtroom accounts. We had a case here in Charlotte, NC that has had a lot of national attention in the last few weeks. The police officer eyewitnesses recounted things that were completely disproven by police dashcam video. But they were *sure* they’d seen it.
I think the only way that bestselling authors get away (sometimes) with infodumps of backstory is because they figure readers will stick with them knowing there’ll be a payoff. Because they’re well-known. But sometimes I’m not sure knowing there’ll be an eventual payoff is still worth it to me, as a reader. When we’re not invested with the characters yet, hearing about their history is boring.
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