Secrets Make the Story World Go Round
There’s an easy way to tell an experienced writer from a beginner. The beginner has trouble keeping a secret.
Secrets are what make life interesting in the world of fiction. They cause a lot of drama in real life too but they’re the lifeblood of many fiction genres. One of my favorite genre writers is Alistair MacLean and he’s one of the best at using secrets to propel his story forward. Just recently I was consulting on a screenplay that had a lot of problems. I kept thinking of how MacLean would have dealt with it.
In the story I read the writer revealed who the bad guys were, what their plan was, and who the heroes were in the first 30 pages. So he’d revealed every secret there was before the first act break. What else was there?
MacLean would have approached it very differently. To be sure the man had his own faults as a writer. I picked up one of his books at the library and promptly put it back because the first sentence was something about how the Colt revolver hadn’t changed since the days of Wyatt Earp. Anyone with even basic knowledge of gun safety knows quite a bit had changed since the 1870s. But MacLean was like a tabloid reporter who never let the facts get in the way of a good story. So even if his novels could be a little thin as far as details went he still provided a really exciting ride.
And the key to his success as a writer is in how he used secrets. He loaded his stories with them. Every character had at least if not more. And he took his own sweet time revealing them to the reader. In MacLean’s books every chapter would begin with a mystery. Something unusual has happened. The characters investigate what happened. As the chapter ends the hero declares he knows the explanation.
But he doesn’t say what it is! At that moment MacLean throws in another complication. Another murder. Another car crash. And now everyone has a new problem to solve. The secret for that chapter is revealed further along but by that time the reader has several more mysteries and secrets to ponder.
The key to this style of writing is recognizing that the reader is totally in the dark and that it’s in the writer’s best interest to keep him there for as long as possible. Think of Game of Thrones and all the myriad secrets that are slowly revealed throughout the course of the novel and the series. If the audience knew right from the start who killed Ned Stark’s friend, would they stick around?
How true, Michael. It’s all a balancing act.
Secrets in fiction can be really great at building suspense and keeping me on my toes. That’s what I lkike about them. I like them to be active, that is kept alive by good plots rather than dragged out for the sake of having a secret. This will keep my attention and want to keep reading
Thanks for having me on here. It was great!
I totally agree about Game of Thrones. Just when it looked like one secret was about to be revealed they would throw something new at us.
Great post! I’ve always said I would make a horrid suspense writer because I’d want to share information as soon as possible
My sister and I were discussing this just recently. I love to be pulled along, scratching my head and then *WHAM* it all comes together. I can even forgive historical inaccuracies is the story propels the reader forward. And those, WTH moments can be so awesome if the author has the talent to bring it all together in the end. Although, I have thrown a few books against the wall over the years!
This is a very interesting post.
I also want to give things away when I write. I admire people who write good suspense but I admit I struggle with it. Thanks for the post.
I try not to give things away as I write, but to dole them out in tiny parcels along the way.
I love the old pulp detective novels; the writers were great at keeping the reader in the dark till the very end. I’ll have to check out MacLean’s work.
I stumbled on your Alistair MacLean discussion through a Google Alert. His habit of keeping the reader in suspense, while strewing red herrings about, was absolutely a key strength of his writing – and the two books whose covers appear above are among his best. (Note that _The Last Frontier_ is known in the U.S. as _The Secret Ways_.) For recommendations on which MacLeans to read, please visit my website (where I have reviewed all his novels and many of the films based on them): http://AlistairMacLean.com.
The reason I chose Last Frontier is because it was called Secret Ways, which was appropriate given the post!