HOW STORIES FAIL, HOW STORIES SUCCEED - WITHHOLDING INFORMATION RIGHT
Truth is, nearly all fiction stories reveal themselves as they are read, are at one level mystery stories — therefore nearly all fiction stories require their writers to withhold information
There's only one problem with what I said before: it don’t tell the whole story.
At all.
Truth is, nearly all fiction stories reveal themselves as they are read, are at one level mystery stories — therefore nearly all fiction stories require their writers to withhold information to one degree or another as a normal part of their practice and of the form.
In other words: the very nature of fiction obligates writers to withhold information — the very form is a sustained act of withholding.
Any writer worth their salt knows that restraint, discretion, mystery are essential components of a writer’s craft and of a story’s function.
Restraint, discretion, mystery — all of these require some level of withholding.
Consider texts like Twin Peaks that withheld information hardbody. Consider how Lynch and Frost’s mysteries and omissions produced all manner of post-watch cognition — thousands upon thousands trying to decipher and decode — a hermeneutic enterprise that didn’t seem to detract at all from the immersion — in fact seemed to help it.
But you’re probably asking: what does this all mean operationally?
Can withholding information imperil your fiction?
Definitely.
Can withholding information empower your fiction?
If done right? Definitely.
Such is the nature of art that a strategy can be both good and bad, a contradictory simultaneity that the artist must have the generosity and the imaginative flexibility to embrace.
In the case of withholding information I would argue that there’s an un-generative way to “withhold information” — which is what we normally mean when we say “withhold information” — and a generative way that fortunately for us looks nothing at all like the un-generative way, and which I will now attempt to elucidate.