When to Reveal, When to Withhold
How to strike a happy balance to keep your readers invested
Readers want to discover. This is true whether you’re writing mystery, heartfelt coming-of-age, thrillers, horror, comedy, whatever. When readers are intrigued, they keep turning pages. When readers are confused, they set the book down. When readers aren’t emotionally invested, they’re bored.
One element of powerful storytelling is knowing when to reveal information and when to withhold it.
Let’s study snippets from “Sugary Deaths,” a short story by Lilliam Rivera that appeared in the young adult horror anthology Our Shadows Have Claws.
The story opens with Pinky. It’s the 1980s, and Pinky is the Pac-Man Queen of her neighborhood. She’s freshly dressed and walking over to arcade at the pizzeria to make her big appearance, as she has become a bit of a celebrity.
… Pinky pauses and looks up at the stone gargoyles guarding the building, just ten feet above her. When they first moved in, everything about New York frightened Pinky but not the gargoyles. The stone statues reminded her of the ones sprinkled across Barceloneta, from the entrance to the Cementerio Municipal Viejo to her family’s home. When she saw the stone beasts, she knew the city would not devour her. She would be safe.
The monstrous gargoyles each feature a different aspect of human life: One is cooking, another is eating from a bowl, another is stirring a pot, another appears to be telling a story, another is laughing.
“Today I’m beating my score,” Pinky says in their direction.
A minute goes by and she tilts her head and frowns as if she heard something she didn’t like.
She crosses the street to the pizzeria.
Notice that sentence: A minute goes by and she tilts her head and frowns as if she heard something she didn’t like. As a reader, you’re immediately intrigued. What does this sentence mean? Does Pinky simply have a wild imagination? Does she just enjoy talking to inanimate objects? Did she actually hear something? The sentence has no implicit meaning on the page and Rivera resists any urge to overexplain. She simply moves on to the next sentence and takes Pinky to the arcade, where we forget about the gargoyles and instead meet Blaze, a new kid who has beaten Pinky’s high score, much to her chagrin. Blaze is arrogant and conceited. Pinky dislikes him immediately, even as a crowd of admirers (mostly girls) crowd around him. She resents him beating her high score, of course, but she also senses something very bad about him. Her suspicions are quickly proven true as he moves through the girls—including her best friend.
Later, Pinky and her mother have the following conversation.
… “I saw your friend Lourdes with Blaze in front of the building,” her mother says. “You should talk to her. Warn her. She shouldn’t be hanging out with him.”
Her mother turns Pinky to face her.
“I will,” Pinky promises.
“Good,” her mother says. “We have to protect our own.”
That last line—“We have to protect our own”—isn’t unique in and of itself. But it has greater meeting. That greater meaning is not implicitly stated. Instead, the author is leading us somewhere.
Later, as Lourdes falls for Blaze, we get this brief line.
… Blaze is PAC-MAN, gobbling up all the girls on 110th Street, using them and tossing them to the side because he can. Pinky glances up at the stone gargoyles right above them and gives the slightest of nods.
This is the second mention of gargoyles. It’s brief. Rivera doesn’t expand on it in this paragraph, but she’s already given us breadcrumbs, from the first mention of gargoyles to the comment from Pinky’s mother, and now this—a nod, as if she’s having a conversation with them. Rivera’s allowing the reader to put the pieces together. She trusts that they will come to understand the subtext, which will lead them to the revelation in the closing scenes, when Rivera invites Blaze to the rooftop under the guise of a sexual rendezvous.
… Blaze twirls a strand of her hair around his finger. Pinky grins, flashing a little bit of her teeth, and takes a couple of steps away from him toward the edge of the roof.
“You ever been to Puerto Rico?” she asks. “Barceloneta is a town in Puerto Rico, on the south side of the island. Some people believe they’ve seen gargolas flying in the dead of night. They say gargoyles hunt those who’ve caused harm on in the innocent.”
Suddenly, all those moments that weren’t implicitly put on the page bring us to this moment, when all the subtext makes sense and comes to its inevitable conclusion: Pinky turns into a gargoyle and devours him.
Imagine how less effective this story would be if Rivera opened with something like: Pinky came from a long line of murderous gargoyles. It would deflate much of the tension and suspense as the story goes on and doesn’t allow the reader to move closer to the page and make their own conclusions. There are times, of course, when you may want to state something outright. But there are also times—more often than not—when you’ll want to withhold information until it packs the greatest punch.
When are you revealing information? When are you withholding? Have you been strategic about when to reveal so you can get the greatest emotional impact? (The key word here is “strategic”—you don’t want to withhold information just to be coy). How much space are you leaving for the reader to come to their own revelations—emotional or otherwise? Are there scenes where you can employ a bit more subtlety so you can bring the reader closer to the page?
Happy writing, friends.