Withholding It
How to Keep Your Readers Reading
There’s a pretty interesting post by Rebecca Neely on The Writing Cooperative all about how to make your reader want to keep reading.
Some of that is subjective. For instance, she quotes Dwight Swain about starting your story in medias res (right inside the conflict with no set-up), which has its lovers and haters like pretty much everything does.
But what I want to hit on here in our series about hooking the reader and keeping them reading are three aspects of withholding information from the reader.
These are really pretty great tools.
WHY WITHHOLD SOME INFORMATION FROM YOUR READER?
Bryan Young says in a Writers’ Digest blog that doesn’t seem to exist anymore,
“One of the hallmarks of a good screenplay, or any story, really – is having the right amount of information doled out at exactly the right time. Too much exposition and the audience gets bored and angry. Not enough context and the audience gets confused. And angry.”
But you want to be careful about withholding information and do it deftly. On her blog about this, Margie Lawson has this hysterically apt example that I’m putting below, in which she shows how badly it can go.
She writes,
“Creating story tension is about making promises to your reader regarding potential disaster, tragedy, misfortune or complications, making the outcome of the situation uncertain, and then drawing that uncertainty out for as long as possible.
When you don’t give readers a clear sense of what might happen if everything doesn’t go the character’s way, what they have to lose and why, they can’t possibly be invested in how the character struggles to prevent it.
Trying to be cryptic by withholding too much information only results in a vague future the reader can’t picture and therefore doesn’t care about, for example:
Continually naming a character something vague like “the stranger”, when the story is focusing on them.
If the narrative focuses on a character, then continually referring to them by a deliberately vague title like “the stranger” only ends up sounding awkward. Tension isn’t decreased by naming the character because it is their actions and the way information is delivered that build the tension.
Withholding critical information that would naturally be revealed by a character or situation without a good reason to do so, other than the purpose of revealing it at a later time.”
There needs to be craft involved and a balance. Hooking the reader isn’t about manipulating the reader via withholding information.
THE TOOLS OF WITHHOLDING INFORMATION
All that said, there truly are some great tools that exist out there that Neely speaks of.
She brings it down to three and writes,
Whet your reader’s appetite. String him along. Be stingy with information. He’ll love you for it. Even if you don’t write suspense or mystery, think of it in those terms. You wouldn’t tell the reader whodunit in Chapter 2, would you?
Here are three tools to consider:
Foreshadowing — is that looming storm a promise of trouble? How about the empty bottle of medication in the hero’s desk drawer that he eyeballed before leaving for work?
Cliffhanger — end your chapter and purposely omit a key piece of information. Start the next chapter with a completely different character, for example, so your reader must read on to find out what he wants to know.
Plot twist — your reader thought your hero was going to zig. But you made him zag. For example, what if your heroine is going along with plans to escape with the hero, then turns his own weapon on him at the last minute? Whoa. Never saw that coming. Now, your reader is salivating to find out what happens next.
Let me know if you want me to explain any of those in an upcoming post, okay? But they are all really great tools when you don’t use them in an over-the-top, super repetitive, formulaic way to keep the reader reading. Like too many dumplings.
You want to be selective, mix it up, because even just mixing it up can add that dash of tension that will keep the reader reading.
Withholding is about releasing information in a way that doesn’t annoy the reader, but keeps them wanting a bit more. It’s a lot about expectations and craft.