Keeping Secrets

I’m not talking about your personal secrets, the ones you agonize whether or not to reveal by being naked on the page. I’m talking about the more technical issue of how/when you disclose secrets as part of your plot.

Secrets are a lovely playground for writers—so many ways to misinterpret, add mystery, and/or keep the story moving forward. But not without its pitfalls for the writer.

Too many secrets

You’ve come up with a great mystery novel idea. The FBI, CIA, NSA and Department of Justice are all trying to kill a woman with an earth-shattering secret. Throw in a rogue NSA agent and your detective and you have a dog’s breakfast of underground motives and activities. It’ll be great fun throwing in red herrings and false trails. You barrel towards your surprise ending.

Okay, so this is where you want to give a thought to your reader. You know where you’re taking this. But the reader doesn’t. All he experiences is five or six shadowy characters doing enigmatic things, all of which seem unrelated. If you’re lucky, he’ll stick with you. But more likely, he’ll be confused, can’t keep the story lines straight, and will give up on the novel as a boring tangle.

Some fixes

Cut down the number of suspects. I know—strikes a blow to your heart. But think about it. Why are many villains better than one really well-written one whom the detective doesn’t recognize until almost too late?

Make each suspect/secret really intriguing. The previous suggestion may be a bridge too far. An alternative is to spend more time with each suspect so the reader has an interest in finding out what happens to the particular characters.

Too obvious

The opposite end of the spectrum is making the villain too obvious. The character that always seems to be on the scene. The nosy parker. The excessively helpful bystander. Since your reader is often smarter than you, revealing any one of them as the murderer/villain will seem flat and been-there-done-that. And your novel will end deflated rather than with a big pop.

Some fixes

Give credible reasons for being there. Presumably, your bad guy has to be present or at least connected to the events experienced by your detective. Spend some energy coming up with a credible backstory for your villain. The attending doctor, the protagonist’s kid’s teacher, the physio working out the detective’s muscle cramps.

Let the reveal be satisfying. Okay, this isn’t really a fix. It’s more how the end product will feel to your reader. You want a I-didn’t-see-that-coming-but-it-makes-sense, rather than an Oh-okay-that’s-what-happened. If you get the first reaction, you’re likely to have built a story which kept your reader involved while planting clues he won’t recognize until after he knows the solution.

A Goldilocks moment

Yes, it is a matter of the porridge being neither too hot nor cold. Give a thought to how the story will strike the reader. Keep giving the reader a reason to turn the page. The promise of a great ending doesn’t cut it. Instead, litter the path with crumbs which allow the reader the pleasure of trying to figure things out as the novel progresses.

He’ll love you for it.

The Nutshell

The Nutshell is a highly acclaimed novel by Ian McEwan. It is a brilliant story which is both a fantastic flight of fancy and a sharply observed, gritty tale of murder. With the overlay of compelling comments on the state of humanity.

The plot in a nutshell

An unborn baby is the protagonist (no, that’s not a typo). By listening through the womb, he discovers that his mother-to-be plans to kill his father, John, to continue her affair with John’s brother, Claude.

The baby is outraged but helpless. He ‘witnesses’ John’s poisoning and the subsequent police sympathy for the pregnant widow (Trudy), on the assumption that John was a suicide. But the police become suspicious. Trudy and Claude decide to flee. The baby is desperate to stop them.

You can read a fuller summary by clicking the link.

The literary rules he breaks

I’ve already written how amateur writers break writing rules at their peril but here is an example of where, in the hands of an experienced writer, they can be trampled upon to great effect.

I want to concentrate on the cracked literary rules, but there are also many more exciting features. I encourage you to read a review to get more on these aspects.

Inherently unlikely premise

Really, the story of an unborn baby—ridiculous. You’re supposed to write characters with whom the reader can identify. We’ve all been fetuses of course, but I think I may say with confidence that none of us told stories from the womb.

Impossible, and yet by the end of the first page, I’ve bought it. And the erudition of the baby who pronounces insightfully on the world he has yet to enter. Some of this acceptance can be attributed to the authority of the author. McEwan’s mastery of the language and confidence makes it easy to fall into his world, no matter how unusual.

Both omniscient narrator and first person

The unborn baby is the first person narrator. Typically, writers should stick with one point of view. It encourages identification with the protagonist and focuses the story. But McEwan doesn’t allow the strait jacket he has chosen hold him back. He enters into every character’s mind to further the story and is a fly on the wall for events the baby could not have been present for. Again, we move seamlessly from one perspective to another, hardly noticing.

The protagonist doesn’t act

I’ve already written a post on avoiding passive observers as main characters. A protagonist needs to act to achieve his goals. He can’t just stand around wringing his hands. Otherwise, the reader loses interest or gains impatience.

A baby in a womb. Is there a better definition of an inactive witness? Okay, he tries unsuccessfully to strangle himself with the umbilical cord, but for the most part, he can do nothing but observe. And I am right there, watching with him.

So, that’s just three rules trampled over. There are more, one of which I will go into more detail in the next post.

The Nutshell reinforces what I have said before—there are general rules for writing which master craftspeople can use with ease but also know when to break in the service of the story. You can do it also if (and only if) you have the same facility.

This primarily mechanical breakdown of the novel is not, I hope, how you experience it if you have read it or will (sorry, the tense agreements got a bit tangled up there). Because there’s a lot of fairy dust in the novel, too.