The Power of Not Knowing

You ever see some woman who you talk with every now and then and she seems really cool? She’s interesting, unexpected, unpredictable. You want to learn as much as you can about this person because she’s so fascinating. Be careful what you wish for. Once you figure a person out, the intrigue is generally gone. Then that woman becomes just another predictable person.

The same can be true for your characters. If you put too much out on the table, it can lose power. We shout meet a character who we learn about through the course of the story, understanding this person through a combination of actions and exposition. If you lay it all out from the start, it reads more like a character bio than part of a narrative.

This is true of any part of a story, actually. Characters, settings, whether a set of circumstances was coincidence or fate or a brilliant plan. Leave some mysteries. Leave questions that people will desperately want answered. And do give the people answers, but not all of them.

The human imagination is very powerful. If you leave certain things unexplained, the audience will try to fill in the blanks. This can create a unique experience, making your story a personal one for every reader.

However, this can easily be used as a crutch. If you are a bad or lazy writer, you may not answer questions and claim it is to create a unique experience or to affect people with the power of not knowing. But if you're doing that, you know you're a bad writer and that it's your crutch. Don’t confuse leaving parts out for intrigue with leaving crucial information out because you’re lazy and you will be just fine with this technique.