The Art of Withholding Information

As authors we hold all the cards when it comes to how and when we reveal key information to our readers. Withholding certain details can create intrigue and set up twists the reader doesn’t see coming. But if we aren’t careful, our readers might feel confused or cheated and consider our purposeful withholding as breaking a tacit agreement authors make with their readers whether they realize it or not: to play fair.

So, what does it mean to play fair when it comes to withholding information? When does it work, and when does it cross the line?

Creating Character Intrigue

Of course, we want to make sure our reader understands who our protagonist and other key characters are, where they’ve come from, why they behave as they do. But this is one place where withholding information can be a strategic move. The reader doesn’t need a character’s life story to connect with them. In fact, giving them too much information up front amounts to telling what should be shown and can ultimately interfere with a reader’s ability to get to know them on their own terms.

A reader wants to observe a character in action—how the behave, what they say and think. It’s important for readers to know where and when the story is taking place, as well as key details about who the character is (age, occupation, and the like). But why a character behaves the way they do is one of those cards we authors can keep close to our chest.

A good rule of thumb is to keep the reader on a need-to-know basis and drip-feed only the most essential information. This allows your reader to participate in the story by putting the pieces together themselves. As the protagonist acts and reacts, the reader gets to play detective, slowly but surely coming to an understanding of who this person is and how they’ve become that way.

The trick for authors is to walk the fine line between intrigue and confusion, and it’s not always easy to know when you’ve succeeded. This is where feedback can be essential. Enlisting critique partners and beta readers to weigh in on how the work is landing and whether they feel drawn into knowing more or are too baffled to continue will let you know if you’ve withheld too much or have played your key cards too quickly.

When Withholding Information Breaks POV

If you’re using first-person or deep third POV, this means you’re allowing the reader to see the world directly through your focal character’s eyes. The implication is that you’re giving them direct access to the focal character’s deepest thoughts and secrets. Unless the narrator is set up to be unreliable, if they know something, that means the reader should know it too.

Unreliable narrators are a special case. They might be unreliable in the sense that they see the world with a specific bias, such as the housekeeper Nelly in Wuthering Heights—in which case they don’t see themselves as unreliable at all. To them this is simply the way the world is, and the reader comes to understand that this narrator might not be the best judge of reality.

Or they can be outright lying, like Nick Dunne in Gone Girl—and in that case, Gillian Flynn lets us know fairly early that he’s not being candid by having him tell us he has lied to the police. His lies are revealed slowly, over time.

Gone Girl provides another example of a different way to withhold information because Flynn also creates one of the best twists of all time at midpoint when we discover (spoiler alert) that not only is Nick’s missing wife alive, but her entire series of diary entries (which we assume, based on the genre of a diary, to be “true”) have been a fabrication designed to create her alibi. In terms of POV, Flynn gets away with this because the diary entries are a static device presumably written in the past—in other words, the reader is not in Amy’s head at the moment she writes them.

Withholding Information to Create Suspense

I encounter this often in the manuscripts I edit. The protagonist opens a box and says something like I can’t believe what I’m looking at—but the author doesn’t tell us what it is. Their intention is to create suspense by withholding this information, but that’s not the right place for the suspense, and it breaks POV rules. If we’re in the focal character’s head and he sees something, we should see it too. The suspense should not be about the contents of the box but rather the fallout. What will happen next now that the protagonist has discovered this important secret? That’s what we should be worried about. Withholding information to create false suspense will only make the reader feel manipulated.

The Special Case of Mysteries

When it comes to withholding information, the mystery genre is a special case because the entire plot rests on the gradual and systematic uncovering of key information to solve what amounts to a puzzle. Withholding information is the game.

One of the accepted conventions of the genre is that the author must play fair with their readers. The reader functions as a sort of silent partner in a mystery, which means they should have a fair chance at solving the crime. It’s a key paradox in mysteries that the reader wants to try to solve the puzzle, but they also want to be wrong.

However, when the reader goes back to dig for the clues they missed, they should be able to find them. This is where fair play comes into the equation. If the reader has absolutely no chance of solving the puzzle, there’s a good chance they’ll feel cheated.

Naturally, there are exceptions. And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie, breaks this rule with impunity. There’s almost no chance a reader will guess who the murderer is, but it’s such a great story most readers don’t care.

Sherlock Holmes also makes deductions the reader can’t hope to compete with, but Arthur Conan Doyle gets away with it because the books are narrated by Watson. We might not be as smart as Sherlock but we’re probably smarter than his sidekick, and there’s some satisfaction in that.

In Conclusion

Withholding information can create a satisfying read that allows your readers to participate in the fictional dream, or it can make them tear out their hair in frustration. The best way to make sure you’ve played fair with your reader and haven’t crossed the line from intrigue to confusion is to get feedback on your work.

TIP: Sign up for Michelle’s Substack for more great posts, including one about sparking creativity by walking. Literary history is full of writers who swore by walking as a way to enhance creativity or solve a knotty problem. 

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