Big Conflicts and How Much Characters Actually Know

What’s going on in the Middle East right now? I don’t really know. I could find out. Reading news articles and books or interviewing a few people would give me a general idea.

How much does an average person in Palestine know, or someone in Israel? Certainly a whole lot more than me. But I would guess that many on both sides don’t know exactly what’s going on either.

What I’m trying to point out is that there are few if any people who know everything happening on all sides in a political conflict. Most people are not affected directly and/or hear skewed reports. (We tend to get a bigger picture only in the aftermath, like when we found out what Hitler was up to after WWII. And you know what? I bet even WWII historians still don’t know everything.)

Does any one of your characters have all the puzzle pieces? I’m inclined to say he or she shouldn’t. If the reader ever gets a full view of the political conflict, it is usually through multiple points of view.

I think Brandon Sanderson does a good job of this in the Mistborn novels. The characters end up taking two books to figure out everything involved in the political conflict of the first book.

Just some thoughts.

Happy Yarning!

Withheld Information: Or, This Crazy Plan That Just Might Work

I’m part way through Inheritance, by Christopher Paolini, and it’s got me thinking about withheld information in narratives.

Megan Whalen Turner–you’ve got to watch her or she’ll pull a fast one one you. In the three of her books I’ve read (The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, and The King of Attolia) she leaves out one critical bit of information at one critical point. When it is revealed later, it changes your whole idea of a situation or a character. I loved it, once I caught on.

So I’m not sure why it bothers me so much when Christopher Paolini does something similar in Inheritance.

Here’s the scenario (spoiler-free): the point of view (POV) character is sent to take a city and end a siege. It’s hopeless, but he comes up with this Crazy Plan That Just Might Work. Only thing is, Paolini won’t tell us anything about the plan. Not during the scene in which the POV character explains it to his friends, not during the scenes in which the POV character oversees preparations, not even during the scene in which the POV character can’t sleep the night before it’s put into operation.

I notice this kind of thing all over the place. To name a few off the top of my head: M. E. Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret, the scene in which Lady Audley gives instructions to her maid, and the reader doesn’t get to hear what she says; Brandon Sanderson’s Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones, when a chapter ends right before Alcatraz explains his Crazy Plan That Just Might Work, and we come into the next chapter as Alcatraz and Co. put it into operation.

All authors withhold information until key moments. Maybe the POV character doesn’t know it yet, or maybe the POV character doesn’t want to talk about it yet. Or maybe it’s not important to the plot, yet.

I think it bothers me in Inheritance because I can’t see a valid reason for that tactic in this case, at least not for as long as it goes on–chapter after chapter after chapter. Is it to avoid redundancy (we’re going to see how it plays out so an explanation is unnecessary)? Or is it a cheap trick to keep us flipping pages?

I don’t know. But it makes me mad.

I fear I’m doing something similar in the novel I’m revising. I try to slowly reveal that the main character’s view of the world and of his family is fundamentally flawed, but in order to keep it from being obvious from the get-go, I hold back on his motivations. I need to make it clear at the beginning what it is he thinks he’s accomplishing, and slowly show how wrong he is.

I definitely want to avoid making readers feel like I do while reading Inheritance, because honestly the withheld information turns me off the book rather than hooking me in.

When my main character comes up with his Crazy Plan That Just Might Work, I kindly have him tell his friend the gist of it before we watch it play out.

Happy Yarning!