Just thinking about revealing key information in my writing and I wondered how others tackled the issue.

For instance my MC is suffering from partial retrograde amnesia but I only reveal this two thirds of the way into the book, in very general terms, is this a good idea or a bad idea?

Geoff

Well, it's hard to say without reading it. But if your plot turns on him remembering or not remembering things, I think the reader might well feel cheated if they're not aware from early on that he won't be remembering things we'd expect him to remember. It needn't be a problem, I think, if we are aware of his amnesia: readers are used to working with an unreliable narrator, and enjoy working out what s/he doesn't or can't tell us, but we need to know he is unreliable.

The other risk - I'm sure it's not true of yours - is that the reader feels that amnesia is simply a cheat to make the plot work, because there need be no rhyme or reason to what we are or aren't told. (This is where fiction departs from real life, in the eternal human quest for order and reason in the randomness of life.)

When I'm plotting a novel, as well as columns for the main plot-strands, I often have one or more for what's revealed of the characters' past to the reader, and what to the other characters, just to keep track.

Emma

Hi Emma,

I guess I'm just going through one of those what will readers think of this moments. The brain haemorrhage occurs in the first chapter. The issue is alluded to in the second during a conversation with his doctor although I left it deliberately ambigous. I then refer to the haemorrhage specifically in chapter 6 but it's not until we get to chapter 38 that the amnesia is revealed.

To be honest the book could do with just a few minutes of amnesia, as in nearly all instances of head trauma there will be a few minutes which are lost. For a while I wondered if I should leave it at that but with the introduction of a more severe problem gives me some extra material. One of the key themes is memory, how it changes with time, how it's affected by depression and how we remember things differently (sometimes falsely). During my research I discovered that these are particular issues amnesiacs have to deal with, especially generating entirely new memories to replace the events that have been lost.

I guess my main worry is I don't want the reader to spend too much time thinking "What's going on here?" which is how the first and second chapters pan out. Yes I want them to be curious but I don't want to lose them entirely. This issue has been further compounded by the realisation that most novels tend to put this stuff right at the beginning so the reader knows which direction they're headed in.

But I guess we'll see when I eventually get round to submitting it!

Well, I think that sounds absolutely fascinating. By the sound of it, I'd have thought most readers would pick up pretty quickly that your MC may not be functioning quite normally, and go on reading with that in mind. But it's maybe the kind of thing that most needs some outside readers, taking on the whole book, because you know what you meant, and it's next-to-impossible to tell if others will to.

And you probably have to resign yourself to some readers not eve getting it. I'm fascinated to see what some readers miss about TMOL, which I and any number of agents/editors/other readers thought was bleeding obvious. If I tried to make it crystal-clear for the most inattentive reader on the planet, lots of other readers would suffer death-by-boredom. Even reviewers miss things, and see other things I never put in, or at least, not consciously.

Emma

hi geoff

a book that has something similar occur is vikram seth's An Equal Music. STOP READING NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS.

We learn about halfway in that the girl the MC's trying to get with turns out to be deaf. Obviously, this causes various a-ha moments when we then go back through the pages and i think readers find this satisfying. however, i think this may only work because the girl is deliberately hiding her deafness from the MC and so its fairly natural for it to be hidden from the reader too - it doesnt feel so much like a conceit.

most readers, im guessing, like twists and surprises - i always feel a bit cheated tho, especially when it's not done for a good narrative reason and only cos the author felt like it.

i didnt like the seth book - nothing to do with the reveal tho, just thought it wasnt that good a book. (im not recommending that you go and fork out money for it is what im saying!)

sam

I really enjoyed the Seth book - though the end was a bit creaky - but I think Sam's got a good point, in that there was a good reason for the info to be withheld from the 1st person narrator, and therefore the reader. What doesn't work is when you feel the narrator could have told us and hasn't. That is a question of controlling PoV, I guess, and from how far inside people's heads you're telling the story.

I remember discussing this business of withholding from the reader with my MPhil tutor, who used to teach Secondary English. He used to get 12yr olds to read the passage in one of the C S Lewises where Edmund(?) wakes up, and, feeling strange - heavy and dragging - goes to find a drink in a stream. How he feels is described at some length - a page or two - before he sees his reflection, and realises he's turned into a dragon. My tutor said that some children got it really quickly from the description, and some not till Edmund saw his reflection, but that all of them felt happy and satisfied: the early-getters enjoyed watching the slow-reveal of the description with the knowledge they had, and the late-getters enjoyed it all falling into place retrospectively. (One or two - the ones of whom he said, 'there is no hope' - never got it at all.)

So there are different ways in which readers can enjoy withheld material, and it may not be the way the writer expects.

Emma

Some good points have been made here and I go along with Emma and Sammy. I feel that the most important factor is that the reader does not feel that this 'revelation' has been added by the Author almost as an afterthought but was not an integral part of the plot when first devised.

Len

<Added>

cut out the word 'not' in the penultimate line. My specs were steamed up...sorry

Just drop in a few lines where the MC struggles to remember innocuous things up until the reveal, or for others to comment on it: it all depends on POV of course. As others have said, the main thing is for the reader not to feel cheated.

len - you're specs were steamed up?! what on earth were you doing? actually, don't answer that...

<Added>

tch! your/ you're... tomayto/tomahto

I thought about doing that Mischa but it's a toughie as there's an element of did it really happen at all that comes later on in the book. Though I guess if I dropped some really subtle and ambiguous hints in there.

It's also interesting to note that readers don't want to feel somehow cheated. In that respect fiction can never truly represent real life, it's like in films when a crucial item, a knife, a train crossing etc is introduced before its needed, usually with a lingering shot. It's always there so the audience doesn't think "where the fuck did that come from?" but life isn't like that. Life is full of unexpected events, in fact that's all it really is; a series of unexpected events. Even plot twists have to be within bounds.

Geoff

and yet life ends with the most expected event of them all.

Or does it? (Inspiration & Ideas>See The Needs of Man or The Lounge Forum>The God Delusion)

a course... i meant to say that 'life as we know it ends...'